Plans

The sun is beaming over Dublin this afternoon. The furry rug next to my bed has a creeping rectangle of warmth on it so I kick off my flip-flops and loiter for a moment with bare feet. My heart is a solar panel. So I walk outside, down the North Strand Rd, carrying my damp wash in a plastic shopping bag to the laundromat in Fairview village where they have cavernous tumble dryers, the kind so big that your underwear look like they're rehearsing for Cirque de Soleil. The owner of the laundromat is singing—not humming, singing—along to a crappy, diet-rock power ballad on the radio. Something like: baby, I'll catch you when you fall. I'd probably bust out some harmonies if I knew the words...if I knew how to harmonize.

My clothes won't be dry for 30 minutes so I walk across the street to the park. All the trees lining the main path have sprouted into a shady canopy. This isn't sweltering Florida. Nobody's interested in the shade. It's chilly in the shade, even in May. Out on the grass, people are sprawled like sunbathers on a crowded beach. I find a bench in the sun and plop down to read.

There's an elderly gentleman next to me on the bench smoking a cigarette. He smiles and nods when I sit down. The man is watching some young kids play football. They're using balled-up shirts to designate where the posts would be and are lining up to take penalty kicks. The shortest kid boots one past the goalie and goes running around, pumping his fists like Zidane. He screams, "I SCORED A GOOOAAAAL!" Without glancing over, I can feel the man next to me smiling. Just like you can feel the sun shining without looking at the sky.

When my watch tells me the laundry's dry, I walk back across the street. I love folding clothes fresh out of the dryer, feeling the warm fabric beneath your chin where you tuck the neck of the shirt while folding each sleeve inward. The smell of detergent floating up like a woman's perfume. I'm washing the sheets so they're fresh when Summer gets to Dublin in a week and a half.

I fly back to Atlanta tomorrow to help Summer with the final stage of moving. We're renting a minivan and will need to drive two vehicles down to Orlando in order to get everything there. Then we'll spend a few days with her family and fly out on the 20th. Since we changed our plans last-minute and it would've cost a small fortune to get me on her flight to Dublin, I'll be traveling back on one running about an hour behind hers. That way I can try to intervene if she bumps into any snags at customs. She asked me to do this. The stress was getting to her. It means I get to see her sooner than expected. Funny how soon is never soon enough.

We'll pretend this was the plan all along. And hopefully the sun will still be around when we arrive in 'dear, dirty Dublin' (to borrow Joyce's phrase). Either way, Ireland can look forward to Summer.

Clontarf Stroll

[Click on the shiniest cloud.]

10 Things

It's time to intervene before this blog devolves into a willowy, sad-sack, preteen-girl diary of melodramatic wistful longing and poignant ruminations on my separation from Summer and the bleakness of my current employment prospects. Yes, those feelings exist. And, yes, they're upsetting. But I don't want those more dismal realities to obscure how much of this trip has been an absolutely thrilling joy ride. A sensory feast. A long-overdue, extended honeymoon with the country of my birth.

Maybe on a subconscious level I feel bad for having too good a time when Summer is temporarily stuck in the U.S. working to fund this part of the transition. Gabbing about all the fun I'm having seems unremittingly cruel. But the truth is that, even though I feel incomplete without my wife here, I'm so happy to be back in Ireland. So out-of-my-gourd ecstatic to wake up here every morning without a return ticket sitting on the dresser. Like a groom crawling into bed with his new bride, overjoyed that he doesn't have to shuffle back to his own house at the end of the night. While the doom cyclone of economic recession swirls around me, my heart expands like a bubble that refuses to burst.

And so. And so!

In honor of this fact—and in honor of how much Irish people enjoy ridiculing Americans' use of the word 'awesome'—here are 10 things that have been like really awesome about being back in Ireland:

