A Sort Of Homecoming

Plans

2009-05-10T16:53:00.006+01:00

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

2009-03-31T19:53:00.007+01:00

[Click on the shiniest cloud.]

10 Things

2009-03-25T15:47:00.008Z

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:

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.
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.
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).
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)

2009-03-24T14:58:00.008Z

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

2009-03-18T20:59:00.003Z

[Click on the blue door.]

St. Patrick's Day Thoughts

2009-03-17T14:30:00.008Z

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

2009-02-27T15:32:00.007Z

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.

Song of a Beach

2009-02-23T15:41:00.005Z

Yesterday morning I decided it was finally time to get behind the wheel of a right-side drive car. The experience didn't exactly commence with starting pistols and throngs of well-wishers cheering loudly. In fact, I had to promptly climb out of the car and go back inside to find out how to put the car into reverse (there's a little circular ring beneath the top of the gearshift you have to pinch up). Then, after making the wrong turn off a roundabout shortly after leaving the M50 motorway on my way into Dun Laoghaire, I took a self-guided tour of the surrounding neighborhoods, passing the same vaguely familiar intersections multiple times—only because I liked them so much.

I finally arrived to the church in Dun Laoghaire where I was meeting my friends Esmond and Nathania, but only after Es kindly guided me through the last few turns over the phone. I had a tricky time keeping my mobile against my ear since I was holding the steering wheel with my right hand and shifting with the left. My other option—clutching the phone between my toes—was a non-runner because my feet happened to be occupied with the clutch, gas and brake. Fortunately there didn't seem to be any gardaí (that's 'guard-ee,' Ireland's police force) on the roads anywhere so I was not deported for reckless driving. I caught the last 10 minutes of the service, but it was just long enough to thank God for keeping me alive and Myles' little Opel car unwrecked.

After church, E&N took me to Powerscourt Estate in Enniskerry for lunch. I felt like my eyeballs were in danger of gaining weight from all the gorgeous scenery they had to feast on. The world-renowned Powerscourt gardens stretch off into the distance to Sugarloaf mountain. Even though a blustery wind whipped about, the sun periodically broke through the scattered clouds—apparently realizing what day of the week it was—and we ate a meal that tasted as good as the scenery outside looked.

After lunch E&N dropped me off at a restaurant called Nosh in Dalkey, which is a little ways down the coast from Dublin city. I met up with Brian and his girlfriend Layla who were just finishing up their own lunch. I had a quick coffee with them and we drove to nearby Killiney beach.

I don't think Ireland has Hollywood-style star maps for tourists to purchase, but if it did, this stretch of road weaving down the coast would be the equivalent of Mulholland Drive. Easily the most precious real estate in the whole of Ireland. (Not coincidentally, Killiney Hill happens to be the romantic overlook where Glen Hansard takes Marketa Irglova on his motorbike in Once.)

One of Layla's uncles owns an opulent castle-looking mansion right next to Van Morrisson's place overlooking the sea here and she pointed it out as we drove by. Apparently Van is a cranky neighbor and has sued her uncle over property disputes [cue feigned surprise]. We drove past a gorgeous marble-white apartment complex on Sorrento Road, which Enya owned for a time. Bono also lives in Killiney. With the recession deepening, you can get houses in this area for an absolute steal—just €10 million. Something to shoot for, anyway.

We parked along Vico Road and took a steep row of stairs down to the beach. There were giant moss-covered boulders piled up along portions of the sand and we climbed over them with tenuous footsteps. The sea stretched out into the distance. People walked dogs. Layla reminisced about all-night dance parties she'd attended on this same beach after getting a last-minute text on her mobile close to midnight announcing to the guests where it would be held.

Brian and Layla walked down the beach holding hands and I tried my best to not hijack their moment. They're planning toward a move to Berlin later this year. They have to find tenants for their place in Dublin. They have logistics to sort out. It all sounded too familiar, pregnant with all that expectation.

The stones on Killiney beach are round and smooth as polished glass. I picked up a couple choice specimens as we walked along and stashed them in my pocket. Layla said that she found one as a girl that had the fossil of a tiny snail in it. Maybe hundreds of thousands of years from now one of my bones will end up fossilized in a stone on this beach. If so, I hope someone picks me up and hurls me skipping and bouncing across the cold, black surf.

