There is a branch of the Dublin City Library very close to Shanowen, right on Ballymun Road (can we pause for a moment to appreciate what a cool word "Ballymun" is? The last time I heard or read the word "Bally" uttered in earnest it was from the Crocodile Hunter, may god grant his soul eternal repose). Sadly, the library was not as eager to grant me lending privileges as I was to secure them.
"We'll need an address, sir, on this card."
"Really? Great. I have one of those."
"Excuse me, just a moment, while I remember it." (I suppose I can't blame the librarians for the incredulity: most people remember their own addresses). "Ah! Yes, here it is. I live on.."
"Excuse me, sir, do you have proof of that residence? A utility bill or something?"
It was at this point that I had to confess what, I'm sure was abundantly clear already - I'm not from around here. In fact, I explained, I'm studying here for a few months, and am from America.
"America. I see." At this point she fixed me with a rather speculative and condescending gaze. She was thinking "Damn Americans" but said "yes, well, if that's the case, you'll need a printed document vouching for your residence here in Dublin. Come back on Monday."
She seemed immune to my wheedling attempts to prove, by means of plastic laminated cards, that I was, in fact, a resident of Ireland (if a temporary one). Even my Ace in the hole, my big gun, my last resort, was ineffective -
"Please, madam...all I've got to read is ULYSSES , for god's sake. You simply must help me."
The woman was not sympathetic to my needs. Coming to the decision that the blighted dowager had surely never read Ulysses, librarian or no, I thanked her for her trouble (though the trouble was all mine) and dismissed myself.
Walking rather grumpily out of the library, I forgot to look to the right instead of the left and nearly wandered in front of a swiftly moving Peaugot. It would have done more damage to the car than to me had the thing and I impacted, but I'm still glad that I noticed in time. Not knowing what else to do and not all that excited about returning to the flat, I rather aimlessly boarded the next bus.
Upon debarking in the city centre, I wandered down O'Connell for a little bit before veering randomly onto a side street. I have seldom been disappointed by this rather haphazard means of navigation in Dublin. It seems that every corner yields something novel or interesting, whether it's something patently and humorously european, a plaque commemorating some bloody event, or a statue. I know literally nothing about Dublin, my adopted city, and so I have resolved to walk every street, significant or not.
Down this particular one, I detected granite columns. Now, I'm from the University of Virginia - I've never met a column I didn't like. I decided, with typical American temerity, to waltz inside the building to see what it contained. I soon discovered that I was inside a Cathedral - remembering my accidental discovery of the Carmelite convent, I came to the conclusion that the Irish Catholics, through long practice, are very good at hiding their churches - but rather an unusual one in that it assumed the rather austere neo-classical visage of a masonic temple more than the flowery gothic buttresses of the city's other churches. I walked to the center of the room so I could look up at the ceilings and the galleries:
I was, as you can possibly imagine from the pale representation of this picture, impressed. I was still looking up at the ceiling when a bell rang and the 10 or 12 other kneeling occupants of the church, previously un-noticed, stood up. An organ began thunderously ringing forth and a parade of small boys singing in latin and led by a priest, began to move up the center aisle. I had, it seemed, inadvertently walked into the beginning of a mass. Not one to be needlessly disruptive, I decided to stay (besides, of all the places in the city, for me to walk right into a mass has to be some kind of a sign, right?).
I'm glad I did. The boy choir was magnificent and the organist quite skilled. The wonderful music echoing around the marble of that ancient and massive room made for a very powerful experience, and hearing Latin inflected with an Irish brogue was quite humorous. Some of the music and all of the mass was in English, so I was able to make out the proceedings, which were Catholic.
I could be wrong, but I'm relatively sure that, although I have seen many of them, I have never attended full mass in a cathedral before. This was just a Friday evening prayer service, but the magnitude of the building and the powerful resonance of the proceedings - even for the 15 of us present for them - allowed me to gain a new appreciation for the power of place to dominate the consciousness and to amplify otherwise customary reverence. One can praise god in any setting, of course, but hearing the ancient music in the cathedral space it was written for seemed to magnify every sentiment and thought into one of sublime transcendence.