1. The Sweets - Holy monkey...the sugar-coated, gummy Fruit Pastilles. The Cadburys chocolate so rich that every bite is like dessert fondue. The soft-serve ice-cream cones with crumbly chocolate Flakes wedged in the side. The Aero bars. The hot chocolate at Insomnia Coffee made with steamed milk and dusted with chocolate crumbles. Mighty Munch. I've never considered myself much of a chocolate guy, but this little tooth-rotting roll call seems to indicate otherwise.
2. Dublin city layout and architecture - I don't know I'll ever get over how gorgeous this city is. The regal stone columns of the central post office and government buildings, the sky-piercing roofs of enormous cathedrals, the urban parks with their ponds and ducks and benches perfect for sitting and reading and people-watching.
3. The History - One of the things I miss least about living in Atlanta—and, before that, Florida—was the pre-fab newness of those places. Here, you can feel the history gushing out of every sidewalk crack, the ghosts wandering down every back-alley, the castles and abbeys, the standing stones in the countryside that date back thousands of years. So much still to learn and appreciate. So many people who walked these streets before me. All the sentimental drivel it inspires (oh wait, not that last thing...I better stop).
4. The Guinness - I know my friends here think I just drink it to feel more Irish. But the richness of it, the big fat robust flavor that hits the spot so perfectly, the foamy top, gah gah gah waba waba waba. [Head explodes]
5. My new Irish friends - Until your life is tangled up with other people's, there's no way to feel settled. The kindness I've experienced here has been amazing. The marathon, secret-spilling conversations with people I'd only just met. The incredible welcome. The way people have bent over backwards to help me get settled in and connected. The invitations to go drinking, dancing, reveling.
6. The feeling of home - I told someone the other day that, because my missionary parents relocated every few years, I felt like I was perpetually on tour (a bit like Bob Dylan, maybe). Every city was another interesting stop, but never quite a home. At least not in the profound sense of the word 'home'—where you're from, where you belong. The other day I walked from the centre of town to Rathgar where my family lived for its last two years in Dublin before leaving Ireland for good. The closer I got, the more familiar everything started to look. The intersection where I'd turn left when walking to school. The bank on the corner where my older brother witnessed an honest-to-god heist with gun-waving crooks and everything. The red-brick townhouse where we lived. The thin grassy lawn behind it where my dad taught me how to hit a baseball. It was all there. And it all felt like a strong post I could lean against, that could support the whole weight of my homeward gravitation.
7. The Liffey - Who cares if the water is filthy and so filled with toxic muck that you'd grow a third arm out of your chest if you fell in? Its lazy flow amid the traffic-clogged quays is a blissful reminder of life's inertia. We're all just caught in the meandering flow of time spilling eventually into eternity's dark, choppy seas. There's a freedom in that sort of letting go.
8. The music - I can't believe how many good music venues there are here in Dublin—Vicar Street, Whelan's, Andrews Lane, The Academy, etc. There are constantly good shows coming through. Big bands, indie bands, rubber bands. Went to see Mogwai on Sunday night. Mastodon and Metallica are coming. AC/DC is coming. U2 plays Croke Park in a few months. I need to make some money fast.
9. Trains - There are trains here. And they take you nice places. In Atlanta, the most exciting place to take the train was the airport. In Dublin you can take a day trip to a small fishing village along the coast and catch the train home once your soul has been sufficiently cleansed of the accumulated dust of everyday life. Plus, there's no better place to listen to a Tom Waits album than on a train. Especially if you don't know exactly where it's taking you and there's a surprise in store.
10. Opportunities for international travel - It's remarkable what a deep appreciation the Irish have for traveling. One of my friends here took an entire three months off work, flew to Australia, lived in a rented RV and traveled the entire sprawling outback with his wife. The minimum amount of holiday time an employer can legally give you here is 20 days. I can't wait to see the world with Summer, one dirt-cheap Ryanair ticket at a time. And I can't wait to come back home to Ireland after every adventure.

Hunter (How It Feels)

I've been unemployed and living in Ireland for just over a month. I thought my years of experience getting an award-winning national magazine to cruising altitude would help my chances in the job market abroad. I thought to myself, 'At least I'm not fresh out of school trying to find work, I have experience, I have accomplishments to show. It'll only be a matter of time before I find something, anything.'

I still don't have any solid prospects, which isn't exactly a bewildering predicament. Ireland is in recession and, at this point, employers are so skittish, an unexpected loud noise would send them crawling frantically up a telephone pole. But, if you don't have a bunch of money in savings, you have to get creative in making the cross-Atlantic leap. Also, international job-hunting from the U.S. felt like an exercise in trying to wring milk from a hunk of crumbling driftwood. In all my 29 years, I have never heard such deafening, stultifying radio silence. You have no idea.

