Several of my previous blog posts have highlighted written words and paintings on walls: murals of writers and poets and their meaningful words. Murals and writing on walls hold political and cultural importance and meaning everywhere, especially in Belfast. When we first set out on our day trip, we stumbled upon an interesting question posed on the wall: “Love, Peace & Happiness is this possible in Belfast…? Discuss.” Is this possible in any place? Is this possible for humanity? I did not realize the strong implications of these words and how prevalent they are to Belfast’s culture and history. Even though we have discussed these conflicts in class and seen museum exhibits, I was not completely aware of the full extent of the tensions and feuds between Nationalists and Unionists.

During the Black Taxi tour, Pat did a great job at illuminating the past tensions-the Troubles-and the modern conflicts between these two sides. The mural of Stevie Top Gun McKeag had several different meanings depending on the side-a memorial for a valiant hero versus a violent murderer. Then, Pat took us to the peace wall, a physical divider between the two communities. He gave us permanent markers to sign the wall, giving us a chance to write our own names and words on the peace wall. It seems like signing the wall is sign of peace not only in Belfast, but a petition for peace for the whole world. Perhaps, the most important fact of murals and writing on walls is how it holds meaning and it makes people discuss them.

Transition. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “transition” as a “passage from one state, stage, subject, or place to another: change” (n. a. “transition). Today, we left our dorms and temporary classroom at University  College of Dublin and set out for Belfast. On the AirCoach, I peered out of the window at the passing landscape–blurs of greenery with picturesque farms, houses, and churches. These places that hold meaning to people who live there or have a connection to the area simply pass through my gaze–figures of a place with no fixed physical connection, but constantly changing images. Like being lost in a narrative, an imaginary time and place, my mind is enchanted by the moving spaces.

Sometimes I speculate about the towns and houses that move past. What is happening in that place in the split moment that I travel by? I try to find a static image in the flux of moving landscape, creating my own story and projecting my own meaning. For instance, we drove under a bridge where a herd of cows were crossing–where were they going? Who did they belong to? I can still recall the image of the cows crowding across the bridge even though the image crossed my gaze quickly as the bus continued its route.

Transition also foresees a new place, so that the moving landscapes and volatile images signify a progression to another place. Each passing image brings the thought of a new place. The motion of the bus and the quickly passing landscape incites my excitement, wonder, and curiosity. 

It was our last full day in Dublin–a rainy, dim day with strong gusts of wind. The Chester Beatty exhibitions gave us a brief shelter from the rain and wind. Outside the Chester Beatty Library, we encountered some beautiful gardens with elaborate flowers and hedges. The middle lawn area had converging concentric lines of brick pathways. I watched as about half the class wandered in the garden lawn, following the brick lines step by step. Observing their progression through the gardens, I started to think of our own trek around Dublin and reflect on our steps through the city. We wandered around the streets in a single file line or sometimes in pairs, experiencing Dublin and creating our own memories.

Throughout our excursions through the streets of Dublin, we have been following Google Maps, tourist maps, tour guides, local recommendations, each other, and bus/rail lines. Like following the bricks lines in Chester Beatty gardens, we have mirrored the footsteps of past memories, historic events, and literary imaginations. These conceptions of place have shaped our directions and footpaths through the city, influencing what we see and where we go.

I’m interested to see what we will experience and where we will go in Belfast. What paths will we follow? How will they shape our conceptions of the Irish culture? As my solo-trip to Scotland approaches, I’m getting excited about making my own experiences and memories; I wonder what paths I will follow and where my travels will take me. It will be an adventure!

After the UCD festival, Sara, Jolie, and I ventured out to Sandycove for a relaxing dinner by the seaside. The buzz of the city can be overwhelming at times, navigating through the endless stream of people with the background sound of loud bus horns and chaotic construction. It was nice to spend an evening in a quiet and peaceful area filled with the sea breeze and rhythmic waves. As I looked out over the ocean, my eyes lingered on a quote painted on the wall from James Joyce’s A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man: “The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering.” I felt that this quote nicely embodied my experience of the tranquil atmosphere in Sandycove. It is interesting that in just a few miles a place can drastically change from a bustling city to a quiet seaside town.

