Triple Ending

 

 

 

 

it’s a bit weird, but as Erin read the last lines of Ulysses in class, I found myself a bit choked up. The words were beautiful in itself, but I think it’s also because the end of the book signified so much more. Ulysses wwill always be a huge part of my life because I cannot separate this trip from the book. The novel literally and figuratively is Dublin. I think that’s why when we finished the book, it also signified the end of our trip. I’m so unbelievably sad that we must depart. Not only is it the culmination of the book and our trip, but it also is the end of my undergrad. Closing the door on 3 things at once is a bit overwhelming and I find it very bittersweet.

As I strolled through Dublin today, I kept trying to take mental pictures with my brain. I’m so excited to go home and share my experience here, but at the same time, I wish I could just take everything with me. Tom Wait’s “Take It With Me” keeps playing through my head and yes…really…I’m going to take it with me when I go. I’m going to take ALL the things.

I love you, Ireland. You’ve been so good to us. I will return one day…until then. Au revoir.

My thoughts turn to home…

It’s inevitable that this day would come, but I feel as though these past 5 weeks have zoomed by. I’m not ready to leave, but I suppose that it’s better to depart wanting to stay, rather than leave because I want to. 

There are so many things that I’m going to miss:

1. My apartment. I like this feeling of living on my own. It also doesn’t hurt that I had the “penthouse” complete with the view. I can see the sun set from my window back home, however, it’s not really the same.

2. Walking. Although I haven’t really exercised since I’ve been in Ireland, I don’t feel terrible because of the amount of walking we do. Walking through the city definitely does make you feel like you are a part of it. I think that’s why I grew so attached to this city. My footprints are sprinkled throughout and like Woolf’s idea of the gold dust, it will be left behind once I leave.

3. Pubs. I’m going to miss WALKING to a pub and not worry about driving back home. I’m also going to miss the atmosphere. I’ve met so many wonderful strangers who have added more hilarity to an already good night. 

4. Learning. As I am finally done with my undergrad, the thought of not stepping into a classroom saddens me. I’m definitely not going to miss tests and deadlines, but I will miss learning and being instructed by someone who knows their stuff.

5. Our group. I feel as though our group was pretty awesome. Everyone clicked and we got along so well. I think it’s because as Sean Finegan said, “You guys are weird.” I know we;ll hang out back home. But it won’t be the same.

Glasnevin

 

 

It’s not that I hate cemeteries, but it does frighten me a little bit so I was a tad bit anxious about going to Glasnevin. However, I was pretty amazed at how beautiful it actually was. Everything is so well taken care of that it doesn’t really seem like a cemetery.

 

I though it was crazy that there are actually more bodies in the cemetery (around 1.5 mill) than there are Irish people in Ireland (1.2 mill). That’s pretty insane!

It was also cool to see the headstones of those that were important to Ireland. Like aforementioned, I’m not a huge fan of cemeteries so I tend to stay away from the ones back home even though they do have famous or important people buried there. 

it’s interesting to think that history is literally buried here

 

Cliffs of Moher (I WANT MORE!)

I was actually debating about whether I wanted to spend and extra 38 euros to go to the Cliffs of Moher but I’m so happy that I did.

A couple people told me that Dun Aengus and Cliffs of More were really similar and I can see that they mean, but they really aren’t. For me personally, I enjoyed Dun Aengus more, but then I wonder if I’m biased because I saw them first. Either way, I did love both of them and I’m so happy that I got this opportunity to go to both.

it was quite eerie to see Dame Street this empty. Of course it was sunday at like 7:30 am, so it made sense, but nevertheless, it was weird.

i’m really going to miss the clouds

it’s weird but the sky feels a bit larger here

i thought it was pretty amazing that it was POURING rain when we were on the beaches by the Cliffs of Moher

but as soon as we went up, the skies cleared and the sun gave us a smile

i wish i could stay forever

the juxtaposition of the green and gold and blue…it makes me feel so many different feels!

i thought it was really cool how metallic green the rocks on the bottom looked

it’s times that these that make me realize how tiny I am and by that I’m not doing away with my problems, but it reminds me that i will be ok

moo

remember the real killer

What I love about these kinds of trips is that it creates a unique bonding experience. Of course all of us experience everything in a different way, but I think it’s significant that we are doing it together. It is a moment where we are all connected and it makes me really happy.  Of course the fact that we’re also on a bus together for 10+ hours helps as well. J I’m going to miss these excursions so much. 

