no longer in ireland (the end)

I'm typing from Amy's apartment in Park Slope, my home for the next two months while I navigate Brooklyn and stir up an art storm. Or something like that. Since I'm no longer in Ireland, this blog will be coming to an end.

My last days in Dublin were blissfully sunny, downright warm and filled with excessive amounts of good times. Amy, Alex and I went to Malahide beach, ate a perfectly ripe avocado and tried to tan our snow white limbs. I was unsuccessful. Story of my life.

I took my final trip to Sin é, did some dancing and awkwardly disconnected myself from a very drunk friend who kept trying to poke me in the stomach despite Amy's best efforts to get him away. Her "get away" code is kicking someone in the foot, repeatedly. Watch out, anyone trying to poke me, Amy will kick you. And hard.

I also enjoyed my last meal at Gruel, my last pint of Guinness at Neary's and my last Luas ride. I really enjoyed my last Luas ride. From now on...purely NYC transit for me.

There happened to be a woman's mini-marathon in Dublin yesterday morning, blocking my bus stop and obliterating the taxi stand outside St. Stephen's Green. I dragged my sorry self all over the place looking for a ride to the airport and had to spend my last 20 euro (which I was saving to buy The Da Vinci Code at the airport) on taxi fare. Oh well.

Now I'm here. Overlooking Prospect Park with wireless internet, a huge comfy bed, a shower the doesn't cling to me and super nice parents who aren't my parents.

Aren't you glad I did this instead of send obnoxious mass emails? I am.

beth gibbons

I wandered south on Dartry Road two days ago and found a river, a small park and entire families of ducks. Hey, I thought, why don't I just follow this mysterious river? It has to end up at the ocean at some point. I texted Ben about my discovery, he replied with "That's the sort of statement that usually follows up with a search party."

Never fear, Ben, I'm a seasoned explorer. I know where I'm going nearly all of the time. Turns out my intuition (and basic understanding of river to ocean behavior) was dead on and the Dodder (as I now know it is called) spit me out in the Docklands on Ringsend Road. Quickly oriented, I grabbed a lemonade at KC Peaches, the employer of pretty much every visiting American student at Trinity (including Alex and Chris). It helps that this coffee shop/deli is directly across the street from their apartment and they get a free meal on every shift. Enough jealousy.

Neal, Ben and I saw Russian Dolls yesterday and I've been watching enough YouTube to fry my brain. Tonight: Ben's farewell, featuring four different kinds of cheese. Currently some drunken Irishman is kicking the bus stop outside my window. He takes two steps back, charges forward and kicks the metal with a loud boom. Then repeats the process. This has been going on for ten or more kicks. He's in some kind of zone.

New York in three days.

Just finished JFK. Holy shit. Now I'm going to try to go to sleep.

welcome to the weekend

Currently finishing my last round of 8 euro laundry. That's $10.19. For two loads of laundry. I try not to convert things to dollars when I spend money, but sometimes it's just too tempting/it's a form of self-punishment. I can't believe I have any money left after this semester. Everyone studying in Dublin likes to proclaim it's the most expensive city in Europe. Kids in London and Paris do the same. Apparently Copenhagen and Stockholm are number one too. Suffice to say: Europe is mad expensive. My wallet misses Los Angeles, but it misses Providence even more.

My legs miss PVD too. When I get back, the walk from Sheldon to campus is going to feel amazing. As in, amazingly short. Even List will be a piece of cake. Plus I'll have my mom's fancy white Peugeot to roll around on. I'm going to have a dishwasher. A front porch. A back patio. Housemates I actually talk to and have things in common with. A closet...I'm starting to drool in anticipation.

But meanwhile, today was gorgeous (after normal morning showers). I ventured into the city to grab some farmer's market food and read Kingsley Amis overlooking the river. While Amy, Alex and Ben are studying for their last finals, I'm rolling around looking at conceptual art drawn with dried up markers. I stumbled on a used book fair in Temple Bar, but in keeping with Dublin prices they wanted SIX EURO for some dog-eared, underlined, manhandled copy of Nick Hornby's How to be Good. Is that even a good book?

Last night Amy and I wandered around the northside looking for a particular Polish restaurant once seen but never to be found again. The plan was to celebrate my imminent employment with Pierogi 2000 (gallery) with some dumplings. After blocks of fruitless searching, we settled for Chinese dumplings and stuffed ourselves silly with MSG. Dinner featured an activity Amy and I are ridiculously good at: the embarrassing story trade. This entails laughing till both parties are out of breath and silently clapping their hands with tears streaming down their cheeks. Honestly, two people could not be more clumsy/unlucky/fated to always entertain others by telling stories that make them look like fools. We're special.

I just found out, after living here for over five months, that you can open the door into my building simply by pushing on it. Rather than doing the whole card swipe thingy. Think of all the minutes I spent out there in the rain, fumbling through my pockets, hands too cold to grip the stupid card...

No matter, the joke's on the dorm. Just wait till they discover I put holes in the wall to hold up my National Geographic map of Europe. So there.

Actually, they'll probably fine me. In euros.

cyclops is a douche dead?

I have a date tonight! Well, a friend date. But a date nonetheless. Ben called it a "world-shattering, last stand date." That's right, we're going to see X-Men: The Last Stand. So many mutants, all attractive. This means I will leave my room for the first time in two days.

I am a lazy lazy bum. But I've accomplished some things. Like...I sent out letters until I ran out of stamps. I talked to my parents. I figured out my transportation route from Park Slope to Williamsburg. Uh. Not much else to report.

