Dis/Locate

Snowing in SoCal!

2007-01-12T20:50:00.000-05:00

This year was the first time in over 100 years that it did not snow in NJ at all in the month of December. Even I, who hates being cold, was saddened not to get my little burst of snowy winter before heading back to the sunny warmth of SoCal.

This morning though, I woke up (in California, mind you) at 6 am to the sound of rain. I peeked outside my window, and sure enough, it was raining, which is pretty rare here. I smiled (it's always a little exciting when it rains here) and went right back to bed.

An hour later, I woke up to people chatting loudly outside my window - and it didn't stop. I couldn't figure it out - I've only lived here for five days, but so far, it had been a pretty quiet neighborhood in the mornings. And it's Friday, so it's still the real week and the kiddos should have been off to school.

Not thinking too much of it, I got up, got ready for my day, opened the blinds to the patio as I was getting breakfast and saw:

SNOW!!!

Real snow in my little patio in California! Sure, it was already melting (that's what those insanely loud raindrops were), and it looked at first like the salt they lay down on sidewalks and streets in places where "it's snowing" actually means something, but this was real snow (a real snow dusting), not just hail (often confused with snow by Southern Californians, it would appear) and not just the imagination (again, that happens here from time to time).

There was even enough snow for my neighbors to make the tiniest snowman (snowperson?) I've ever seen. And there was snow near the pool area. I've never actually seen a pool with water in it, that could have been used the day before when the temperature was in the 70s, with snow anywhere near it (in Jersey, and I'd assume everywhere else where it snows, pools are emptied or covered for the winter).

Somehow, being in California for the snow made it almost as exciting as if I had never seen snow before, either. I wanted to call some of my friends and tell them to look out the window, but it was too early for that (so I called my aunt and mom back east where it was three hours later instead). But the weirdest part was that they didn't have snow - not in La Verne, a few towns west, and not in Los Angeles, either. So they too were excited to see the pictures (and although they'd heard it snowed, as they are not CA natives either, they didn't trust reports from Californians - they needed to hear from someone who's seen real snow before. And it helped that I had photographic evidence).

Snow in my complex!

My actual apartment - with a "dusting" of snow.

The Tiniest Snowman Ever

The Tiniest Snowman Ever - in perspective (it's that tiny little blob at the top of the stairs. See, it's a very teensy snowman.)

My gnome wants to go play in the snow, but he's not allowed out until after the gardeners come.

New Home

2007-01-09T19:43:00.000-05:00

The movers came yesterday and I am closer to feeling at home in my new apartment. And today my heat was fixed, so hopefully I won't have to force myself out from beneath 14 layers of blankets to get up in the morning (and it only got down to the mid-50s in my apartment without heat the last two nights. I can't imagine what I would have done in a climate that actually gets cold in January).

Here are some pictures of the new apartment as is. It looks like a disaster zone, but I'm hoping that will improve as I unpack.

Living Room

Dining Area (I'm also turning it into an Office Area)

Kitchen

Bedroom

(That whole far wall is a closet. Not bad!)

Bathroom

(Notice the NYC Subway map shower curtain in the mirror - that was a gift when I moved here from JSnoBu and it has set the decor theme in my bathroom since then - it's all framed maps of public transport systems - NYC, LA, DC, the Venice vaporetti [the water buses], and this year I will be able to add London Underground, Paris Metro, Dublin Luas and San Francisco BART maps to my collection!)

The Patio

(Management promised me the gardener will clean up the leaves this week. One thing I've never noticed about CA until coming back after so many months away - it looks like Autumn here now. Most trees still have their leaves, in yellows and oranges, instead of the bare trees back east this time of year. It's like a second Fall!)

Re-locate: Starting Over

2007-01-09T19:27:00.000-05:00

OK, I swear I'll finish the Ireland Saga at some point, but for now, I might as well catch you up on the present.

I came back to California last week, and was staying with my friend Sara until my apartment lease started on Sunday. On that morning, I drove from her home in La Verne, about four towns west of Upland, my town-to-be, thinking about what was about to happen. I had been so excited the night before, I barely slept. I was about to move into my very own apartment for the first time. I've never lived completely on my own before, without roommates or family. It was somewhat bittersweet, because a few months ago, I was planning on moving back here with Conor, and would have been sharing this experience with him. Even when I looked at apartments when I was back in September for my exams, I told people I was looking either just for myself or for my fiance and me (I indicated that the doubt was from the visa process, and not that I was thinking of breaking up with him, of course, but still, he was on my mind as I looked).

But instead of making a home with him, this transformed into a chance to start fresh. A new situation, a new year, and a new home. It all felt promising.

I was driving along Foothill Boulevard, which is actually the historic Route 66. As I got to Claremont, which is just west of Upland, I saw three vintage biplanes, in bright oranges, yellows, and reds, flying in formation overhead. As they passed, three vintage cars, mostly in black but with red and yellow panels, drove past me in the opposite direction on Foothill. A block later, as I was still smiling about the funny scenes, three old-school cruiser-style motorcycles drove past me.

I decided (and chose not to let reality get in the way) that this was a parade for me, welcoming me back to Upland and celebrating my new home and fresh start.

Favor: The Movement

2006-12-07T13:25:00.000-05:00

We interrupt my longwinded saga of my voyage around Ireland to bring you this emergency request:

Please vote for The Movement to be played at the Oxygen Festival this summer!

Below is the text of an email I just received from my friend, Matt, (technically Conor's friend, but don't hold that against him!), who's in a band called The Movement. They're really good, and lots of fun, and it would be amazing if they could play at Oxygen, which is the biggest music festival in Ireland and always has an incredible lineup. (Check out The Movement's MySpace page here )

Here's how you can help:
Click here.
Write "The Movement" in one of the boxes
Be automatically entered for passes to the festival! (It's a win-win situation!)
Get your friends/family to do the same!

Here's Matt's email request, so you can hear about it in his own words:

"I need a bit of help. I'm trying to get our band into next summers' music festivals, and currently the organisers of Oxygen have a wish list where you can vote for your 5 favourite bands to play thefestival on their website. We'd really appreciate it if you could take asecond to vote for us.
go to http://www.mcd.ie/os/ and put ' The Movement' in one of the boxes.
cheers for your help
matt
p.s. pass this on to anyone/everyone you can think of"

Wuthering Heights, TXTs, and a Bit More Truth

2006-12-04T11:22:00.001-05:00

So back to the drama in my life, because my travel journal is riddled with it at this point in the journey. And I have to say, I think some of it was certainly exacerbated by the wilds of Donegal.

(Photo: Road trip in Donegal)

Co. Donegal really was striking, the "savage" and "terrible" raw beauty the guidebooks describe it as. The palette of colors throughout the county seems wider here - the greens are harsher, and there are streaks of earthy reds and browns ripping through the bogs. Where peat has been cut, it looks like a giant raked his fingernails across the land. There seem to be many more mountains tearing through the skyline, as well. We could just picture Heathcliff, hair whipped by the brutal winds, eyes wild with passion and grief, searching desperately for Catherine in the rawness of these moors (yes, yes, I know we're in Ireland and not England, but I can't imagine even the moors of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights being more desperate or desolate than this).

