Returning

CALIBAN

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

I have always suspected this speech was written about good old Blighty, not just the Mediterranean island on which Shakespeare's Tempest takes place.  I reread it before I left for London, and am only now reading it again upon my return. This semester has been one of rereading and rethinking. I have reread my journals from last winter break, anticipating everything possible; and my journals from the semester too, sometimes obsessively tracking details of my days; I have reread this blog again and again, for the purposes of proofreading and contemplation alike (I think of it as 'returning to the source'). As you might notice, I have been thinking a lot about the books and poems I have read in the past, trying to find some nexus with my own lived experience.

All of this makes me wonder about the experience of reading as an experience of living. Think of yourself, reader. Only a few of you accompanied me in person, but we have still shared these moments together. I am new to blogging, so I have to consider the actual function of a blog. It is something intended to be read, but I hope that the reading has not stopped here, that perhaps you have found yourselves curious to know more about some of the places I described or the people whose words I have referenced - or even the words themselves. More importantly, this all seems like an exercise in imagination; though you are not with me in this place, how do you imagine it? How do you see these words?

I have just reread my first post on the blog. I was hesitant to post it or share it with anyone. In retrospect, I can now look for the patterns that emerged, the many changes this blog underwent in a few months - for instance, there was a stint of sharing photos of the meals I cooked; I tried my hand at cliffhangers for a while; I always tried to cite works of writing that I had been thinking about - and it makes me think more broadly about the function of actually going somewhere new. There will always be these exasperating, and still exciting elements of chance and change.

Despite all the paperwork and the boarding passes and whatnot, there really was not much else I felt in control of during the semester. I am thinking about my first post on the blog, when I established the fleeting Dickens motif, the idea of forming a chain of memories link by link; I always found them by accident, unintentionally, or without expectation. I did not often share them on this blog, but I promise you, there were many.

Another crucial element of surprise was my readership; I never knew who was reading unless people told me about it, asked me to tell them more, or commented. One of the glories of blogger is that you can keep track of where your readers are: USA, Canada, many European countries, China, India, Russia, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, it goes on. This morning I ordered a coffee at a local shop and the barista told me he really liked reading my post about Paris. This all seems to suggest to me that we are perhaps a bit more connected to each other than I usually think. Thank you.

I am building up to the real substance of this final post, the events of my last week in London. I saw three shows - "Everyman," "The Merchant of Venice," and "Woolf Works" - all of which shook me to the core. I took a few exams, took a daytrip to York, said goodbyes to a few favorite people and places, pierced my ear, cleaned the entire flat (the joy of staying the longest also means the pain of cleaning up after everyone else), found a rainbow, had a last pint, took a last long night walk.

That walk was actually almost identical to the very first walk I took in the city a year ago. I found myself again beguiled by the birds in St. James's Park and the flocks of pub-goers spilling onto the sidewalks; by accident, I happened to find the same Charlie Chaplin impersonator in the same place I had found him last June. This particular incident comforts me; it reminds me that places don't change all that much. I threw out a pair of shoes that took me just about everywhere.

On the trip back to Boston, I thought about all the places I still have yet to see in the UK and Europe and the entire world. Even on my way home, the most stable, honest, true thing I could think of was that I will return soon.

I will resist the temptation to close out with someone else's words. I will keep on walking, writing, thinking - to what end? I would not want to know just now.

Ever in Good Stead

Kenny returned to London at the end of his semester. We had planned a few things to do around the city and a trip to Ireland for the coming week. In London, we spent time at Hampstead Heath and Richmond Park, and had a few classic English meals - proper Sunday roast, fish and chips, pies.

We set out for Ireland on a cold, cloudy day. I did not have many expectations for Ireland. The times were so hectic leading up to the day, I really had not done any preparation for the trip. Fortunately, Kenny and I are a similar breed of traveler. We both like to have a few ideas in mind, but nothing definite; whenever we have traveled together we have just let things fall into place.

When we arrived in Dublin, we found some cheap food to go and met up with our Airbnb host. I had arranged to meet up with Shauna, an old friend from high school who is studying at Trinity College Dublin. We met her at the front gate of the college and she showed us the campus, including the spectacular library, the collection of which boasts the Book of Kells. She showed us around parts of central Dublin along the Liffey, She shared many interesting observations about Irish people and culture. Since it was the end of the semester, we could all talk about our explorations in Europe too.