Easy Does It

2009-02-22T01:56:00.000Z

Let me begin this entry with a confession. I’ve been living in Springfield exactly four days and I've only left the property twice. I haven't even gotten in to the city yet. It's true. Please don’t spit in disgust.

The town of Celbridge (that's ‘sell-bridge’) is about 12 miles from Dublin’s city centre. There’s a bus stop right outside the front gate where a double-decker will collect you and drop you off downtown at O’Connell Street in roughly 35 minutes (unless the driver suspects you’re a tourist and blows right by you, leaving you standing foolishly on the curb with your arm extended—this happened to me in Dublin one night at 11pm during my visit last November). There’s even a spare car here at Springfield that I’ve been invited to use when I need wheels.

It’s not that I’m unexcited about getting in to Dublin city. The vibrancy, architecture and cultural heartbeat of Ireland’s capital were the deciding factors behind Summer and me deciding to begin our journey in this part of the country. It’s just that I feel like the little girl in the Shel Silverstein poem who eats an entire whale for dinner. She takes a small bite, then another, then another. The author’s jovial drawing shows a big Smithsonian-style skeleton beached on the kitchen table in front of her, picked clean.

I’m consciously fighting the urge to rush myself through this process. It’s a lot to absorb, the host of subtle differences that knock you off balance. A different sort of tone beeps when you dial a phone number and are waiting for the person on the other end to pick up. Different voltage and plugs. A sprawling new house to navigate and kitchen cabinets to relearn. The grieving farewell to Mountain Dew—my favorite fizzy beverage. My wife turning abruptly from beautiful flesh and blood to a name in my Skype contact list. Driving on the opposite side of uncomfortably narrow streets.

I borrowed Libby’s car and drove about five minutes into downtown Celbridge to try to open a bank account on Thursday. I was surprised at how nervous and edgy I felt pulling her car out the gate into the left lane of traffic. Turns out I can’t open an account until I have a bill proving that I live where I say I live. Debit cards are called Laser cards over here. The differences aren’t earthshaking—it’s not like I have to learn a whole new language—but they pile up fast.

I was born in Galway and lived in Dublin for seven years before my parents uprooted the family to Southern California. So there are moments of sensory déjà vu, which offer comfort during the transition. I adore the Irish accent and it’s a thrill to be surrounded by it again on a daily basis. I deeply miss my own Dublin accent. Sometimes I feel like my Irish identity withered away when the teasing of my 2nd-grade classmates eventually scrubbed it clean off my tongue. For a long time, I’ve secretly hoped that it might return one day if I could just be around it again. That seems unlikely now. Something tells me it’s gone forever.

I’m taking things slow. I decided it was important to spend this week nesting. Even though I’m living in a pink bedroom surrounded by furniture and decor so gaudy they’d make my grandmother wince, it’s my own place. There are framed pictures of Summer everywhere. And my Xbox 360 is plugged into a 52" hi-def plasma TV that was already installed above the window. It’s obnoxiously high and hurts your neck to crane back to watch it, but did I mention it’s huge and hi-def and plugged into a video game console?

The two youngest of Libby’s six kids—Michael and Myles—still live at home. Michael is a sophomore in college and shares my love of video games. Earlier tonight we played Horde in Gears of War 2 for a couple hours. The glorious discordance of the girly pink bedroom and the aliens we messily sawed in half with our chainsaw-equipped bayonets made me smile deep down inside.

Last night I borrowed a tux jacket, bow tie and cummerbund in order to attend a South Dublin Hunting Club ball with Libby, Myles and a few of their friends. After dinner an awesomely cheesy dance band called The Black Knights performed to a floor packed with ecstatic revelers. The band played a two-hour long, spitfire montage of pop songs that ranged from The Bangles to Paul Simon to Journey. The world felt tiny. Even when they inevitably played “Brown Eyed Girl,” it took a second for me to register the Irish connection. Every last song written for the whole world to share.

Due to persisting jetlag, I had a bit of a headache raging and I think I nodded off once at the table, but my new friends refused to let me fade completely. Pints of Guinness kept showing up in front of me. Then shots of Baileys mixed with butterscotch schnapps. Then a bottle of Corona. Then I swallowed something far more intoxicating: the realization that I’m in Ireland to stay.