There is something about this wild, rugged, and harsh beauty that is at once stunning and terrifying. Whereas the beauty of California, the sunshine and perfect days (and yes, even the brilliant, streaky sunsets apparently augmented by the layers of smog), make me lighthearted and happy to be alive, there is a passion in the beauty of Ireland, and particularly in the Northwest, that demands you confront your emotions and inner demons. It is a beauty that demands the whole truth, and will not let you be at peace with yourself until you've acknowledged what is savage in you, as well.

And so, as we drove through Donegal, I couldn't help but think of all the confusion I was feeling about the whole broke-up-with-the-fiancé thing. On the one hand, Vincent had been a big confidence boost, I have to say, and I was receiving multiple text messages from him daily - most of them too embarrassingly gooey to even mention (although Jen and I, and even her dad, did get a good laugh out of them. They were very sweet and well-intentioned...but I hadn't even known him for 24 hours, so they couldn't be taken all that seriously). This confidence boost made me think that perhaps my lingering feelings for Conor were really fears of change, or of never finding anyone else. Vincent was a reminder that change can be fun, being single can definitely be fun, and that I probably (hopefully?! I don't want to jinx myself for all eternity) will in fact meet someone else one day.

But on the other hand, the whole Vincent thing was also a stark reminder of just how sad I was about Conor and me. As Jen pointed out, here I was, getting daily texts (love letters for a technologically savvy and attention span-depleted generation?) from Vincent, whom I'd met a few days earlier, but had not heard a word, spoken, written or TXTed, from Conor, whom I'd known for years and had until recently been planning on spending the rest of my life with, since the day after he and I hung out, and it just really shouldn't have been that way.

As the days passed, I shifted from thinking of Vincent to thinking of Conor again, and I was clearly not as over Conor as I'd hoped I was. I missed him, but I wasn't sure I didn't miss him because I would miss Ireland, too, and all that Ireland means for me (because so much of it is entwined with Conor). Maybe that was why travelling around Ireland made not being with Conor hurt so much.

And his silence, although it isn't fair to contrast him with Vincent, bothered me too. And so all of a sudden, I was so mad at how Conor had handled/been handling our break up.

[**It's funny, months ago when this was all happening, I was still very protective of Conor - I didn't want to say anything bad about him, and I especially didn't want to say anything to close friends/family who hadn't met him or spent a lot of time with him, because I didn't want them to think badly of him. I was probably a little embarrassed, too. But now, after all that's gone on and all the time that's passed, I'm not that concerned about it.

So here's what actually happened: although Conor and I were definitely on the rocks, I was still coming to Ireland and we were still hoping we could make it work between us. However, as I mentioned in one of my early posts, I realized while in CA taking my exams that I was just really excited about my Ph.D. progress, about being back in CA where I love the place, I love my friends, I have the resources I need to do my work, I live a lifestyle I enjoy, etc. And all this made me realize that being with Conor required me to give up more of myself than I was willing to - and that being with him no longer made me happier than all of these things. And blah blah so on and so forth.

Ah, but Conor must have felt that way himself, or something similar, because the day before I was supposed to leave for Ireland, the day before, he calls me - and he only does because we haven't spoken in a week and a half and I finally emailed him to point out that we do need to speak as I was meant to leave the next day, and he tells me he just doesn't think it's going to work. And he didn't think he had to call to tell me, because he figured I'd have sorted that out on my own based on the fact that we hadn't spoken to each other in the last week and a half.

Now, I had indeed already worked that out on my own, and in fact, changed my plane tickets so that I was flying out two weeks later, but since we hadn't spoken in the last week and a half, he didn't know this.

So, while I was glad he did the dirty work of breaking up - and, to be quite brutally honest, I did sort of milk that situation to my own benefit and his definite detriment, which I'm not entirely proud of, but what the hell, he deserved it - I was a bit shocked to discover that the man I had almost committed to spending my life with was that much of, let's face it, a giant coward. I mean really, that's how you break off an engagement? You just stop ringing the person? What are we, in seventh grade? He might as well have passed me a note...at least that would have been vaguely respectable in light of the whole long-distance thing.**]

Ok, that was a tirade I hadn't planned on making public, but I guess if I'm bothering to do the whole heart-on-my-sleeve blog thing, I might as well lay it out there. And, although that whole bit in between the asterisks is definitely a rant with the full weight of the last two months behind it, it is in fact in keeping with just what I was feeling at the time, because I have my journal in front of me, and exactly what I said was:

"So he's a jerk and a chicken. It just seemed a horribly immature way to deal with this. I couldn't imagine, if the situation had been reversed, and he was putting his life on hold to come to the US, I would have done the same. I mean, just out of feeling guilty I would have at least waited until he arrived and then tried to see if we could make it work.
But I guess those are some of the biggest problems between us - the differences in both the way we think people should be treated and in how we want to be treated ourselves.

Part of me also thought it was coincidentally convenient - not only did he get a two month extension on his dissertation for breaking up with his fiancée [oh yes, he did], but what would have happened if we hadn't broken up, since he hadn't finished before I came, and thus was not ready to move to Belfast, as had been our original plan? Would I have moved in with him and his parents?! Oh, hell no.

Anyway, I definitely drove around Donegal feeling passionate - and quite a bit rage-y.

When I came to Ireland for the first time, two years ago, it was right after my dad died. Travelling by myself in this lush, vibrant, but at times desolate country forced me to face my grief (well, some of it - the real onslaught of grief would come the following fall) - and comforted me in those times with the absolutely amazing beauty and life of the country. This time around, I am mourning the loss of a relationship - obviously it's very different from losing my dad, but it's a significant loss for me nonetheless. And being in Ireland makes so visible the connection between intense grief and intense joy - the kind of grief that makes knowing joy possible.

[And we're back at my dissertation topic...]

And it really did feel like I was mourning for our relationship. I decided that it was hard, painfully hard, to let it go, but that it had to be done. Jen and I had a long talk Friday night, and I was bemoaning not know what was right, or what I should do. Jen was very helpful - she reminded me [and I repeat it here for posterity, and because I'm sure I'll need to be reminded of it again] that sometimes love isn't enough, and that life really does get in the way of it sometimes. But that doesn't mean it was wasted - there's always something to take away from a relationship, or something that comes with it. I was also scared that I may never know when a relationship is "right" again, because for so long I had thought this one is [Obviously. Or I never would have considered marrying Conor. And so all the people who say, "You just know when it is right" infuriate me, because I did know, and it turns out I was wrong. (Plus, I'm just going to go out on a limb here and assume that at least some of all the other divorced or otherwise parted couples who thought they too would be together forever "just knew" at some point as well - so please, before anyone ever says that to me again, come up with a better answer. Because that crap does not cut it.] Anyway, Jen had a more specific way of looking at it, and although I am sure there are other reasons, at least this is the start of a legitimate list: she told me, 'You'll know it's right when you're with someone you don't have to subsume parts of yourself for.'

Ok, I obviously should have known that already. And most of me did. But hearing it from someone else made it much clearer. This relationship had died."

[I do feel the need to warn you: that last statement will undergo revision before the end of my trip. I had fun, but boyoboy it was a rollercoaster at time!]

