In Russia, We Play Chess. In Ireland, We Dance.

The pub is called Pravda. It’s made to look Russian, of course, dressed head to toe in red paint, posters of revolutionaries, and words scrawled in bold, distinguished Russian lettering. It’s Saturday night, one in the morning, and the space is packed to the gills. Rock music is thumping, pulsating throughout, drowning whatever conversation people situated on the countless stools and at the many candlelit tables are trying to have. Once you get past the front room and its coffee shop arrangement, though, conversation seems to be a moot point, as hundreds of thrashing and swaying and shaking bodies envelop what appears to be the real deal: a multi-level room with a raised stage, colorful slide projections, a labyrinth of staircases, and a full, back-lit bar. After wandering through the crowd, elbowing my way past twenty-something’s in ripped jeans and band tees, sequined tunics and teased hair, I make it to the stage, where all the girls I came with are dancing to catchy songs that make up the mix-tapes of our lives. And then I’m there, dancing alongside them, even though I’ve refused to do so in the past—I’m quite shy about these things, really—and it is so, so good. This goes on and on, and just when I think the night has peaked, that the moment has reached its greatest height, it happens.

I don’t know what it is about Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” but the moment that song comes on the radio, or pops up on a shuffled iPod or, as indicated by the atmosphere at Pravda, filters through a bar’s speakers, time seems to stop. Everything freezes, and, as though control is something to be laughed at, the song’s nuances grab you by the limbs, and the lyrics grab you by the throat, and all you can do is put your fist to the air and pump. You pump and you sing, not because it’s inevitable (it is), and not because everyone else is doing it (they are), but because it is all part of attaining that perfect high. When the first notes blare, I ready myself, find my internal balance, because I know what’s coming. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach, the happy, about to flow upward and over and fill every nook and cranny of my being. To describe this is to describe a cliché. It’s to describe the moment in the movie where everything is suddenly in slow motion, and the main character has the grand epiphany that all is well, that everything is okay. The world, in essence, is just right. This is what happens. I am dancing on a stage in a bar overseas, and I am singing the song, and I am pumping my fist at all the right times, and I am watching all the people, and making eye contact with the girls from my program, and then my eyes are closed and I am listening, listening, and feeling all the cliché rage of being very much alive. And it’s there, the happy, telling me that this is right, that this will be another memory to associate with the song, living this experience among a crowd of hundreds, and it’s telling me, against beautiful, deafening sound, that this is why I came here, that this is why being in Dublin is nothing but wonderful.

***

Despite the fact that the sun only seems to come out in ten-minute intervals, twice or three times a day if luck will have it, and despite the fact that our flat went without heat for five days, and despite the fact that the water in our building is often shut off without warning, I could not have asked for a better first week in Dublin. So much has happened, that to write about it all would take much thought, maybe almost too much. I crawled through pubs with names like The Turk’s Head, The Mezz, and The Temple Bar (located, aptly, in said neighborhood). I found myself downing a banana smoothie and mozzarella and pesto panini at the environmentally-conscious Nude, taking in an Irish breakfast and crème caramel tea at the quaint Joy of Chá, and indulging in an all-expenses-paid lunch of chicken, broccoli, and penne pasta drizzled with a tomato cream sauce and a slice of chocolate gateux at the Irish Film Institute’s café. I saw the conceptually interesting but uneven Vive La, a play told in the mummers’ style, through verse, music, and song, about an imprisoned acrobat who was coerced into spying on the United Irishmen in 1798. I celebrated the twentieth birthday of one of the girls in my program by going out for a pint, and delighted in the sight of the girl doing a jig with the percussionist of an Irish folk quartet performing that night (the band also sang “Happy Birthday” to her shortly after). I went to class, where I learned we’ll be reading and analyzing plenty of exciting playwrights (McDonagh, Beckett, Friel, McPherson, and Enda Walsh among them) and writing theatre critiques; watching tons of Irish films I’ve been meaning to see for years; and writing full-length plays while having weekly one-on-one intensive meetings with Michael West, the playwriting professor. I finally dealt with my film violence anxiety and saw No Country For Old Men, which was audacious and beautiful, especially when projected onto a screen large enough to rival the IMAX…

