Dublin

This is an excerpt from last year's journal that I've been pondering as I prepare to visit Nice and Paris. Feel free to ponder along.

We should have spent the week in Dublin.

The Guiness Warehouse understands its place in the city, and, tongue-in-cheek, makes you walk up a seven story sensory assault to stand elbow-to-elbow against the dilettantes who lounge disaffected in the only available seats.

Everywhere I can see evidence of the stinking, steady, loud, hard-working and laughing character that populates Joyce, Wilde, O'Casey. But the evidence is painted over, plastered behind new facings. It feels like the streets have become New Jersey debs covering their bad manners with makeup. Keep the bad manners, lose the makeup.

Oscar's statue is covered with colors as vibrant as even he could have wanted. He lounges, as Yeats said, "on the fairy-swept dew" of St. Stephen's Green. They loved you, they hated you. They paint you raucous colors and lay you out on a rock. What else could you have done for yourself?

The Abbey, dressed now in its modern coture but still the cauldron of Irish drama: intimate, inviting, and slyly slipping alternative ideas to this blue-collar town between pints.

Finally, before the train left, we found him. James leans on his cane and muses on the busy pedestrian section of O'Connell Street. And in front of him, separating traffic, the Spire (the Hypodermic, as the more polite Dubs call it.) What do you think of all this, James? Your country (still your country, for all you couldn't work here) has taken you back and trumpets your writing as its own. You are carved into the Guiness tower windows as though the chic crowds never exiled you. Ireland has been to war, avoided war, allowed tolerance and understanding in the back door, and embraced its place in the world with only slight reservations. But is it losing its power over artists and the innovation of their work? Is it becoming the jejune layabout you were so disgusted by? You loved the living city. You loved its wanting and its dirt. Tourists don't like dirt, James, and so the Dubs move on. Why do you think they set this gleaming phallus in front of you if not to deny the impotence of Eire in a world driven by technology and the tourist trade? But you didn't care for either. You cared for heart, for artistry, for inspiration. This city, this country always provided it. Until now. Now they chase the same power everyone else chases, and can't grasp it. They need you now more than ever, James, but once again I don't think they're listening to you.

Doesn't it break your heart, James? The way they never listen until it's too late? What do you think of this city now, James? What do you think of it all?

I asked him that. Do you know what he said?

He said, "Feck 'em."

Yah. Let's go home.