Backstory

2006-11-29T11:35:00.000-05:00

I started writing my next blog entry ("Wuthering Heights, etc.") and realized that perhaps I should back up some first, to avoid confusion. I've been a bit coy about the whole Vincent thing, haven't I? Way back when it happened, or even when I was keeping somewhat up-to-date on the blog, it felt somewhat inappropriate to dish gossipy details. But now that it's been nearly two months since it happened, it doesn't seem like a big deal, so what the hell?

We totally had a fling. A PG-13, confidence building, first time since the fiancé break-up fling mind you, but a fling nonetheless. So I'll go back some pages in my journal to provide you with the Vincent backstory.

(Imagine the sounds of a plane engine, a la Lost, as I transition.)

Vincent, the Frenchman who had been living in Ireland for five years, and I officially met in Blue Zone, the groovy wine-and-jazz bar in Dingle I was raving about. However, Vincent had noticed me earlier in the day reading on the pier while he was working on his boat (and apparently projected onto me all sorts of what-he-wants-in-a-lifelong-partner attributes, because otherwise there's no accounting for his level of intensity). We chatted for a while (about religion, politics, my broken engagement, his own failed loves, our hopes and aspirations, our shared appreciation of sunsets, Jon Stewart...Ahh, the French. No topic is taboo.), and I met many of his friends (apparently it's quite the hangout for ex-pats from the Continent. Many of his friends were from France, Spain, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. By the way, apparently he and I are going on a vacation to Bulgaria one day, and he might buy me a house there. See what I mean about intensity?). He was actually a very cool guy, and soon enough, we were joking around with each other as though we'd known each other for...well, for more than three hours.

Then we walked down to the pier (although it was now locked, Vincent has a key since he keeps his boat there) and among the boats, Vincent pointing out the ones he would love to one day own. Then, because I was shocked that there were real sand-beaches (as opposed to harbours or sea cliffs, all that I had seen) on the Dingle Peninsula, we drove to a nearby beach (I did make him promise he wasn't a deviant psycho or anything first...I take my safety seriously!), which was really, unbelievably romantic. The sea was perfectly flat, reflecting the nearly-full moon, the teensiest of waves lapping against the whitest sand (I think the moonlight had lots to do with that...I have a feeling it wouldn't be quite as romantic in full sunlight).

The next day, he picked me up to drive me to Tralee, but first drove me all around to his favorite places on the peninsula. He had made me a mix CD and a CD of photos of sunsets he had taken in his travels. He, um, also asked about whether I want to have kids one day (When I told him I want to adopt, he insisted we adopt older kids who otherwise would go overlooked. Wonderfully sweet of him, but a wee bit psycho, too. I won't even get into the other crazy plans he had for us.) He wanted me to stay, or join him later in my trip, but alas, I absolutely had to meet Jen and her dad (and with increasing urgency as Vincent's interest seemed to grow exponentially - and inexplicably). He waited with me in Tralee until it was time to board the bus, and before the bus had even left the parking lot he had sent me a gooey sweet text message. The texts continued throughout the week, each one more romantic (and hence crazier).

Paired with the mix of cheesy love songs, which we played in Jen's rental car, my 24-hour boyfriend provided us with much comic relief throughout the rest of the trip. (I was always very nice in response...I figured, hell, I got a huge confidence boost out of it, why shouldn't I boost his confidence as well? This was all very good while he was on one side of the country and I on the other, and I was going back to America in a week. Still, I did at times have a lingering fear that he would somehow wind up on my doorstep in the States one day...) It was just unfortunate that I didn't share any of his (completely inexplicable!) amorous feelings. Because otherwise, it would have been the most romantic fling I've ever had!

***(sounds of airplane engine - the backstory is over. Too bad I'm not on some fabulous Hawaiian island, though)***

Down the Pub - a photo essay

2006-11-27T23:59:00.000-05:00

After entirely too much time spent trekking through County Donegal in desperate search of warm food, Jen, Mr. S. and I successfully found a teensy little pub absolutely packed with paraphernalia in the town of Adara. It was adorable, the winner of several James Joyce "Authentic Irish Pub" Awards (it was too soon after my postcolonialism qualifying exam to let the notion of the existence and expectation of "authenticity" go unremarked, but I will spare you the boredom of repeating my rant), and served excellent cheesy garlic bread. However, I'm too tired to tell you more, so I'm just going to show you pictures instead.

(Advance apologies for some blurriness - rain had gotten onto my camera lense and I only noticed it after a few blurry photos)

Those are all the pictures from the Donegal pub. There were lots more I wanted to take - but then other customers came in and I didn't want to disturb.

The following pictures are from other trips to Ireland; I'm including them because I had trouble loading pictures into my last blog so this is really an experiment to see if there is a limit, or if there's some other reason or if I am merely technologically challenged. Enjoy!

Gravity Bar, Guinness Factory, Dublin (above and below)

Traditional Music Session in Doolin, Co. Clare (above)

The Bushmills Distillery (in Bushmills) on the Antrim Coast

(above and below)

The all-purpose bar, hardware and bike shop in Dingle (above). Similar to the all-in-one donuts, burgers, and Chinese food restaurants so inexplicably popular in California, I guess?

Outside a pub in Cork
(above and below)

(poster in Kilkenny, above)

And that was your thirst lesson in Irish!

Donegal

2006-11-27T20:07:00.000-05:00

Wow, if you're reading this you are either eternally optimistic or very, very bored at work. In either case, I thank you for your faith that I would one day finish my damn story. (I'll explain what I've been doing in the meantime when I finally get up to talking about November. You may want to check back in early 2007?)

Anyway, after tearing through Counties Galway and Sligo at breakneck speed, Jen, Mr. S. and I finally made it to Donegal City (By "City" they seem to mean the four roads that comprise the town and come together to form a diamond shape with a big statue in the middle of it). After a gray, rainy day, we pulled into town just as the sun was appearing - which was apparently just in time to set. We drove around until we found a suitable B&B (not as easy as the guidebooks made it sound - Rick Steves, I am losing faith in you), and while Jen settled in to take advantage of the big bathtub with bubble jets in the room we were sharing, I headed out for a walk along a trail that lined the river, hoping to take advantage of the little bit of sunshine.

(Photo: at the end of the trail, the river widens, letting out into the sea. Beyond that land is the Atlantic Ocean. It really was pretty.)

After we were all rested, we headed into "town" to find a restaurant (the quest for nourishment was a recurring theme on our journey, and every day it became increasingly difficult. Perhaps we should have prioritized eating while shops were still open? But that didn't occur to us.) Eventually, we found a place that was open, and it turned out to be really nice - and warm, which was a plus in my book. We split a bottle of South African pinotage (my second in three days - and in my entire lifetime), and by the end of the meal, we were feeling quite festive, so we set out in search of a pub. Although there were a few (no matter how small and middle-of-nowhere it may be, every Irish town seems to have at least a few pubs in it), we were in search of live music, and there was only one that seemed to fit the bill that night: The Scotsman, which ironically enough boasted the only traditional Irish music in town. (And by traditional, they definitely meant pub-songs-tourists-know).

It was an interesting place, filled entirely with one bartender; several drunk regulars , who no longer had teeth and kept sliding off their stools crowded around the bar; two musicians in the middle of the big room; an entire busload of retired Canadians on holiday; and one guy probably in his late 20s sporting a black tracksuit, red Pumas, a blondish badass buzzcut, and two pints of Guinness.

