Dublin

December 30, 2007

Last night at the concierge’s suggestion I went to the Brazen Head, where drinks have been served since 1198. Eight hundred and more years later it is still crowded and loud and pulsing with mirth, if rather too full of American tourists, in which group I never count myself.

Out on the Liffey is closed, replaced by a poxy garlicky restaurant. I think of the joy I had in past times from those three grubby rooms (if you count the loo) and I weep.

Visited the George, where there was nothing, then out into the Temple Bar, where there was plenty. Talked a while to a lanky Frenchman who kept a notebook, one section of which was dedicated to the origins of people he met. Under “Ohio” he already had “Akron”–which I found amazing, somehow– but I was able to add Asheville to his North Carolina list. His name is Cyriac (Cyriaque). And he was delighted when I was able to quote to him Milton’s poem, “Cyriac my grandsire . . . ,” which he had never heard, and which he wrote down greedily in his book. Even, I suppose, as I do now.

Late in the day now I must say this has been one of the remarkable days of my life, though whether I can tell of it, or will want to tell of it, when the time comes I don’t know. Maybe the center of it should remain secret knowledge, so all may work itself out in the secret gardens where it grows best.

Rose, of course, too early to have access to any of the places I needed to go. It was too early for services at Christ Church, so I had coffee at Jury’s across the street–free coffee, as it turned out, for the till girl, American Alana, had run out of change. As I sipped my free and therefore sweet coffee and waited for church, it felt as though a roof in my brain was peeling back, and a clear, brisk illumination pouring in. I crossed the street and sat down. The beautiful floor of Christ Church was all around me. I speculated on the shapes in the floor, especially the doughboy dogs–dogs on their hind legs, wearing helmets and backbacks, and walking with walking sticks-- which seem to be the central motif not only of the floor but the new chairs as well. I finally asked the old gent next to me, and he said they are meant to be Franciscan monks, rendered as pilgrim wolves because they used to scurry down to the Liffey to beg alms from newly arrived sailors and voyagers, alms which the clergy of Christ Church believed rightfully to belong to themselves. A thousand year old grudge repeated endlessly, expensively, in imperishable stone. The sermon was something about how we should tolerate Muslims because the Holy Family fled from Herod to safety in Egypt. I wondered why the Flight into Egypt should be celebrated before the Epiphany, but nobody had an answer for me. Coffee in the crypt afterwards, where I go whenever I can, for I love it so much, where you can see the still older wall built by King Silkbeard when everybody was a Viking, where I talked with an American woman who had moved to Ireland to do good deeds for the insane. Something like that. Had lunch at the Bull and Castle, in a little bowed-out window where I could watch all those passing between me and the cathedral, all those pausing to read the menu board. I thought, thought, thought all the while. Then I went to Dublin Castle. Meanwhile, the Bull and Castle meal (or the Irish coffee with which I ended it) was making me sick, so I had to find a place to vomit, and finally asked for the combination of the locked lavatory (it had become a gay cruising area, and we can’t have that) and the combination is 1-3-1-1, in case anyone is in the same state as I. And I vomited heartily, almost endlessly, and when I was done I strolled to the Chester Beatty Library, where there are lovely oriental things, including a stunning series of prints called One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, and I kept writing The Beautiful Floor of Christ Church and One Hundred Aspects of the Moon alternately in my notebook, as though some great discovery or work were going to come out of one or the other of them, and then I climbed up to the roof garden, and there, amid the rooftops and spires, with the gulls gold-bellied from sunset flying over, the vision was complete in three seconds.

For the first time I saw the shape of my life. It has a story, and not a bad one, when it comes to that, if not a spectacularly good one. It is easier to feel, to see, than to explain, and the explanation makes it seem more fragmentary that it feels, for some hurts must be protected always. I know now the story that will make life make sense, a story that I have been telling accidentally (or however you describe the power that rules the word) the whole time, a story substantially true, but which I have made truer by, I suppose, the subconscious recognition that I must. I don’t think I’ll tell it. I’ll let my work tell it. Some of it I will keep utterly to my heart. It is better than it might have been. I can work with it. It is worse than it might have been, too, in ways that seem to me arbitrary and wilful. But I can argue or I can go on, and I choose at this moment to go on.

It is a comedy, by the way. Sometimes it is actually funny, but I don’t mean that. I mean that all the invitations to degradation are ultimately refused. I don’t know exactly where the roof will be, but I stand upon the floor, and it is pretty high, and will not now sink under the flood.

One bit I will tell, and it is one of the funny parts: never was there a man whose appearance was more at odds with the qualities of his spirit. This is why I became an artist, so that one part might be explained to the other.

Doors which were always locked are not locked now.

The wine knows what cup will hold it.

The apprenticeship is over, the masters found, the workshop built. The work begins.

(You really can go on like this forever, once you get into the groove–)

Walked late. Went to a bar called Joxer’s. I guess the guidebooks would call Joxer’s “rough” if they mentioned it at all. A video was playing, with Dolly Parton at one moment and Andie MacDowell at another. I felt they were messages from home. Went to the Blue Goose, which had swallowed up Out on the Liffey. It looks the same, except the beer is Polish and nobody was there. Walked and walked. It is still a thrill to stand where Michael Collins stood, to touch a stone Maud Gonne touched as she walked.

Here’s a secret: I am better than I say I am. My secret places are not dark, but too bright to show.