and now 3 months

Hard to believe I have only written once so far, which is unusual for me. But life in Ireland has been an absolute whirlwind, probably because I came with no plan and was working everyday to sort out what seemed for a while to be the unsortable. Amidst finding my feet in a new and very beautiful, incredibly welcoming city, and taking some trips down South to Cork, out West to Sligo and up North to Edinburgh, I somehow managed to find a job in my field and have met some fantastic people that now, looking back, makes all of the uncertainty and challenge seem much more worth it.

Anyway I started this post in New York while I was home for Christmas, feeling very strange that for once being back home was only temporary. I thought maybe stepping back from my office, my apartment, my new city, new country would create enough distance for me to reflect on the past four months, but that wasn’t really the case, and I found it difficult to summarize my time here and the little nuanced things that make it such a unique experience. It’s a good indication that I should start a daily journal or something, because I want to be able to recall all of the little things, since it’s these that make the time so exceptional.

I think the best way to treat a blog so neglected is to reflect a little on both home and away (wherever home happens to be for me at any give stage). For Christmas, my dad gave me a bunch of CDs that he made for me, some of which were compilations of Irish music. These were accompanied by explanations of why he chose certain songs, or the meanings behind them. I thought I would go through a couple with my own thoughts, as it might help to highlight some of the things I’ve been experiencing here:

Number 5 on the 1^st CD by the Clancy Brothers is called the Jolly Tinker. This was the name of a bar in the Bronx I went to a few times in college, and was the first time I heard this expression but actually had no idea to what it was referring. From my own experience with the “Tinkers” here in Ireland, they are not particularly jolly at all, and many people tend to have a very wary, unpleasant view of them. I’ve been told that Irish Travellers for the most part are useless criminals, siphoning money from hardworking society, trying to claim special status while all they do is live in dirty caravans, have heaps of babies, not go to school, and cause fights. I had a job interview a few months ago in a town about 40 minutes outside of Dublin called Portlaoise with a Travellers Rights organization where I had my first (and really only) sit-down conversation with Travellers, in which they expressed extreme suspicion of me and were not very friendly in the way I had been accustomed to with other Irish. Not that they don’t have a right to be guarded or choosy of who they work with, especially considering that they face a fair amount of discrimination and ostracization by the general population - but I was a little surprised since their mission statement emphasized making a greater effort to collaborate with the wider community. I thought maybe being American could play to my favor since their biggest issues would be with getting on with other Irish, but I think they figured that as a complete outsider I was totally oblivious to the challenges they face as a very distinct minority that almost always gets a bad rap. Case in point: I was introduced to some Travellers on the Luas tram, where the mother was yelling unintelligible English at her son, who was tracing penises on the window glass and swinging from the overhead bars while the father laughed. On American public transport, I’m not sure this would necessarily be very noteworthy, if still annoying, but my friends who were with me very strongly stressed that these were most definitely Knackers and not like the other Irish and apologized that I had to witness that kind of behavior. I hadn’t really noticed it in the first place, and asked how you can tell a Traveller from a non-Traveller, as I’d asked other Irish before, and was given the same sorts of answers – their track pants, their unpleasant manner of speech, their extremely rude behavior; as if all of these things were purely Gypsy qualities that other people wouldn't really have. 

The only other Traveller experience I had was going to the Merchants’ Market in East Wall, which is far down in the Docklands; in the “dodgy part” as many Dubliners might pin it. I kept seeing it advertised all over the IFSC where I live, and online as a cool free thing to do in Dublin, so I walked down there to a big warehouse full of vendors selling different odds and ends – clothes, antiques, paintings, toys; all very cheap and the place was full of Travellers. One of them sold me two prints for my room for 4 Euros each, and there she seemed jolly enough to get the two coins from me anyway.