For dinner, Shauna recommended we go to the Bernard Shaw, a bit south of St. Stephen's Green. Kenny and I made our way there to find a good deal, a drink and a pizza for something like €7. The place appears to be an ordinary bar, but it leads to an open patio in the back, colored with eccentric street art, the kitchen taking the form of a blue double-decker bus parked at the back of the lot. The pizzas were crafty, made with ingredients like chard, pear, prosciutto, and gorgonzola. Our booth had a bit of a flair to it:

After the meal we wandered back toward the center of town. On the way, we stopped in a church to poke around. My favorite feature was the keg of holy water.

As we made our way back toward the Grand Canal Docks, our neighborhood for the week, the dynamic quality of Dublin became clearer, specifically in the architectural differences within the area. To one side of the canal are the glass fronts of high tech conglomerates; to the other, the concrete bastions of industry.

I was beguiled by the rows of single-story Victorian homes that are not only still in place, but remain inhabited by locals. In London, the demolition of Victorian homes in favor of new high rises seems to be one of the County Council's foremost schemes.

In the morning we decided to take a bus to Galway for a daytrip. On our way to Connolly Station, we met some lobbyists for Ireland's (now victorious) "Yes" campaign, in favor of the legalization of same-sex marriage. One lobbyist, a local councilman wanted to talk to us about our trip and our origins, despite the knowledge that we cannot vote in the referendum. Thus is the kindness of the Irish. Anyway, what matters here is that Kenny and I were witnesses to the polemics of the referendum, the traces of which could be found on every streetsign and lamppost. One image remains particularly poignant to me, of a concrete canvas depicting two men embracing each other, which had been defaced - whether by human hands or the rain I am not certain.

The advertisements for each side of the argument were spread not only in the city, but throughout the country as well. About 60% of the electorate voted in favor of legalization; Ireland is the first country to legalize same-sex marriage through popular vote. On a side note, one of my favorite parts of the semester has been engagement with European politics, especially the UK's General Election.

The bus to Galway took about ninety minutes longer than we expected, so once we arrived in town we decided to book beds in a hostel so we could have enough time to explore. We had lunch at The King's Head, a pub our friend Sean had recommended. Leaving the pub, we chanced to find our former classmate Riley Stefano, who happened to be heading home from her semester abroad the next day. We met up later for drinks around town.

Shop Street

The town of Galway is beautiful. Its semblance to the landscape of New England's coast is striking. At times, I was reminded of the trips my family would take to visit my grandfather on the coast of Maine when I was little. It is a lively port town, populated by the National University's many local and international students. Kenny and I walked all along the coast of Galway until we found Salthill and its small cliff.

Kenny contemplating at Salthill

After a sufficient session of what I have come to call "horizon therapy," we wandered back into town to check into Barnacles, our hostel. The receptionist there recommended some good places for food and drink. We had a cheap dinner at Hillbilly's, a chain serving delicious chicken fillet. Here I must digress: the Irish love chicken fillet (pronounce the "t"), a baguette with fried chicken, tomato, and lettuce, usually costing as little as €1 at grocery stores. No, it is not traditional Irish food, but it is a cultural enterprise in the country; thus is traveling on a budget.

From there, we crossed Eyre Square and found the National University's beautiful campus. Something about the energy of university campuses makes me comfortable. It is an energy I have sorely missed this semester, studying at a large, spatially fragmented city university. Walking across quads and under stone archways, and lazing in the neatly trimmed grass offered the kind of energy and clarity I have only found prior on my own home campus in Vermont.

Later that night, we met up with Riley and Laura (another SMC classmate) for a proper pub crawl around town, from Taafe's for live music to The King's Head for traditional Irish dancing, and finally to The Quays, a re-purposed church across from our hostel, now a multi-level super-pub with great vibes.

Laura, Kenny, Riley, and me, Jameson in hand

The next morning, Kenny and I headed out for the Cliffs of Moher, a truly spectacular place encumbered with a truly unspectacular spirit of tourism. We had a good long walk along the trail, which brought me back to my very first day trip this semester to the grand White Cliffs.

We headed back to Galway from there, then back to Dublin, a total of five hours on buses that day. We were relieved to arrive at the station in Dublin and find chicken fillets.

The next day we decided to see more of the city. We began by heading out to gambol with the throngs along Grafton Street. We inched closer and closer to the Guinness Storehouse, and eventually passed the threshold of St. James's Gate. The factory tour is probably the closest thing to a major tourist attraction in Dublin. I am not a huge fan of Guinness, and the whole place was just a big ode to Arthur Guinness, but I have to say that the Gravity Bar on the top of the building is a really cool place to see the city.

View of the Wicklow Mountains from the Gravity Bar

Kenny and I glimpsed the great sprawl of the Wicklow Mountains from the bar and were bummed we didn't have time or means to go hike them. However, we were intrigued by the sight of Phoenix Park from above. So there we went, to some disappointment. A major road runs right through the park, which, despite its enormity, lacks any sort of trail for walkers to follow.