The grappling that I have done with my own Catholicism in the past few years has mostly been outside of church and often through the prisms of authors who create characters whose positions seem to compare to my own, Evelyn Waugh and James Joyce in "Brideshead Revisited" and "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." I suppose it's good to also give god a chance, so to speak, in his own house.
Turns out the building I stumbled upon was St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral, the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Dublin. It's an interesting irony of the Irish identity and their past altercations with Britain and the Church of England that perhaps the most catholic city outside of the vatican has only one, medium sized Catholic cathedral but has two massive, grand, and unused Protestant Cathedrals (St. Patrick's and Christ Church).
When St. Mary's was built it was going to be a temporary cathedral until a better location could be secured. The bigger edifice was never built and St. Mary's still has the word "Pro" before its name because only a pope can declare a church a cathedral and, although St. Mary's serves as the seat of the archdiocese, for seven centuries Christ Church has been the official cathedral according to the dictate of St. Laurence O'Toole, the patron saint of Dublin.
Despite it's somewhat tangled legitimacy and comparatively modest size, St. Mary's is still a very impressive place. It's the seat of a diocese that is almost a thousand years old and is itself nearly 200 years old (it was built, I cannot help but noticing, the same year that the Jefferson Society was founded). Several saints and many nuns are interred beneath.
When I left the church I saw a copper dome jutting out above the skyline and decided to try and make my way to it to investigate. I wound through several streets (nodding appreciatively at the Flowing Tide Pub, where I enjoyed my first pint here several days ago) and found myself on the Quays by the River Liffey, looking at the following building:
It is, as you see, a rather pleasing Georgian edifice. It is the old Customs House, whose description I recognized from one of the short stories in one of Joyce's stories in "Dubliners." I imagine it did a much more robust business when Dublin's shipping business was more vital, but it continues to stand in rather noble supervision of the river front. Sadly, I could not enter because it was closed and locked, but I did become slightly inebriated as I passed from the aroma of the gaggle of hobos who were imbibing on the steps.
Feeling sprightly and over ambitious (and perhaps slightly out of it from the dual fumes emitted by the hobos and the Liffey) I decided to attempt to walk to the sea. I set out down the Quays through the docklands, leaving central Dublin behind. I walked for about 45 minutes in the direction of a distant light house, but it never seemed to get much closer. I was most dismayed when a large shipyard prevented me from easily going any further. Starving, I decided to turn around and head back when I reached the St. Patrick's rowing club (est. 1927) at the est link bridge.
As I passed back over the Quays on what the city has named the "Campshire walk" in the hopes of luring more foolish souls like me, I had a rather confused sensation aroused in me by the local architecture. Dublin's docklands are a strange area The most apparent oddity is that, as opposed to the rest of the city, they are utterly devoid of people. There are a few ambitious joggers, but that's about it. There are none of the small shops that are the foundation of the jollity of the rest of Dublin. The only thing around are massive buildings in various states of decay or progress. There doesn't seem to be any current commerce or residence, only buildings that are either dying or being born. There are two suites of signs: the "gone out of business" or "business relocated" set and the "new thriving apartment complex coming soon!" and "available business plots here!" group. It creates a very confusing state of limbo: is this area yesterday's scene, or tomorrow's up and coming? The Campshire walk itself features slick steel railings preventing a plunge into the Liffey. It is neatly and newly cobblestoned and benches have been helpfully but futilely placed at regular intervals: no one sits on them. I encountered several signs put up by the "Docklands Development Authority" that feature racially diverse, happy, and clean cut groups of people engaged in various wholesome activities on the banks of the Liffey, wandering in and out of sparkling new buildings: old couples holding hands, young boys playing football with a boy in a wheelchair, kids getting cotton candy from a fair carrying a puppy, people farting shamrocks and happiness, that sort of thing. I wonder if the vision will ever occur? Based on my inability to grab a sandwich or a pint anywhere in the entire desolate but clean docklands, I'd say that particular dream is a fair ways away.
