Unfinished Ireland Post

This post was never finished and never publishes. But it's Paddy's Day and I'm sad so I'll publish it anyway.

This is the end of the Ireland photos and the end of the trip and it's been a week since I've been back but it is still weighing on my heart.

I wrote this post on my last day in Dublin at a rather empty bar called Foley's that I thought I had gone to in the past but I did not remember it once inside. Few people read it but I guess I write these things mostly for myself so I have a record of them and so I can sort out how I feel about things. I've never been able to figure out how those people with travel blogs make a living from traveling and writing about it. I suppose there is some luck involved. I don't think I'd like that much, anyway, because they are forced to alter their travel just to, well, survive, and anyway I get too tired moving around all the time like they do. The best travel is extended stays in one place, which I have been able to do a few times in my life.

One of those times was in Ireland, but according to my journal from that period that I caught up on during the trip, I wasn't too happy there. I think it was because it was just too far away from Dublin, that I wanted to live in Dublin, and that I really didn't know what I was doing and what I wanted to or could even do with my life.

What I do know is that this last trip awakened some of those same feelings in me. Even though I've done many interesting things and have been to many interesting places, I haven't accomplished anything at all. I've worked at some great places that are pretty tough to get into in the first place, but I've never been able to advance. Some of this has to do with the overemphasis on Masters degrees that Washington places on people. Coming to DC with a lot of student and credit card debt and earning only $28K during my first year and not much more the second really made it impossible to go back to school. Instead, I used to go to the Georgetown bookstore and buy the books that were required reading for students in the courses relevant to my work. But nobody cares about knowledge; they just want that piece of paper that says you paid a lot of money to read the books that I read on my own. Now I think about going back but feel I'm too old for it and the thought of having to memorize geometry equations that I never use just to take the GRE is a real turn off. Anyway, I never really had the people skills necessary to advance, either, which is probably more important in this town.

When I went into Dublin City on Sunday morning, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the day. There is this literary pub crawl they have in the evenings and I thought maybe I would do that but I really just wanted to hang out and be a part of Dublin. I really wanted to write something. I wanted to catch up on the last four or five years when I haven't really written anything, and I wanted to do it all at once. Of course I felt overwhelmed. The thing is, it's pretty tough to get published for the first time if you're over 40, and you have to have something to publish for it to happen. I have 150 pages of a poorly executed good idea left over from my twenties that I hoping experience can fix, but the passion that drives youth to creativity seems to be lacking these days. The manuscript sits there, as if I am waiting for some genie to come and fix it for me. It's such a mess that every time I start to work on it, I become overwhelmed and toss it aside. But I think it is the only way that I will ever be fulfilled. It has to be finished, and it has to be published. All of this is making me anxious.

I went into this trip thinking it would be no big deal, like when I went back to Luxembourg last year and didn't feel any real connection and not much nostalgia. I expected to feel it then. After all, it was that year in Europe that changed my life forever. I didn't experience many strong feelings when I first arrived in Dublin, either, but something changed on Sunday when I was about to leave. It was like Dublin finally forgave me for my absence and took me back. Now I have no idea when I can return.

I have some connection to that place that I can't describe. That's why it took me so long to get over missing it all those years ago, when I couldn't afford to travel anywhere. The only other place I've felt that is Beirut, but the chaos and political nonsense made it much easier to leave the last time. But even that wasn't the same as this thing I feel for Dublin, a small city with perpetually cold weather, bad (but improving) food, and a love-hate relationship with U2.

I had to take a different bus that dropped me off on O'Connell Street, when I remembered that I had wanted to get my picture taken in front of the statue of James Joyce like I had so many years ago. I was 22 then. Sometimes I feel just as naive about life now as I was at that age. I haven't picked up Ulysses in years. I used to read it regularly and when I was finished, I'd just start over and read it again. I never even read Finnegan's Wake though it has also been sitting on my shelf for years.  I used to read so much and then social media came and my attention span was destroyed and now I only read a book or two a month, and two is rare. You would think having to commute three hours a day would give me ample time to read, but the truth is I'm too tired in the mornings to concentrate and too tired in the evenings, too. It's mental fatigue, really, and spiritual. Actually probably more spiritual. My conscience is tired. Ignorance may be bliss for some people but for the rest of us who have to clean up after ignorance, it is exhausting.

He looks pretty pissed about having to look at the hideous spire in front of the GPO

The GPO, where the war for Irish independence began, commemorated with a hideous spire.

Clery's department store

I didn't really know where I was going but I just started walking and trying to find subjects for photos. I was a ball of anxiety but still feeling a sort of high from the U2 show the night before and I just became so overwhelmed by everything.

Bar and hardware. What a combo. I guess they won't be removing that bicycle.

I walked through St. Stephen's Green.

Joyce again. He used to be on their money, too, before the euro.

Then I sat on a bench and nearly cried. For what? I don't know. Everything I guess. As I wrote about in the above mentioned post that few people read. I must have sat there for twenty minutes before looking at an art sale around the green and wondering what I should do next.

I ended up going down Baggott Street. I discovered that the Baggott Inn that had been one of the first places (the first place?) U2 had played was also gone, just like Windmill Lane Studios and Landsdowne Stadium. I had remembered Baggott Street to be livelier but life seemed to be missing. Maybe I misremembered it. There was a pub I had liked called Larry Murphy's which seemed to be shut for good, too. I had planned to have a pint on the terrace but there was not even a terrace.

The doors of Dublin. Mine looks similar.

Bricks forever.

I walked along the canal that I had forgotten and around the area where all the embassies are, remembering how thrilled I had been about seeing them on my first wanderings. This was before I lived in Washington and before I had met any ambassadors, so it was still all a literal and figurative foreign world for me. I like how the red brick stretches down the roads seemingly endlessly.

Too light, too lazy to fix. Baggott Street

I was trying to practice photography but I didn't have it on Sunday. I had problems with the clouds and the blue sky constantly switching places and it was too bright and too dark in rapid succession. I have Photoshop so I've adjusted some images, but I either believe that Photoshop is for the lazy photographer or that I am the lazy photographer who doesn't want to bother with Photoshop. Anyway, real photographers use Lightroom and they don't take shitty pictures like some of the ones I took.

Since I've been back I've found out that four people I knew died and this just adds to the depression I am experiencing right now.