So not quite what we were hoping for, but we stayed for a few rounds and it was good fun (I wouldn't go so far as to say it was good craic - but we did laugh a lot, even if it was mostly cynically). Occasionally the barkeep would take a break from tending bar to come join the musicians on the bodhran, and she was quite good. And then one of the Canadian women, at the encouragement of her friends, got up and bleated out a sad, sappy song about when one's old wedding ring used to be new. It took all our energy not to put our hands over our ears (or her mouth), so after that we decided to call it a night.

The next morning, we headed out for the Glen Gesh Pass, which Jen and I had been hoping to hike. It was supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in Europe, described in Lonely Planet as almost Swiss Alpine-y. Our B&B owner insisted we go first to Slieve League, the highest sea cliffs in all of Europe, and since they were somewhat on the way, we thought it would be fun. The day kept looking promising - hints of blue sky and clouds lightening up around the edges. But whichever direction we drove, we seemed to be heading stright back into the dark, angry skies.

Ah well, this meant there were plenty of fat, twisting rainbows to be seen along the route, so it wasn't too bad.

The road up to Slieve League was so narrow and windy I was certain the car would tip right over the edge. It was also dotted with what must surely be the heartiest sheep in Europe, in order to withstand the sideways sleeting rain and winds like knives constantly cutting through the mountains.

(Photo: Hearty - and stubborn - sheep)

As we approached the car park, we saw a beautiful arc of a rainbow pouring out from a cloud right into the sea. Jen sped up, hoping to take a picture of it before it disappeared, but by the time we parked and got out of the car, massive raindrops had started falling. We snapped a few pictures before we were soaked through, and got back in the car - but a second later the rain stopped, so we got out and made our way over to the edge to get a better view of Slieve League.

(Photo: Just before the rainbow disappeared and it started to pour)

Even though the view was mostly obscured by clouds, it was still breathtaking: rippling cliff walls capped by clouds, and off in the distance, we could see the sky brightening and another rainbow floating along Slieve League towards us, skimming the clouds and the sea. We waited for it to approach, but it was difficult- the wind whipped up suddenly and pushed so hard our eyes watered and we had to brace ourselves to keep from falling over (and Mr. S. wouldn't let us stand by the edge anymore. Apparently people fall over the Cliffs of Moher to their death every year, so we heeded his caution - this is even higher and scarier). At least the wind dried our previously soaking clothes in almost no time.

(Photos: Slieve League)

We got back in the car and decided what we needed was a cup of tea. We decided to drive to Killybegs, the next town, because we'd seen many signs for it and it seemed much larger than anywhere we'd passed through since leaving Donegal City.

When we got to Killybegs, maybe a half hour later, the "town" consisted of about three buildings, none of which were open. We finally found a single living soul, who informed us our best bet was Glencolumbkille, which turned out to be about 40 minutes away. At this point, we were not just cold and hungry, we all also had to pee desperately. But it turns out Glencolumbkille had nothing on Killybegs. We decided there had to, absolutely had to be something in the next little dot on the map.

Somewhere on the road Ardara, the next dot, we realized we were in fact driving over the Glen Gesh Pass, the very pass we had hoped to hike. We were at once crushed we were driving over the big hiking adventure we'd both been looking forward to since before we even got to Ireland, (as hiking it now would seem a bit anticlimatic, since we'd already seen the views) and puzzled - hiking along the side of the road is definitely not what either of us thinks of when we think of "hiking."

We were definitely let down. But, since the weather sucked and this whole thing was taking much, much longer than we'd anticipated, and the whole need-to-eat-and-pee thing was wearing on us all, we decided it was probably for the best, hopped out at an overlook and took some pictures, got back in the car, and called it a day with respect to hiking.

(It was pretty and it did look a bit like the Swiss Alps. But still - bit of an overstatement in the guidebooks, I have to say. And we ran into buzzcut tracksuit boy from the night before, which was at least comforting in the sense that it made us feel as if we were on some tourist trail, albeit a very sad one, and not completely out of our minds).

(Photo: Me and Jen being blown away by view and wind. Awful photo, but the only one I have of the two of us from this trip.)

West Coast Drive-by

2006-10-24T22:46:00.000-04:00

Meanwhile back in Dingle a few weeks ago...

I was meeting my college roommate Jen and her dad in Galway on Wednesday, so much of Wednesday was spent traveling. (I repeat my earlier comment that traveling around Ireland by bus takes forever and I don't recommend it. I have no idea why that didn't occur to me two years ago when I spent six weeks travelling in that manner.)
Vincent offered to drive me back to Tralee where I would then be able to catch a bus to Limerick ... and then to Ennis ... and finally to Galway. He picked me up early in the morning so we had time to drive around all of the Dingle peninsula, which was wonderful. When I was in Dingle two years ago the weather was awful, so I only got to do pre-arranged van tours rather than explore on my own. (I did an archaeological tour, though, which was pretty cool - we looked at lots of pre-Christian Celtic sites and early Christian sites. I'm going to include some pictures because I don't have any from this trip...and pictures are always more fun than no pictures!)

Standing stone - Cross slab

Ogham Script - ancient Celtic writing

Ring forts

Driving around the island was amazing, though. Vincent took me to see the Blasket Islands and the Sleeping Giant just off the coast of An Daingean (incidentally, the residents of the town of An Daingean/Dingle - as opposed to the whole peninsula - were voting recently to change the name back from the Irish An Daingean, as it has been called for the past year or so when Irish became mandatory on the peninsula, to its English name "Dingle"). We could also see the Skellig islands off the coast of the Ring of Kerry peninsula in the distance. Then he drove me through Conor's Pass (even joking about the irony is too obvious), which cuts between Mount Brandon, the highest mountain peak in Ireland, and the other mountains on the peninsula. The buses don't drive that route, because the road is too narrow and windy in many places, so I never would have been able to see it otherwise - and it was stunning. It is a glacial canyon, with seven sparkling glacial lakes at the bottom, and it is apparently always shrouded in mist - even for Irish misty standards, this is spectacular.

Many, many hours after Vincent dropped me off in Tralee, I stepped off the bus in Galway. And to my surprise, Kennedy Park, the park in the middle of Eyre Square, which is the main (only?) square in Galway, and which has been barricaded by all sorts of makeshift fences and scaffolding and under construction for at least the last two years since I've been coming to Galway, was open, fountains flowing, sun shining (the surprises just didn't quit) and full of pedestrians. It was great.

I lugged my big ole' backpack...and roller carry-on - I decided to spare no luxuries like real towels, a winter coat and a hair dryer on this trip, and so overpacked - through Galway to Nun's Island, one of the little islands in the middle of the River Corrib, which runs through the city centre. As I was crossing O'Brien bridge, I saw my favorite home in Galway - this adorable backyard right on the river with a cute little lush green yard and flower beds. It's a B&B, and I always think to myself that one time I will remember the name and make reservations there. I never remember the name.

I turned the corner and immediately saw the sign for our B&B, where Jen and her dad had made reservations. It was on the tiniest street imaginable, and was very dingy looking. I immediately felt bad, because I had assured Jen that every B&B I have stayed in in Galway has been perfectly adequate and we would probably be fine no matter where we booked. Now, she and I, who have done the whole hostelling thing (as late as the night before, for me), would likely have been fine anywhere, but her dad is a full-fledged grown-up who expects a little more out of his accomodation than a too-small bunk-bed and twelve strangers cum roommates. Whoops.

