We Are Not Islands
Notes on returning, belonging, and the streets of Dublin
Good day dear readers,
I’ve made it home to Ireland, by the blessed wonders of modern aviation, not to mention the multiple subway cars, trains, buses, taxis and tuk tuks that whisked me across countries and an ocean, while I leaned back in my padded seat, listening to music, or peeling back the wrapper on a 30,000 foot high chicken curry.
I’ve returned to this green island, just waking from a long wet Winter, and swooning in the first scents and sounds of Spring. I listened to the pre-dawn songbirds at Drumcondra station, calling the new day forth, with such a vigour as though they were pulling the sun itself up into the sky. And birdsong is the sweetest blessing for a world too often composed of stone and cold surfaces, and a desire to rush forward. When the train rolled up along the tracks it drowned out their song. And when the grey wagtail alighted on a stone in the Liffey’s flow and called out to its mate, its high-pitched call cut perfectly above the roar of the water around it.
Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.
Brendan Kennelly 'Begin'
We are not island’s, us human beings...
I stepped inside a tall Georgian building off St Stephan’s Green and happened upon the Museum of Literature - the MoLi.
It celebrated Joyce and Wilde and contemporary Irish writers - three floors of interactive audio visual displays and poems projected in flowing lines across a wall. The Life of Joyce drew me in, a chronological journey with brief text and photos of the different moments of movement, achievement and struggle in his life. At the end of that journey a display of the key people in his life. The list was long.
Set apart in its own display case is a letter from Joyce to W. B. Yeats, dated 1912, an urgent appeal from one great Irish writer to another, asking for help in getting Dubliners into print.
Joyce was no island, his genius merged and leaned into the support of those who populated his life.
Nora Barnacle - lifelong partner and eventual wife, the great love of his life.
Harriet Shaw Weaver - his most devoted patron.
Sylvia Beach — owner of Shakespeare and Company in Paris.
Ezra Pound - championing him tirelessly across London and Paris.
Dr. Louis Borsch - his Paris eye doctor.
City Scenes…
I walked the streets of Dublin with the fresh eyes of long absence and saw once again the myriad displays of ‘wonderful madness’ that is the Irish character. A veritable Brendan Behan play spilled onto the streets and mixed with the vapid glimmer of 21st century life. I queued for a sandwich in Dunnes Stores on George’s Street while beside me a Vladimir and Estragon wheeled up and stared into the promising glass display of cut meats whilst clutching their 8-pack of Rockshore beers.
‘That’s a lovely girl,’ he said, to the woman about to make their order, but she didn’t hear, and he lowered his eyes in sombre disappointment.
In Stephen’s Green the great hulking seagulls have learned to swoop and grab sandwiches from people’s hands. Each bird has claimed their own circle of petunias and hyacinth on the lawn, they strut there like white gladiators with a patch of blood on their faces, breasts raised high, fending off any intruders. A man sits beside me on the metal bench and unearths his sandwich from three layers of wrapping. He begins to eat. His phone rings. The seagulls see their chance, distracted now, the sandwich sitting lightly in his hand, he speaks to the voice on the other end. And bang. The seagull storms into his personal space and, victorious, lands just feet away to finish the spoils, tearing the salad and meat from the bread.
The pigeons are gentler creatures, maintaining their ancient stepping curiosity, tiptoeing towards crumbs and nodding their heads in submission. When one sidled into a café and along the floor in search of croissant crumbs, I smiled and considered it a natural progression of their cityscape survival strategies. A giggling waitress shooed it out. But the pigeon would be back. It saw nothing wrong in its actions.
City folk…
Nearby, a daughter gently lectured her mother on the importance of drinking enough water for kidney health. The mother considered this for a moment and replied that she thought she was grand - two cups of coffee a day, two cups of tea at lunch and dinner, and, as an afterthought, maybe a glass of water. That would do her.
A young Indian family stepped into view, their two small daughters beautifully dressed in silky grey-blue saris, polished shoes peeking out from below. Their smiles were like the fresh spring flowers surrounding them, their beaming parents arranged them in front of the flower displays for a photograph, the daughters willing and obedient, each clutching a large tube of Pringles like a beloved teddy bear.
This is it, I thought. This is home. My place, my sights and sounds. The glory of the ordinary. Multi-cultural Ireland, the changing cityscape, the rich carpet of life. I felt the writerly hunger in me take it all in, to miss nothing. This was the very city that inspired Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses, and it was still pulsing, still evolving, still brimming with life and misery, humour and misplaced dreams.
Still absolutely itself. Though utterly changed.
Returning…
I walked, as I always do, to Castletown House, and crossed the damp, lumpy ground toward a lone standing oak. I placed my hand on its bark and looked into the blue, cloudless sky through its branches. I gave thanks. Let the journey, the return fall away. I lay on the ground, with my back against the base of the trunk, felt the cool ground beneath me. Above me a family of buzzards swooped and screeched, their cat calls in the high bright air.
And I was simply grateful.
Grateful for the distance travelled, for the roads and rivers and oceans crossed, for the chicken curry at 30,000 feet. Grateful, above all, to be here. Home.
Welcome home,it’s always good to have you here.
Welcome home Daithi ☘️🫶✨ looking forward to seeing you soon a Cara 🧡