So I moved over ahead of Summer to look for a job. She stayed behind so our family would have at least one paycheck to sustain us during the interim period. That approach seemed like the only sensible way to make the transition work—Tarzan taking one hand off his swinging vine and not releasing the other until he had a firm grasp on the next vine. We didn't have any illusions about the Irish job market being an easy nut to crack, and it hasn't been. But the distance has been hardest of all. Before this separation, we'd only been apart a week. It's hard to go from sleeping in the same bed to being Skype buddies and pen pals. But this is the price we both agreed to pay in order to coax our Ireland dream into reality.

My job-hunting has thus far offered me quite an education in management—guilt management. Guilt for leaving Summer behind and experiencing so many momentous occasions without her (we'll definitely still be apart when I turn 30 in late April). Guilt for voluntarily quitting a good job—a dream job—when so many others would be happy to have any job. Guilt that I'm not doing enough to find a job here, even though I'm chasing every relevant opportunity that I come across in town and during my daily job-board perusing.

Maybe I'm not being aggressive enough in my follow-up. Maybe I'm being too aggressive in my follow-up and scaring employers away. I told someone the other day that job-hunting feels like dating—the anxious searching, the compatibility judgments, the interviews, the hoping, the waiting game, culminating in some kind of legal contract that demonstrates the commitment of both parties. Only thing is: I can't adequately express in words how much I hated the dating game with its murky rules and 'wait three days before calling' tomfoolery. Now I feel like I'm doing it again. 'I've already sent in my CV. Will I look too desperate if I call to see if they received it? Maybe I should wait three days or something.'

The best thing about this process has been the way it's forced me to reassess my own humility. Working as an editor for Paste had wonderful perks—paid travel, hanging out with Scarlett Johansson and Jack White, attending music/film/video game conferences and festivals, playing gatekeeper to aspiring writers, TV & radio interviews, etc.—but it eventually takes over your self-concept, crowding out all the deep-down parts that are so much more fundamental to being who you are.

I never want my job to be the most compelling, important aspect of who I am. If the TGI Friday's on Grafton Street likes the CV I delivered and calls me back today, offering me a serving job, I'll say 'yes of course thank you yes please,' I'll even wear the dorky suspenders and flair buttons (Dublin hasn't switched to black polos). It would be a pride-swallowing moment, to be sure, but how wonderful to be sending down one more scrawny root into the Irish soil.

My Afternoon in Howth

[Click on the blue door.]

St. Patrick's Day Thoughts

I considered heading into Dublin this morning. A married couple that I've become friends with rent a third-story apartment in city centre that offers a dazzling panoramic view of the O'Connell Street bridge (see above photo). You couldn't ask for a more ideal vantage point from which to see the parade roll by. Despite the blue skies and gorgeous weather, I couldn't quite bring myself to walk out to the front gate and catch the bus.

Maybe I'm lazy. Maybe I don't enjoy stepping over puddles of beer vomit. Maybe both. The other day I had just gotten off the bus downtown and was heading down the sidewalk when a man stumbling by me in the other direction unexpectedly began to projectile vomit. (Yes, I know, sorry.) What's more disturbing, though, is the fact that it was maybe 2pm in the afternoon. That was just a normal weekday. This is St. Patty's, the apex of falling-down drunkenness and loud-mouthed, squawking-tourist exasperatingness. Ehh, no thanks.

I realize that I've been conspicuously radio silent the past few weeks. After downloading a routine software update, my computer refused to boot up and was completely inoperable for one of those weeks—thank God for my friend Pat the musicology doctoral student who helped me format the hard drive and reinstall the operating system. Then my cousin Jon and his sweet wife Meg came into town, hanging with me in Dublin on the front and back end of their week-long stay in Ireland.

It was nice to have that excuse to forget about the pressures of job-hunting and just wantonly indulge the tourist impulse. We went to the Guinness Storehouse, caught a play at the Olympia Theatre, drove down to Wicklow to visit Glendalough, the oldest monastic settlement in Ireland. Jon and I have only spoken at family gatherings over the years and this was the first time we've ever been able to get to know each other as friends, not just family. It was a special visit. And they were fortunate enough to take home an embossed certificate and large blue ribbon for being the first family or friends to pay me a visit upon my arrival.

Still no job, which means still no Summer. I've modified my expectations and applied to a variety of restaurants while I continue my search for a suitable career-advancing position, if one exists here. The most promising job posting I've come across since my arrival is a Front of House Supervisor position at an incredible arthouse theatre in Smithfield Market called Light House Cinema. Given my deep love—and extensive journalistic coverage— of independent film, not to mention my experience working in the hospitality industry during college, I feel uniquely qualified for the job. I can only hope the recruiter shares my opinion. But I've done just about everything I can—hand-delivering my CV, writing an in-depth cover letter, reaching out directly to the owner of the cinema via email with a personal introduction. Now it's just a waiting game. A hoping game.