We made it through to the other side and waited forty minutes for a train to take us back to our neighborhood. When we made it there, we spent some time looking around the Grand Canal Docks.

Samuel Beckett Bridge, appropriately bizarre and complex in structure

We did manage to fit one more walking trip into our day. For sunset, we walked from our flat to Sandymount Strand, a sandy bluff in the bay of the city. I was interested to go there because of an incident in one of Joyce's books that takes place there. It turned out to be high tide; otherwise, we might have ventured out on the sandbar and been marooned in the rising tide. It is a beautiful site to see the city lights and the turn toward night.

The next day, we took the DART train to Howth, a seaside suburb of Dublin. It is a real beauty.

We walked uphill for a while to reach the town's cliff walk. Having brought a few beers along, we thought we would toast to our last day in Ireland atop the cliffs. However, without an opener, we tried to open the caps on a fencepost, whereupon a group of adult men crossed our path and asked in broken English if we required assistance. All five of them gladly retrieved bottle openers from their rucksacks; the man who opened my bottle looked me in the eye and told me deadpan, "We are Germans," to which his friends all erupted in laughter. It was a strange gem of a moment Kenny and I continued to cackle about for the rest of the day.

The coastline looks almost mythic from the cliff walk. Small islands rise from the sea, glowing green.

We ate fish and chips in Howth and headed back into town. Our Airbnb host was kind enough to drive us to the airport as he was picking up his new guests there at the same time. The trip back was easy, only forty minutes in the air. From my window seat I could watch as we passed over Sandymount and Howth in a pinkish sky, and then as we descended above the little glistening hamlets of England.

Having had few expectations for Ireland, I was all the more thrilled by the trip. I returned to a sense of anxiety, with only ten days left in the UK. I began to plot my grand finale with just as much excitement as trepidation. I thought of a passage near the end of Joyce's first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a diary entry of the protagonist dated on my birthday:

"April 10. Faintly, under the heavy night, through the silence of the city which has turned from dreams to dreamless sleep as a weary lover whom no caresses move, the sound of hoofs upon the road. Not so faintly now as they come near the bridge: and in a movement as they pass the darkened windows the silence is cloven by alarm as by an arrow. They are heard now far away, hoofs that shine amid the heavy night as gems, hurrying beyond the sleeping fields to what journey's end - what heart? - bearing what tidings?"

 I hoped for a final epiphany as fortunate as Stephen's, to be stood ever in good stead by my own great artificers, memory and imagination, as these grand trips grew fewer and fewer, my time slipping sooner and sooner.

Ghostbusting

Thought you were done with me, eh? Think again fools. I've been a bit too busy to update the past few weeks, but here I am, sneaking back to share some stories. I want to start writing about this beginning-of-the-end phase with two trips I took the first week of May.

The first trip was to a familiar place, Wroxton Abbey, a college where I studied Shakespeare last summer with a group from Saint Michael's. I had been talking to my friend Sean about the possibility of going back, and we agreed it would be foolish if I didn't take the short trip over to Wroxton while I'm still so close.

Wroxton is a small village in Oxfordshire, close to the larger town of Banbury. This might seem an apt opportunity to rehash the usual verb associated with English villages, "nestled," or with English counties, "in the heart of..." Not exactly true in this context. Long roads separate the villages of this region, and the village itself is in North Oxfordshire, not exactly the heart. I like this idea, that Wroxton is resisting the language of its location.

Anyway, I arrived at the college and had lunch with the dean, Nicholas Baldwin, whom our group came to know well last summer. After lunch and a short tour through the house, I set off to walk the grounds for a few hours.

If you haven't assumed this yet, I should say loud and clear that I have never walked more in my life than I have this semester. Daily averages have tended to be in the 10-12 mile range since January. I probably walked about that much in Wroxton. The abbey and village are contained spaces, though there is a public footpath that rambles through the woods for some time. Walking by the same houses and fields by different ways made me feel a bit intrusive, as if locals might have noticed this stranger ambling about for hours might be problematic.

Here's what the walk looked like:

One thing I remember quite vividly from those two weeks at Wroxton last summer was the unpredictability and inevitability of the rain there. On my Wroxton-redux walk, the same frustration occurred to me, as the rain would pour for thirty seconds, then disappear for an hour and return for a minute, ad infinitum.