Before my friends coaxed me onto the dance floor where “Sexy Back” blared at eardrum-shredding decibel levels, an elderly chap at our table named Pat sidled up close to me. He knew the basic details of my move to Ireland and that I'd worked for a music magazine back in the States. We gushed about our shared love for Tom Waits. Pat grinned the whole time like he was squatting on a secret too wonderful to tell. His demeanor only sobered when he acknowledged the grisly economic situation and the scarcity of jobs here, but he was proud of me for following my heart. He wished me luck. I knew that he was on a first date, which appeared to be going extremely well.

In the minibus on the way home at 4am, Pat and his date were holding hands, joking and giggling like schoolkids. The contagious happiness I saw on his face didn’t cost him a single euro. And, employment hurdles be damned, neither will mine.

Springfield in Pictures

2009-02-19T21:04:00.001Z

[Click on the horse's mane.]

A Bedroom Window Overlooking

2009-02-19T12:35:00.000Z

Day One

2009-02-18T23:34:00.000Z

On the 6 1/2-hour flight in to Dublin, I read The Road. I already have trouble sleeping on planes, but Cormac McCarthy's book—the tale of a father and son desperately trying to survive in a brutish post-apocalyptic America—made sure I kept awake. The dreams would've bared razor teeth, for sure. Though I didn't overthink my reasons for picking it up at Barnes & Noble a couple days before my departure, the plot has interesting resonances with my current situation. A difficult journey. The life-support that is family. And, to be sure, the pervasive, world-swallowing gray. In the book, ash. In this new country, sky.

As our plane neared the runway, it crept low in the sky over fields so green they appeared black. Pale light barely crouched on the horizon. My groggy eyes stung, searched unblinking through the morning haze for my new home. The city lights glowed orange like thousands of tiny beacon fires.

Even life's most poetic moments eventually screech headlong into the mundane. My plane touched down and there were bags to fetch, a not-quite-familiar airport to navigate. During my move planning, I'd come across testimonials of people moving to Ireland from the United States who said they'd been held up for hours at customs, waiting to enter the country. They'd been interrogated Jack Bauer-style, asked to provide 18-24 months worth of bank statements, birth certificates, marriage certificates, signed resignation letters from former employers in the States, rental or purchase papers for their residence in Ireland, on and on.

After flashing my Irish passport on the way in, I never saw another customs agent. I piled my bags on a cart, almost high as my head, and pushed the car with one hand while I dragged my monstrous rollerboard behind me with the other. I'm sure I looked like a one-man gypsy caravan. I kept expecting someone to stop me and ask to see all the papers I'd meticulously prepared and stashed in a manila envelope. But no one cared, as long as I didn't run my cart over their foot.

Brian, a friend of mine who, up until recently, played keyboards in a band called Bell X1, picked me up at the curb and we somehow managed to squeeze all my stuff into his small-ish four-door BMW. Granted it took us about 10 minutes, testing out different methods of putting together the storage puzzle, sliding, twisting, swiveling—sliding and swiveling, swiveling and sliding. Finally we squeezed in the last instrument case and were on our way. Brian grew up in Straffan, the town right next to Celbridge in Co. Kildare where I'll be staying. He didn't have any trouble finding Springfield.
The Springfield estate belongs to Libby, an American-born friend of my parents whom they met while living in Dublin in the early '80s. Decades before she moved in, Irish author Aidan Higgins grew up in the house and wrote about it in his 1966 prize-winning novel Langrishe, Go Down. The manor house on the property is a majestic, imposing place with centuries-old oil paintings, antique furniture, chandeliers and two different wings that stretch the length of the house. Once you pass through the tall, wrought-iron gate from the road, you follow a gravel drive that winds through lush green horse pastures all the way up to the front door. It's a breath-stealing approach.

I'm writing this post at the kitchen table, looking out onto the back courtyard and stables, the latter of which her son Myles has converted into a garage and workshop for his motorcycles. A mottled cat yawns and stretches both paws forward on the windowsill, apparently empathizing with my jetlag. There's no shortage of animals around here. More on that later.

