30 May 2009
23 May 2009
The Mariquita in Dingle
I received a message from Maria about two days ago asking if I’d like to go to an aquarium today. “Of course!” I replied via ecstatic text message, “Where is the aquarium?” Dingle, apparently.
So we set off on a rain-soaked bus at about 9.30 this morning for a lovely day on the peninsula. It in fact cleared up significantly, with patches of blue finally becoming patches of cloud as the bus pulled over at Inch Strand, a stretch of beach along the Dingle Peninsula. By this time the rain had receded, leaving only a strangely benevolent sun for us to abandon our shoes and socks to and play in the water. It was a cold Atlantic, but it could have been much worse, and the beach itself a wide and gentle slope. Maria did cartwheels and spins and butterfly kicks and Melnia took pictures and I marveled at the look of my toes in the surf and we ran and laughed and I found myself in the sun for the first time in days.
Melina (left) and Maria (right) enjoying the sun.
From there we wound up the coast, green and blue all the way, passing sights I in turn came to recognize having already been to Dingle with Barbara and David. So I wasn’t much surprised by the route of our tour around Sleg Head, including a trip past the Beehive Forts and the Blasket Centre, where we stopped to spend time sunbathing on the stone of their back face and making daisy chain wreaths and giving ourselves names like “Rainbow” and “Mariquita” (my favorite Spanish word- ladybug.)
It was a beautiful trip, even as we stopped at Dunbeg Fort where I finally got pictures and once again fed wildflowers to the donkey. The day was warm and comfortable and everything was so vibrant, the islands seems to glow and even the elusive Skellig Michael was visible.
The entranceway to the inner circle of Dunbeg Fort.
Our final stop took us in the Dingle Town where we finally toured their tiny but vibrant aquarium, with a multitude of tropical and native species, small sharks, sea turtles, goldfish the size of my head and even a petting tank with a ray that appeared to do spinning tricks in the water. We ran around like kids in wonder, taking pictures with the decorations and marveling at the way light moves through water.
A vibrant little seahorse.
It was the first time I’ve been on a trip with Maria and Melina and I enjoyed the leisure of it. There was no need to do much of anything except enjoy the sun. Perhaps it was the fact that I done it before, or perhaps it’s some kind of Spanish mentality, but there is a refreshing wholeness to being able to travel Ireland without having to learn something, or do something, simply to sit in the sun, in the green, and hear the sheep and remember this is where I am right now.
It’s been little over a month without travel and it was a much needed break from Cork, a reminder that the trip’s not quite over yet. I’m still here, I’m still here.
So we set off on a rain-soaked bus at about 9.30 this morning for a lovely day on the peninsula. It in fact cleared up significantly, with patches of blue finally becoming patches of cloud as the bus pulled over at Inch Strand, a stretch of beach along the Dingle Peninsula. By this time the rain had receded, leaving only a strangely benevolent sun for us to abandon our shoes and socks to and play in the water. It was a cold Atlantic, but it could have been much worse, and the beach itself a wide and gentle slope. Maria did cartwheels and spins and butterfly kicks and Melnia took pictures and I marveled at the look of my toes in the surf and we ran and laughed and I found myself in the sun for the first time in days.
Melina (left) and Maria (right) enjoying the sun.
From there we wound up the coast, green and blue all the way, passing sights I in turn came to recognize having already been to Dingle with Barbara and David. So I wasn’t much surprised by the route of our tour around Sleg Head, including a trip past the Beehive Forts and the Blasket Centre, where we stopped to spend time sunbathing on the stone of their back face and making daisy chain wreaths and giving ourselves names like “Rainbow” and “Mariquita” (my favorite Spanish word- ladybug.)
It was a beautiful trip, even as we stopped at Dunbeg Fort where I finally got pictures and once again fed wildflowers to the donkey. The day was warm and comfortable and everything was so vibrant, the islands seems to glow and even the elusive Skellig Michael was visible.
The entranceway to the inner circle of Dunbeg Fort.
Our final stop took us in the Dingle Town where we finally toured their tiny but vibrant aquarium, with a multitude of tropical and native species, small sharks, sea turtles, goldfish the size of my head and even a petting tank with a ray that appeared to do spinning tricks in the water. We ran around like kids in wonder, taking pictures with the decorations and marveling at the way light moves through water.
