Ireland 1

July 29, 2012


Sligo
It looked as though I would not make it to Ireland this time, either. As delay piled upon delay at the various airports, I had a scene of dramatic resignation planned, wherein I demanded a refund of my thwarted tickets and a flight home the next possible moment. But one spasm of incompetence cancelled another out, as it were, and the flight to Shannon that I was meant to miss because of late departure from Chicago was itself three hours late, and I was there, finally, in plenty of time. Chatted with Jimmy, coming home to Clare from a stint of work in Oklahoma. Sat with Julie Yick from Mountain View, California. Half Irish and half Chinese, she did me the honor of allowing me to jabber on about Irish history, while she told me about her life and loves and her study of the culture of Puerto Rico. She gave me Hispanic poets to read, a couple of whom were so good I was ashamed never to have heard of them. Between Julie and effortless sleep, it was a good flight over. I promised her I would go to Puerto Rico, and I see no reason not to keep that promise.

The drive to Sligo was long, after the long series of flights, but uneventful. I convince myself that there is some special peril in driving on the left, but it is, at the end, exactly the same as driving on the right. Perhaps I should count as an event passing Tobercurry, and the electrifying remembrance of the route I walked into town under a winter moon when I went to the theater festival, and tried as hard as I could to become one of them. Filled with momentary sadness. I wanted Knock Sidhe to stop me in my tracks, but it couldn’t quite.

Installed on the 5th floor of the Glass House, for all its newness and local pre-eminence, a grubby little production, decorated to emphasize the sort of deliberate cheapness that haunts Irish domestic design. For a place called “The Glass House,” the high, narrow window is disappointing, but what I can see through that window are the towers of the Cathedral and the Town Hall, and beyond them, Knocknarea, the whole of it, gleaming in her rainy holiness. That view pays for everything.

Wandered about in the almost empty Sunday streets, visiting the new Offig Failte and getting a program for Tread Softly. Many of my old haunts are closed. Connelly Street is a ghost town, except that Liam is still running his B&B there. Will for the most part have to find new bars, and hope that some of the old glamor endures. I analyzed the feeling I had when I started on the streets of Sligo, and that feeling was, oddly, comfort. I am comfortable here. That turns out to be good enough.

Ireland has been a rainy silvery green gleam all day, as if trying to win me back, but not too hard, at first.