day 3

Now Playing: S on his handheld American football game.

March 20, 2008. We all woke up early today, up by six-thirty, dressed, ate breakfast, and fixed lunches. Then we walked down to Europa to catch the bus to Dublin. The day was grey and cloudy, long low rollers of cloud streaming down over Cave Hill. We got the eight o'clock bus. The ride took three hours: long, dull, and rather uncomfortable since the bus was too warm. S and I were both queasy. We drove through Banbridge and Newry, and across the border, where the bus was stopped by the gardai. They're on a manhunt right now, so they asked everyone for id before letting us continue on the way: through endless green fields, little tumbled farmsteads, hedges running crooked and crossways everywhere, tiny villages, pubs and shopping centres and churches.

The bus stopped at Dublin Airport, then went on. We went through the Docklands, which are bustling with construction. Forests of cranes hanging over quickly-rising state-of-the-art buildings, webbings of glass and steel blossoming from concrete ground. The bus left us at Dublin Busaras, bustling with lines of people waiting to board, and we walked from there to O'Connell Street. Crowds of people, of course--my lasting impression of Dublin is of people, hurrying everywhere. Dubliners singly, and little knots of tourists together. All kinds of languages, French, Dutch, Russian, and dialects of English from Great Britain and America.

We boarded a city sightseeing bus, one of the open-top buses, for a tour around the city. We ate our lunch on the bus. A man happened to sit down beside S who was from Texas (his accent left me without a doubt), and he immediately began to discuss OSU football with S while the bus left its stop and trundled through the crowded streets. Past the Millenium Spire, shining in the thinly-falling mizzle; across the River Liffey; and to the stop at Trinity.

We got off at Trinity and walked through the dark dirty archway into the courtyard. Full of people. I was munching a pear from lunch, the sweet juice filling my mouth as we dandered across the courtyard. We went to the library to see the Book of Kells exhibition. Through the giftshop, then into the exhibition itself. The dimly-lit honeycomb of displays was crowded with people. We looked at ogham stones, Gospel books, Ethiopian carrying cases, video displays about book-making. I read over little poems and riddles about writing printed on the walls, savoring the strong alliteration of translated Old English and the sweet interlaced rhymes of Irish.

At last we reached the inner room, the books themselves: the Book of Kells in two volumes, the Book of Armagh, and another volume. The Book of Kells was open today to a passage from Luke and to the portrait of St. John, with the initial of his Gospel. I bent over the beautiful outspread pages, studying the intricate painting, the gold leaf and bright colors intertwined. Like the interweavings of a dream, ever more detailed, the patterns leading the eye inward further and further to be lost in leaves and faces and sinuous woven bodies.

After the Books, we climbed the stairs to the Long Room. More people in here than the time when I visited it before: the silence of the room was diminished, though the great wooden vault hanging above the crowds of people preserved its aloofness, its complete silence. Shelves and racks of brown-backed books marching down either side, and the eyeless white busts of dead authors and philosophers, and the old wooden bog harp mutely preserved in its glass case.

We went downstairs into the crowd and noise and heat of the gift shop. Then we went outside and took pictures of the buildings, and got back on the bus finally. We rode the bus around, past all the sights, until we got to St. Patrick's Cathedral, and there we got off. The cathedral is another Norman building, though more on Gothic lines than Christchurch, longer and leaner. Still square, though, still the squat blank walls, the clerestory line blocked with stone. Most of the windows had no stained glass, though at the ends of the cruciform shape of the cathedral, the greatest windows were stained: pictures from St. Patrick's life mostly. The floor underfoot was tiled in patterns with red, orange, green, and brown, carefully glazed and tessellated.

On the aisles down either side of the nave were monuments to various past deans of the cathedral, to lords and ladies, to soldiers who had fallen in war. The grave of Jonathan Swift was there. Dusty flags hung from the walls above the monuments, some of them black and war-torn, so burned that their insignias could no longer be read. Most of them, though, were simply faded, the reds, blues, and golds crumbling into dust. The choir stalls at the front of the cathedral still had the banners of the Knights of St. Patrick's hanging above them, together with the ceremonial helms and swords.

We walked around, looking at all the curios preserved in the cathedral: the door that had been hacked through by two warring parties when the leader of one risked his arm to make a truce; the Huguenot bell; the eagle-winged lectern; the pulpit with its statues of the Apostles; the stone statues standing over graves.

After awhile, we got back on the bus, and rode it around to the end of its circuit, past the Guiness brewery, Kilmainham Gaol, Phoneix Park, the National Museum, the Hugh Lane Gallery, and Parnell Street. At the end, we got off the bus. S wanted to go back to Belfast, so we went to the bus station to catch the four o'clock bus.

We had half-an-hour, so we sat and waited in the station. Pigeons walked around under the benches where we sat, their heads bobbing back and forth. At last our bus began to board. It was very crowded, completely full up. S and I sat side-by-side. He listened to the "Myst" soundtrack on his MP3 player, and I read The Return of the King, through the glorious chapters about the last battles and the cracks of doom. The city gave way to green fields, and the green fields gave way to the dark misty slopes of the Mournes. The sun was setting, and clouds were flowing down over the steep heaths and moors.

The bus got caught in a traffic jam in the foothills of the Mournes, outside Newry. We sat and sat as the bus inched forward. I stared out the window at the dark slopes going darker as night fell, at the dim peaks behind the ridged hills. At last we reached Newry and crawled through it, then drove more quickly to Belfast. It was still another hour, though. The moon rose over tree-crowned ridges and green fields, staring palely through thin clouds.

Back in Belfast, we walked back to RH. The wind was bitterly cold and strong, whipping my hair over my face. I made sweet-and-sour chicken for us for dinner. It was eight-thirty by the time we were sitting down to eat. After dinner, M and I sat with Daphne in the common room for awhile, helping her procrastinate. Then we went upstairs, took showers, and went to bed.