Catching Up on a Busy Month

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29432040.post-1153927326708359452006-07-26T08:14:00.000-07:002006-07-26T08:23:25.520-07:00Catching Up on a Busy MonthMonday, July 10, 2006 Computer Geek Spotting in Ireland Today, I determined to get my technology up and going, so I bought a Mobile Disk. My luck, again, comes through; while I was on the bus, going into Dublin to make this purchase two college kids were talking about the best place to buy computer parts. I asked them about where to buy this one, and they took me to two computer warehouses so I could get the best deal. …love these Irish folk! I’m also determined to get some of my own poems printed, so I can participate in a reading this Thursday! I don’t know if my very “Texas” poems will translate, but we’ll see. Again, I wrote a lot last night, watched CSI (doesn’t sound like a very Irish thing to do, but when has the remote control, I never get to watch CSI), and slept late this morning. I took my towels and a pair of jeans (the things I can’t dry myself with “Dr. Bronner’s”) to the laundry today; Rhonda, if you’re reading this, you would be proud of me: I’m re-using the same bath towel more than once. Sunday, July 9, 2006 Full Moon …a nice lazy Sunday. I went to church at Dublin Unitarian, arriving only a little late and being forced to sit in the pew from which I could only read the word “Discovery” on the stained glass, which also probably has more condemning and admonitory words on other panes. I didn’t move a muscle though, didn’t strain for a different view; I like the sentiment! I took a long Sunday nap in the afternoon, waking when Ken called to remind me it was a World Cup night (Paris and Rome—it’s hard to know who to root for). I had a thick dream about school hallways in an old building. Then, I went to O’Connell, wondered around catching the cheers from soccer fans, drifted to Temple Bar area, and was rushed into a dinner of Curried Coconut Prawns at the Mona Lisa Restaurant. Later, safe in Sandymount, I walked along the beach toward the full moon and dipped my hands in the Irish Sea as if it were holy water. Wrote: a poem called “Sandymount II” about the seaweed’s looking like Spanish moss…. Saturday, July 8, 2006 An Artsy Kind of Day It’s been a rainy old day here in Dublin town, so I spent some time this afternoon at the National Museum of Modern Art, where I saw several paintings by Louis le Brocquy which I liked very much and in which I could see an influence on the Becket and other Tom Byrne’s works I saw at the Apollo Gallery yesterday and had a drink at the Old School House pub. I’ve been in pubs in Edinburg that were housed in old churches, but this is the first time I’ve seen an old school building used this way! Wrote: a scene for a play, the leaf falling in from the bus, into her grasp, after the conversation in the park with the divorced woman’s saying, “That’s horrible. As if he were nothing. As if he were a leaf….” Friday, July 7, 2006 All “Booked Up” in Dublin Last night, a writing idea kept me up until 3, so I slept in this morning, ate pears and cereal, and then went into the city centre to use the internet determined not to do or buy much today! But, the best laid plans…. I ended up strolling through Duke Street and found a rare book shop—my weakness. I also went into the Apollo Gallery on Dawson and fell in love with two works by Tom Byrne (Pocession [sic] and Becket) in case anybody out there is looking to spend a couple of thousand euro on a birthday or Christmas gift. Anybody? Anybody? You’ve got to love Ireland. This morning on the bus, an old man sat down by me and ended up encouraging me to try to get a teaching job in Dublin, which he says is hurting for teachers because of the new influx of immigrants in the schools. “You could have a job by the end of the week,” he said. Before we left, he gave me his phone numbers and told me if I “had any difficulties” during my stay to call him, because it was “always good to have someone to call for help” and he would “be curious to know” if I got a job. (He stayed on the bus an extra stop to show me where the local teachers’ union was located.) Again, on the bus, our driver encouraged several young people to move to the top of the bus, so I moved, too. When I got to the top and sat down, one little boy, about nine or ten, turned around, looked at me, and thinking that the driver had asked me to move to the top to make way for the elderly too, said, “Take it as a compliment!” (Cheeky kid!) Yesterday at the service at St. Patrick’s when I was “bone tired,” I opened the prayer book and found this scripture from Psalm 6:2, “Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak. O Lord, heal me for my bones are vexed.” At the time, my poor, old feet were “vexed” as all get out, and when I first got up this morning and looked at my new blisters and put weight on them, I thought again, “Ohhhhh, Lord, heal me ‘cuz my bones are vexed.” Come to think of it, my feet feel much less tired today, so my prayer must have gone straight through! (Mother, you’ll have to tell Daddy and Dr. Awney about this one!) Bought: a signed third edition