The sky is a teeming, impenetrable gray and appears to be threatening rain. I haven't learned its tells yet, but I'm smart enough not to trust it. Eventually I'm going to have to walk into town to open a bank account and I know the clouds are waiting for me to get halfway there so they can welcome me to Ireland with a freezing, pissing downpour. That's ok. I'm happy to be here. And if the rain can make the pastures look this sublimely beautiful, Summer should pray it drenches me as well.

Two Hours Until...

2009-02-17T22:29:00.000Z

Learning To Fly

2009-02-17T21:39:00.000Z

I have never jumped—will never jump—out of an airplane. But this morning I walked out my front door and felt like I'd forced my body through the doorway of an aircraft at cruising altitude. I could almost feel the rush of air crashing into me like the grill of an 18-wheeler. I hear a loud humming in my ears but it’s not an airplane engine. It’s the blood coursing through my brain, trying desperately to process emotions that are thick and heady and utterly confusing. All this and I'm not even jumping out of a plane, merely boarding one.

One of Summer’s coworkers roped her boyfriend into driving me to the airport. He owns a pickup truck, which I needed to transport my junk—a 70-lb. box of clothes and shoes and toiletries, a 70-lb. clothes suitcase, two acoustic guitars, a case holding my uilleann pipes and whistles, my obnoxiously heavy and overstuffed backpack, plus a rollerboard containing two Xbox 360s (one retail, one dev kit), a Wii balance board and a flat-screen display.

Once I’d loaded everything into the bed of the truck, I came back inside and looked around one last time, set the alarm, left my house key on the breakfast bar and charged out the front door. In case you’ve never intentionally locked yourself out of your house, it’s a queer sensation. Then I pulled the door shut behind me, thinking here we go. Thinking what am I doing. Thinking holy shit. Thinking please God let this work out ok. Thinking take a deep breath and get in the truck. In order to open myself to the life that awaits, I must leave behind a perfectly good one.
One of my big fears in this process has been the logistical dot-connecting of how to get my stuff across the ocean to Ireland. I kept imagining this nightmarish scenario of showing up at the baggage checkout counter, only to be met by some grim-faced lady shaking her head unsympathetically, telling me I couldn’t check this or that, that TSA baggage-handling regulations dictate that I’m screwed because of reasons x, y and z.

But despite my overweight items and the sheer volume of stuff piled up on the luggage cart, the only hitch in the process was that one of the bags weighed 72.5 lbs, which meant I had to pull out a heavy winter jacket and carry it through security. Oh, and just to be sure that my wallet didn’t exceed the airline’s weight requirement, United Airlines relieved it of $900 to cover overweight and additional bag fees. Not bad, if you consider what it would cost Summer and me to ship all those items over in a FedEx plane.
I’m in the air right now on my way to D.C. Still trying to make sense of what I’m feeling. I’m scared to death of the immediate question marks: Will I be able to find a job? How long will Summer and I be apart? Will it feel like home until she arrives? I think the feeling of excitement is on its way shortly. After all, this is the leaving part of the journey, the wrenching goodbye to security and status quo and familiarity. The arriving part of my journey still lies ahead.

My flight to Dublin leaves D.C. this evening at 7:45pm. It will carry me through the night. If I’m able to fall asleep—doubt it—I’ll wake up in Dublin on a brand new day. That nighttime passage feels oddly appropriate. As the sun creeps into the sky tomorrow, the world will appear to start over and my life will have changed. I myself will have changed. Because my arrival in Dublin—the city that watched me learn how to crawl and walk and speak and play—will mean that I found my way home after too many years away.

Cloudy Day Hopes

2009-02-11T22:20:00.000Z

Sheets. As in: the rain outside this Starbucks window is whipping down in ____. As in: I wish I were home nestled in bed beneath the comforting weight of heavy ____. The world is dusky and gray and wet. There are lakes in the parking lot whose surfaces ripple as the wind hurries past.

I'm in Dublin. Not that one. The one in Ohio. The one my good friend Jameson calls home. I wanted to pay him a visit before I left the country. A momentary reprieve before the world-rattling life change of my departure for Ireland arrives—less than a week away now. It's been reassuring to be here and realize that bonds of friendship are more than capable of surviving geographical distance.