I’m also continually enamored with all of the literature and poetry that I see around Dublin. It is everywhere–written on walls, painted into murals, spoken by locals. I will miss being surrounded by a culture that places importance on literary figures, literature, and poetry. When I tell locals in Dublin that I’m here studying literature, they reply by listing their favorite Irish authors and asking about the works that I study. It is different in the States where people ask about the outcome of my studies: “What do you want to do with an English Literature degree?”

There are 14 bronze plaques on the streets of Dublin that identify a place where Leopold Bloom visits in Joyce’s Ulysses. The plaques exist physically in place, but also signify a fictive place. As we left the Archeology Museum, I cam me across one of these bronze plaques. On our free day, Sara and I meticulously planned a day that followed the tracks of Stephen Daedalus and Leopold Bloom–a Ulysses pilgrimage. We followed the footsteps of Daedalus in Sandycove, Sandymount, and Dalkey, pretending to dive into the Forty Foot, climbing up the Martello Tower, and walking into eternity on the Strand.

Later in the afternoon, we followed the steps of Bloom in the city. We bought lemon soap at Sweny’s Chemist on Lincoln Place, enjoyed gorgonzola sandwiches and burgundy at Davy Byrne’s (the combination does not complement one another by the way), and searched for a racy novel around Merchant’s Arch (aka. our own version of Ulysses). After our 13 miles of walking it was nice to relax at the Oval Bar for dinner (also mentioned in the novel).

We ended the night at an art and poetry party complete with swing dancing and big band music (not quite Edwardian, but still fun). One of my favorite parts of the evening was having a poem written for me. A poet was sitting at a typewriter with a sign that read “Fresh Poems.” After telling the poet about my day, he wrote a poem in about 15 minutes that perfectly captured my experience of Dublin and the concept of place. Here are the first lines of the poem: “Steps followed around a city / As though it were a map, / As though streets can hold stories / Steeped into the brick.”

In his poem “Lake Isle of Innisfree,” W.B. Yeats writes “a small cabin build there, of clay / and wattles made: / Nine bean-rows will I have there” (lines 2-3). When I read this poem again for class, I couldn’t help thinking of the similarities between these lines and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, where Thoreau builds a small cabin in the Concord woods. Like Yeats’ “bean-rows,” Thoreau details his attempts to grow and harvest beans in “Bean-fields.” I was curious to the connection between Yeats’ poem and Thoreau’s Walden.

When I explored the Yeats exhibit at the National Library, I found Yeats’ copy of Walden in a display case. Although I was annoyed that the exhibit spelled Thoreau’s name “Henri,” I will thrilled to see this copy not only because it relates to my academic interests, but it also enlightened me of the place connection between the two writers. It was a serendipitous moment for me to stumble upon a piece of Thoreau in a Yeats exhibit in Dublin (especially considering some of his negative depictions of Irish immigrants).

Both Thoreau and Yeats portray an idealized place-a secluded house surrounded by nature and simplicity. Where Yeats’ place exists in his “heart’s core,” Thoreau experienced this place first hand. However, it is interesting that both works have similar images of a place. How do two different writers share a place or the idea of a place? We have discussed this notion of shared places in class, but I’m also interested in the shared places of Yeats and Thoreau. It seems like Yeats’ image of the cabin and beans directly references Thoreau’s Walden and his project to “live deliberately;” but why? I’m looking forward to further exploring Yeats, Thoreau, and their shared place.

A Samuel Beckett bridge, poem, and play,
that is how I spent my day.

Samuel Beckett’s works, especially early works, are greatly influence by Joyce; even in “Eneug II,” the poem I read for the reading in place assignment, we can see how Beckett uses Joycean phrases and techniques, like “feet in marmalade.” It is interesting how these authors interacted, reacted, and reinvented the literary styles of Ireland’s past writers and their own contemporaries.

On the Dubliners walking tour, the guide explained that Joyce added everything in his works where Beckett stripped everything away. The Beckett Bridge embodies this description with its minimalistic design of the harp, Ireland’s national symbol.