I have learned many lessons from walking this semester, though one seemed most apparent to me on the grounds of Wroxton: it is the lesson of looking for patterns. An example: I walked by bluebells, I had never seen them there before, or did not remember them being in that place. Having followed a different path for a few minutes, I had forgotten where the bluebells were. I walked across a grassy bridge, turned the corner, passed over a knoll, and took a new path; when I looked to my feet I found them again. They were the very same bluebells, somehow appearing to me in a different patch of dirt than before. So this is it: things start to make sense as a whole when I wander.

It might not be a very tangible lesson, though I believe it is important. Being alone in the woods, albeit the contained and maintained college grounds, I wondered about communication in nature. It is inevitable that having last heard human voices a few hours prior, I would become curious about what the trees might be saying as they squealed and creaked.

And from these thoughts, I turned to my memories of the place, all bound up within myself. That occurrence of remembering memories proceeded much simpler. An example:

Me and Sean, Wroxton, May 2014

Wroxton, May 2015

So as I walked alone in the abundant presence of nature, I became preoccupied with the idea of absence. How could I not think of absence, in a familiar space with no familiar companions with me? This might all sound very melancholic; despite all that, it was a wondrous day of reunion. I think on that day I recognized a revelation attributed to the writer John Berger, that "The field that you are standing before seems to have the same proportions as your own life" (from "Field," 1971).

Later that week, I set off for the South Downs, a glorious national park in the county Sussex, south of London on the coast. I had one short visit to make on my way through, at Monks House, the former home of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, now a museum maintained by the National Trust. I think I've cited VW a few times here before; she's a favorite of mine, in part because I spent my last summer researching and writing about her novels for a fellowship grant.

My walk from Southease station to the village of Rodmell was full of excitement. I went along a dirt road through Southease village, passing over a bridge that looked familiar to me...

From VW's photograph album

I had looked at an online archive of the Woolfs' photograph albums through Harvard University's library before my visit to Monks House, and searched for places and images I could try to find on my way through. I knew she had walked over this bridge many times before to get to Southease station, and that her biographers have speculated that she floated beneath it when she drowned herself in the River Ouse. I never quite believed that a person could will herself to drown with stones in her pockets. Again, inevitably I thought of this as I walked along the river, over large stones lined along the basin.

On the trail to Rodmell, I considered how this landscape might have affected her creative process, specifically with some of the novels I have read of hers that she wrote at Monks House (namely, Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Years). She loved London, and though she was removed from the city against her will - for the sake of her health - the pastoral lifestyle of her Victorian  predecessors - Hardy, Trollope, Thackeray - fostered some of her greatest writing.

The footpath that led me to the village offered some incredible visions (as Woolf might have said) of the South Downs.

At Monks House, I found myself disappointed with the general scheme of the place. It was overcrowded with very pretentious conversations between very old English pensioners - which is to be expected. Most of the house is restricted to visitors. In fact, only three rooms of the house are open for public viewing. Even in the garden and beside her writing cottage, I couldn't be contemplative or thoughtful.

VW's grave

From the Woolfs' album

From the Woolfs' album 

VW in the garden at Monks House

VW in the garden at Monks House, with her dog 

The living room, VW's desk in the far corner

It would be difficult to choose a quote of hers to place here. All in all, the visit was not what I hoped it would be; however, having spent a lot of time with her writing, I know that reading is the most authentic form of communication I have with this writer, whom I know has had an enormous effect on how I understand the world. When I left the property, I returned to a recurring thought from other historically-themed trips I've taken; that we cannot relive history no matter our intentions or methods for attempting to do so.

I had a while left before my train back, so I explored the village a bit more. A churchyard is just behind the Woolfs' garden, so I poked around for a while.

A tomb with a view

I spent the rest of my time following the trails that wend around the South Downs. The sky was sunny and a comfortable wind blew over the hills. While I walked back to Southease, I remembered a picture of her in the woods around Monks House.

As I trudged through thickets of nettles and ivy, I had to think about why I came to the area and why I am fascinated by Woolf's life. Woolf's writing does have a spectral quality to it, the senses of mystery and unknowing taking shape in the minds of characters. The arduous task of reading her books might be lightened by the idea of "Ghostbusting," the role of the reader as detective in the great ghost story of history. Doesn't she look a bit like a ghost in this picture?

I don't think there is much joy to be found in trying to relive someone else's life - not for me, anyway. The joy is not so much in replicating, but rather in finding a unique experience of one's own along the way. The trip to Sussex was most joyful in the midst of those trails over the hills of the South Downs. Similarly, I recognized my joy at Wroxton when I discovered and encountered new spaces, things, ideas - while the moments during which I could only think of the past made me sad. Maybe I was drawn to these two places by an intuitive drive to find ghosts, and what I did actually find is still just as ambiguous to me.