But when I walked into St. Martin's B&B, a wonderfully friendly woman named Mary showed me to an enormous room, which Jen and I would be sharing, and barely left me time to drop off my things before she whisked me into the dining room for a cup of tea while I dried off and warmed up (you know how I just described it as sunny in Eyre Square? Well by the time I'd made it to the B&B - maybe 15 minutes later - it was pouring). And the dining room's bay window overlooked the lush garden and flower beds I've been admiring for two years! We were in the B&B I always want to stay in!! Yeah! And inside, it was enormous - Jen's and my room had a flat panel tv, a regular tv, three beds, a dressing area - with skylight, a huge bathroom, and two different kinds of hairdryers. It doesn't get any better than that...

Jen and her dad showed up a little while later, and after settling in, we hit the town, our main priority being dinner. Unfortunately, it was about 8:30 and we had forgotten that nowhere in Ireland serves food after 8 or so. After a long wild goose chase, we finally found one place serving food (McSwiggan's I believe, if you're ever hungry in Galway at night and don't want Abrakebabra, Supermacs, or Eddie Rockets, which are all Irish for fast food). The next day, Jen and I had time for a quick run through the city and then it was off to Sligo, where we had initially thought we'd spend the night. However, it was pouring by then, Jen and her dad weren't particularly compelled by any of Sligo's sightseeing points (Yeats stuff and seaweed baths - which I do highly recommend, though) and as I'd been to Sligo a few years ago, I didn't feel the need either, so we headed off for Donegal, where we were hoping to go hiking the next day.

I was very sad not to stay longer in Galway, which after Belfast and Dublin is where I've spent the most time in Ireland, and is my favorite city here. Mostly though, I was sad I didn't have time to eat at Couch Potatas, which is probably my favorite restaurant in all of Ireland. But we did cover a lot of ground, bombing through the West Coast. And boy oh boy, did the rental car make it easier than Bus Eireann!

Back Again

2006-10-19T11:53:00.000-04:00

My apologies for slacking on the blog. It turns out internet cafes were harder to come by in Ulster than in the other regions, and I ended up spending most of the trip in the north. I'm already back stateside (and thus have very little excuse except for being busy - and lazy - these past few days for not updating you all since I returned). But in order not to overwhelm you, gentle reader, I'll just post an entry a day with excerpts from my travel journal to jog my memory. And cause not too much spectacular has happened since I arrived home, so at least now I can stretch out having something to say.

In the meantime, though, I want to thank all of you who have reached out to me in support these past few weeks - I've had tons of emails and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. There were certainly parts of the trip where things just, well, sucked, or I was lonely, but it was helpful to know you were thinking of me. (And just to reassure you, I was doing much better by the end of the trip - I think I did indeed successfully reclaim Ireland for myself, so get ready for St. Patrick's Day and don't excpect me to substitute the phrase "just takin' the piss" with "just kidding" just yet.)

Oh, and while this has only a little bit to do with me having a good time in Ireland, for those of you wondering if you correctly read between the lines in my last entry, well, all I can say is it's not all bad being single ;)

Tralee, Dingle, and my Mystery Shipwreck Explained

2006-10-07T13:19:00.000-04:00

The rest of the Tralee rose and sculpture garden was beautiful as well - below are a few pictures. I have to say, there wasn't a whole lot to see or do there (and here I picked Tralee because it seemed like a fairly big enough town - after all, it had a cinema and both a Tesco and a Dunnes Stores. I mean, short of Abrakebabra, what more could you ask for in an Irish town?).

I did have lunch at an O'Brien's Sandwich shop - it's an Irish chain that's sort of Starbucks meets gourmet-style Subway. And the cups they use look like regular clear frappacino/freshly squeezed juice cups, but they're made with 100% corn, and they biodegrade completely within 50 days of composting. How cool is that?! Cheers to O'Briens!

Afterwards, I hopped the bus to Dingle/An Daingean, settled in at the Grapevine Hostel and then walked down to the harbour to take advantage of the sun that had miraculously popped out after many morning showers. I sat and read a bit while watching the boats come and go and taking many, many photos (I have a bit of a thing for water and/or boats).

And look what I found! The very same shipwrecked boat I took a picture of 2 years ago - and posted in a blog about a week ago. Later that night (3 October - internet access has been few and far between so I'm a bit far behind) I went to the Blue Zone, a wine and jazz bar Liam recommended, and met this guy, Vincent, who told me he had seen me earlier on the pier while he was working on his boat (although I wouldn't have recognized him from it, I had in fact seen him earlier on his boat). Anyway, although Vincent is from France, he's been living in Dingle for the last five years (OK, there is nothing funnier than a Franco-Irish accent. He would speak with a French accent but he'd be saying very Irish things. And for phrases the Irish tend to use a lot, he'd even have an Irish accent down. So it would be like 'Lalalala-French accent, like, y'know.' He even described Fungie, the famous dolphin of Dingle, as a 'right fecker, that one. Very cheeky,' in a french accent.) So I asked him about this boat, and apparentlyit's been shipwrecked there for 15 years, right in someone's backyard, essentially. It was wrecked when the person who lived there was burning lots of peat one day and the smoke disoriented the captain, who thought it was fog, ran aground and wrecked his boat. He was pissed at his neighbor, so got out and left the boat to rot in his backyard. And they're still feuding over it today, apparently.

Shipwreck in Dingle, 2006

The Rose of Tralee

2006-10-03T13:52:00.000-04:00

Wow, that last posting was incredibly maudlin (I had no idea I was going to get so personal. This feels a little weird, since I actually gave out this link - I'm a little self-conscious. But I'm going to be as honest as possible, because this is meant to be my travel journal. Plus, when Conor asked for the URL, I told him he couldn't have it because I needed to mention him. So at least it's less weird; I'm not thinking of him as my audience [I'll give it to him one day...when our history is a little more history]). To pointedly change the mood, I'm posting some pictures from the rose garden in Tralee, home to the song - and the pageant - the Rose of Tralee.

Check it out! Purple roses. How cool is that? I love rose bushes - my parents used to grow them when we lived in South Orange. But I've never seen purple ones before. I gasped out loud (is there another way to gasp? Whatever, I made a noise) when I saw these and some guy walking around the gardens laughed at me. But I was psyched.

OK, I have more pics of Tralee and Dingle but the guy running this internet cafe wants to leave - it's closing time - so more tomorrow.

Cheers!

Conflicted

2006-10-03T13:13:00.000-04:00

At the end of my last post, I was going on about how wonderful it is to be Ireland (and it is wonderful, I must say!). When I arrived in Ireland, nervous but determined to be triumphant and have an amazing trip, I was also feeling very sure that breaking up with Conor was a good thing (or, will be in the end). One of my friends described me as sounding really 'upbeat' about it all. And I was. (That's not to say that when things started to go bad I wasn't devastated; on the contrary, I was a wreck for most of this summer.) It's just that in September, especially while I was in California, it became very clear to me that the rest of my life - school, what I want to do afterwards, etc. - seems to be so on track: I love what I study, I am excited about one day becoming a professor, my dissertation proposal actually proposes to do something I think will might be important and maybe even make a wee bit of difference in the world (something I was lamenting was missing from it until June). It just feels like everything else in my life is going so well, there's no reason why I should give it up for something that hasn't been going so well (and unfortunately the way the immigration visa would work, it would entail one or the other of us almost constantly giving something up, even if we were to trade off who's making the sacrifices.) In fact, I actually felt just a bit relieved and free when we finally broke up.

