Sunday, September 04, 2005
Quick, said the bird
Memory is strange, the past not a stable territory. Having a work trip in Dublin, walking known streets. A vivid year and half I once had here, and now the memory of that is of distant but still clear echoes, and faces slowly fading. Most people have left, the constellations long since changed.Intense time with intense feelings: I am half-inclined to nostalgia, but only half - I would not exchange those experiences for anything, but I would not be anxious to repeat that time, so often terrible, painful. Not that it would be possible: though the river keep the name... So, memory is very strange - an immediate, intense life transformed into a recollection, distant but clear echoes, conversations, experiences slowly fading. I have kept the name but am not the same having lived here once.
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2 comments:
Oh, you've lived in Dublin? Wow, lucky you! I've been there a couple of times, the first time around I read Joyce's Dubliners while there. It's a really charming city. The last time there I discovered Colm Tóibín's novels; now that's a contemporary writer who really gets a strong grip on the reader. When dreaming of Ireland I've read stuff like Synge's plays - the whole country is such a literary Mecca. I'm not very much into religion but for someone into literature visiting Ireland is really the closest thing that I personally can think of as a pilgrimage.
Did indeed - it was an unreal moment to arrive at Yeats' grave by accident, Ben Bulben looming grand and grey on the background... An amazing literary tradition for such a small country. I enjoyed my time there six years ago, an intense experience in many ways.
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