Land of the Poets

It's a new day in Ireland. We (the Lovely Carla and I) are now in Galway, a two hour train trip from Dublin. We're on our way to the Western coast, which is where we will chill out for a couple of days. Yesterday was a real blur, it was basically a continuation of Sunday; we arrived early in the morning, with basically no sleep, and we stayed up all day trying to acclimate to the time change. This meant jumping forward into the future about six hours.

We walked the streets of Dublin, I'm sure we re-traced many steps made long ago by Mr. Joyce and Mr. Beckett. We feasted on the excellent Irish cuisine, especially the brown bread and seafood. Later in the day, we found ourselves at the Temple Bar in downtown Dublin and tossed down two pints of Guiness. It put me in quite the genial haze. We listened to two old-timers (a guitarist and banjo player) play traditional Irish laments, the patrons knew all the songs and sang along. It was all quite touching and strange, out of time, so to speak.

Ireland seems "closer to the root;" a land of tradition and culture and music and poetry, it's lush and green and sort of sad too. The people are cheerful and friendly, funny and sad, with a certain nobility in their sadness...cultured Europeans with a deep and abiding connection to the land. Very different from our modern urbanites in our golden paradise in the States.

On the street, they are playing music too. Incredible, soul-full music, including one quartet that did exquisite versions of Dylan's "Hurricane,"and Neil Youg's "Southern Man," and "Rocking in the Free World.," They played these tunes like they were traditional homeland music too. One of our cabbies' told me "Dublin loves Dylan," and I'm sure it's true. This is a country that seems to hold singers and poets, and dancers and drinkers in very high esteem.