They do not have pumpkins here.

Also, no Goldfish snack crackers.

Or good avocados.

What they do have:

Jarred herring displayed prominently in food stores (thumbs down).

Prawn coctail potato chips (thumbs down so far they're in the iron inner core of earth).

Hobnobs oaty biscuits (thumbs up).

This place (thumbs touching Jesus).



















.

UCD on a Sunday

One tiny car in the parking lot.

One cheapo wine bottle in the woods.

One beauty bird chilling on the green.

EAIP Post. (Excusable and Inexcusable Post Post).

I've been thinking a lot about what I find excusable and inexcusable in myself, the people around me and just the world in general.

Last night my class went out to a bar called Zanzibar and it bothered me that the sign said Zanzibar bar. That reminds me of how I almost chose Trinity College over UCD because UCD's placard says UCD Dublin, which is University College Dublin Dublin. Repeated words in signs are inexcusable.

So we sat in Zanzibar bar and the Americans drank Guinness. We all warmed up with the elation of sitting two inches away from people we knew only by comments in class and we had each others' breath on our ears because the music was too loud. I told and heard of secret insecurities, jokes and worries for the future. My favorite part was being asked so many questions and asking so many back. I can't remember the last time I was around so many questions; I especially can't remember the last time someone asked me to dance. I learned about a classmate's cocaine bout, another's time in Shanghai and the way another only dances with his shoulders. I split a cab home with Anne from Wicklow and Kara from Oklahoma and then went to bed purposefully and without taking my panic medication. I did wake up three hours later with fierce chills and a tight, fast chest so I took my pill then went back to an uneasy sleep hoping I wouldn't feel like a failure in the morning. I didn't. I think relying on something has finally become excusable to me.

Today I made a list of things to do because I was afraid that I would become lonesome on a listless day and therefore eat and spend money. I finished all on my list around 5PM and what did I do? I ate a week's calories then bought songs and shows on iTunes. Here I offer two little slices of advice free of charge:

1. Don't eat when you're bored because someday you'll be really bored and you'll eat a whole pizza with a half bottle of wine and some frosted flakes and then you'll pass out with your spiked bloodsugar and wake up 6 hours later bright and ready for the day, which is good, except that it's 12 AM.

2. Buy a song by The Weepies- maybe "Keep it There." I don't think you'll regret it. You wouldn't regret a song by M. Ward either. How about Chinese Translation? And if you're bored and have a buck to spare and if you like CSN&Y, buy "Tree Top Flyer" by Big Daddy O. Then decide you're sad that Nick Drake is dead and buy some Alexi Murdoch songs. Then listen to "Lord, Blow the Moon out Please" by Hem because I said so. Because spending money and time on music when you're a poor and busy student is a rebellious act against loneliness so excusable it's almost law.

Romance Sean style.

Sean: I love your eyes.
Me: Thanks.
Sean: You know the most beautiful part about them?
Me: What?
Sean: Sometimes when I look into them I can see my own reflection.

Everybody hurts sometimes.

I walked into a door; he poured scalding coffee on his hand. When we press on that top blister liquid comes out from some secret opening arond his wrist...very cool. I, however, can do nothing cool with a bruise on my nose.

SEVEN!

We talk about important things- socialism, vegetarianism, Pynchon, Marvin Gaye. We drink a beer brewed on the premises called Brain Blasta. 7% alcohol by volume. I typed that correctly. It's a pun on braon blasta, an Irish phrase meaning tasty drop, which is what we call it for short; it's Christian name is tasty drop-kick to your sobriety.
After 2 of those babies, Cody dances. He makes white cool and then does the best moonwalk so Sean and I make him teach us and now I practice it every morning. Sean says, "I love all your clothes, man. You've got style." Cody says, "Well, I've been wanting to say that you, my friend, can grow a beard." I'm tired from beer and nights thinking instead of sleeping and Cody taps my elbow, "You hanging in there?"

It's 1:30. We write email addresses on the backs of free magazines and put them in our bags. Hugs are given, taken, returned to their owners tighter. Sean and Cody hug and I realize how tall Cody is and how neither of them begin patting. It would have been an awesome year getting to know Cody. I do know that.

Today Cody's getting on a plane back to the states and I'm going to read Lady Gregory, write a report, watch last week's Lost, go for a jog and call another of the numbers I got from class.

This will be the last post in which I mention Yeats.

I miss just about everyone I know- all very indivdual misses with distinct tugs as fast as a glance and unaffected by the new relationships I'm making.