Ah, but time ran out at the end of my last post, plus I had to catch a bus to Limerick to then catch another to Tralee (ah, the difficulty of traveling on a student budget is that buses take forver. I spent a good 6 hours just getting across the country yesterday. At least it's a beautiful countryside to stare out a bus window at.) So I didn't get to mention that I ended up meeting up with Conor. Initially we weren't going to meet - Conor felt it was too soon for us to be friends and we first needed some time without being in touch. I was saddened by this, because I thought we could rise above our mess and meet up while I'm in Ireland for what may be the last time (and it's not like we're likely to bump into each other out one night or anything, what with the whole two countries and an ocean between us usually). So when I got a note at my hotel that he wanted to meet up, I was glad.

Although our break up had been friendly, our most recent phone call had not been, and I was a little anxious about seeing him. But it was great. We went for a drink at the Market Bar, which was nice because for some reason I can never find it on my own, and then to dinner at Wagamama's (mmm, Wagamama is one of my favorite restaurants in the world. It's great Asian food and great people watching - 'positive eating and positive living' (or something) is their motto. Plus on Sunday they had pumpkin curry as a special, and I love just about anything pumpkin. I highly recommend it if you're in Dublin, London (the one in Covent Garden is huge), or apparently Australia, Holland, and Dubai, so check it out!), and then to some old school pub I've never been to before and can't remember the name of.

But that's not really the point, is it? So anyway, it was great to hang out as friends and really just get along well - in fact, in many ways it was like the night we first met: we were immediately comfortable with each other and conversation came easily (which never happens with me when I first meet someone - I'm usually too shy), and yet despite the comfortableness, there was also a bit of nervousness, too, from not knowing where we stood with the other. The night we met it was because we were both interested but couldn't tell if the the other was, but sadly, on Sunday it was because we have all this history - and to be fair, still all these emotions - and didn't know what the other felt.

There were many times when I remembered why it wouldn't work between us. But there were even more times I remembered why I fell in love with Conor in the first place. When you're apart for so long in a long distance relationship (we're talking, three-four months at a time with us) it's easy to only remember a person's faults - and to blow them out of proportion. That whole distance-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder thing seems to have a definite shelf life, because after a while, especially when the main part of your life, the life you live everyday, is completely separate from someone, it's easy to build that life without him and to forget how important he is to you. And I think that has a lot to do with how things ended up going so wrong between us.

Sure, we were also on our best behavior with one another. And sure, it's easy to overlook those reasons for why we won't work when they no longer matter - when they no longer carry the weight of 'is this something I'll have to live with forever? Is this going to affect us and our relationship forever?' and instead they're just little quirks that have no relevance to me.

But being with Conor on Sunday, I was reminded of just how well we did work together, and being in Ireland, no matter where I am (I'm in An Daingain/Dingle right now, by the way, after spending last night in Tralee/Tra Li) reminds me of the life I spent the last year thinking I was going to have, until two weeks ago. And for the most part, it was a life I wanted.

We had a fairytale romance in so many ways - that wouldn't-have-believed-it-if-it-hadn't-been-me meeting, where we clicked the first night we met, and then spent the next night hanging out until 4 in the morning with Ellen and Neal. Ellen described us on the second night Conor and I knew each other, 'it's like you two have been married for years you seem to know each other so well and have all these jokes between you already.' We weren't going to do long distance after that summer I was backpacking around, and I just had a feeling that we would end up back together at some point (though I envisioned it years down the road - like after I finished the Ph.D. and had some fabulous job teaching at Trinity or NUI Galway or something - not the following New Year's Day). We did decide to make it work in January, and when Conor came to visit me in LA in April we had this crazy meeting at a little restaurant in the teensy village of Mt. Baldy, up in the mountains above Claremont, with a tattooed and face-pierced man named Sammy, who passed our table and then returned to read our energy because he said he could feel it as soon as he walked in the room (Sammy told us we would get married, and thatwe were both already thinking about it but wouldn't say anything to each other about it, and that although we would have difficulties-he even knew there was long distance between us- we would have a great time together).

I still know that our decision to break up was right. It's just that I can't help but think that a big reason why this didn't work out is because we did have too much distance between us for too long. (Damn Citizen and Immigration Services - if that visa had only come through sooner! :) ) It's not just the distance, it's our different goals and aims in life, to be sure. Even if we could legally be together, Conor needs to be here to finish his Ph.D. and I need to be in CA to finish mine (and I still have years to go).

It's just that being with him on Sunday reminded me how good we could have been. It reminded me of how close we came, and how we just let it slip between our fingers.

Failte (and a confession)

2006-10-02T07:30:00.000-04:00

I have to admit, when I left for the airport, I had some trepidation about making this trip to Ireland. The thing is, my fiance Conor and I broke up last week. I wasn't exactly planning on announcing this over a blog posting, especially since so many of my family and friends have been so wonderfully supportive and enthusiastic about this relationship, even throwing me a shower, and I wanted to let people know in a more personal manner - and I was waiting first, to make sure this break up 'stuck' and that we were both sure this is the right and best thing for us, and also because I didn't have time to sort out details before I left like returning shower presents (which I will do when I'm back stateside!) and plus, I'm learning it's just a little awkward to announce this sort of thing.
[The break up has been a long time coming. Complications with immigration - like them sending me a letter last month indicating they do not believe I am a U.S. citizen or that I've actually met Conor in person! - and the difficulties of a long distance relationship certainly exacerbated things, but it's also due in part to the challenges of us both needing to be in different places while we finish our degrees, and to the different cultural understandings of what we believe relationships should be, and a whole slew of other things. It really is for the best for us, at least right now. And from my perspective, I started to realize it was inevitable when I was back in CA for my exams, and was so happy and felt like I was making so much forward progress on my degree and my (hopeful!) career and that I was just in a really good place, both physically and emotionally, and I was doing what makes me happy. With that came the realization that if the compromises I would have to make in a marriage - which are necessary in any relationship but unfortunately more complicated in an international relationship - needed to make me happier than I already am with my life, and I was afraid they just wouldn't.]

And so I prepared for Ireland with mixed feelings. I love travelling and the adventure and experience of it all, but travelling alone can certainly get lonely at times, and as much as Conor and I both were in agreement about breaking up, that doesn't mean it has been easy. And even though I've been to many places in Ireland without Conor, especially the summer I was backpacking around, I'd only actually spent four days here without him in my life. And of course, all things Irish make me think of him. And this trip was initially planned as the beginning of our lives together. I was coming for the fall and through Christmas, with the exception of a two-week trip back to the States in November.
Instead, I changed the tickets last Wednesday so I am now only going to be here for a week and a half (so even if I didn't mention the break up, I have faith, gentle reader, that y'all woulda figured it out eventually!), and instead of moving to Belfast with Conor, I'll be backpacking around.

