The Rocky Road to Dublin

This weekend, I went to Dublin to see the National Library's exhibition on Yeats and the viking ship, The Sea Stallion, at the Nation Museum. To cross this little island, it takes about two and a half hours on the train, which is very pleasant, but getting to the train is a whole other story. The buses don't start in the morning until 7:15, and the direct train I wanted left at 7:30, so I had two choices: walk or take a taxi. Well, Ralph sent me an email saying that he would *really* prefer that I take a taxi, so at 6;00 am I tried to call the taxi service to get one. No go: fifteen minutes of busy signals. Well, at 6:15, I knew the walking window closed, so I set out. It took about 45 minutes as a pretty brisk stride to get to the train station. I stuck to main streets which were all very well lit, and as I trotted into the morning city (it was officially 'civilian twilight' according to the computer) I saw all these full cabs leaving the city! No wonder I couldn't get a cab: this was prime cab time. I guess the late clubs were getting out at 6:00. Anyway, there was nothing to worry about because the city was actually suprisingly busy at this time.

So the train was lovely, and I read a book called The Poor Mouth, which is a satire of the Gaelic League. It is hysterically funny. I will come home with a copy that I will lend to everybody, it is so good. Now, you wouldn't think of Dublin as being a cosmopolitan metropolis, but it certainly feels like it after living in Limerick for a while. The Yeats exhibit was very well done. I really liked the copy the of the 'creativity survey' that some social scientist sent him. Can you imagine sending a Nobel prize winning poet a creativity survey where the person has to fill out little boxes about creativity? There were places where Yeats had crossed out entire questions and written in "It is impossible to answer this."

After Yeats, I went to see the replica viking ship at the National Museum. While I was there, a primary school class was also there on a field trip. The little boys were all dressed in tin foil armor, with painted cardboard shields, and tin foil/cardboard swords. They had also made little tinfoil helmets, and one boy had made cardboard horns out of toilet paper tubes for his. All the little girls were dressed in burlap bag tunic like things with belts. Not a scrap of tinfoil was wasted on any of these girls. *sigh* They were having a great time despite their teachers' gender forming imperialism. They ran around the boat and shouted with abandon. Inside there was a video about the people sailing the boat from Denmark to Ireland. Evidently they had to be towed a bit when the wind went down and the rowers got tired. It looked like it was hard work! This boat was a replica of one of five boats that had been scuttled to protect a Danish harbor, but the wood of the boat they excavated was Irish wood, so clearly the boat had been made in Dublin. Now, the regular history that circulates about Vikings in Ireland is how they burned, plundered, and killed monks like nobody's business until Brian Boru kicked their collective asses at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014. However, when you have a great tourist attraction like this boat, the story gets a different spin. Here are the fantastic Norse who came to create a stable economy in Ireland and were great craftsmen who built cool boats like this. Lochlann go brea! They hailed the Sea Stallion as "coming home to Dublin" and it was a great thing! As I am spending time studying the interpretation and creative use of history and imagined history, this perceptual flip-flopping on the Viking issue is thoroughly entertaining.

Taking the train home, I arrived in Limerick while the busses were still running, so I hopped on the bus back to the University. Waiting for the bus and taking the bus takes about 45 mintues to get home: the exact same amount of time it takes to walk, only it is less sweaty. Anyway, I get on the bus just in time to watch some street theatre. I was just getting on the bus when a man, who I must assume was very drunk, careened across the street and fell on his face right in front of the bus. His none too steady mates were hot on his heels, and, I suppose in some kind of misguided solidarity, fell down on top
of him. Through the windscreen of the bus, I saw the two topmost men weave to their feet, and then they appeared around the street side of the bus dragging their friend onto the pavement. He was utterly inert, so they sort of draped him up against the building, and he lay there with his rugby shirt all pulled up under his arms, resting peacefully in the filth of the street, with, I swear to you, the most beatific smile on his face. As the bus progressed up the street, we passed a woman who was also clearly inebriated, and she was reeling down the street at such a pronounced zig zag that she would run face first into a building wall, rebound, only to catch herself and head back into the wall about three feet further along the way. I only glimpsed two iterations of her progress before she was lost to view. We had to pause a little longer at one stop where another alcohol affected person had to profusely thank the bus driver for stopping before getting off the bus. It was all as appalling as it was hysterically funny.

Now, Gentle Reader, lest you chide me about presenting a potentially negative stereotype of Limerick, I have to say, I am merely reporting what I witnessed from a public bus at 8:00 pm. I'm sure from a Cincinnati public bus, I would collect similar variations on the human condition. The people at the university are very sensitive about the whole alcohol issue and there is much debate about how to work with the negative effects. At the student orientation, one presenter asked the study abroad students, "So, what do you associate most with Ireland?" I think he was fishing for green hills, shamrocks, St. Patrick or James Joyce, but one young man in the crowed immediately piped up with, "The Drink!" Clearly the presenter was embarassed, and he said, quite sincerely, "Yes, I know people say that. As an Irishman, it really pains me that this is so because there is so much more than The Drink to my country." I think the young American was faintly embarassed by what he might have meant as humor. Actually, the pubs here are social events. To go for drink means to sit down and have a nice chat, not go get pissed. I think that is so in America also, at least in my experience (which is oh so very broad when it comes to the bar scene, dontcha know). Anyway, I tell the story of The Man Who Fell In Front Of The Bus because of how striking his smile was, even as he appeared to be in the depths of awfulness.