It makes me sick that Summer won't be able to follow until I have a job. How do I savor the beginning of this adventure without my closest friend beside me? How do I care for her from such a great distance? How will our relationship weather the dismal storm of forced separation, without so much as a timeline for her to mark the days against?

I've chosen to leave security behind and go hunting for a place that feels like home. I've lived in too many cities that felt like stopovers. Where every billboard seemed to flash a digital countdown clock. I'm ready to settle in and send roots deep into the soil, even if great risk is involved. There are countless educated people unemployed in the world right now and I voluntarily quit my job to go clawing after a dream. There are no guarantees of success or happiness or smiling fate or divine blessing.

At my going-away party an older friend asked me why I'd choose to move over to Ireland during a recession. I told her there was never a good time. It would never be easy or comfortable. It would never be fun to say goodbye to friends. It would never be enjoyable to figure out how many bags you can check with an airline and how heavy and large those bags are allowed to be. But there are gray skies in Ireland just like there are gray clouds in Ohio. And on those gray clouds we're invited to write our technicolor hopes in bright, looping cursive. Mine is that Summer will join me quickly. That my best friend will on the next plane. Or at least the one after that. I'm determined to make it so.

I Saw The Sign

2009-02-05T22:26:00.000Z

I doubt she'd ever use the phrase to describe herself, but my mom is a Christian mystic. She loves parsing the meaning of signs and omens—occurrences in daily life that might offer hints as to what God intends for our lives here on earth. I'll share an example of something my mom would consider a sign: last Friday, on my last day as a full-time employee at Paste, the incredible singer/songwriter Dar Williams (click here and shut your eyes) taped a live session in our office's podcast studio. Coincidentally, Dar just so happened to be the subject of my first feature for the magazine, written from my college apartment in 2002 before I was ever invited to move to Atlanta and be the first full-time hire at Paste.

I was nervous and awkward during that phone interview and even apologized mid-conversation for my lack of polish (to which she sweetly replied, "Well, so far so good, eh?"). I didn't know how to record a phone interview. I didn't have a fancy recording device. I just set up a cassette recorder and turned on the speakerphone. I fudged my way. I faked it. Somehow I'd convinced fate I held a winning lottery ticket, all the while I was trying to redeem a chewing-gum wrapper for the prize, hoping no one noticed until I was out the door with my oversized check.

I don't know if Dar's performance in the office last Friday was God putting an exquisite bookend on my time working at Paste. Either way, it felt like a gift.

My mom flew into Atlanta on Monday night for a quick 24-hour visit. Summer and I had driven a rented minivan up to my parents' home in Lynchburg, Va., a week earlier to drop off some furniture and boxes, but we'd missed her because she was out in Arizona. It was good to see her. I braced myself before her arrival because I knew there'd be a marathon chat session and I get exhausted just thinking about that much uninterrupted conversation. But it was good. I knew it would be. Our plans to move to Ireland have given her the chance to relive her own experience moving there with my dad in the '70s. And there are similarities between our situations. My parents had been married roughly the same amount of time as Summer and me when they left the U.S. (Another sign, perhaps? But of what?).

Summer made an interesting comment after my mom left—something about how we all convince ourselves that our stories are so unique. We want to feel special. We want to feel like our stories are more interesting than the next person. But it's all been done before, even thrilling moves across great expanses of water. My own parents have experienced these same feelings before we ever got the crazy notion in our heads. It's not a depressing fact either. If they hadn't moved to Galway, I wouldn't be an Irish citizen, I wouldn't be able to make this leap. Even as we try to strain toward individuality, there's strong thread connecting our lives and experiences.

Jesus himself went on a journey across water. A storm rose and he commanded the winds to be still. The winds obeyed. He and his followers passed to the other side safely. It was a sign that he was in control. It's a sign that I should be ready for strong winds and whispering calm.

You've Got A Pint There

2009-02-01T18:22:00.000Z

Last night Summer and I drove over to The Grange Pub in Decatur. The official reason was our farewell send-off party. But, honestly, who ever needed an official reason to hoist pints of stout and revel in the company of dear friends. Like a relaxing vacation where you eventually—finally—lose track of what day it is, the servings of Guinness ran together, punctuated every so often by a creamy, cheek-tingling shot of Baileys. Glasses were never empty for long. Giddy conversations only paused the length of a contended, nursing swallow.