So back to the trepidation. Nervous as hell is actually probably more accurate.

But then the plane touched down in Dublin (I slept through the Shannon stopover) and as I looked out the window, I remembered my first morning ever in Ireland: a rainbow appeared over the runway as we landed, I picked my first destination out of my Lonely Planet as we taxied to the runway (Drogheda), and then within a few hours I had checked into a hostel, seen my first thatched cottage and fields of Irish sheep and cows, had the rain storm down on me and been dried out by the sun and even had the process repeated a few times, in genuine Irish style, I learned, and been to Newgrange to view megalithic tombs. Yesterday morning, as the plane touched down, there was no rainbow but the green fields were sparkling with the wet of a recent rain and the sky was streaked with the grays and periwinkle that accompany a retreating storm and the promise of (some) sun. And I remembered that I love Ireland, with or without the boy.

As I rode the bus into Dublin, I felt like I was coming home. Some things never change (ah, like the construction on the M-1 road) and some things do - there are a lot more of those creepy hare statues popping up around Dublin, and my favorite billboard, the Bulmer's (my pint of choice) ad that asks, 'North Cider or South Cider?' as it lines the railway bridge spanning the River Liffey, is back (it was gone in June) but has been updated with the graphics of their current ad campaign (OK, OK, so the things I notice may not be important in terms of Irish politics or how the city is recovering after a month of Gaelic football and hurling championships and the Ryder Cup, but rather what's with the hideous statues and a celebration of my favorite cider's favorite ad, but so what?!)

I had forgotten how much I love Dublin. I sometimes dismiss it as too cosmopolitan and too much like any other city in the world, and I always think I prefer Galway and Belfast to it. But as I walked around yesterday morning and afternoon, enjoying not having to take a map or a guidebook with me and popping into old favorite shops and new ones which will soon be added to that list, or just enjoying relazing in Hodges and Figges (or however it's spelled) bookshop, I again felt home - Dublin, as my home base of sorts, was the first place I felt at home in Ireland, so it's great to be back here.

And I knew that I will have a great trip. It may indeed be hard at times (I don't want to jinx myself!) but I think (hope!) I will more often have a great time. I love Ireland, and this is a chance for me to reclaim it for myself. After all, I can't go around hating all things Irish forever. I mean, can you imagine if I had to swear off dying my hair green for St. Patrick's Day? :)

And if not, there's always lots of whisky and ginger ale to get me through the rough spots...

(Photos: One of many scary rabbit statues in the city; an even scarier and more sinister looking stuffed bear statue on the corner of Grafton Street and St. Stephen's Green park; O'Connell Street: a statue [I forget of whom!], the Spire and the General Post Office - the site of the 1916 Easter Uprising; the River Liffey)

Garden State

2006-10-01T05:50:00.000-04:00

Because Autumn is my favorite season, and I'm usually in in Southern California, where we don't so much have 'Autumn' as 'Fire Season' this time of year, I haveto take advantage of the beauty of fall in the Garden State while I can. So yesterday, my aunt Kelly, uncle Jim, cousins Vicki and Kevin and I met up with my brother Liam and his fiancee, Julie, to go apple and pumpkin picking. (We had to cram it into the morning before I left for the airport to make sure I got the trip in). While waiting for Liam and Julie to arrive, we had the traditional apple-picking fare of cider and cinnamon cider doughnuts, and when we were all assembled, we piled onto a hay ride-style tractor and were driven out to the orchard. We picked janagolds, idareds, macintoshes, and a few other kinds, the names of which I've already forgotten. But it was good, wholesome Autumn fun and reminded me why I love this season. And as Julie pointed out in reference to the view in the photo below on the left, it was hard to believe we were in NJ.
But since I always have to show love for my home state, I wanted to post this as a reminder of a few of the reasons why we are the Garden State!

Leaving for Ireland...

2006-09-27T11:11:00.000-04:00

I'm leaving for Ireland on Saturday, so in anticipation of my trip and because I clearly need a little more practice with this whole blog thing and would like to figure it out before I am at the mercy of internet cafes, I thought I'd practice by posting some photos of my trip to Ireland in 2004.

Bicycle on Sherkin Island, off the coast of Cork

Ship in Dingle Harbour

Abandonded home in the Gap of Dunloe

Stove

Don't get me wrong, Ireland is absolutely beautiful. But everyone's seen stunning guidebook photos, and I guarantee I will be posting many myself as I travel. So until then, I thought these might be a little more interesting.

Spot of Peace

2006-09-26T22:08:00.000-04:00

(NOTE: I wrote this Tuesday, 12 September, but didn't post it correctly. Oops.)

On Friday, I finished my last qualifying exam for my Ph.D. Over the course of the past week, I took four four-hour written exams, in postcolonial theory, feminist and queer theory, moral agency, and peace studies. With lots of freaking out and even more procrastinating and postponing thrown in, I have been preparing for these exams for the past year. I then spent the weekend writing my 30 page dissertation proposal. I turned it in yesterday at 1:30…and I was free.

Yeah, sure, I have to read over all of my exams to prepare for the oral defense this Friday, so technically I’m not quite “free.” But even if I weren’t mentally exhausted from the previous week (and the previous evening – that dissertation proposal was exactly 0 pages long when I woke up Sunday morning) there was physically nothing I could do about it – my eyes were so bleary and bloodshot from spending hours in front of very old-school computers all week and flipping through nearly 80 books that I was having trouble seeing anything in focus.

So I started to run some of the errands I need to get done while I’m out in CA for two weeks – change the oil in my car, apartment hunt for my return in January, etc. And then, all of a sudden, it sunk in.

I am done!! These exams have been haunting me for a year. Actually, even before that: since I got to grad school, I’ve been scared of the moment it was my turn to sit in the tiny little excuse for an office in the second floor of the School of Religion and go one-on-one with a computer from the early 90s to tap out about 20 pages of theoretical analysis in 4 hour spurts. These exams are notorious. There are people who were preparing for them when I began my program four years ago, and are still preparing for them.

And I finished!! I was completely free. There was nothing I could do, or even should do, until the next day (which is now today).

And so for the next 24 hours I did whatever I wanted – I wandered around, went into my favorite stores, sat around in Borders for hours looking at books just for fun (ok, even though I was bleary eyed and exhausted, I couldn’t drag myself away from books. Looks like I at least chose the right career!), and treated myself to a leisurely dinner without trying to frantically cram notes into my head while I ate (and spent about 10 hours sleeping).

And I didn’t feel guilty. I didn’t have the nagging feeling that there was more work I should be doing, there was an article I should be reading, there was a paper or a proposal to write, or other people’s papers to grade. I could just be. And while I wasn’t doing much of anything (I was far too tired for that) I could just be lazy and not feel like I was wasting time.

I thought back to the last time I was this completely free, and realized it was during winter break after the first semester of my second year of grad school. That was fall 2003. At the end of the following semester, my dad passed away suddenly and I took my first incomplete. And the following semester I wound up with two more. And between finishing those incompletes, completing the rest of my coursework and finally passing my second language exam, I have not had a single moment where there wasn’t something else I should be doing in the past three years.

I just want to bask in this moment of peace for a few moments.

Because when I leave the computer lab, I’ve got to start preparing for Friday’s oral defense.

