The Island that Lay Before the Great Flood

Atlantis was lost beneath the sea, the king of philosophy wrote millennia ago. The people there fell into vice and paid the ultimate price for upsetting the natural order, whatever that may be.

Enda went to Brussels or Frankfurt or one of those other European places on the news where you see politicians trying their hardest to look oh so serious in front of their own reflections. Enda told 'em a tale of modern Atlantis, once again lost beneath the waves of the sea, repeating that old ballad sung by CJ all those years ago - "We lived beyond our means."

"It was an island that lay before the great flood in an area we now call the Atlantic ocean," the Donovan song goes; Donovan, who now lives in "fair Atlantis", with not a shred of irony.

The secret is that Atlantis lives on, that the waves of finance and wealth and cheap loans and mortgages and fancy restaurants and summer houses in Spain and bags of coke and living like a rockstar version of Narcissus crashed upon the land like a great tsunami that only the god Neptune could have conjured in the insane madness of the stormy sea.

We must have done something wrong, like believe in a utopia packaged by a few rich white guys far across the sea. The small poor catholic country where the craic was to be had became a golden empire reaching for the stars for a while, and a giant silver spike pointing the way to Nirvana.

That needle, make sure to catch the vein ...

Atlantis was swallowed up, but it still lives.

And I'm sure if you were to ask the king of the philosophers if he actually asked anyone other than a king or a priest in Atlantis if they actually deserved their fate they would probably say, "No, before my time that."

And I'm sure if you were to ask an ordinary person living in Atlantis if they actually deserved their fate they would probably just shrug. "Twas a messy thing, that," I suppose they would say.

Then I remember. Atlantis is just a story. There's no evidence for the existence of that grand island. It was a virtual place, a myth, a lick of gold paint on something tainted with the lifeblood of a living breathing organism.

Atlantis never existed, the Celtic Tiger never existed, and fuck off Enda Kenny.