The Power of Three

 

ireland’s conversion to christianity is credited to st. patrick. it is said that he used a clover to explain to the irish the idea of the trinity: god, the son, and the holy spirit. that’s why shamrocks are usually synonymous with st. patrick and even ireland 
the entrance
i do sometimes wonder at the grandeur of catholic cathedrals…but once i’m inside, i can understand the need for it
there is a certain beauty and calm that is reminiscent of God
look at those arches
the whole church had plaques, crypts, and graves of people who had passed
but the most famous is Jonathan Swift…yes the writer. i had no idea that he was the dean of this cathedral from 1713-1745. i actually didn’t even know he wasa dean of a cathedral as big as this one. he’s most famous for his book Gulliver’s Travels and his satire “A Modest Proposal”
a list of the previous deans…swift’s name is on there as well
i could have sat here all day. ireland has been a nonstop hub of excitement…it was really nice to have some alone time and reflect
this is actually where swift is buried. he had his wife buried next to him. initially, it was in secret, but of course everyone now knows
i’m not catholic but i lit a candle anyways…bottom left corner 🙂
on our way back to trinity
i’ll miss seeing these beautifully old buildings

it’s hard to believe that they still exist after all these years

we had a guest speaker come and talk to us about Irish theatre. she had a couple excerpts from some modern plays and i thought it was really cool to find me and my manfriend’s names next to each other in brian friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa. little reminders not only of home, but also the fact that i was meant to be here at this time and at this place in my life

i hate pigeons, but this one had swagger and came up to me to inquire about some food.

being in a new country changes one’s perspective on so many things. it can be something as small as pigeons, but it can also be something as big as life itself.

Ulysses in real life

i had mentioned that if Dublin were to burn to the ground, they would be able to rebuild it using Ulysses. Dublin is essential to the book. The main character spends his day roaming around the city, so it’s always cool to see the actual places that are mentioned in the book.

the book begins with some of the characters in a place called Sandycove…and off to sandycove we went!

our stop
haha i wonder what “antisocial” behavior entails
this is on our walk from the train to the martello tower (also in the book) it’s now a museum dedicated to joyce and ulysses
it’s the actual key! EEEE!
this reoccurs throughout the novel and it was real! 
the super steep and narrow staircase up to the top
if you’ve read ulysses, you would know that Stephen stays in the tower with Buck Mulligan and Haines. Buck Mulligan was based off of St. John Gogarty and this is where he and Joyce really stayed. 
haha it’s the panther. in the book, stephen dedalus is awakened bc Haines is having night terrors and dreams that a panther is after him. buck mulligan comes into the room and tries to assuage haines. he does this by shooting his gun and pretending that he is killing the panther. this actually did happen between joyce, st. john gogarty, and the other dude. the only thing is that joyce had outstayed his welcome and gogarty shot the gun a couple inches above where joyce’s head was in the next room. he got so pissed he left in the middle of the night and walked back to dublin. took him like 2 hours i believe.
for our scavenger hunt, we had to re-enact a scene from the first episode
top of the martello tower
AHHHH so pretty
that island thing in the back is Howth…pronounced hothe. it’s also in ulysses. couldnt go there because there’s a fire thats raging. why? because freaking there hasnt been rain in like a month. NEVER happens in ireland…of course itd happen when we come
dublin’s flag flying high
what’s with ireland and these crazy staircases
we also went to sandymount strand…a couple of stops down.
channeling my inner dedalus and strolling

haha also re-enacting the weird trash ads

being able to visit these places definitely enriches the ulysses experience….super lucky and super blessed

yay for Yeats!

we went to the National Library of Ireland because it houses the largest collection of Yeats material IN THE WORLD. Yeats seems like an ordinary poet, but he was constantly renewing himself and his work. Not a lot of people know this, but he was actually very involved in the occult and participated in things such as seances, automatic writing, etc. Although most of the exhibit was pretty cool, some of the stuff was a tad bit creepy.

