On our tour today we saw hidden caves in limestone deposits where secret Catholic schools sessions were held. After seeing those on my tour today I thought about the story Poteen Maker. In it a teacher makes poteen during school hours and disguises it as science experiments. During the tour, our tour guide explained that poteen was made by an elderly woman around that part of town. It was illegal to sell poteen and because it has a very strong alcohol content it most people dilute it with water. One clever, poteen maker decided to sell water to go with the poteen and give the poteen away for free. No law prohibits the sale of water.

When we discussed the Poteen maker I thought of how the new teacher at the end of the story could be a representation of the poteen maker in the past or possibly things coming full circle. One of the things that hold the narrator back from going in the school is nostalgia. He has nostalgia for his old school just the way it had been. Maybe, some part of the narrator does not want his hopes dashed about the new school by venturing in and seeing the changes that have been made. he wants to preserve the memory of the school as he knew it in his mind. That idea ties into place and one molding a place into something meaningful with by the creation of memories and familiarity.

For this character, the condition of the school and the behavior of the teacher is all he knows. He is familiar, he is comfortable, and because of nostalgia, he does not want to disturb the place he has created in his mind.

When I read The Dead I felt that it could be interpreted in many different ways. One piece of the text that seemed to have an open interpretation of Gabriel’s interaction with Lily the caretaker. Was his interaction lecherous or was it just an innocent conversation that just became a bit awkward. Gabriel himself is a character who comes off as feeling both superior and inadequate to others. He is very self-conscious and that can make reading his interactions with others a bit vague. We can never really know what Gabriel feels about something because James Joyce seems to give information but leave out just enough to make it open for interpretation and without resolution.

Some of the themes in the book story that we discussed were religion, love, and consciousness. One of the biggest themes is love and desire and the loss or absence of that. Gretta has to deal with the loss of the Michael Fur, someone who she felt had died of a broken heart over her. In reality, he most likely died of tuberculosis exacerbated by the standing out in the rain.

This theme and loss and death is woven into the text through the aging aunts, Gabriel’s dead mother, and Michael Fury. The life and death around him make him think about his own role and feelings towards others. He learns about his true feeling for his wife and the short comings he has when it comes to interactions with others. Many of Gabriel’s internal struggles are exemplifies through the poetic devices used in the text. Especially, at the end in his moments of desperation and devastation. Repetition, imagery, inversion, simile, and alliteration were all used to convey the emotions in the last paragraph.

In class, we discussed the episode one of Ulysses: Telemachus and its impact on the novel as a whole. One thing that I found interesting was that one can travel through the city of Dublin according to the locations and events in the book. Apparently, James Joyce was very meticulous and deliberate about what he wrote and everything has a meaning and a purpose if it is present in his writing. I learned that the book Ulysses is a mock/parody of the Odyssey. For one thing the main character, Steven Dedalus has a Greek name that references to Daedalus, Icarus’ father. I also learned more about Joyce’s inventive writing style. He made something new with his writing. Through his work, one can definitely see a consciousness and a shift from traditional writing.

Today, the 16th of June was also the Bloomsday celebration. It celebrates June 16th, 1904, a day depicted in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses and is names after the central character in the story, Leopold Bloom. We traveled to Sandycove and saw many Bloomsday celebrators donning straw hats with black sashes, three piece suites, and long dresses. We visited the tower where Joyce had last stayed before he had left Ireland. There was a reading of the Ulysses going taking place on the roof top. The reader put so much life into the words and similar to No’s Knife gave meaning to what can sometimes seem like meaningless words.

After that, we enjoyed the scenery and watching the local festivities of Bloomsday.

Today started off great with a delicious breakfast and a short and spiced class. Our readings were a W.B Yeats poetry selection. We discussed the various and complex imagery he used to describe the war and the people involved in Easter,1916. I decided to read Easter,1916 because Yeats spent part of his life in Howth and that is where we spent the day.

The flora and fauna in Howth were spectacular. Diana, Chelsea, and I saw many birds diving for fish. One bird let out a screech of joy when it finally caught a fish after several unsuccessful attempts.

Howth was absolutely astonishing. Never have I hiked on a mountain side/ cliff adjacent to the ocean. While I was up there I though about the cliffs by the ocean at my grandfather’s house in Jamaica. They are not as high up as the ones in Ireland. Sometimes it is very surreal to think about how similar the two islands are even though they are an ocean apart. When I was up there I felt very connected, almost as if I had been there before. This for me shows that place is very complex and not something that can be easily decerned. How can I feel so connected to a place I have never been to? As soon as I saw the cliffs, rocks, ocean stretching for miles and felt the breeze I immediately thought of home. This showed me that there’s is an in between place where one can make a new and unfamiliar place their home because it reminds them of their actual home.

Today we visited the Kilmainham Jail. I have had never experienced something so eerie before. Especially, since we were right on the grounds of the jail and not in a replica of it I could feel more of a connection to the tragic events.