It's Good to Be Home

2006-09-13T22:17:00.000-04:00

I’ve only been back in California a few days, and I’m overwhelmed with how at home and how happy I am to be here. Which is odd, because to be honest, I’m in the middle of my Ph.D. qualifying exams, which is allegedly the hardest part of the entire program, even harder than writing the dissertation itself (perhaps because the exams are so intense and crammed into such a short period of time?). Oh, and my personal life is in shambles (ah, but what’s new?).

And yet, this morning I went for a hike on Mount Baldy, weaving in and out between shady tree-lined paths (well, “paths” in quotation marks – I was sort of making the trail up as I went) following a stream, and desert canyon expanses complete with lizards, various succulent plants and cacti, and boulders I had to scramble over (as I said, I quickly realized it wasn’t as much a trail as I thought!). And I realized that I was happier than I’ve been in months (which is saying something, because I tend to be a fairly happy camper).

It was a beautiful day, I had good music on my iPod (though I turned it off to listen to the water rushing downstream) and I was home. And everything felt good – and right – in my world.
I’ve spent much of the last few days realizing how incredibly lucky I am – which again is odd because I really am in the midst of what should be a crazy and wildly stressful two weeks (two written exams down, two more, plus a dissertation proposal and my oral defense to go!). And to be honest, when I’m in the library or on campus I feel somewhat stressed, but I’m staying at my dean’s cabin up in the mountains, and somewhere between leaving Claremont and climbing 5,000 miles up above the smog it’s all released. By the time I reach the cabin, I have the wonderful assurance that it will all be alright. The stress melts away, and I get to enjoy a glass of wine sitting outside, where for the last two nights everything has been washed in the silver of a nearly full moon.

But it’s not just the mountains. The first night I was back in California, it was so good to be back in Claremont and see friends I haven’t seen for months (nor kept in touch with – [guilty smile] – because I’ve been an awful friend while preparing for exams) – and to get all their support for these coming weeks. In Claremont, you can be swimming in the ocean, hiking out in the desert, or skiing in the mountains all within an hour (or less) of each other. In California, being a vegetarian isn’t considered a crazy hippie thing (at least, not as much as it is outside of CA, which I always forget until I’m elsewhere). The “dry heat” really exists; a concept I never understood until I moved here. And people often do seem friendlier and laid back. (OK, enough stereotypes!! Suffice it to say, it is a different world out here, which people told me before I moved but it has taken going away after 4 years and coming back for me to really understand that.)

I realize how nice it is to be home – and how nice it is to have so many places to call home. Last November, my mom moved out of the home we’ve lived in since I was 10. It’s also the home my mom grew up in; my parents bought it after my grandfather passed away. It’s been in our family since the 50s. It’s the home I most remember my dad in. At Christmas, a family member asked me if it was hard coming “home” to a new home in a new town.

And it wasn’t. I felt right at home in my mom’s new place. I felt guilty once I said that though, as though I should have had more remorse about no longer being in the old family home. But to be honest, it stopped being my home years ago – sometime during college at that point where you cease to have a home; when home is no longer where you grew up but not quite college either, because college is so fleeting. I always felt welcome; I just never felt home. And after my dad passed away, the home where I most remember him, and most remember my grandparents, just had too many ghosts to be home.

But my mom’s new home is perfect for her now. And I just spent the summer there, and feel quite at home too. And I still feel home in my old town (despite outgrowing the house, I don’t think I’ll ever outgrow Maplewood/South Orange. Ask Zach Braff, or watch Garden State. You’ll see – it’s hard to get over having grown up there).

I started to realize just how many places I can call home: Belfast, for which I have an especially strong sense of nostalgia in the fall. I have been at home just outside Florence, in a little Etruscan hill town where I lived for half a year and with which I felt an immediate affinity to the land and energy of the town. Battery Park, at the very tip of Manhattan, where I lived for a year, was another place I instantly fell in love with. I loved to run through the park that capped Manhattan and then stretched up along the Hudson through the yuppier Battery Park City area, darting in and out of the little coves that cut into the land. I loved to run over the Brooklyn Bridge into Brooklyn and then back along the Seaport. At this very southern tip, you were always aware that you were on an island, not like in the rest of the city. On the weekends, I loved not going north of 14th Street, avoiding the blah of midtown I faced during the weekdays, and discovering the streets of the Villages, TriBeCa, Nolita, and Alphabet City. We were evacuated from our apartment, 4 blocks south of the World Trade Center, for a month after Sept. 11, but like every other New Yorker, it just made it more fiercely home when I returned.

Washington, D.C., which was my “unhome” during said fleeting college years, is a bit covered in the dust of memory, but it’s still home when I go visit. The Tombs still feel the same and watching the Lincoln Memorial rise up in front of me as I run over Memorial Bridge still amazes me, despite my cynicism towards patriotism.

I have felt the magic of home even in some of the places I have visited only briefly: the Gap of Dunloe in Killarney National Park in Ireland; in Colorado, soaking in hot springs under a sky with more stars than I knew existed; everywhere I went in London felt like home; discovering a world where vegetarianism is actually quite normal in the Bay Area (though it helped I was staying with Eileen!); dancing all alone in the middle of the Drombeg stone circle in Rosscarbery, Ireland; or watching the Atlantic bash the cliff walls of Doolin (also in Ireland – I’ve spent a lot of time there) as the sun sets at 11 at night in June; walking around alone one night in Cork and feeling at home because the Cork City Centre makes me feel nostalgic for Milan, where I’ve only spent one day, and for my friends from the Villa in Florence with whom I spent that day.

I’m so appreciative of all this because I have felt so far from “home” many times, both at home and abroad. So realizing how much being here fits and how happy it’s made me, is something for which I am grateful. It’s good to be home.

Why Dis/Locate?

2006-09-13T22:16:00.000-04:00

Why Dis-locate?

Well, in part because “Dislocate” was already taken.

But also because themes of dislocation seem to permeate my life. I travel a fair bit, and I was planning on starting this blog later this month, when I take off a semester and travel to Ireland (and perhaps beyond?) for the fall. But I’m spending two weeks in California first and since I’ve been out here, I’ve been compelled to write quite a few blog entries, and it’s the location that’s compelled me.

This is mostly a travelogue, a way to keep in touch while I’m gallivanting about. And traveling is all about dislocation: the strangeness of new locations; the dislocation of oneself in these new places; the possibilities such dislocation creates – you can be anyone when you travel, it’s a fresh start, a chance to try on the self you’ve been meaning to be for some time. It’s also about dis/location, so perhaps the name is fortuitous: feeling at home in new places and new selves; the shock of recognition. Locating home – or self – in the dislocation. And, lest all my proper training in Judith Butler-style feminist theory or postcolonial theory be forgotten, I should emphasize that it’s also about constructing the self through these dis/locations – and understanding that the self is never fully constituted, but rather always a little dislocated.

Although this is mostly a travelogue, it is also a bit of an activist blog and a bit of a Ph.D. blog, because these are significant components of my life right now. And as I’m learning, I think anyone who’s even aimed for the Ph.D. can attest to the various ways in which it is a dislocating experience. And as for activism, it is in the dis-location of dominant and hegemonic paradigms in which we create space for real change, in which we start to create a new and subversive location.

And so…welcome to dis/locate.