Ireland 3

July 31, 2012

Went last evening to a café on Bridge Street to a program of Yeats’ plays for dancers, put on by John and Sandra from Blue Raincoat. John was a handsome, stocky man with a blond beard. Sandra had a hard face but a sensational figure, and both had that deep as-from-a-throat-of-bronze voice Irish actors can have, and which is necessary for epic theater such as Yeats’. I was not filled with confidence, as they were preparing before my eyes (I, as usual, having come early) but in the event they were wonderful. The readings from the plays were poetry, and both, especially Sandra, possessed a scholar’s knowledge and an actor’s fluidity of expression. The bridge and Castle Street were visible from the upper floors of the café, but what I was thinking was what a delight to be able to hear and hear about material that there is, literally, in my life no one else about which to confer. I was like a man returning from a far country, hearing his own language. Blue Raincoat had done the dance plays, so it was not theoretical. I gobbled it up gluttonously. Felt a shock of recognition, too, when they were prefacing Dreaming of the Bones, for Tiernan O’Rourke was king of Breffni, and Breffni was here, and my mother’s family the O’Keenans were the bards of the O’Rourkes, so when I first walked the Garavogue thirty two years ago, overcome with the sense of belonging, I was remembering and not imagining. It was my ancestor’s voice who first sung that story, the chief of Ireland’s sorrows. Wanted to ask John and Sandra about Peter Davey, but I was afraid the response might be a blank look and a shrug.

Strode thereafter to the Methodist church on Wine Street to hear two poets associated with the Yeats seminar, which cohabits with Tread Softly this year. They were personable, charming, serious in their efforts, not very good. Met one of them in Hagadorn’s later, and didn’t tell him that. I’ve observed before that there seem to me to be levels of poetry, and one can achieve excellence in the precise-observation-of-things-around-you mode, and yet not quite approach true greatness. There must be a theme. There must be a reaching beyond the experience of the individual. One of the poets actually brought this up, discussing the greatness of Virgil’s Georgics, observing that it was precisely observed, accurate, but did not stop with that.
After poetry I cruised for a likely bar, and chose Hagadorn’s, where I assumed (rightly) that the poets and their entourages would be gathering. A man named Rory Lambe sat beside me, already drunk. Rory incited a Yeats-reciting contest in the bar, which for a while included a goodly number of celebrants, all of whom knew a little something of the bard. I won the contest handily, but might not have had Rory not been so drunk. Bought a round and left the bar, coming back to the Glass House. I myself was pretty drunk by then, but I think I chatted with the bartenders, one of whom was Irish/Japanese and had grown up in Berlin and spoke fluently to the many German guests, the other a smiling dark-haired local boy. And so, unless there’s something I’ve forgotten, to bed.

Ireland 2

July 30, 2012


Brightest of days it has become. I wandered the alleys of Sligo, quickly recalling the past, adding the present. Visits here are less electrifying now that I’m no longer looking for him, but something’s lost and something’s gained. Serenity is surely gained. Picked up my tickets at the Hawk’s Well, up Harmony Hill and the Lungy, plotting to buy one of the empty houses along Church Street, The fact that I could makes the operation more complicated. Bought American money which had been languishing in the Hawk’s Well till, the lady said, for as long as anybody remembers. Visited the Abbey. I’m not sure I ever had before; maybe I was keeping it for this time. It’s all black stone and brilliant moss and sad sighing from the remembering soil. Many photos with the blue behind it. Down to the river, with the sacred two arches of the old mill. All the buildings they spent so much time building stand empty. One could rent a hundred storefronts and not fill up the vacancies. Went looking for David Roach, found the woman who bought their art store from his mother. She told me a place to put my card that he might see it. Drinks now in the Glass House lounge, its glory, above the sparkling waters. I wish for Sligo, for Ireland, better fortune.

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.

July 27, evening

Sidney writes that Bob Cuccioli, our last Lincoln, is Broadway’s new Green Goblin in Spiderman.

Strange day. I have done almost nothing but sleep, and if someone asked me how I am I’d have to say, “almost too sleepy to be sitting at the keyboard.” Sleep is my response to depression, but who knew I was that depressed? Can you be that depressed over a thwarted trip? Whether you can or not, I was. Am. Not under my control.

Plainchant on Spotify.