Our friends wished us well, rubbed their hopes against ours until the excitement crackled like static electricity. My coworkers at Paste showed up sporting white undershirts and jeans. A few even completed the uniform with hooded sweathshirts and flip-flops—an ensemble I'd worn into the office more than enough times to coin a dubious fashion statement. I felt incredibly special. People had conspired on my behalf. Nick even borrowed 'product' from his wife to nudge his hair up into something resembling a fauxhawk. A better-looking version of my own.

These kinds of events are like seeing your life play in flash animation before your eyes—a living, breathing slideshow of the story you've been fortunate enough to live. I tried my best to soak up each moment as it dissolved into the next, as this was surely the last time I'd see all these precious people in one place—Paste coworkers and a smattering of people with whom I'd played Irish music around town or hobbled through Irish-language studies—all together, crowding in to wish us luck. I wonder if they realize that their presence in my life feels like the fulfillment of some person's 'best of luck' wish from years ago. Back when I abandoned the comfort of my college digs in Gainesville, Florida, to steer a 17-foot Ryder moving truck north on I-75 to Atlanta.

Around two in the morning, Summer and I eventually had to leave The Grange. You know when it's time to go. Things start winding down and the prospect of home tugs at your mind. That's what pulled us out into the chilly night-time parking lot. That's what's pulling us steadily closer to an island in the North Atlantic where I gulped my first breath. I can't help but feel like some part of me has been holding that same breath all these years until I could scheme my return.

After leaving The Grange and arriving back home, Summer and I crashed onto the pullout couch in our living room (we've already sold the two beds in our house). But holy crap: that pullout couch—even with its flimsy mattress and pesky cross-bar digging into our lower backs—felt like a plush feather bed. And we were king and queen, tucked inside the lavish robes of our own uncertain destiny.

For Sale: 1,000 Tiny Anchors

2009-02-01T16:39:00.000Z

“What makes a house grand ain’t the roof or the doors / If there’s love in a house, it’s a palace for sure / Without love, it ain’t nothing but a house / A house where nobody lives.”

Tom Waits is croaking his throat-lumping ballad “House Where Nobody Lives.” I feel like the guy has his leathery face pressed up against our dining-room window, peering inside at the empty expanse where you’d typically find a kitchen table. There’s nothing there, just a bunch of assorted junk cluttering our floor, most of which will end up on a thrift-store shelf near you in the coming weeks. Some stuff just isn’t worth the trouble of selling. Who’s going to buy my little stuffed Will Shakespeare doll? What about my Brookstone pen with the light-emitting tip that lets you scribble notes in dark movie theaters? People don’t normally go to the Regal 24 to watch a notepad.

Summer and I have been dumping everything we own, getting ready for a move to Dublin, Ireland. We might as well be taking a feeble hot-air balloon across the Atlantic because weighty, clunky possessions have been deemed a threat to our passage. Clothes and instruments will join us. Our IKEA desk hutch, couches and king-sized mattress will huddle together on the pier as we sail off. They will blubber inconsolably, holding each other, mourning the life they’ll never get to enjoy on that foreign shamrock shore. With each piece of furniture that leaves our house in a stranger’s pick-up truck, we feel lighter on our feet, a yoke is lifted. We perk up a little straighter, like kids eager to pass the height test so they can board a roller coaster.

It's been surprisingly easy to part with our stuff—even stuff we've loved. We sold our beloved 2005 Volkswagen Jetta to Summer's younger sister. We actually stood together in the driveway and watched it motor off like two parents who's only child is leaving for college, following its sleek blue frame with our eyes until it weaved around the corner and disappeared from view. Just like that, it's gone. And, by the time you've walked back inside, you've forgotten what the comfy interior felt like, how nice the stereo sounded on roadtrips. As that car—and its groin-kicking monthly payment—drifted away, the reality of our future home in Ireland drew closer.

The soul needs room to breathe. So we root out the clutter and feel fresh oxygen rushing in to take its place.