Number 9 on this CD is Mountain Dew, a song that is about Poitin, which I’ve only recently just tried, though apparently it’s a real country drink and so I’m not sure where it came from. According to this song you can get some good stuff in Galway, which is next on my list of travel spots in Ireland (not necessarily for the Poitin, but that doesn’t hurt).

Number 18 is Four Green Fields, about the provinces in Ireland – Connacht, Leinster, Munster, and Ulster. Ulster is the only province I haven’t been to yet, though some of our family was evidently from Donegal, and it is home to great sites like the Giants Causeway and Lough Neagh. Much of the province is in the UK, and while I still don’t have an exceptional handle on the current sociopolitical dynamics between Northern and Southern Ireland, I do often get the recommendation to visit Belfast.

The first song on the Chieftains’ Album Long Black Vail is Mo Ghile Mear, which features Sting. My dad notes that he hopes I can find someone who understands Gaelic. This is not really a problem, as I know quite a few people who can speak a fair amount, and one or two who are fluent. It’s impossible to escape the Irish language here, which as someone who studied sociolinguistics (at what feels to be some ancient point in time) I actually find really interesting. I’ve found many people will say that they can’t speak a word of Gaelic, despite having been taught it all the way through school, and despite all of the signs everywhere being in both English and Irish. Irish is so prevalent here that I’m even starting to recognize some words and phrases, even if trying to pronounce them is utterly hopeless. My friends who would be fluent would likely have gone to a bilingual school, but there are also communities around Ireland (I think mostly in the West) that still speak Irish as their first language. I remember being told once that Gaelic was a dead language, and I mentioned this here and was met with defensiveness. Even though people don’t know it, didn’t really learn it, don’t want to learn it, don’t think they should have been forced to learn it, they still very much want to keep it.

The next song on this CD is the Foggy Dew featuring Sinead O’Connor. I was interested to learn about the history behind this song, as the Foggy Dew was one of the first bars I was taken to in Dublin, and I’m more than sure there is a connection. This pub will be on the list of places to take my parents when they come visit, along with O’Donoghue’s on Merrion Row where the Dubliners got their start, and Stag’s Head where James Joyce apparently frequented. While I don’t think my parents are necessarily big pub people, there’s a few that I think will be good craic for them – and O’Donoghue’s is close to Stephen’s Green, mentioned in another one of the Clancy Brother’s songs. My dad has asked me a few times if I live close by to it. Stephen’s Green was one of the first sites I saw in Dublin, though I probably take it for granted and don’t even really classify it as especially interesting. Though, I do like the story of a standoff that happened there during the 1916 uprising between the Irish Citizen Army and the British Army when they temporarily halted fire so they could feed the ducks in the park.

Number 11 on the Cranberries’ No Need to Argue is Yeats’ Grave. My dad notes that this was the song that inspired the CD project because I had visited this grave during my time in Sligo. I’ve personally read very little Yeats, and embarrassingly had no idea he was buried anywhere near Sligo up until the moment I was literally driven to his gravesite. I think my tour guide was more interested in showing me Drumcliffe Church, which was very beautiful (but maybe also because I had accidentally missed mass that day…) and she left me for a few minutes while I sought out the grave I hadn’t know was there. It was one of those very strange private moments. The place was empty, the silence compounded by the very dramatic Sligo landscape, most notably Benbulbin and Knocknarea. I did miss out on climbing Knocknarea, which is meant to be an incredible hike, and leading up of course to Queen Maeve’s Tomb.

The last song on this CD is So Cold in Ireland, which is funny because I left New York in a blizzard, and once I got back to Dublin the sun was shining and it was 40 degrees. In the song Delores O’Riordan doesn’t seem too keen to get back to her home country, but I felt the opposite whenever I was sitting on the plane making my way back to Dublin after the holidays. It’s easy for me to feel strong connections to the places to which I travel, so that’s nothing really new. But I’d have to say there’s something a bit special about Ireland. It might be colder and rainier than I’m used to out there in the Pacific, but I’d say there’s honestly still been nowhere quite like it.