of The Rough Field by John Montague—I couldn’t resist it because I loved the lines about the woman’s being “broken down by / process to a pale / exhausted beauty;” and from the half-price stacks downstairs two others—Collected Poems (Patrick Kavanagh) and New Irish Writing edited by David Marcus, that latter of which I had to take because I was in the middle of a story called “Christmas” by John McGahern when the clerk told me they were closing up the shop Wrote: some lines for a poem about “sitting under the angels on O’Connell street, eating a sugared donut.” Thursday, July 6, 2006 My Luck Holds I happened to walk into the yard of Trinity College today just at the moment a graduation ceremony had either ended or was about to begin! Graduates wearing their robes were milling around with their proud-looking family members just in time for me to snap a shot or two. This morning, I started a conversation with a lady (68) by telling her she looked pretty in her green and red. “I’m trying to cheer myself up,” she told me, and we started talking. She was from Belfast originally, but moved to Dublin when her boys were small because “there were a lot of problems there then, you know.” She told me about her best friend of 63 years and her husband who has emphazema, so had a rough day yesterday. Today, though, was cooler, so he “should do better” today she said. A lovely lady…. ...enjoyed soup and bread at Davy Byrne’s today, one of Joyce’s locations in Ulysses. Then, I ate rose-flavored and pistachio-flavored sweets from a market stall, bought some books at the Upstairs Bookstore, and enjoyed an evensong service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Not a taxing day at all, but I am exhausted. A quick walk into Sandymount for some take-away dinner…. Bought: Bearings, a book of poetry by Joseph Woods; The Wolfhound Guide to Dublin Monuments by Elizabeth Healy. Wrote: A scene for a play about teachers. Wednesday, July 5, 2006 Oh, Happy Day! I ambled to town (Sandymount) to grab groceries and stopped for fish-and-chips at a take-away, which I ate in the part in the center of town by the bust of Yeats. Granted, that experience might not seem like a big deal except that later when I read Pat Boran’s line about children, “[dousing] their leaking take-aways with vinegar,” I understood the image. My landlady was home from Spain today! She gave me a great deal on my apartment, making it possible for me to stay through the whole month of July because she said something about my inquiry “just struck a chord,” so I feel like I’m the “writer in residence” at Seaview this month. When we met today, she was delightful and helpful again, and I thrilled in seeing her paintings of “Four Ladies of Forceful Personality,” especially the ones Roth did of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Tolkias when they were in Paris. In the afternoon, I made my visit to an internet café on O’Connell Street in Dublin, since I am still not able to access the internet from my apartment. (My landlady wasn’t either this morning, so I’m hoping it’s just a temporary problem with the signal.) I made some photographs of monuments and buildings near O’Connell for my Western European Studies Project. Then, I strolled down to the tourist office and made a stop and then spent part of the afternoon with a berry smoothie under a tree in St. Stephen’s Green, doing some journaling and talking to a nice Irish lady about her divorce, which was final today. (Certainly should be a poem there--and I hope a good new start for her.) Poetry Ireland sponsored an “emerging poets” reading tonight in Damar Hall, which it turns out is the basement of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Dublin. The following “new” poets read from their works tonight: Dylan Brennan, Catriona Clutterbuck, Bernadette O’Reilly, Desmond Swords, and Maureen Boyle. I found myself jotting down ideas as they read. Brennan’s poems about his time in Mexico, especially “The Market of Color” reminded me of how travel provides writing fodder, the exotic pops out, and then when you get home, if you are lucky, you begin to see home with your new tourist’s eyes and realize how rich and unique that place is, too. I liked Desmond Swords line about two accents “jostling,” and now I want to write a poem about the Spanish and English of Houston. Likewise, Maureen Doyle’s poem about Queen Hermione’s lost years in Shakespeare’s play would lend itself to a nice opener for my students’ writing poems about other Shakespearean characters or even about Shakespeare’s own lost years! I had to laugh today when I heard people complaining about the heat. “It’s the hottest day it’s been this summer,” they said. It felt almost cool to me, and although I miss Ken and my Huntsville/Scottsboro friends, I was happy to be away from the “long, hot summer” that Alabama was promising as I left five days ago. As I type this, I’m sitting at “my” dining table with a lovely painting and the now-opening pink carnations that were in my room when I arrived both in my line of vision, but when I turn to the left and see the Irish Sea and the distant red lighthouse, I am still surprised. It’s