In other big news, the time has finally come to leave the beautiful horse-breeding countryside of Co. Kildare and move into a place in Dublin. It's become obvious to me that I'm not cut out for the time-sucking, money-leeching inconvenience of commuter living. Even though I have friends in town who've been kind enough to let me crash at their places when I don't want to take the arduous, late-night bus ride back out to Celbridge after an evening in the city, I'd rather enjoy the luxury of a brisk, moonlit walk.

I've gotten reconnected with a childhood friend named Elizabeth and she put me in touch with a French musician colleague of her's from University College Dublin who had a room for rent on the North Strand just a 15-minute walk from O'Connell Street. I'll pack up my satchel and move in with him on the 29th of this month. The bedroom is a decent size and Summer will be able to stay there with me once I get a job and she flies over, while we're lining up a place of our own.

Despite my lack of a job, I'm starting to feel like I belong more every day. Elizabeth has introduced me to her circle of friends and they've all been incredibly kind and unreservedly welcoming. I've had the thought several times as we've been laughing and joking and raising pints and dancing till 4am and discussing life and food and the messy journey of the atheists and doubters and God-fearing, recovering evangelicals in this wonderful pack—these are my people. I can let down my guard here.

All the years that I've felt homesick for Ireland, this is the human fabric I hoped to weave myself into. The cobblestone streets that cut from Dame Street up to the quays by the silent, black river—their bumpity surface massaging my feet when they're sore from walking the wide city. These are the storied stones I inwardly sighed for without consciously realizing why my heart pumped exile.

Confessions of a Shop-a-Novice

Just over a week living in Ireland, I still feel like I'm practicing cursive with my non-dominant hand.

C'mon, I've shopped for groceries a thousand times. How hard can this be? There's a 24-hour Tesco supermarket a short drive down the road from Springfield. No problem at all. But what a gruesome display of awkwardness I managed on my first grocery-buying excursion, like a man with a crippled leg trying to keep his smile intact while tap dancing on television. If you want to grab a cart outside, it'll cost you €1.50. I had the correct change in my back pocket but couldn't figure out how to properly insert the coins into the handle to unlock the tether. No big deal. I'll just grab a handheld basket inside.

I didn't know the layout of the store so I wandered around, aimless as a young toddler separated from his parent. Down the feminine hygiene aisle. Down the pet food aisle. There's gotta be some orange juice around here somewhere. I grabbed milk. I grabbed a loaf of bread. I glanced at price labels while strenuously trying to keep my brain from converting the totals to dollars. In fact, I tried to shut down that American-tourist lobe of my brain completely—'these portions are tiny,' 'I wonder if this liter of milk would fill a single bowl of cereal,' 'honestly...who names a kids cereal Breakfast Boulders?'

It wasn't an epic shop-a-thon. I simply picked up the essentials—milk, OJ, bread, tuna fish, mayo, butter, cereal, a liter of Coke, pork sausages. Before long, my handbasket was spilling over and I had to set it down every few aisles to let the blood flow back into my fingers. Then I got to the checkout counter where a bored, mumbling teen clerk asked me if I had a Tesco clubcard, but I sheepishly had to ask him to repeat the phrase a couple times before I could make out what he was asking.

Then I realized the store didn't provide bags—paper or plastic. So I quickly tried to pile everything back into my little basket while the next person's groceries came sliding down on top of mine. I felt like That One Guy who holds up the line at airport security trying to get his shoes back on while everyone behind sighs loudly enough for him to hear. While hauling my wireframe basket halfway across the car park to my van, clutching the handle with both hands to distribute the weight, I thanked God it wasn't raining. Just in case tourists have any illusions about what kind of weather to expect over here, the plastic shell covering each cart drop-off station is there to provide some indication.

Next time I will shop like a trained professional. I've already filled out the application for my free Tesco clubcard and will have it at the ready like a six-shooter leaping out of a holster. I will beat down my whimpering pride and ask somebody how to properly insert my coins into the shopping cart handle. Then, when Summer arrives—glory! glory!—I will have the distinguished honor of being the first man in the long march of human history to teach his poor wife how to shop.