Thinking about this as I strode the several miles back down the River from the Coast to the City Proper , I became even hungrier. Upon return to the Centre, I began eagerly to cast about for a large pile of hot food. Most of the restaurants obligingly place their menus in the outside windows so that one can peruse at will rather than risk the potential embarrassment of entering and quickly vacating an establishment that is too expensive or doesn't have anything good, etc. On the other hand, the menus revealed a nearly universal proclivity for charging prices in excess of what is reasonable. It is nearly impossible to get a meal, a salad, and a drink for less than 20 euro. During this exploration, however, I did discover that much cheaper fare can be had before 7 PM and at "lunchtime" (generously defined in most cases as lasting until 5 PM). I imagine that, in the future, I will eat my main meal in the middle of the day.
That sterling reflection did me little good at the time, though. I firmly resolved to eat earlier in the future and stepped into a small Italian place on Essex Street East across from the Old City Hall. I ordered tortellini and a cider and sat back to look at the Window and read a bit. Though they did charge me out the nose for the food, it was very delicious and surprisingly bountiful in quantity, so I felt somewhat better about the whole affair. I observed with some degree of amusement that it was the restaurant's policy to add a 10% service charge to each bill. Having secured for themselves this pittance, the wait staff was grimly determined not to earn anything more. Had they not already accorded themselves the privilege of building a 10% tip into my bill, I wouldn't have given them that: they comported themselves with a bare minimum of cordiality that bordered on hostility: "how DARE you come into my restaurant and pay me lavish sums of money? I resent that!", they seemed to say as they plunked a tepid glass of water in front of me and did not return until they snootily demanded payment for my meal. I understand this sort of behaviour is relatively common here, where you never tip more than 10% at a restaurant and never tip at all at a bar, by common understanding. Handily, my dining needs were relatively simple and my desire to be left alone to read was handily accommodated by the waiter who wanted as little to do with me as possible (had he known that solitude was my desire, perhaps he would have made himself more of a nuisance). Also, as I have said, the Tortellini was quite excellent, so I cannot complain.
I returned home on the now-familiar bus route. I continue to be amazed at the casual disregard for life and property that is displayed on the roads here. People, cars, buses, and bikes dart all over the place, in and out of lanes, at will. We had a troupe of several small children run out to the middle of the road to attempt to stop our bus when it was moving at 45 km/h and dodging several small autos at the same time. The driver did not seem to be surprised by this occurrence. The only thing that makes the roads here less adventuresome than the Honduran experience is the merciful absence of livestock on the thru-ways.
The rest of yesterday evening was quiet, at least for me. I could certainly hear the proceedings in the living room, wherein several of my UVa companions were gaily preparing to go out and avail themselves of the Dublin night life. I read and watched episodes of Boston Legal for most of the evening, muttering at the incompetence of the attorney's of that programme and their refusal to grasp what I consider to be relatively fundamental legal and moral principles. I am, nevertheless, quite amused by their antics. I retired around 3:30.
I also got up late and, discovering that it was too late to go to Howth, have spent much of the day tackling more of Ulysses. My progress seems to have slowed, but I am still proceeding quite gamely with hopes of being finished by Bloomsday, 16 June.
I have discovered that the original Twinings Tea shop, first opened in the early 1700s, is still extant on the Strand in London! I simply must go at some point.
Tonight, I imagine, I will make some soup and continue to read! I plan to have another walkabout in the city tomorrow before my meeting with Cllr. LaHart. In the meantime, perhaps I should learn something about the Irish Political System, since I am about to become a part of it.
2 comments:
Nice photo of St. Mary's. I need to spend more time exploring the city.
You should row, or at least get me a bloody t-shirt. Go to saint Jame's gate or something. goodness
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