what one painter called “the blue time of day,” except to my left there’s a little Technicolor emerald mound of land peaking into the frame. Every glance out my window is like a little gift. I don’t know if my Mayo line really goes back to Mayo County as I want to believe or if my father’s grandfather still had traces of an Irish brogue or whether my father just told me that to cover the fact that he had used “Irish brogue” as a regretful metaphor for cursing a lot. But I do know this: I do have “the luck of the Irish,” and I am thankful for this day in my luck-laced life. Wrote: A draft a poem about my father; the aforementioned journals; some lines for the poem for my friend in the park today; revisions and a new stanza for “Inevitably” about climbing on top of the oil pumps in Texas. I was reminded: (1) Of the word churched as it was used in East Texas where I grew up—not as “church learnin’” but as the church’s “disowning” someone whose sins were so striking that they couldn’t be redeemed and needed to be made an example of. Of course, I never knew of this ever actually happening, but it was always there as a threat in the air. (2) I was also reminded of the Japanese expression that means, “I am full,” applying not just to food, but to one’s life being full and rich with experiences and blessings. (3) My student, Elizabeth, who said that she had never been a stranger anywhere. At the time, I was envious of that kind of certainty, but today as I was so much aware of my Otherness as an American, as a tourist, etc., I was pleased with the freedom that comes when you embrace the tag, “Stranger.” Read: At the internet café, several poems reprinted online by Pat Boran, Joseph Woods (who I hope to interview Monday), and Eavan Boland. Tuesday, July 4, 2006 Independence Day I must be feeling more confident about getting around Dublin, because several people stopped me today to ask me for directions! I was a typical tourist today though, and I used the remaining hours on my hop-on-hop-off tour to go around the city several times, making notes about bus numbers and planning out some activities for my remaining days. To celebrate July 4th, I had a cheeseburger at Eddie Rocket’s for lunch—not Miss Bogie’s, but it was still a good little salute to home. I listened to “I Only Have Eyes for You,” “Get Up Off That Thang,” and “Rock Around the Clock,” and I felt very American! Then, I went to what I now know was the last big poetry reading to be held at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, a part of the old Parliament Building. The bank is closing the centre to pursue some profit-making venture. (Boo! Hiss!) But, at the end of the reading Theo Dorgan spoke about the closing in a way that made me think he had done more than kiss the Blarney Stone; it was the most eloquent speech I have ever heard, and if he’d asked us to follow him through hell and back, most of us would have answered “Do I have time to put on my hiking boots?” He insisted that the closing of the centre wouldn’t kill poetry in Ireland, but he worried about the soul-killing effects of making decisions for pure profit and reminded the audience of the story of Old King Midas. “Poetry,” he said, “is one of the last places we can go to remind ourselves we do not want to live and die for gold.” I had gone to the reading to hear one of my favorite Irish women poets—Eaven Boland, and as a bonus I was able to hear her read with Paula Meehan, whose name I was familiar with, but whose work I was not. She read several works that dealt with the diminishing natural landscape; I’m looking forward to including her in my Irish Poetry Lesson Plans. Poetry Ireland sponsored the reading, so I was also able to meet its director Joseph Woods who I am also hoping to include in my project. Wine and finger foods had been provided by a benefactor; most of you know how I have an oddly strong love for “little, tiny sandwiches.” Sitting in a room filled with history, letting the sound of Irish poetry wash over me—I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day in Dublin! On my way home, the bus driver (from Nigeria) told me about his parents who live in Waco, Texas, where my grandparents live; it is a small world. Wrote: A draft of a love poem about independence; a draft of a lesson plan based on Meehan’s “Death of a Field” poem; a few lines of my own version of Meehan’s poem, “Death of a Field,” based on “my” possum lost to a new housing development in Alabama, my abundance of persimmons just rotting on the vine, and my willingness to believe the salesman who told me when I asked about the likelihood of urban sprawl taking out the pasture next door to our house, “I don’t see how they could.” Read: The Man Who Was Marked by Winter and Pillow Talk—two collections of poetry by Paula Meehan, plus more chapters in my enthralling Haruki Murakami novel, Kafka on the Shore and Best Thing I Saw Today: A stranger on a bus wordlessly stand up and open a complicated baby stroller for a young, overwhelmed mother.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/29432040-115392732670835945?l=amonthindublin.blogspot.com'/></div>Leilani Kesnernoreply@blogger.com