I should really go to bed, since I have to meet my Dublin manager at 7:30am, but since I slept until eleven and then got hyped up on tea, cappuccino, and Diet Coke, that could be difficult. Today was a nice and lazy day, even though I got angry with myself when I realized that I set my alarm for eleven with the intention of doing something productive, and then glanced at the clock at 2pm and realized that I had wasted three hours play Sudoku. Lame!
Anyway, I threw some clothes on and went to the National Gallery. I think my opinion of art is obvious when I recount that Matt later asked 'Did you see the Caravaggio?', I stared at him blankly, and then said 'I must have seen it, I remember reading the display notes in the Caravaggio room'. But, to be honest, I have absolutely no recollection of the painting itself. Sigh. The National Gallery was a good way to kill a couple of hours, and I like portraits because they come close to telling a story about the person who was painted, so it was nice that several rooms were devoted to paintings of famous Irish men and women. However, now I wish that I would have gotten up earlier so that I could have gone someplace more in line with my tastes, like any of the myriad of writers' museums in Dublin.
After the gallery, I met Matt for what was supposed to just be coffee, but turned into an early dinner at one cafe followed by dessert and coffee at another cafe when the first one closed. Today was a bank holiday (my second long weekend in the month that I've been here!), but that didn't explain the closing hours of the first cafe--it seems that most things here close absurdly early, even cafes, as though all retail merchants have come to recognize that they can't compete with Guinness after 5pm. While I do enjoy a pint of Guinness more than one would have expected of a girl who usually sticks to cosmopolitans (*lots* of cosmopolitans), I enjoy cappuccinos and capitalism more, and I wish that I could go shopping any night of the week if I felt like it. This has been v. good for my wallet, though--and it says a lot that Ireland is actually cheaper for me than India was. In India, I could justify everything by saying, 'That's only $10! I'll get five of them, that's such a great deal.' Here, things are like 50 euros, and I can never get to the store in time to buy them anyway, so it's done a lot to rein in my rapacious acquisitiveness.
Despite the nice day, I'm in a really bad mood; I had nightmares about the end of the world all weekend, which usually doesn't bode well. I think I'm obsessed with catastrophe. It doesn't help that I'm not really feeling settled here this weekend; also, I missed my great-uncle's funeral on Saturday, which I suppose isn't such a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I have fond memories of him and it's yet another case where I missed something in the family that everyone else had the opportunity to go to. He gave me the flute that I played all through school, so I suppose it's fitting that I've been thinking lately that I should pick up the habit again. So anyway, I'm in a bad mood, but by tomorrow it will all be resolved, I'm sure. Michael--congrats on your scholarship and your fabulous weekend, and thanks for ensuring that the bad news will continue for me! I initially didn't believe my brother when he hypothesized that our luck is inversely proportional; but, the kid may be onto something.
I'm going to close with one of my favorite poems, which I happened to be thinking of tonight; it's appropriately bleak. Tomorrow may be better or worse, but at least it will be different!
"Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Line"
by Pablo Neruda
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
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