(A brief digression: while there were many shots in No Country For Old Men I marveled at, I think the one that took away the most breath was the shot that focuses on Chigurh’s boot and the blood that slowly creeps towards it, entering the frame in an almost-but-not-quite-unexpected way. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If not, you’ll recognize it when it happens. Anyway, I love stuff like that. It’s like the shot in Lost in Translation where Bob and Charlotte are lying on the bed together, and he’s on his back and she’s turned away from him, and everything is silent; in a very subtle way, he rubs her foot, which, incidentally, is the foot she bruised in her hotel room. That shot, to me, says everything I need to know about the film. It is also one of my favorite shots in a film, ever. But back to the topic at hand. The scene between Chigurh and Carla Jean is, I’d also argue, nearly perfect. It takes all the tension that has been building—and that the audience has been riding on—throughout the entire film, and channels it, adding new stakes in the process. Unlike Juno, another Oscar season critical dandy, the more I think about No Country, the more I like it. It is so contained and so level, and harkens so much back to the Coens’ roots, it’s admirable. I have so much love for films that speak to their contemporaries. Like There Will Be Blood, which echoes Citizen Kane in a very clear way. Dare I make the assertion, though, that Paul Thomas Anderson’s is the better film? Does that make me blasphemous? I’ve always felt Kane was overrated, but explaining why I’m so enamored of Blood will take paragraphs I’m not willing to write just yet. Plus, this blog entry about Dublin needs to continue in that vein at some point.)

…Last Tuesday, before we were all treated to a fine dining experience at the IFI, everyone in our program (which is part of NYU’s Tisch School of The Arts) participated in a walking tour of Dublin, led by the program’s Irish history professor, Tommy Graham. Unfortunately, too much time has passed since the tour, and since I didn’t take notes, I can’t remember most of what was said. I did, however, take some pictures:


Bank of Ireland's House of Lords

clock tower at Dublin Castle

archway at Dublin Castle

part of Dublin Castle
(that looks unlike a castle)

the ceiling of City Hall

and the floor

I like clocks

Christ Church
(right next door...the bells at all hours are such a comfort)




And, not part of the walking tour, but important nonetheless:


at The Turk's Head, a "superpub"
(the girl on the far left is my roommate)

the waitstaff gave us FREE FOOD
(breaded mushrooms, sausages, chicken nibbles, and chips)

We were happy.

Yesterday, nearly everyone in my program went to the Guinness Storehouse. I couldn’t make it, but since it’s only a ten to fifteen-minute walk from my flat, I suspect I’ll be making the trip soon. Perhaps even tomorrow. I’ve drunk enough Guinness already to warrant a quest for learning how it’s brewed, and besides, I need to do something touristy. Going to the Office of Immigration (or, as I'd prefer to call it, the Overseas D.M.V.) doesn't count.

Coming soon: tales from The Mezz, encounters with attractive Irish rockers, cool slang, and more pictures.

In Which I Attempt To Be Concise and Fail.

A little over a week ago, the question seemed to be, “Are you ready?” The dental hygienist asked me right before she sabotaged my mouth with sharp, metallic tools. My parents asked me more times than I care to remember. I answered, “I don’t know.” I thought, How do you even begin to respond to a question like that? Being ready—what does that even mean, especially in times of transition? Of course I was excited. There is no doubt about it: every time I thought about hopping on a plane and landing overseas, my heart beat just a little faster. But I’ll be the first to admit to my anxiety, sometimes crippling, not for fear that I’d have a hellish experience, that I’d kick and scream my way back to the United States. Nothing so melodramatic as that. But I suppose I was fearful of change, of what it would be like to not be back at Sarah Lawrence for a full semester, to not see some of my closest friends for months, to have to (in a way) redefine myself for a whole new group of people. This is common, I know, I wasn’t singular or special in any way. But the nervousness still remained. No matter how many times someone said, “You’re going to have the most amazing time,” the little voice came back strong, chiding, alarming, Safety first: have you looked both ways before crossing the street?

