Ireland

Getting this much anticipated post out has been a trick. Its posted date is a bit of wishful thinking, really.

The difficulty is that I've had quite an eventful week, eventful enough that none of you really want to sit through all the events. New things are like that, and I've had two new countries, fifty new people, and an entirely new sort of living to adjust to this week. On the other hand, within a couple weeks all the novelties will be exhausted, and I'll have nothing to write about except my insights into the Cartesian Circle. So I think the best policy is to pace myself, sating your appetite for my life in tiny bits.

Ireland is not a tiny bit, though. Ireland is a great emerald island an hour's flight to my west covered in an irregular patchwork of fields and pastures. It's a island that has been violently divided, that never experienced Britain's industrial revolution, and until recently was one of the poorest in the world. But you wouldn't guess that, at least not at first, stepping into Dublin, a bustling city of a million people on the Liffey River. The city center swarms with youth, bars and clubs and theatres and ethnic restaurants and fashionable shopping, with optimism and left-leaning social policies and lively nightlife and high art and culture and literary tradition. We stayed in an upscale hotel across from Trinity College--J.D. and I in a great big room on the top floor--within a short walk of everything.

And everything was about what Stephanie, our fearless coordinator, had in store for us. Pummeled from every side by a battery of walking tours dull and grand, we visited old paintings and old books and old houses and old churches and old castles. Ireland is an old place: we saw, for instance, the Book of Kells, a 9th (or was it 8th?) century illuminated manuscript, and we toured Dublin Castle, originally built by Norman occupiers in the 12th century, but at whose foundations has been discovered a Viking wall from much earlier. The castle, which has been used by every government since the Norman invasion, is like a physical timeline of Ireland: Norman battlements built on Viking walls, with a Georgian entryway leading up to a Victorian hall displaying portraits of the succession of viceroys, and a great state chamber where the Irish president is now inaugurated, displaying the flags of the orders of the Irish knights who once swore allegiance to Britain, the flag of the Republic of Ireland, and the flag of the European Union.

And the whole thing stands as a symbol of the main theme of Ireland, that runs through every monument, street name, and church. The deep-running pain of memory, of tension, of ambivalence. Statues of the martyrs of the 1916 uprising against England--gun smugglers and incendiaries executed for treason. And then also, less celebrated, of the English lord who brought Dublin its water supply system. Great breathtaking cathedrals like Christchurch, built as monuments to the authority of the Church of England and the Protestant religion, or like St. Audeon's, as security for the Norman occupation--political weapons. There are weapons everywhere--every beauty is broken.

We saw in Dublin Castle the layers of conquest built up on one another: all our cities are built and rebuilt on upward climbing layers of rubble. It's heartbreaking and distressing to think about how our cultures are built in every aspect on history's rubbish heap. It would be enough for despair, but for the promise--

And I will abolish the bow, the sword and war from the land,
And will make them lie down in safety...
Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice,
In lovingkindness and in compassion,
And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness.
Then you will know the LORD.

That's kind of trite-sounding just whipping it out there like that, and the thought process is much longer than that, but this is getting too heavy already.

So instead, there's Kildare. On Sunday morning everyone was to meet down in the hotel lobby in order to board a bus for the day's activities: first a tour of Russbourough house, then a lunch stop in the townlet of Kildare, and then a jaunt through hill and dale to a secluded and ancient monastic site called Glendalough. This was all planned out in a fair bit of detail on our itinerary, beginning at the top with our departure at ten o'clock sharp. Very sharp. So sharp, in fact, that it sliced a few of us clean off, leaving us standing kind of disbelievingly in said lobby at 10:01. The five of us--Steph, Casey, Paula (that is, Christina), Sonia, and I--held a council of strategy.

The resulting strategem was as follows: a strike on the Dublin central bus station, followed by a maneuver by coach to Kildare, ETA 1330, which, being a small town, would afford ready opportunity to join forces with the advance party, scout the town, board the originally missed coach en masse at 1400 to continue our reconnaissance to Glendalough, completing the tour by the originally scheduled 1730. With precise execution, there was no conceivably difficulty.

So we five boarded a bus for Kildare and rode through strip-malled suburb, O'Reilly's-bar-and-peaked-roof-cottage-filled town, and open tree-bordered pasture country. We arrived at Kildare's triangular square (that's what the guidebook called it) at about 1340, and immediately fanned out across the four blocks of central Kildare. And continued to fan until a bit past 1400, by which point it became clear that, wherever the group might be eating lunch, it was almost definitely not Kildare.

So we had lunch ourselves, at a pub called Silken Thomas. A pub in the great pub tradition, with dimmish lighting and some unidentifiable sport on a big screen and locals hobnobbing loudly at the bar, and I had a steak and vegetable pie (think stew in a crust) with chips and veggies, since the atmosphere fit so well.

After lunch Steph and Sonia decided to head back directly, catching the next bus for Dublin. But Casey and Paula and I decided that Kildare wasn't such a bad place, and so we went Exploring. It was a very short walk out of the town center and into the great green countryside, on a long lane sporting authentic Irishmen walking small terriers, occasional gusty rain, and liberally sprinkled horse and sheep residue. It was wonderful and refreshing. We walked to the Irish National Stud (look no further), provider to the race industry (quite popular--every small town has its operating bookmaker) of breeding horses, though we didn't tour there. We wandered through a small cemetery--graves adorned with flowers, incense, and statues of the Virgin--and followed a short path to peaceful St. Brigid's Well, where the trees waved colorfully with ribbons and bells tied for blessings. We also wandered a bit more through the town proper: a harsh composite of sleepy (it being Sunday) and idyllic country town unknown to time, along with a drab drear (as the gray rain swelled) and disrepair that says, I've seen better days and don't know what to do with these. As we walked down a row of quiet old-world cottages like the one pictured above, we passed a handful of kids smoking in the street, and breaking their windows one by one with a tire iron. I don't know, though; maybe Kildare hasn't seen better days. Maybe it's still waiting for them.

Dang it, I've gone melancholy again. So, after our pleasant explorations our expedition party boarded another bus for Dublin, this time a wonderful double-decker bus, and we took the front row of seats in the top, looking out on the entire course of fields and highways and hamlets, until the rain came in sheets and the windows steamed up and Paula and Casey fell asleep and Ireland faded behind the mist and falling darkness. Mmmm.

Turns out, by the way, that the main body bypassed Kildare altogether in their rush, as they fell further and further behind schedule, and hit Glendalough (the main attraction, in my view) only very briefly. So our independent expedition was a winner all around.

Saw lots of other things in Dublin and surrounds, but your patience is already exhausted I suspect. Stay tuned for accounts of classes, my wonderful college, cooking, singing, rowing, and libraries. Or at least some of those.