an aritistic rendition of yeats’ “stolen child”
one of my favorite poems by yeats. they projected some of his poems on screens and played yeats reading the poems out loud. funny…i imagined his voice very differently
in one of my earlier posts, i mentioned that yeats was one of the individuals that were responsible for the founding of the abbey theatre
the floor plans

the national library also houses the reading room where it houses a bunch of old books and manuscripts

the way up to the reading room. so beeyoooootifur
books books everywhere!
individual desks complete with a book stand and those old school green lamps
some of these go wayyyyyy back…like before the 1700s. what’s amazing is that we had access to them and flipped through some
i had read that back in the day, for some reason, “s’s” looked like “f’s.” we found a mixture of it in these old books
what was also interesting is that at the bottom of each page, they had typed the first word of the next page. so it says “lascivious” at the bottom left and again at the top right

after we left, we stopped by a bookstore that specializes in old books
there were many different editions of Joyce’s. i believe this one costs like 10,000 euros. oh the books i’d buy if i was a millionaire
walked back home to this beautiful weather

reading may be food for the soul….but a girl’s gotta eat!

it doesnt look like much, but it was the best lamb shwarma i’ve ever eaten. that thing is the size of my arm btw. 2 meals in one. yes!

i also consumed a delicious lamb burger with mint relish. nom nom!

A bunch of us decided to go on a ghost tour of Dublin and it was very different than what I had imagined. I know that I had previously mentioned that you can’t really separate Ireland from its history. With that said, the ghost tour was really fun, but it was interesting that it was almost like a historical tour of Dublin as well. There were parts on the tour in which I actually forgot it was supposed to be scary. The evening progressed and we actually did end up in a pretty spooky place. It’s unfortunate that it seems the British have not only touched these souls in life, but also in death. I keep forgetting how violent it all was.

this is where handel debuted his Messiah. haha totally had nothing to do with the ghost tour

where a pretty famous prostitute lived…she was later burned alive (pictures of the place will come further down)

the vikings stormed Dublin and made it theirs. as a result, a lot of artifacts have been found. around this area there are a lot of plaques like this one that remind people of that fact
the door to a church and cemetery. they used to have strict alcohol laws regarding the time in which it could be served. so the keeper used to have people pay a fee and they would go down and drink in the inner cemetery which was underground. it would shut down during the fall because it would get wayyy too cold. unfortunately, on the last night of the “business season”, a soldier got too drunk and passed out behind a tomb. when the keeper opened the door in spring, all that remained was the bones…picked clean by rats. they say you can hear pounding and screaming on a quiet night 

the old gates of Dublin city
remember the prostitute i mentioned earlier? she became pregnant with a higher class fellow and instead of taking responsibility, he told people that he had been bewitched. due to the history of ireland (the old religion, not the new) witches weren’t that threatening…but because a lot of people were jealous, they “tried” her, found her guilty, threw tar and alcohol on her and burned her alive in the right corner next to the gate. he had one of our people stand there before he explained the back story and she felt like something was touching her. ahhhh
people used to drop off unwanted babies by that gate. some people feel a tapping or tugging on their legs and waist
leper’s area. they would lock those gates and open the doors so the lepers could hear mass. as for communion, the priests would chuck it out the window. so sad. the area we stood in was actually a pauper’s cemetery. they would just dig holes and dump people in. but then they had to stop because grave robbers would dig up the bodies and sell them to med schools and sucha british fellow used to work here and randomly come out and terrorize the irish people. he was like 6’3″ so he would grab his scarf and wrap it around the neck of the nearest irish person he saw and hoist them over his shoulder. then he would run down the street until they suffocated and died. this was during british rule and they thought of this as a positive thing…he was “cleaning” up the “vermin” in the streets.

like I said…petty, pretty violent

anyways, on a brighter note I also had an opportunity to sprawl out on the hurling pitch and do my reading. The sun was on it’s way down, there was a breeze, and it was still light outside. It was definitely the ideal condition and the cherry on top of it was that I saw a fox!

fox>coyotes

Alchemy

One of the field trips I was looking forward to was the Guinness Storehouse! I thought we were going to the actual brewery, but the one we visited was more like a museum. Even though it was a museum, they set up the inside like a brewery, so we were able to see the step by step process that creates Guinness!