Well, you know what? Fuck the little voice. I’ve been here slightly less than 48 hours, and it's brought me some of the most eye-opening fun I’ve had in my entire life. Forgive the cliché, but it’s true: I really do feel like a little kid in a store full of candy and toys.

The plane touched down in Dublin at 6:50 in the morning, before the sun had even come up. During the seven-hour flight, I watched The Bourne Ultimatum (such a hard-on for Joan Allen, even if the movie was your typical adrenaline-infused action fest), ate a stew of meat, potatoes, carrots, and peas, partook in the tea service, and read Portnoy’s Complaint, which, if there’s anywhere to read that delicacy of a novel, it’s not on an airplane. (Having to stifle laughter of that magnitude is, if anything, painful.) I went through customs, no problem, got my luggage, no problem, grabbed a taxi, no problem, and made it to my flat in Temple Bar (a neighborhood reminiscent of SoHo and parts of the Village), where I settled in and took a brief nap. Then, after meeting my roommate, I made a decision that I still have no regrets about, even if it left my legs feeling as though they had been detached from my body, beaten with a baton, and then reattached for the sheer humor of it. Map tucked away in my cargo bag (just in case), I decided to challenge my navigational skills by purposely getting lost. For three-and-a-half hours, I walked down streets I didn’t know the names of, past shops and restaurants and a woman howling (not singing, howling) something in Gaelic. I wandered through an outdoor market and bought oranges. I strode down the quays by the Liffey. I passed slews of double-decker buses, City Hall, the Bank of Ireland. I watched a verbal argument break out between anti-abortion protestors and some passersby. I detoured down cobblestone corridors with hanging string lights, into arcades that must have once been churches, the ceilings were so high. I didn’t take pictures. It was cold and wet, and my second goal (aside from eventually winding up back at home) was to keep my fingers warm. My third goal—to keep my ears warm—led me back to Temple Bar, where I walked into a vintage shop called The Eager Beaver (yes, yes) and wound up briefly chatting with the salesman about my being from Chicago and his having a mate who likes to go to the Taste every year. I should’ve known not getting my fuzzy hat (an Eskimo-like winter hat I ordered two weeks ago, one that still hasn’t made it to my house) would lead to good things.

Flash forward several hours: all eighteen members of my abroad program, after consuming various greasy delights from Leo Burdock’s Fish and Chips, decided to further a self-made meet-and-greet by going to (of all places) a two-level Australian sports bar called The Wool Shed: Baa and Grill (really). Because a fire-spinning, hula-hooping, circus-inclined actor in the program also turned out to be an American football fan, we (of all things) watched the Green Bay Packers go head-to-head with the Seattle Seahawks. I hate football, but we were in the company of a bunch of Irish people who seemed pleased to be watching the game, and besides, a pint of Guinness can do wonders for conversation. During the course of the evening, the following things were revealed to me: there is a girl in the program whose family members had to flee Ireland because of ties with the IRA; the same girl and the fire-spinning, hula-hooping, circus-inclined actor were both in a History Channel special about Irish immigrants, playing, respectively, an Irish prostitute and a gambling drunkard; everyone seems to like Lost, HBO, or both; and I am alone in my dislike for Juno. When this last bit was revealed, a guy in my program looked at me like I had no soul. This matters not. The more I think about the movie and its contrivances, the more my detestation grows.

So as not to end on a sour note: today began with orientation and grocery shopping, and ended with more pub-going. I experienced my first real bout of culture shock when, in search of a power adaptor, I found myself in Argos—or, as some people in my program joked, “the store where nothing can be stolen.” Argos looks a lot like an Internet café: there are terminals everywhere, but instead of computers, there are catalogues with the store’s entire inventory. A purchasing customer flips through the catalogue, finds the product of his or her choosing, writes down the product number on a special small-sized form, and then takes a number. When the number is called, the piece of paper is given to the sales associate, who then finds the item in an extensive inventory room that, to my knowledge, must be in the back somewhere, as most inventory rooms are. The catalogue is hundreds of pages long (maybe even a thousand), and there were gobs of people everywhere, so the whole time I felt quite overwhelmed. It was like going to Macy’s the day after Thanksgiving, except all the products were on pieces of laminated paper everyone fought and shoved their way to get at.

