“It was one of those summers you’re nostalgic for even before it passes. Pale, bled skies. Thunderstorms in the night. Sour-smelling dawns. It brought temptation, and yearning, and ache – these are the summer things.”
― Kevin Barry, City of Bohane
Photo by Jennell (a friend)
Here we are everyone. The mental midpoint of summer and its whole rippling form that it’s taken on across the globe. Except for those places underneath the cap, so to speak. Like some sort of undulating beast with many heads, its obviously taken on many heat heavy forms around the world. Here, summer struck out on its own starting in (if you listen to the Irish) the month of May up here in Dooblin Town. There might have been one, maybe two days, where the temperature crept about 80F. Other than that, it’s been a lot like a typical San Francisco summer. Just replace the fog with light rain and keep the temperature the same.
And to be fair, we had a bit of the good weather here and there in late spring. But the month everyone here still talks about with deep nostalgia and sacred reverence was the now distant past of June. June, the whole month, promised the steamy swamp of summer. Long legged languid days swelling with that grassy smell of ripeness. The scent of life relaxing, unfolding. It prompted me to immediately purchase not one, but two fans (or ventilators as they call them here), for my dread of hot days is absolutely legend (to use an Irish turn of phrase).
But I didn’t begrudge those finally getting their own weather that they had dreamed of, you know? The kind of raw heat and sweat a lot of people long for in every stunted winter day’s waking dream. Look, I get it. They, no all of us, have paid the price. All of us coming awake each morning to darkness and fallen back under afternoon’s early night for many months. A cold bitting dark rife with wind and slashing rain. Really fucking HIGH gas bills (thanks to the war in Ukraine). And then all the other usual problems of a city these days stirred in for good measure. Housing crisis and low salaries forcing the young (20s and 30s) to still be living at home. Jobs are plentiful, but the pay is not. The crime (I don’t feel like the crime is that bad here, but the Irish do and it is a smaller place here so, ok…), the homeless, the drugs (there’s no fentanyl here but everyone dreads its eventual arrival), all swirling around in their miserable rain blender.
In June, everyone assumed the reckoning had come in the form of summer’s hot light falling from the sky out of some holy forge above. Little heat coins for the pockets of all the weary denizens of this little green island in the north. Many of whom feel torn absolutely ragged by the bite of the two seas (the Atlantic and the Irish Sea) and the one Channel (St. George’s Channel) to the south. Water everywhere. The constant breath from it on the neck even. But also, let’s not forget, the Irish love to complain. And the weather is top of the list.
And now here we are in July, what with Jesus or the lord or whathaveyou having killed off all promises of hot, sultry sunsets at 10:30 in the evening. July is the new October. So now, every single conversation is traced to one single origin; The Weather. Greetings are now summarily disposed of at work meetings on our video calls and instead the weather is trotted out for at least 5-10 minutes of commentary about the unfairness of it all. I couldn’t be happier with this development. I have enjoyed, thus far, a summer of overcast skies, light rain along with the soft grey light that fades late. You would think this would increase my writing time, but I did over commit myself to traveling with friends at the beginning of the month and am just now recovering from that mentally and physically (eating all the time on the road with scant exercise takes too much out of me, also I’ve noticed that I’ve grown far more introverted since moving to Ireland).
But today showed itself to be the typical overcast July day again and having re-established better routines the last two weeks, I was ready for an all day writing marathon. I’ve neglected consistent schedules for my own writing, my letters out to loved ones, and this blog as well. Sitting for hours and writing and reading and writing is just the medicine I’ve been needing for well over a few months now. I have been traveling pretty solidly since May. And then was in Paris in April. Thanks to the last job that took forever to eliminate my position and handed me many months of free time (with complete uncertainty behind it as none of it was really explained until later) as a parting gift.
That is to say, I suppose I don’t really have fuck all to say today. Just the practice of moving my fingers across the keyboard helps tremendously. A new mechanical keyboard at that! The new job has been limping along, having started out in layoffs of the very people who hired me and then my having to re-cement why I’m there with other people who are difficult to figure out. In short, all these companies are pretty much alike. It doesn’t matter what country you’re in. But I like being an architect, I want to do a lot more of it and less politics. And more than anything, write and write and wring out the last drop from the washcloth of the mind as much as possible.
It’s almost like the last several months gave me TOO MUCH information and experience to process. And I got overloaded. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. And now, aside from going into work, I stay in my room in the house in this old fort comprised of many old houses. And I love the strange curves of the ceiling, the rib bones of the roof curving inward. Like being inside of a whale. I love living with another writer whose book collection resembles the one it took me almost two years to dissolve back in San Francisco. In fact, she has a lot of the same books I once had. And so it’s a full life right now, despite relegating myself to the room. I am going to the gym each day to mitigate and then going to the market for food, then home to cook, then all that is usually done by 9 or 10. A movie then bed. Routines, rituals. All coming back.
Just a few pictures will follow of July while traveling in the west (around County Mayo and then Sligo). I was there with friends from Seattle (so see, they’re used to the rain) and we found ourselves out there in Westport, a charming little Irish village in the west everyone bangs on and on about when given half the chance. I had never been there, but I will say, yes it is small and charming. But in the summer it is littered with the Americans and the Heritage Hunter types, and there were rednecks from Mississippi who made loaded comments at a nearby table during dinner about the Feds and the national parks and it was like, jesus christ, gie it a feckin’ rest, ya? Other than that we learned there is a highly revered barkeep in the village who is from Scotland, and yes, therefore Scottish. His name ended in Castles which made it a bit fun to try going from pub to pub to ask, “is ___ Castles here?” and then watching everyone collectively swoon over this guy. Like both women and men. It was a small stab at entertainment on the heels of exhaustion on our last night. Regardless, we learned a lot about his life from practically every barkeep in the village, including the fact that Wednesday (the night we were there) was his night off. The next day saw us off to Sligo on a country bus. Frankly, I was quite eager for Sligo, my most favorite town in Ireland.
We miscalculated slightly on the departure. The bus, as it turned out, did not take credit cards (and I could not extract cash from the ATM in the village as it was broken). We had been to Scotland a few days earlier and one of us asked if we could offer British Sterling in place of the Euro. This, and I should have known, is the wrong thing to ask in Ireland.
“Fuck no!”, said the driver. A few laughs from the bus seats. Then a tiny old woman came up and donated some money, other people did too. Pretty much the whole bus contributed to the one last ticket we didn’t have cash for and got my friend on. It takes a village, indeed. I mean, I’m pretty sure we all used some light karma there as well. But we would have done the same with positions reversed and we would have done so happily.
We thanked everyone as we sheepishly made our way to the back of the bus and one woman in her 30’s asked me abruptly, “why do you have British Sterling”?
I answered, “We were in Scotland. Edinburgh. We forgot to change it out in the airport.”
Everyone seemed satisfied with this answer. Smiles and nods all around. And we spent the rest of the next two hours gazing out the window at the rain soaked green fields, stone fences and the dreary strip malls of Castlebar as the bus rolled through. It’s a market town in the west. I don’t recommend it, really.
But while in Westport, we did do a small boat tour in the Clew Bay. I had a hankering to see Dorinish Island, the subject of Beatlebone, one of my favorite discoveries this year. What a mad book. A type of narrative that found its way into my inner life during the entire time I spend in Copenhagen and then in the west of Ireland on this trip. And yes, I was in Copenhagen with my friends for a few days. It’s too much for me to take on the description of that leg. All you should know is that we saw a concert, Depeche Mode, and Copenhagen is lovely, elegant and seems like a social paradise.
I leave you with summer photos from the west.