 eyes of ireland Cold Spring - Ireland That spring would be a cold one, but I didn't know it yet. I wasn't really doing much of anything, just working too much and drinking to match the hours I'd overworked. So I decided to take an invite from a friend to come to Ireland and help around the farm. It wasn't the easiest decision to make, and certainly wouldn't help my propensity to drink, but I figured, what the hell. I've never seen Ireland before. Flying. Flights in the U.S. can be torture, especially those long ones, say from coast to coast, but overseas flights - they're are much different. A huge plane with an enormous cabin, maybe ten seats across, almost always two movies and, of course, many drinks. They set you up with blankets and pillows and snacks, and you begin to feel cozy like you're in your own living room. Maybe the seat next to you is empty, so you can stretch out, lounging, pretending you are someone more important. After the first movie, you start flexing your legs like its says in the in-flight magazine on how to avoid jet-lag, and you pull off you headphones and listen to the quiet chatter around you. You listen carefully to the voices of the stewardesses who are native to the country you're flying to. You try to remember their sounds - the long o's and the gentle volleying of pitch from song to speech. You map those words like territories in your mind so you might recall them later as one of the first things you can remember about leaving the safety of your own land; the sweeter sounds of Irish voices. After hours, my lips were dry from the air and my knees were stiff and creaky like a rocking chair. As the captain's voice came over us, I felt the anticipation of the approach. We started the decent, and still from 10,000 feet up, I saw through the darkness and frost of the small window, the tiny illuminated cities with electric paths that curl into each other the arms of giant sea-animals. These towns, some of which I would barely know passing by, some I would know intimately, were the shapes of unfamiliar creatures, their bodies the color of new pennies on the night land. And though the lights of the paths are on, the cities themselves remained unchanged - there was no movement in the streets below. The cities were still under the heavy spell of sleep, and while they turned in bed dreaming, I imagined the dark countryside was just beginning to stir with the first rooster's call. As the wing lifted, my stomach lurched, and above us I saw the palest feather of blue sky break the dark clouds with the beginnings of the new day. Arriving. Exhausted, feeling half-dead, I stumbled through the foreign airport like a drunk exiting a bar and going off to work, and hurled myself, duffel sloshing behind me, toward the sliding doors where a neat row of taxis stood waiting at the curb. My cab driver loaded my things into the trunk, and asked me several questions in succession in a heavy Irish brogue, some of which I could not understand. I responded with, "Philadelphia," and "first time" and then a pathetic, tired shrug, and he understood. I sank down into the soft upholstery, and watched the passing rows of gray chimneys against the clouded sky, letting my head bob with the ride, and drifting forward and backward into the tide of rushing, inevitable sleep. I woke up at the bus station, where the cab driver had put the car in park and said in a voice like a bowling ball rolling back to me, "Fiftin poonds, Miss". Waiting. With a tug of the locked door, I realized that I had arrived at the bus station too early - it hadn't opened yet. I hurled my things onto the ground with a disgusted grunt and waited. Outside, some locals, Dubliners, had started to gather near the doors, waiting for the station to open. A couple with plaid, pinned clothes and brightly-colored hair leaned against the brass doors next to me in the whistling wind. Another woman walked up, an elderly woman, with a cane, stood on the other side of me, and said in a shaky, elderly voice, "It's closed". She looked at me as if I were to be held responsible. "Yes, I know." I replied, my American accent giving her a bit of a startled look. It hadn't dawned on me before that once in a foreign country, one becomes the foreigner with the strange accent. It felt odd, like using someone else's toothbrush. I didn't come to be a foreigner. I came to live simply, and find out what I could about the lives of the people on this green island. I wanted to be a ghost over the landscape, not another American with a camera. I didn't want to be viewed that way, not even by strangers at the bus station. While we waited for the station to open, these lives stood about me, and it felt good to be, even for just the moment before I opened my mouth, mistaken for one of them. From then on, when I was alone, I spoke very little in public places, trying my best to seem like I belonged as much as they did. I settled down on my duffel bag, tucked my head in my arms like an animal, and tried to keep warm. After a minute, a cold mist began to blow with the wind. Something was put into my head about Ireland being a sunny, warm place. Not warm like Jamaica warm, but pleasant warm like Maine in the summertime, kids fishing in cutoffs. I expected, even in these earliest days of spring, for the sun to be out drying laundry on a line, the smell of that light on your clothes. I thought it was Scotland that had the damp, gray days. Turns out it's Ireland, too. Riding. Once inside the bus station, I sat and waited for the bus to Cork City. I had a book with me, but I left it in my bag, knowing that in my waking-dead state, reading would be a senseless act. Instead I stared at the few other people in the station; the couple with the punk hair getting tea, the old lady with the cane and a friend who had joined her wearing a fur-lined coat, a young man in a brown suit with a portable video game. By the time my bus boarded, I was awake enough to get excited about seeing the Irish countryside on the long ride to Cork, but soon after the bus roared away from the crowded streets of Dublin, I feared I wouldn't see much more. I fought against my exhaustion long enough to see the blazing green landscape rippled by streaks of rains almost horizontal on the big landscape window. But drugged with the excitement of a new place, coupled with the exhaustion of the travel it took to get there, I quickly fell into a dreamless sleep, waking only briefly to glance out the window to three different scenes; a rolling green field lined with yellow-flowered bushes, a castle in ruins, and a black cow nursing a black calf by a stone wall. To be continued... |
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