TOMORROW: second to last farmer's market. Ever. I will probably cry.

rathfuckingmines

I'm getting really tired of living so far away from city centre. Tonight, without Ben to walk home with, I was forced to fork over 7.90 euro for a cab ride to halls. At 2 am. It sucks living out here. Instead of blowing all the money I have left over from my semester budget, I'm trying to spend as little as possible so as to make it through the summer without burdening my parents. It's the least I can do considering they think I've abandoned them forever (not true).

Rathmines is cool. But it's hard to enjoy an area without anyone to enjoy it with. The Tesco (grocery store) is a 10 minute walk away. Ben is 15 minutes away. Trinity is a 45 minute walk and Amy is a good 50 minutes. Even if I take the Luas, I can't really get into Dublin in less than half an hour. I'm stuck out here in the boonies with five freshman suitemates all studying for their hellish final exams. It's gotten to the point that every time I use the kitchen I clean it for fifteen minutes or so, come back to use it a couple hours later and it's even worse than it was the last time I was there. It's awesome.


Today was a pretty good day of 'doing nothing in particular,' though. Amy and I met up to have full Irish breakfasts at "Lovin Spoon" on the northside. Beans, tomatoes, toast, sausage, bacon, mushrooms and egg. Fantastic.

We then visited the newly reopened Hugh Lane Gallery. Not only were Agnes Martin and Ellsworth Kelly paired in the same room, they've painstakingly catologued and reconstructed Francis Bacon's studio inside the gallery. It's maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen in a museum. Tim Hawkinson's solo exhibit at LACMA probably wins (mostly because of the time-telling devices), but this was a close second. They actually picked up every loose sheet of paper, every oil-soaked rag and 100 slashed canvases and carefully placed them exactly where they had been in a new space.

Later we did some puzzle, drank some wine and ventured out to Crawdaddy's indie dance night--which has, unfortunatley, never been as good as the first time I went there. Tonight was disappointing as well. The promise of no cover charge was changed to "only 3 euro!" I accidentally bought beer from the wrong/expensive bar and there was broken glass all over the dance floor. The music was also pretty terrible. This didn't stop me from dancing up a storm with Chris and Alex's visiting friend Tyler. I'm pretty beat now. Who needs "real" exercise when you have dancing in a hot sweaty club?

I promise my studio next year will be much neater, less destructive, but just as productive as Francis Bacon's. Ha!


Oh oh: I switched my plane ticket today. Officially arriving sometime around 5 pm at JFK on June 5. Couldn't be more excited.

ATP (a.k.a. i may never fully regain my hearing)

Just got back from a 14 hour travel extravaganza. Amy and I aren't really sure why we thought taking the bus from Hastings to London and then Stansted was better than the much shorter train journey, but a four pound difference in cost may have been the deciding factor. I'm home finally, but I only want to be back in Pontin's on Friday afternoon.

There was. So much.

1. Two television stations were programmed specifically for the weekend. One by the ATP people, the other by the band of the day. We watched Trapped in the Closet twice and nearly died laughing. For the rest of the day everything I did had a bit of R. Kelly sing-song narration in my head. "And then I pulled out my gun..."

2. Sleater-Kinney invited David Cross to MC their day but he had no scheduled time to do his thing. Given 15 minutes before Sleater-Kinney's set, he suffered yells of "fuck you, get off the stage!" and "shut up and bring out Sleater-Kinney!" after flying all the way from Los Angeles for the one day. It was pretty painful to watch. He did, however, sing a song about America and pretend God was having sex with Princess Di. The Brits loved it.

3. The Decemberists got the entire audience to sit down at the end of their set. The entire crowd. In absolute silence. I've never seen anything like it. But why are all of their songs something along the lines of "I am a welder" or "then I pulled out my sabre"? What are they trying to be, 19th century R. Kellys?

4. My patience finally paid off. Broken Social Scene in the flesh. As great as expected. No Feist, but Amy Millan of Stars fame did a pretty damn fine job.

5. On our way out of London, Amy recognized Dan Bejar in the airport. Not only was his Destroyer set great, his presence made The New Pornographers ten times better than they were when I saw them in Costa Mesa at the end of last summer. And he was a really nice guy. It was sad to see him flying Ryanair. Poor Dan Bejar.

6. Most attractive performers: Carrie Brownstein and Gustav Ejstes. Swoon.

7. Missed Joanna Newsom for Spoon. Pretty sure I'll see her in New York this summer though. If not in California. Rumor has it her set was so hot people fainted. It really was hot downstairs, no joke.

8. Amy made brownies but needed help with metric measurements. This is how we met Simon, a guy who knew exactly how many ml are in a cup. He also assigned us all a representative decade. Sam: the 50s. Alex: the 60s. Me: the 70s. Maggie: the 80s. Kevin: the 90s. Amy: modern naughty girl. When pressed, Simon decided he would be "decade" because "when you add 'the' to a band it just means they're cheesy."

9. Sunday night Sam and I decided to pull out all the stops, finish off my allotted share of the alcohol (the Dubliners were the only ones drinking) and hang out with a gang of Hawaiians we met in the front of every show. They flew all the way from Hawaii for a weekend at Camber Sands. But apparently Hawaii is a "cultural desert." I didn't understand how late/early it was until I realized the lightness in the sky was actually the sun. Halfway into our bus journey Monday morning, I think I finally sobered up.