Beyond the rainy haze of the Dublin sky, the sun lies asleep, swaddled in a cotton swab cradle jumbled with murky moisture, as if a painter’s stroke had fallen too far into the rising smokestacks on the ground below and muddled all the whites and putrid grays together. It yawns with a brilliance and huffs all the clouds and haze away. A blue tide washes over the heavenly sphere and small dollops of foam float carelessly over its surface. Upon a precarious precipice I stand, as the world rolls over into the horizon, one way into unending fields, and the other into interminable sloshing depths.
Since coming here it has been one vibrant, but intense, mix of sleep deprivation, alcohol, and an exploration of my own condition. Two Thursdays ago I was apt to indulge in my own reckless age performance, aka pub hopping in Temple Bar and a drunken shwarma sauce beard to accompany our ramblings with a drunken Irish crackhead who had just come home to divorce papers on his dining room table. Poor lad.
It is such a strange thing to find yourself completely isolated, to fight with your own human nature to attach to social interaction and proximity, so as to not place your dreams and hopes under the foot of a clumsy elephant. "I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." I’ve already experienced an interesting mix of people here, people at first who seem genuine, only reveal their festering innards within days. Empathy is at worst selfish, and rarely genuine in its infancy. Case in point: John McGuinness. At first I was a bit put off by his incongruent attire and demeanor. I should have followed that intuition and avoided him. He’s turned out to be a belligerent misanthrope, quick to intrude and equally sharp to prove callous. While frequenting a pub he quickly made it clear that he was American with his arrogant disruptiveness. I lowered my head in a tacit scolding, hoping to disassociate myself with such assertive, blatant, and embarrassing American imperialism. Despite this, I have found a group of friends which seem accepting and genuine in their generosity.
This last weekend Brooke, Mike, his visiting girlfriend Allie, and I decided to make some amorous sojourns into the suburbs of Dublin. First was Dun Laoghaire, a beautiful port town with magnificent houses barricading the inland. We made our way around to neighboring towns, past the Martello tower where Ulysses begins, which hung perilously out in the bay, stalwart and lonely, waiting to be washed by the tide. Bray was the next day, which was flocked with people frantic to bathe in the sun before it disappears indefinitely for the winter. Bray’s Head hung in the distance, a mountain perched upon the coast line, the large cross on the top casting its shadow upon all of Ireland. At the peak, the bay was clear for miles. The cerulean hue of the ocean blurred at the horizon with the sweet blue of the sky. Off to the west were the Wicklow Mountains which bended into a vast, green, mysterious and radiant country side.
The following day Brooke and I visited Howth, the northernmost peninsula of Dublin Bay. The perilous and peaked cliffs were what I had expected to see when I first came to Ireland, like a dark and omnipotent monolith, towering against the whirling white foam crashing into it. On the way to the top of the cliffs we passed a house in which W.B. yeats had lived between 1880-1883. He must have treaded softly indeed in his house hanging over certain doom. The cliffs were spectacular, a true momento mori as one sees the craggy, horned rocks below and imagines the simple step one would have to abandon everything upon, hoping to land upon “The blue and the dim and the dark clothes of night and light and the half-light”, but being poor having to rely on their own dreams to catch them in an incorporeal embrace. Oh, but to be able soar over all that sharp intolerance and sardonic buzzing, sawing, clanking, yelling, and crying into the place where the heavens and sea blur. But, for now I’ll settle for just being in fair Eire.
The coming week involved a course in reality for the freshers (freshmen) frequenting the campus as they realized attending class might be a good idea. My lectures seemed interesting enough, even though I have ended up in a Romanticism class which so far seems to scream against what I believe. Maybe that’s just Edmund Burke’s paternal ramblings. Though perhaps I will find some profound interest in the exultation of the self in nature that poets like John Keats so beautifully express. The week also afforded a few new friends, California Mike (well technically I met him on the Thursday of the previous week), Steph and Meg. Without much delay we all (Denver Mike, Brooke, Meg, Steph, Cali Mike, and I) had already planned Taco Night on Wednesday and a weekend trip down to Killarney. Which is where my next post will take us to, the SPRAWLING mountains of the Irish countryside.
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