I have a signature photograph from this area, a grouping of rocks, glacial erratics, on the furrowed limestone plain of the Burren. It is the image on my New York exhibit announcement. After nearly every trip to Ireland, the same set of rocks turns up on my contact sheets. This is not intentional. A gravitational pull exists between this particular group of rocks and me. It is not as though there aren't thousands upon thousands of like-looking rocks in North Clare. Yet I return to these same three rocks, always by accident.

So, can I find them on demand? If memory serves me correctly, they are a few miles north of Lisdoonvarna on the coast road. Here now is that peculiar curve of road and the jumbly bit of landscape, from that recurring dream that stopped recurring when I found this spot for real. It should be just past that, over on the right. But it's not. I stop frequently, pulled as I am to gaze and wander in this queer landscape. Another familiar boulder jumps out at me, I remember the photo, but it's the wrong rock. Memory and reality are colliding in my brain, soldered together by the camera.

I am busy making new compositions though. The day starts out brilliant and cloudless. This being Ireland, such a benign atmosphere is inherently unstable. Sure enough, the moment I have a satisfying gathering of rock and sea and sky, the shadows weaken and disappear. The nearest of the Aran Islands, Inisheer, vanishes and returns behind the brush-wash of falling rain. The wind snatches fragments of bird song from my ear, the minor key twitter of a European Robin.

Miles of Burren, and I give up. It seems I cannot summon the spot on demand. I find instead, pulled over, the two American girls I breakfasted with. "This is amazing," they say, "We're so glad you told us to drive this way." With the windy day, their portraits show mostly blown blonde hair, backlit by sun.

The weather turns, again. The shadows vanish, the sky to the west is a wall of black. The agitated Atlantic is glowing green, with white froth at the lip where it meets stone. To the south, powerful sunbeams break into glowing atmospherics. It looks like a stained glass window of my youth. Only the stern-faced angels in the sky are missing.

I am wandering through the rocks, pulled by how many of them look like teeth, their incisors biting the sky. I head for a stone wall, hoping for shelter from the wind so I can write some notes. I glance right, and there they are, my familiar group of rocks. They are eight kilometers north of where I swore I last left them. They're also half the size I remember, the largest round one on the left barely reaches my chest. I can't resist a redux, and find that I must splay my tripod legs fully out, camera low to the ground, to mimic the composition of the gallery card photo. As I reach the car the first dollops of rain fall.

7 February 2002