A vibrant little seahorse.
It was the first time I’ve been on a trip with Maria and Melina and I enjoyed the leisure of it. There was no need to do much of anything except enjoy the sun. Perhaps it was the fact that I done it before, or perhaps it’s some kind of Spanish mentality, but there is a refreshing wholeness to being able to travel Ireland without having to learn something, or do something, simply to sit in the sun, in the green, and hear the sheep and remember this is where I am right now.
It’s been little over a month without travel and it was a much needed break from Cork, a reminder that the trip’s not quite over yet. I’m still here, I’m still here.
17 May 2009
Feet
Walking to the gym this morning in the early afternoon, before the inevitable afternoon downpour and after the mid-morning chill, I felt as if I could walk forever. It is not a new feeling, but it seems more poignant now that I have faith in my own two feet.
I have always been slightly self-conscious about my feet, and on the whole I do not trust them much. I like the way they look, with their high arches, proportioned toes and pink nail polish, but they tend to flop when I walk like silly appendages, the left ankle rolling grossly as I trudge down the street. I am only truly comfortable when walking in bare feet, and that is a rare thing here.
But in the last five months I have learned to walk like I have never walked before. I have taken the walk to school as a normality, down damp paths in the morning or to the café in the afternoon. The walk back from the pub has become a mere trifle, tapping the stone in heels. I have gotten used to carrying my weekly groceries back from Tesco and the Market, familiar brass plaques lying under my Converse. But more than this, I learned that I can walk. That when all else fails, I am never stuck anywhere. Distance is relative, (and the distances I have walked have been long indeed) but I have learned to walk the kilometers without fail, to continue with no thought to how far, simply knowing that I will get there. I can walk. My mobility is never compromised.
In the states I am reliant on a car, my feet placed safely on the gas and brake, never forced to move much in order to go far, but to walk is a whole new discovery. This movement is a whole body experience, a sense of complete self, independent and integrated. No frame separates you from the world and no machine leaves you to be let down. Most mornings I feel I could walk forever, around the country and back to this wonderful city, and that I need nothing but my feet and my legs going on at my own pace; an off-centered gait that may not be economical, but it gets me there all the same.
The night outside Kerry airport I took to my feet in the same way I found my way through the streets of Dublin and Edinburgh and Rome. To walk, to walk to the bus station with a pack of all your possessions on your back, or simply to the gym with a towel, it is a state of perfect independence. You are walking on your own two feet! The world cannot stop you!
And I have come to love it. The days I do not walk are marked by restlessness, a supreme feeling of waste and dissatisfaction. I have even come to love my trod; slow, but more observant. There is more time to take in the birds on the Lee or the purple flowers that cling to stone fences along College Avenue. I see the world when I walk, I see it in its own time, coming and going as it does, as I do. To walk is a feeling of freedom nothing can match. I can walk the world if I wish.
I have always been slightly self-conscious about my feet, and on the whole I do not trust them much. I like the way they look, with their high arches, proportioned toes and pink nail polish, but they tend to flop when I walk like silly appendages, the left ankle rolling grossly as I trudge down the street. I am only truly comfortable when walking in bare feet, and that is a rare thing here.
But in the last five months I have learned to walk like I have never walked before. I have taken the walk to school as a normality, down damp paths in the morning or to the café in the afternoon. The walk back from the pub has become a mere trifle, tapping the stone in heels. I have gotten used to carrying my weekly groceries back from Tesco and the Market, familiar brass plaques lying under my Converse. But more than this, I learned that I can walk. That when all else fails, I am never stuck anywhere. Distance is relative, (and the distances I have walked have been long indeed) but I have learned to walk the kilometers without fail, to continue with no thought to how far, simply knowing that I will get there. I can walk. My mobility is never compromised.
In the states I am reliant on a car, my feet placed safely on the gas and brake, never forced to move much in order to go far, but to walk is a whole new discovery. This movement is a whole body experience, a sense of complete self, independent and integrated. No frame separates you from the world and no machine leaves you to be let down. Most mornings I feel I could walk forever, around the country and back to this wonderful city, and that I need nothing but my feet and my legs going on at my own pace; an off-centered gait that may not be economical, but it gets me there all the same.