I miss my mom especially today, though, because I thought several thoughts this morning that I would have shared with her immediately if not for the freakin 8 hour time difference. I'm bad at math and I hate this whole counting back 8 hours crap. Stupid round earth.

Anyway, people often note our similarities (including Papa Don, who made this side-by-side for me a billion years ago). We have freckles and auburn hair and I don't know whether I imitated her or called up the noises from my genes, but we both have the same laugh, too. We laugh at the same things in the same way and usually cry at the same books and I think she's super smart, (use your deduction) so when we talk a lot I feel reinforced. Plus she's fun.

You know what else is fun? Yeats. I'm serious. I have an oral presentation coming up this week and I'm excited because the class is so divided and electric in their opinions of him. My professor constantly talks about how Yeats wanted his work to be ratified (ratify: to approve and sanction formally) by the Irish people, which it wasn't because he was a Protestant and at times rather pretentious. He might not have been ratified as he wished, but he's about to be radifed (radify: to make rad) during my presentation.

Yeats...and Tiff, Dickie, PJ and Tammy

Sometimes after I read about silver apples of the moon and golden apples of the sun I run to YouTube and zonk and feel great about life in a different way.

And hell yes, I will wake you up at 2AM to watch this.

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

THE AGING PROCESS!

About two months ago, the first gray appeared. Soon it had a friend. The friends invited others up and now there's a rockin' party on the back left of Sean's head. I told him about it and he made me pull one out to prove it; then he stared at it like it had grown a pair of lips and announced, "I hear oak is nice. FOR CASKETS."

Sean refused to believe there were more so I pulled out another, and then another. I should have said, "That's all!" but because I'm horrible I took a picture instead.
















It adds character.

Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich.

Sometimes this MA in Anglo-Irish Lit. feels a bit like the scene from "Being John Malkovich" where everyone is Malkovich and the only words in the language are Malkovich, Malkovich and Malkovich spoken in different pitches like Madarin Chinese. Here at UCD, Yeats is Malkovich. But sexier. Every time my professor, Dr. Clutterbuck, talks about him, she moans a bit and sucks her index finger. She has a mean stutter with the words "and" and "of" and gets stuck on them sometimes for 15 repetitions (I counted). The last stuttered "of" or "and" comes loose in a loud and elongated way as if to recover ground for all the previously clipped and quiet ones. Because she works up into these tiny fits of ecstasy, it's easy when she gets to her fourth frustrated "of" to imagine it as "oh" and to imagine her "and" as "ah." So, in my head, her sentences sound like this, "Let's think about symbols and and and and ah ah ah ah ahhhhhh! bondage in the poetry of of of of oh oh oh oh oh ohhh! Yeats."

Roar.

Soon I'll be swimming on through the years of Anglo-Irish writing with my knowledge of Yeats like some orange floaties around my arms. Right now I'm tired from breathing my life into them.

I'm holding on to a lot of soons right now. Soon I will have a student number, soon I will figure out how to keep more water within the shower curtains than without, soon I will talk in class, soon I won't want to karate-chop the faces of most people holding positions of any authority Ireland, be it the woman who makes me pay 20 cents to go to the bathroom or the man who threatens to confiscate my library card, soon I won't feel homesick, soon I will manage my time like a navy seal on a mission instead of a baboon blissfully munching on his friends' lice.

Speaking of friends with lice, Kate and Tad, Sean's sister and Bro-in-law, were here this weekend. We went to St. Patrick's Cathedral where I condemned myself to an eternity of rubbing Satan's soldiers by underlining select words in the service booklet to make hilarious sentences. I know now that the more intense and serious the service, the more irreverent I become. The pastor was monotone and the choir was all boys. I couldn't help myself. Soon I will find religion.

We also went to the Kilmainham Gaol, a spooky place where pretty much every important Irish politician until the 1920s had a room; so did Maude Gonne, none other than Yeats' forever un-him-loving love. Yeats, Yeats, Yeats, Yeats.

The Guinness Factory called for us next, where Sean and Tad were talking about cigarettes. Sean being Sean nodded to the others already in the elevator, ignoring their language and said, "You know, Lucky Strikes killed more Americans than the Germans." Turns out everyone in the elevator was German.

I've added a few pics HERE! of this weekend with Kate and Tad. They're coming back to Dublin on Monday, after which Sean and I will have to see a new favorite movie and talk of home over thick Irish Stew.