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.