I’ve been in Ireland for just over three months now, having arrived on January 22nd, just a mere eight hours before the next day’s announcement that the Irish had defeated Covid (possibly with one hand tied behind their back and with a solid right hook I like to quip). Masks would no longer be required. Oh! and the pubs could go back to regular last orders at half eleven at night and half one am for the late night bars. So I arrived not just in the midst of a giddy and happy Irish celebration, but also, as I was to understand about a week into it, just in time for everyone to pack up from living with their parents in the countryside and race home to Dublin to begin working again. Which meant, it was an especially bad time to look for a place to rent.
I wanted to update posts here while I was settling in, but at times the thoughts of the blog overwhelmed me, mainly because I was surfing between hotels for almost two of those months. This entailed a constant price comparison online of what the hotel prices were doing three nights at a time and then over and over moving again, complete with two large suitcases and two smaller ones, to chase the best rates via the many places surrounding Parnell Square. Even though I had saved money in anticipation of this transition, it’s still difficult to see one’s money drain off into random hotel stays with the cloud of uncertainty as to where one will live hanging over your head. I also took a solid pay cut to come to Ireland, so I needed to make every euro count.
Eventually, after many viewings of grim lets in decaying buildings (one with a shared toilet jammed in a closet two flights of stairs up), I found a room (and a Croatian roommate) in the East Wall neighborhood of Dublin’s inner city North. And when I moved in, I wasted no time setting it up with a desk, bookshelves and books, and settling in. The balcony has a gritty urban view of the trains sliding in and out of Connolly Station which is a 10 minute walk away. And I can also enjoy the swans being blown about on the Royal Canal. For the Dublin part of this whole journey, this, as the Irish like to say again and again, should be grand. I can settle in here for however many months I need and take the lay of the land, as it were.
However currently, I am not in Dublin but rather I’m on an island off of the west coast of the country. After a three hour train ride west, then a night spent in Galway, then a two hour bus ride to a fishing village called Cleggan, I caught a 40 minute ferry out to an island in the Atlantic called Inishbofin. The Island of The White Cow. I, however, have yet to see any white cows.
There are plenty of sheep wandering around, but that’s anywhere in rural Ireland. As I look outside at the green hills and stone fenced fields, their white shapes dot the entire landscape and as I type, there occasional bleating and distant yakking of the gulls are about the only sounds I hear. Well, that and a mysterious chorus of strangers singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah off in the distance. Their collective voices carrying over a few fields to reach my open window. Once they finished, silence took over again save the occasional song bird. The smell of salt in the air is strong and welcome.
The walk into town is just over one and a half miles. The road is pleasant and there are ruins of a 13th century abby to enjoy (built on top of a 7th century place which was also likely built on top of something from from ancient times). As well as the rare and shy birds nesting in the grasses, the corncrakes. At night, walking home from seeing music, the darkness is filled with their odd calls.
There is a white sand beach nearby (complete with aqua blue waters, of course) and it is a popular spot for Irish Sea Swimming. This is an activity that the Irish seem to love doing and indeed, many of the people I’ve met on the island partake of it every day. Usually in the morning. “Fixes you when hungover!” said one gentleman I chatted with at The Beach Bar, one of the two pubs on the island. He was in his late 50s and halfway into his first Guinness of the night.
Indeed, the other day, the barkeep comes out and says “I’m finally off work!” I joked, “you off to the gym now?” He laughed and said, “No, but I’m about to go and jump right off that pier over there!” and he gestured to where the ferry comes in. “Aye, it’s deep enough though, isn’t it.” And fifteen minutes later, as I sat at my picnic bench outside overlooking the bay, I watched him running down the pier and flying into the air straight into the water. This from the Irish who are always complaining about the overcast skies and how cold it is out.
Inside were two friends here on holiday from Galway, one being an ICU nurse who had gone through the worst of the Covid crisis on the front lines. She also told me she swam every day and it was her foundation for sanity. They ended up being my trad music friends in the end (traditional music is played in the pubs and it’s always best to savor it with others if you can just ’cause, well, you know…the Craic). They were full of dark and irreverent humor and we all shared a deep love of travel.
As to the swimming, I suppose it makes sense. There’s nothing of consequence that will kill you in this ocean. No Great White sharks, no poisonous box jellyfish; only riptides and dangerous surf in some areas. But the East End Beach, where I am staying, is placid and at low tide, riders urge their horses into the ankle deep water to reach a small peninsula with a crumbling ruin of some sort. At high tide, it’s prime swimming time. The waters are fresh, clear, and at a comfortable swimming depth with no riptides.
Anyway, I’m not really here for a sightseeing trip. It’s only part holiday. I’m pretending to my company that I’m even working…which they make it easy enough not to do. I’m here because I joined a writer’s retreat and am sticking to a schedule of four or five hours a day of writing and working on a manuscript (mostly finished) for poetry and on my new gear shift into short stories and fiction.
I suppose this blog will partly serve as my connection to home and to friends, since many of them have jumped away from Facebook. For me, having moved so much over the last 20 years, Facebook was convenient, but friends and family moving away from it is more than understandable. So some of the posts on here will be mundane and boring, kind of like this one. Some might be more of a surreal nature. Some more reflective/poetic. It’s just a means of keeping the lines open to home and to force myself to write often. I’m exploring doing a more literary blog over on SubStack, but am just exploring it right now.
Now it’s back to writing stories, but I’ll leave some pictures scattered in the wake of this post.
