October 12, 2013

Woke, by the clock, at exactly the same hour today as yesterday, but it isn’t the same time at all. Bade Dublin farewell, and its empty streets, though my cabbie said that it was lively where the nightclubs were letting out. The French displayed their usual combination of incompetence and hauteur, reinforcing my conviction that Charles de Gaulle airport is the worse place on earth that is neither a slum nor a war zone. There was some sort of work slow-down, and I arrived at the tortoise security line even as my plane was boarding. I was frantic with impatience (it’s surprising how little it takes to turn me into an asshole, in certain circumstances) but the plane was aware of the mess, and we sat for an hour after I finally got on, waiting for stragglers to get through French customs. The security people insisted I was flying on the wrong day, for when they looked at my reservation it said, 10/11/13, and they could not, until they had taken it to some French authority, be convinced that wasn’t November 10. Charlotte was little better. We landed two and a half hours before my final flight, and with customs and another horrendous security line (twelve units, three of them operating), I got to the gate with no time to sit down. But I did get home, as scheduled, in the blessed daylight. Route 26 was jammed blocked dead still, so I got off and tried 25, which was jammed blocked dead still. But I did get home. Ate steak with DJ. Tried not to contemplate the pain in my legs, which, in any case, is gone this morning. The house seemed shabby beside the Merrion. What wouldn’t? Maud had somehow got locked in the closet.

Post-mortem? The best trip to Ireland in a while. I thought I was done with it, but maybe not. I realize there is nothing further I want to buy, and I forced myself to acquire a souvenir. The level of excellence at the Dublin Theater Festival, among the things I saw, was surprisingly low. Only The Critic would I call great, and what was passable was so only because of excellence of performance. Hearing praise of The Hanging Gardens during an intermission of something else, I wondered how much people like things–plays among them–because they think they ought to. Here is a new play by Ireland’s living genius, and of course it should be wonderful. I see that here and in New York as well– we want to like certain things whether or not they turn out to be actually disappointing. It’s not that I even find that bad, just puzzling. What is the principle of selection? Why this mediocre thing and not that mediocre thing? One supposes that excellence will out, but it must be puzzling to the swiftest to see the slower horses wreathed at the end of the race.

Waiting for my last evening of theater, I wandered down to the Liffey where two herons were flying slow and low to the water. One continued down toward the sea. One flew up into the supports of the boardwalk under Bachelor’s Walk, where he would spend the night, I guessed, with human footsteps above and the dark holy river beneath.