Side of the building

the entrance

our ticket that allowed us a free pint of guinness 😀 this was also the lower ground floor (they count it as -1)

here we have the ground floor (the 1st floor for us Americans) I couldn’t capture the whole wall because my phone cam sucks…but there were so many different kinds of guinness bottles! I wish i could have taken some home

this is a copy of the lease that Arthur Guinness signed on December 31, 1759. how long was the lease for? 9,000 years. no joke.

onto the 1st floor (tech 3rd) where they taught us all about the ingredients

they had a giant sea of barley! i wanted to swim around in it

we are excited because jessica finally found her “desert” haha

it says that the yeast being used right now has descended from the very strain that Arthur Guinness used himself. Some yeast from each brew is transferred to the next. The yeast that they use is ONLY grown at St. James’s Gate (where the brewery and the storehouse is located). They also have some locked in a safe so if anything happens to the main supply, they have a back up. I also read that they consider yeast to a kind of alchemy because it turns something common (sugar) into something special (alcohol).

my kind of magic.

i’m glad that they don’t use the water from the liffey. ick.

they had this cool waterfall thing

on the other side of the waterfall

the next floor had more information about the history of Guinness

Arthur Guinness himself

an old roaster

We got to sample the Guinness too

haha i had two

7 stories of this. pretty.

if you’ve ever wondered why there was a harp on Guinness it’s because it is modelled after the Trinity College Harp. One of the later proprietors of the company adopted later on because harps have come to symbolize Ireland for a long time. What’s interesting about Guinness’ harp is that it was trademarked and faces right instead of left (the harp on the Irish coat of arm’s faces left)

guinness advertising throughout the years. i did not know that the Guinness Book of World Records was started by the Guinness beer people

we were able to finish the tour by pouring our own pint. now i’m going to be annoyed if people don’t pour guinness the right way.

this is the gravity bar, which is situated at the very top. it has a 360 degree view of Dublin and the surrounding area. AH MEH JING

they had these cool captions on the glass that pointed out important places

outside…if you look at the U behind us, there’s a face. I think it might be Arthur’s death mask but I’m not sure

guinness is creamy because nitrogen is mixed with it when you pour it. so in order to properly pour a pint, you first have to pull the lever towards you so the nitrogen comes out. after you fill it about 3/4 of the way, you have to let it settle. after about 2 min, you fill it up the rest of the way, but this time you have to push the lever away from you so that no more nitrogen comes out…just pure guinness

guinness…is good for you 😀

Minutiae

We went to go watch Shush at the Abbey Theatre.

The Abbey Theatre opened in 1904 and was founded by W.B. Yeats and a couple other people. It’s probably best known for the opening of Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World. This play actually caused a riot and it’s said that the policemen who came in outnumbered the audience 2:1. It was pretty neat to sit in a theatre that has so much history behind it.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to a play so I was pretty happy we were going. Even though I had no idea what the play was even about, I was pleasantly surprised. It starts with a lonely woman on her birthday and it is clear that something unfortunate has happened to her. She is besieged by four of her friends and hilarity ensues. However, after intermission, I was blown away by the sudden change in tone. Not going to give away the ending, but it made me very teary-eyed (what is up with Ireland playing with my emotions???!).

I still have a lot of growing up to do, but I was able to realize just how deep and complex a mother’s heart is. I think it’s difficult once children grow up and develop their own lives; I feel that a lot of mothers do place a lot of their self-worth in their children. I’m not saying that the identity of mothers stem completely from rearing their children, but I can see how the idea of them feeling “useful” can suddenly be thrown awry. After so many years of being needed, it’s hard when that suddenly disappears. It definitely made me appreciate all the small things that my mother does for me and it also makes me more mindful of the ordinary things that I can do to make my mother happy.

I’m very glad we went to watch it.

the cast

it’s incredible what a small gesture can mean