Ireland: incoherent fragments
Jul. 16th, 2004 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deviIn London there's no such thing as silence. At my home on the hillside, silence is the default. It's an attention-seeker, pushing its way in at moments when there's nothing happening, pressing around you like an army of cats. It's our tiny human noise that's the exception, wisping up into the big sky.
I thought London was becoming well-trodden and familiar, criss-crossed with paths I'd taken before. But here there's only three years' worth of memories. In Dublin, a city I lived in or near for 24 years, I feel like I'm elbowing through throngs of former me.
Long conversations with my little brother about music and films and, generally, stuff that matters in life. I am constantly amazed at his discernment and independence and general coolness. This is probably because part of me will forever see him in dungarees with missing milk teeth.
I think I am a goddess of inertia. Evidence: when I lived in Dublin it seemed as if nothing ever happened. Then I moved to London and now they've outlawed plastic bags and smoking, there's a spike and square trees in O'Connell Street, the money's gone all weird, and they have a sci-fi tram. The Luas is thrilling and disconcerting and thrilling again. Smoothly, quietly sliding across the rooftops, across streets I've sat in buses on for endless traffic-jammed minutes, clean and shiny and unstoppable. (Though![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gothwalk told me a story about a lorry driver who stopped on the tram line and good-naturedly waved to the Luas driver to go around him.) I felt like I'd been put in cryogenic storage and taken out a hundred years later. This feeling only intensified when I passed a van labelled "O'Leary's Teleporter Service".
A hundred Sheela-na-Gigs, all different, painted in blue and gold by my former art teacher and on display in the cafe of the local stately home. I leaned and peered at their faces across a table of craggy-faced old people who I'm sure were just out for a nice stroll and a cup of tea, didn't expect to see mythological genitalia and looked quietly scandalised by the whole thing.
My mum telling me to believe in the abundance of the universe, and saying that if I went on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? it would solve all my problems. (Now if only there was a TV version of Spelvin I'd be sorted.)
A new restaurant on a hill with a panoramic view of Drogheda. Drogheda is all grey angles and grey blocks and yellow cranes, with the rose window of the cathedral sitting in the middle of it. Remembering going to see Independence Day at the cinema there inlostcarpark's rickety-but-lovable old blue car.
There's a concrete factory near Drogheda that looks like a wizard's castle from far away. Pipes and struts crossing each other so they make the shapes of gothic windows.
Back in London, off a delayed flight and bone-weary, I walked to the night bus from Liverpool Street Station through streets that looked like Blade Runner, dark skyscrapers edged in neon and crosshatched with rain tipping down from an orange-black sky. Line from a song looping in my head: "The city has no faith if you've no faith in the city."
I thought London was becoming well-trodden and familiar, criss-crossed with paths I'd taken before. But here there's only three years' worth of memories. In Dublin, a city I lived in or near for 24 years, I feel like I'm elbowing through throngs of former me.
Long conversations with my little brother about music and films and, generally, stuff that matters in life. I am constantly amazed at his discernment and independence and general coolness. This is probably because part of me will forever see him in dungarees with missing milk teeth.
I think I am a goddess of inertia. Evidence: when I lived in Dublin it seemed as if nothing ever happened. Then I moved to London and now they've outlawed plastic bags and smoking, there's a spike and square trees in O'Connell Street, the money's gone all weird, and they have a sci-fi tram. The Luas is thrilling and disconcerting and thrilling again. Smoothly, quietly sliding across the rooftops, across streets I've sat in buses on for endless traffic-jammed minutes, clean and shiny and unstoppable. (Though
gothwalk told me a story about a lorry driver who stopped on the tram line and good-naturedly waved to the Luas driver to go around him.) I felt like I'd been put in cryogenic storage and taken out a hundred years later. This feeling only intensified when I passed a van labelled "O'Leary's Teleporter Service".A hundred Sheela-na-Gigs, all different, painted in blue and gold by my former art teacher and on display in the cafe of the local stately home. I leaned and peered at their faces across a table of craggy-faced old people who I'm sure were just out for a nice stroll and a cup of tea, didn't expect to see mythological genitalia and looked quietly scandalised by the whole thing.
My mum telling me to believe in the abundance of the universe, and saying that if I went on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? it would solve all my problems. (Now if only there was a TV version of Spelvin I'd be sorted.)
A new restaurant on a hill with a panoramic view of Drogheda. Drogheda is all grey angles and grey blocks and yellow cranes, with the rose window of the cathedral sitting in the middle of it. Remembering going to see Independence Day at the cinema there in
lostcarpark's rickety-but-lovable old blue car.There's a concrete factory near Drogheda that looks like a wizard's castle from far away. Pipes and struts crossing each other so they make the shapes of gothic windows.
Back in London, off a delayed flight and bone-weary, I walked to the night bus from Liverpool Street Station through streets that looked like Blade Runner, dark skyscrapers edged in neon and crosshatched with rain tipping down from an orange-black sky. Line from a song looping in my head: "The city has no faith if you've no faith in the city."
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-16 11:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-16 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-16 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-16 12:15 pm (UTC)Or, if you really are the Goddess of Inertia, how about presenting the odd Higgs boson (http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/cern/ideas/higgs.html) to the world’s physists, eh? :-)
Doing anything this weekend?
no subject
Date: 2004-07-16 12:19 pm (UTC)Excessive amounts of earwax are good for simulating silence, I’ve found. The real thing would be less unnerving.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-16 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-16 03:01 pm (UTC)I'm most intrigued by this talk of Luas, it's making me want to go visit Dublin all over again. Sober this time.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-18 10:21 am (UTC)(Never mind, I'm just being stereotypical...)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-18 10:20 am (UTC)And sorry I missed you too :/ I may manage to squeeze in another trip before the end of the summer, if this house situation doesn't cause too much mayhem, so hopefully see you then?