After seeing the Samuel Beckett Bridge, we went to a literary pub crawl. At the first stop, the actors performed a skit from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: the two characters wait for Godot, but do not seemingly remember when or why they are supposed to meet Godot. While they are waiting (which may be in vain), they lose track of time, consider killing themselves, and fall asleep. As a part of Theatre of the Absurd, Beckett includes black humor and existentialist concepts, like what happens when human existence has no meaning or value. In some ways, I think these ideas can relate to some of the anxieties of the 1916 Easter Rising where the political leaders and poets did not know if their actions would be meaningful. Were they actually waiting for an Irish Republic? How long would they wait? What, or who, would be the final straw in gaining an independent Ireland?  

The guide on the Kilmainham Gaol tour used three words to describe the old prison: segregation, surveillance, & seclusion. These three words reminded me of a documentary I watched called Solitary about solitary confinement in the modern prison system. Solitary confinement greatly impacts the physical, mental, and emotional stability of the confined prisoner. Imagine being locked in a small prison cell for hours, days, or even months–stuck inside the walls of the prison with no escape. The limitations of your physical body induces an overactive mind, constantly plagued with thoughts of the past and your looming execution. While I walked around the prison grounds, I could not help thinking of how these small cells and the seclusion of the prisoners’ bodies impacted their mental and emotional turmoil.

Where did the minds of the revolutionaries and poets wander in the confinement of their cells? Perhaps, they spent time thinking about the Easter Rising; could they justify their actions as moral and imperative for a free Ireland? Or did they revolt in vain? Would their families survive without them? Would there ever be a free Ireland? How would they face death and what would meet them on the other side? All of these questions, thoughts, and emotions spilling out of their minds and filling up the limited spaces of their secluded, segregated, and surveilled prison cells.

You can see from my picture that Sara and Jolie look very somber at the prospect of solitary confinement in the Kilmainham Gaol.

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The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines “displace” as “to remove from the usual or proper place.” It is interesting that in our discussions of place, we have not encountered this word (or so I believe), which is heavily connected with place or rather the absence of a specific place. The Francis Bacon exhibit at the Hugh Lane Museum got me thinking about the concepts of displacement; his art studio abstracted from its original place to inside the exhibit hall. The Hugh Lane Museum website states that archaeologists “mapp[ed] out the spaces and locations of the objects.” The phrase, “mapping out spaces,” stood out to me. How can one map out spaces? When does displacement occur? How do concepts of place change when a place is literally displaced into another place?

As tourists and travelers, we have been “mapping out spaces,” finding routes on the bus system, following Google Maps (or our free fold up maps), and asking locals for suggestions. In these moments, we have not applied value or meaning to the space, but we contemplate the possibility of applying meaning and value; thus, we “map” the space and measure the spatial relations between ourselves and the concepts of place. Can we apply meaning to this space? Think of all the spaces that we have passed on our walks through Dublin–the spaces that go unnoticed or ignored. We consciously and unconsciously choose to map our spatial surroundings so that we can apply meaning and value– we can find place in the displaced space.

Because I have an active visual imagination, I create vivid scenarios and settings in my mind when I read. Even if I have visited the location of the narrative, I continually reshape and shape my idea of the setting. On the James Joyce walking tour, I enjoyed when our guide read a snippet of the Dubliners in the place where it physically occurred (or the place where Joyce meant for the scenario to occur).  I found myself standing in these places and listening to the guide read while I reconstructed my physical surroundings- imagining the place as if the story were happening around me. Not only did I project the story onto these places, but the physical places also reshaped previous mental images. When I first read “The Dead,” I created a fictive place in my mind where the story ends. My original concept of the place changed when the guide led us to the Gresham Hotel, the actual setting for the end of “The Dead.” This reordering of my imaginary place based on the physical place of the fictive story shows the volatility and complexity in the concept of place. If I have a chance to reread “The Dead” in the future, I’m sure that my memory of the physical place will alter again.

Another aspect of the tour and the Joyce museum that I enjoyed was seeing the small table where Joyce collaborated with his researchers to complete Finnegan’s Wake. The amount of research that Joyce put into his works was incredible and to see the round table and his small room where these works were imagined was a powerful experience.

We found him!

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