When I was in middle school I visited the Holocaust museum in Washington DC and thought I was extremely informative and heart wrenching there was still a detachment because it was not in Germany. We were viewing items from the Holocaust preserved in cases from Germany. In this tour, we saw and stood in the very place where hundreds of people died and were killed. Walking through those hallways and belong able to stand in those jail cells in tandem with seeing personal items that belonged to the inmates made such a huge impact on me.

This experience also made me think of the Francis Bacon exhibit and how that was moved from England to Dublin. In the case of the Holocaust museum, the sense of place and belong information was removed once it was removed from Germany. The impact is not lost but there is still a sense of detachment. But in the case of Francis Bacon, a sense of place was restored by moving the studio to Francis Bacon’s home.

Overall, I really enjoyed the tour and appreciated all that I learned. I learned that the owners of the Irish famine were caused by the absentee landowners sending away all the food.

Last night we went to the Musical pub crawl.  We learned a lot about traditional Irish music and the instruments used throughout different pieces.  For example, the fiddle (violin), guitar, bodhran, Irish harp, and  uilleann pipes. We learned that the Irish harp had been banned by the Queen in attempt to restrict Irish culture.

One of this things that I really enjoyed was the dancing. The woman preforming for us during the second pub of the tour mentioned how the Irish dance is very similar to tap dancing. I remember in The Dead by James Joyce there was a part where he talked about Irish traditional dance and my mom has recognized the name of the dance and said that in Jamaica people do this dance. I enjoyed being able to make connections in both of my homes: in Atlanta and back in Jamaica.

Refereing back to the violin, it made me think back to my childhood when I used to play the viola. I played viola in middle school and seeing Dermot play the violin made me think of  when I used to tune my viola and chalk the bow.

Through out this trip I have been linking my life and culture in Jamaica and America to life and culture in Ireland. Knowing  that  the Irish culture has influences Jamaican culture it is interesting to see how those two countries are so connected.

Today we visited the Hugh Lane art gallery. This piece by Harry Clark is made with stained glass. I read the informational brochure and found out that Harry Clarke can be credited with reviving the medium of stained glass which suffered a serious decline in Ireland. I  tied this piece of work to place because Harry Clarke took initiative to revive the art of stained glass art. This shows that he truly cared about his country having its place in art and participating in the art world.

The work of art titled The Eve of St Agnes was made using double layered glass, repeated lay acid etched to produce diverse tones and vibrant colors (Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane).

I also saw the Francis Bacon Studio. I thought it was interesting that even though it w as moved from London to Dublin it still has a sense of truely belonging here because Dublin is where Francis Bacon is from.  this has a lot to do with place because one could argue that Dublin did not shape Francis Bacons work. I really enjoyed this exhibit because the art studio looks frozen in time. Time is insignificant to place regardless of how much time goes by memory will not change or at least not very much. So for Francis Bacon’s studio time does not affect the way the studio impacts viewers. It is especially timeless. So, Francis Bacon’s studio embodies a certain liminality because it has physically occupied more than one space and place.

Today was one of the busier days of out trip. We visited the Abbey Theatre for No’s Knife, saw a statue of people who suffered thought Irish famine, saw a ship, that took Irish emigrants to America, and participated in a James Joyce walking tour.

This morning in class we discussed major themes in modern and post modern literature. Themes such as death, class consciousness, existentialism, illusion versus reality, etc.  I spoke about The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield published in 1922 and how it is about Laura does not seem to empathize with the Dead man or his family but rather romanticize his death and collect this new experience for herself.  We spoke about that to lead into the topic of liminality present in Eveline. How there are many moments where Eveline herself seems to be caught between two places, neither fully in one nor the other.

We also discussed Beckett’s Text’s for Nothing and it’s obscurity. It being a sort of stream of consciousness with out plot

I thought of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and how fulfilling one’s basic need allows for one to ponder existence and consciousness. Maybe that is something that separated Joyce and Beckett from Ireland. Because of the paralysis and because the people were not elevating into those higher levels of thinking due to their socio economic status preventing them from doing so.

We finished off at the Abbey Theatre and it was quite interesting to see and hear Beckett’s words being acted out. The performance made me understand the texts more because The actress Lisa Dwan uses so many different inflections in her voice and body language.

This morning, during class we discussed animal rights since we had visited the Dead Zoo the day before and we discussed the ethics of taxidermy. We discussed how the powerful and wealthy are usually the ones to be the people who poach and are not generally thinking about animal rights or human rights for that matter. I began to think about how people in third world countries think about animal rights. Most of the time people in third world countries can not think about animal rights because they do not have the resources to take care of their own lives/rights much less the rights of animals. So, socio economics has a lot to do with animal rights or lack thereof. In most third world countries, it is pretty common for animal abuse to occur because there are many stray animals and most “domestic” animals live outside. Many of the animals are poisoned to try to keep the population s down. So even when people from third world countries move to a first world country it can be difficult to change their views on animal rights due to the way they grew up and diet changes like becoming a vegan or vegetarian can be difficult because food is rooted in culture and living without meat or dairy is sometimes not an option. This makes the morals and ethics of animal rights even muddier than it is for people whio live in first world countries.