"Culture Shock" as an idea of feeling displaced isn't something I've felt yet in Dublin. There are obvious differences from Southern Ontario, indeed, but these are easy to attenuate--which is actually quite interesting. The obvious markers: driving on the left side, pubs literally on every corner (Joyce had a puzzle about this, I believe), everyone drinks in the afternoon, everyday it seems. Less obvious: the majority of the time dogs are not on leashes, including the times on busy downtown sidewalks. But in terms of mannerisms and ways of relating with people, things do not feel all that different. People are polite and friendly and while some language differences occur, relating things colloquially is not very difficult.
Of course, being stationed near Temple Bar, the tourist hot spot, might skew things for us, in such a customer service dominant zone. So what about a place that, while still a major tourist attraction, possesses less of the bustle and volume of the city center. That brings me to the beautiful Howth.
To describe Howth and our experience of the seaside village/Dublin suburb summarily would be a greater injustice than to not mention it at all, so instrad I will offer two experiences that will hopefully cognate an understanding of our time in Howth...
I.
We come around the bend of the cliff on a narrow part of the path between the coconut scented grouse and the sheer drop into the ocean below. A stone ledge in a small nook on the side of the hill provides a short area of respite for Margaret and me. A small group of German twenty-somethings pass us with a smile; I can tell Margaret is trying to decipher what they are saying. I like that about her. I spy a cruise ship far out in the Irish Sea like some lonesome hazy cloud. The German voices trail off and disappear behind the bend--words float over the cliff and disintegrate into nothingness. Lost at sea.
All is quiet.
I mean really quiet. There is no sound and the pressure of silence boxes my ears. The sheer cliff face protects us from the sounds of the waves. The bend of the path stops trailing voices from invading our space. This is the quietest ledge in the entire world. There are no neon signs denoting it, no tourists flocking for pictures: silence is a fame without celebrity. Then--there--a singular sound breaks through; one of the sea birds, its brown and white body barely even noticeable in the expanse, takes off and flits its wings along the surface of the wave crested sea. Little smacking sounds pulse out from below us. It's strange to hear only one sound like this--no wind, no talking, no atmospheric reminders. Just the sound of one living thing interacting with the world, becoming its own. That sea bird is an entire world, hollowed out from a larger nest of being.
An American couple comes around the corner. "Hi," they say politely. We hurdle through worlds and fall out of the silence.
II.
Margie's feet are killing her. My legs ache in turn and we have already past Howth Castle with no real sense of when we will get to the famed grounds. There's a hill now, leading up to Deer Hill Golf Club and Resort. A group of teenagers kick a football down the first hole to the left of us, Bulmer's in hand. I turn around to catch the fading sinew of Margie's grimaces; she hides them well, so I feel guilty for noticing. It's been a long day. "We don't have to," I say.
"Maybe." She is genuinely unsure. She wants to see the Rhododendrons and the beech hedgerows. She wants to see me see these things. But it definitely has been a long day. I begin to walk back toward the castle but stop. "No, we need to see all the things we want to," I say. "I will give you a piggy-back." After hemming and hawing for a little while, she ascends with a smile.
The hill is not steep but it is long. My legs burn and my chest tightens. I struggle to the top and let her down, my forehead dripping sweat and my breath short. We walk along a paved path to a curtain of beeches. Out of the sun we enter into a blanket of shade. A striking cliff face unexpectedly towers over us. Everywhere the red and pink flowers of the rhododendrons climb the rock face. They stretch to twenty, thirty feet in the air--a lush, unkempt garden unchecked for years and years. The greeneess of the forest world makes these flowers like a heaventree. Another new world.
We walk back down the hill without speaking. We take off our shoes and socks and let the cool evening grass splay over the bottoms of our feet. And yet another world.
Tuesday, June 17th, 2014
Somewhere over France.
