Last Week in Cork

This has been a great trip. I think I’ll be a long time sorting out the implications for my life and my work. Isn’t that the way travel’s supposed to be?

I came here not really knowing what to expect, my mind filled with layer upon layer of ideas about Ireland gotten from countless books and movies. Unlike first setting foot in New York City, when I could hardly turn the corner without seeing a famous face, or a building I’d long imagined, or a scene conjured from a popular song… or Paris, with its stratified layers of art and history constantly breaking through the tenuous surface-presence of things… Ireland has turned out far stranger and difficult to grasp than I ever imagined it would be. Why? I dunno. That’s what’ll take so long to sort out. I think language — how it’s changed, how it’s used — is a big part of that, and a strong point of interest for me.

Yesterday afternoon we were in Dingle, an old pilgrimage center and current tourist hotspot. While we were in the Gallerus Oratory, Stacy mentioned that the Irish government had recently ordered the name of the place changed (back to) An Daingean, despite a vote by locals, who rely on name-recognition of the place by tourists for their livelihood, to leave it as Dingle. (I’m sure this is why the town is covered in signs that say ‘Dingle: The Town Denied Democracy.’ I took pictures, but can’t upload them just now.) An Irishman came in and helped explain the situation, saying that he hadn’t been around for the vote, but if he had, he would have supported the Gaelic name. Steve asked him what it meant; he couldn’t say.

Of course, the beauty of the place is there to wonder at wholly apart from the question of language. Yesterday we dove into the Atlantic on a secluded little beach on the peninsula. We saw more pagan-Christian art, some of it so old, its history so tangled, that no one can say for certain how old it is, what its original intention was. Driving back in the bus I caught glimpses of water, and wondered if that might be my last good view of ocean on this trip. I may try to head down the southern coast this weekend to extend that view…

On the other hand, I’m really looking forward to seeing my wife, and her native country, again. And then our home and our animals.