Fáilte Annex. Part I

Monday, May 9, 2011

Haven’t yet succeeded in getting online, though I have been technically connected twice. But it dawned on me I could go ahead & begin a sort of journal (& oh, my, how out of shape I am at typing on this little keyboard), without the internet. And perhaps that will help me stay awake, which the book (The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse) does not, wonderful though it is.

Because I am dying for sleep, famished for it. The book hit the floor when I dozed for an instant. And at the same time I really don’t want to sleep, not until the hotel in Galway, in a bed. Here I am passing through Ireland, who knows whether ever again. How—quiet, how deceptively boring (& as I type that there us a chime and the announcement comes on in Gaelic for Athlone (for it’s always the Gaelic first: wonderful to learn). How unusually prosperous the land has finally been recently, witness all the bright new housing and light industry. Lush, lush the green, cliché though it is to say, and something blooming spring white in shrubs and even trees everywhere; fields here, too, of rape blindingly yellow, hedged pastures, cows, sheep. Thickets and chimney pots and church spires and sudden slopes of heartbreaking beauty. All of it worth cherishing, dying for, I see that firsthand now, in its quiet homely splendor. I grew up in just such a place, and understand perfectly that dramatic California/Colorado-style landscape is not at all required for passionate loyalty (though Ireland even has all that as well), for a place to be home. All of it cloaking with a fierce pride the long centuries of misery and suffering, the way the music does, the happy music, the dancing that always, always transcended, defied the poverty and bleakness.

But, yes, the Gaelic everywhere first (we’ve just crossed the Shannon, starting up again & passing through Athlone after the stop): on every sign, in the announcements on the train, and I really do regret not speaking any of it, though if I listen very closely I can decipher the names of the towns, at least.

And I’ll know Tulach Mhór, & need to remember, not Tullamore Dew, but the way it began to rain lightly just past there, streaking the windows for a few minutes, before the sun broke through..

(First bit of gorse I’ve seen here, tufting a low rise in a pasture.)

Though after that, suddenly, gorse was everywhere, invading pastures, mingling with the white-flowered plant, topping hillsides, lining the railway. I knew how sweet it would smell, but as a gardener realized it was a pretty weed.

In Galway, standing eating fish (locally-caught whiting, allegedly) and chips, the radio behind me in the shop suddenly blasting “Keep the Car Running.” Forty-eight hours ago, more or less, my daughter was hanging out with Arcade Fire after their performance at the New Orleans Jazz Fest. Small world? Homogenization? Still.

The stiff wind smells of the sea, of Galway Bay, here a few blocks from it. Walked around a bit in the old, pedestrianized area, bought a few minor groceries (a Large bottle of water!), to be able to have breakfast in in the morning, before heading off to meet my tour to the Cliffs of Moher and The Burren. If the weather holds the way it is right now, I will be able to see the cliffs after all : )