The night outside Kerry airport I took to my feet in the same way I found my way through the streets of Dublin and Edinburgh and Rome. To walk, to walk to the bus station with a pack of all your possessions on your back, or simply to the gym with a towel, it is a state of perfect independence. You are walking on your own two feet! The world cannot stop you!
And I have come to love it. The days I do not walk are marked by restlessness, a supreme feeling of waste and dissatisfaction. I have even come to love my trod; slow, but more observant. There is more time to take in the birds on the Lee or the purple flowers that cling to stone fences along College Avenue. I see the world when I walk, I see it in its own time, coming and going as it does, as I do. To walk is a feeling of freedom nothing can match. I can walk the world if I wish.
06 May 2009
Early Examination
It is May already. I wonder when that happened. The days here are rather nice right now, a bit chill, with always the threat of a shower, but of late I’ve found it easy to walk myself to the gym at 10 each morning without becoming hypothermic.
Along the Lee small, white flowers bloom and the leaves give a beautiful green canopy and at low tide I can smell the ocean in the dredges of the riverbed. Two white swans have taken up residence in a length of the river between my apartment and the Mardyke Bridge, their white plumage standing out against the swampy brown of the water.
There are no classes anymore, just exams. A month of stressed students and packed study areas. I have never seen such a collective body of silence as I find crammed into the Q+3 of the library on the rare days when I can grab myself a window seat there. The exams are fairly straightforward; only two essays, 90-minuets, and with a choice of topics so varied I cannot imagine what it would take to fail. My own exams are spaced rather nicely; one tomorrow, one the 20th and one the 27th. After that, well, I don’t like to think about after that. After that I will be leaving this place, but I’m not ready to think about that yet.
Most afternoons are spent in the O’Rahlly Building café with a crowd of now all-too-familiar faces; Maria and Melina, (the Spanish girls), Shane, Niall and Martin (the English lit boys), Debbie and Anne, Heather, Alba, Frank, Ian, and many people who I greet, but with names I can’t remember. Pub crawls still happen at regular intervals, and sometimes just old-fashioned house parties. My free evenings are mostly occupied with reading literary criticisms and tapping away at my keyboard.
For now my only worry is enjoying this last month on the emerald isle without prematurely mourning it. There is time to sit in the warming sun still and hear Shane quip some latin quote, or listen to Melina and Maria chatting away in quick Spanish. To hear more and more about old Irish men in local pubs, jokes about potatoes, or ridicule Joyce.
Or to just listen to the rain.
Along the Lee small, white flowers bloom and the leaves give a beautiful green canopy and at low tide I can smell the ocean in the dredges of the riverbed. Two white swans have taken up residence in a length of the river between my apartment and the Mardyke Bridge, their white plumage standing out against the swampy brown of the water.
There are no classes anymore, just exams. A month of stressed students and packed study areas. I have never seen such a collective body of silence as I find crammed into the Q+3 of the library on the rare days when I can grab myself a window seat there. The exams are fairly straightforward; only two essays, 90-minuets, and with a choice of topics so varied I cannot imagine what it would take to fail. My own exams are spaced rather nicely; one tomorrow, one the 20th and one the 27th. After that, well, I don’t like to think about after that. After that I will be leaving this place, but I’m not ready to think about that yet.
Most afternoons are spent in the O’Rahlly Building café with a crowd of now all-too-familiar faces; Maria and Melina, (the Spanish girls), Shane, Niall and Martin (the English lit boys), Debbie and Anne, Heather, Alba, Frank, Ian, and many people who I greet, but with names I can’t remember. Pub crawls still happen at regular intervals, and sometimes just old-fashioned house parties. My free evenings are mostly occupied with reading literary criticisms and tapping away at my keyboard.
For now my only worry is enjoying this last month on the emerald isle without prematurely mourning it. There is time to sit in the warming sun still and hear Shane quip some latin quote, or listen to Melina and Maria chatting away in quick Spanish. To hear more and more about old Irish men in local pubs, jokes about potatoes, or ridicule Joyce.
Or to just listen to the rain.
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