July 27, 2012

Am supposed to be writing in Sligo, but am not. DJ dropped me off, and I got to the check-in desk, where the man said, “Newark? It’s been cancelled.” He said it was weather, but if there was bad weather over Newark it affected only one carrier bringing flights from only one point of origin. I began to cobble together a new route to Newark (for there was plenty of time, and the weather had miraculously cleared), when I was told that United had cancelled the Newark to Shannon part, too, figuring I wouldn’t be able to make it. They had rebooked me for Saturday, two days later, seeing how their flights the next day were full. How I was supposed to know this I don’t know, for notification was not sent to me in any form. I was determined to get to Ireland that day, and they did try to find something, but I realized they were looking only at United flights. I went to the Delta guy at the next desk, and he found me a way (laborious, but acceptable), but he said United would have to assign the ticket to them. United would not do this. The man at the desk said, “I am not allowed to sign this ticket over to another carrier.” So, after arbitrarily cancelling a flight and then lying about it, after denying me passage I had paid for, they also refused the chance to address the situation by going with another carrier. I almost flat-out bought the other ticket, but I had twenty minutes to make all the choices, and finally I collapsed and let it be. United Airlines is the most hellishly incompetent and gleefully anti-customer corporation I have ever dealt with. Not one leg of one journey with them has been without mishap (all of them but one related to stupidity and bad practice) They know they have a captive audience and they don’t care how badly they play before us. The icing on the cake is that we’re supposed to be the ones to cleave to a certain level of decorum. I was not the only person stranded yesterday, of course. A family from Finland was trying to get home on the same Asheville to Newark flight. United had re-booked them, too, the wife and the kids, but they had somehow left out the father, who had no seat and no reservation, and all flights were full.  The Finnish father was a little shrill, I grant, but not in excess of the situation. The United staff gathered together behind the desk and bellowed at him how he was being abusive, and the only way that would lead was to jail.  I took a taxi home (with tip, $60). The taxi driver was one of those skinny rednecks you see in the TV shows, who had to finish messing with his. . . something in the front seat. . . before we could get going. On the way I learned the rather intricate status of his and his wife’s relationship. She is a check-out girl at Wal-mart, and he is ashamed that her paycheck is bigger than his, and he loves her dearly and he takes responsibility for the troubles between them, and if she just gives him another chance all will be well. I was glad to know all this. Home, I did check the United webpage for my reservation, discovering that I had been booked after a fashion, but had not actually been assigned seats. I followed the directions for getting seats for myself, some of which required an extra payment. The website would not let me pay those fees, instructing me that I had to fill in a valid state on the line provided, which I had done several times already. So, I dug around until I found a phone number, and after a nine minute hold, got that done, I think.

The surprising thing was how much this took out of me. I was so happy in the morning heading to the airport. Buoyant All was so well. When I got home I had to lie down. I did force myself to go to a movie, Batman, but the experience is dim and dull to me, and I came home and slept some more. Made some sort of mistake–I think it was, having not eaten all day, buying a couple of pieces of chicken from Ingall’s after they had set hours in their own grease–and was violently ill through the night, vomiting both in my mouth in sleep and copiously into the toilet. This morning it is as though I had not slept. I have no interest in going to Ireland at all. That is gone. Admitting the absurdity of the feeling, I still feel this all was a calculated cruelty, pointless and wasteful. I hide in my room like a beaten child.

July 26, 2012

Hottest night of all nights, I think, and I slept badly.

Breakfast with M, agreeing to produce his play at NC Stage, having come to an understanding that to produce in this case involved the least “hands-on” component. “Backer,” I suppose is a more accurate term. His self-confidence was a little off-putting, but he was trying to win me, and judgment must come on stage, where any brag can be redeemed by virtuosity. During NC Stage’s preview of the coming season his video was very impressive. The principle of play selection there continues to baffle me– two of the selections seemed weak, and with the world to choose from, why?-- but there’s no doubt that whatever is done will be done superbly. And, again, all is redeemed by the moment. The event was boisterous and well attended. I got into the elevator with a woman who said, “I haven’t laughed so hard in ages.”  Exiting that parking deck is always a trial, and last night it was especially bad. When I finally got close enough to see why, I saw that the attendant was fighting the gate, which could not be persuaded to stay open long enough to let the cars exit as they paid. Finally, three vehicles in front of me, the frustrated man jerked the gate into open lock position, and started motioning everybody to exit without paying. I would have thought an unalloyed stroke of luck, except for the look on the attendant’s face, probably anticipating that his employers would prefer for the cars still to be lined up now rather than to have lost that revenue.

City workers were digging the Phil Mechanic parking lot out from under the various landslides which keep engulfing it. The lot was filled with giant earth-moving machines. I arrived as they were taking their break, and they were surprisingly eager to talk about the operation. It is, or is promising to be, quite a feat of engineering, for a whole hill, cut too sharply on two sides by streets, wants to tumble down toward the river, and leaking water mains have been abetting it all the while.

Am packed, excited, afflicted with my customary traveler’s diarrhea,  and, I think, pretty much ready to sail off across the ocean.

Waiting for Kevin to begin his dawn song.

July 25, 2012

Mother’s 88th birthday.

Woke to pale lightning flickering in the sky. The flashes were more than one a second, and completely silent. I rose and saw the horizon enveloped in flickering pale gold light, as though the greatest storm in the world were raging somewhere miles to the east, as perhaps it is.