After this harrowing journey into the unknown, we all decided to go to Tesco, which, I think, was even more harrowing. Tesco is a combination grocery store and goods store. It is like IKEA in its hugeness. It was unbelievably crowded (as these places tend to be on Sundays), and the layout was a lot different than an American supermarket. This, of course, is fine, until you realize you are at a loss when it comes to finding things. Also, when you realize you can’t buy much anyway, because you’ll be walking your groceries home for ten to fifteen minutes, and because you have to buy your own bags anyway, so you don’t buy many. Yes, in an effort to be conservationists, the Irish charge for plastic…how amazing is that? Later, the roommate and I decided to leave our flat and attempt to socialize. This, of course, meant venturing back to The Wool Shed, where we knew the fire-spinning, hula-hooping, circus-inclined actor would be. Between the three of us, there were a few pints to go around while we watched the Seahawks take down the Cowboys and talked about cinematic theatre, having faith in directors and actors, and the Absurdists. The night concluded with peanut butter sandwiches, True Lies, and a BBC special on clashing religions, complete with both subtitles and sign language. And a man in our courtyard, spunk drunk, shouting, and being told, repeatedly, to “feck off” by our neighbors.

It's All Very Grand, You See...

Today, I watched the sun come up while riding in a taxi. We drove into the heart of Dublin while listening to Johnny Cash's cover of "Personal Jesus."

Now I'm sitting in the common room of my new flat. None of my mates are here yet, but the excitement of being in Ireland is raging.

Coming soon: pictures and actual tales (all to be done post-nap).

So It Begins.

It’s 2008. Everything is covered in snow. In eleven days, I’ll be leaving the country.

Today, I will inevitably answer the question of what I did last night at least five times. The current count is at two. Because of a snowstorm, and because my mom’s ten-year-old Volvo has a proclivity for skidding, I camped out at a friend’s and had the most low-key New Year’s Eve I’ve had in a while. Last year, I celebrated in New York by going to two parties with my cousins: one was semi-swanky and Iron Chef-themed, with boring yuppie guests and not enough communal food, but plenty of wine and film-related conversation with a handsome Brit to hold me over; the other was in the Upper West Side dwelling of two of my cousins’ lawyer friends (and neighbors)—I only remember playing with their dog, eating a lot of shrimp, drinking more wine, and feeling less awkward. This year, there was an order of deep dish pizza, a bag of cookie dough, and seven hours worth of America’s Next Top Model. We rang in the new year by toasting with a glass of milk, a can of Diet Coke, and a carrot. Nothing had alcohol in it. Over the course of the evening, I received a slew of “Happy New Year!” text messages, and a drunken phone call from a friend, who expressed his wishes for the invention of a microwave that could freeze food (in addition, of course, to heating it). He also promised to pay me ten dollars if I stayed up and watched the entirety of the first cycle of Next Top Model. It nearly happened.

I fell asleep around four-thirty or five. I did not wake up with a hangover. Instead, I had a scrumptious brunch of whole-wheat bagels with cream cheese, clementines, and tea. Then I drove the Volvo into the bowels of surrounding communities, and found that most of the roads had been completely cleared. No more skidding, no more anxiety about crashing into parked cars or lampposts or trains. Just smooth sailing, and snowflakes falling gently onto the windshield.

I made a mix-tape about a week ago. Driving around today, I decided it’s close to perfect for this kind of weather. There is nothing like the calm of Aimee Mann’s voice to remind you of how snug and comforting winter can be. I’m always vocal about how much I hate the snow, but how can I truly hate it when it’s blanketed the landscape in such a serene way? Where is the sense in detesting something so beautiful?

New Year’s Resolution #1: I will try not to distance myself from the things I love.

Thunder, Lightning, Strike.

Sonic booms occurring outside my window.



This is only a test for what's to come.