20:47 
Oh aye, and as an indication of how evil I am, I was stopped by the police on my way back into the country, getting off the plane. Luckily I had my passport with me as ID, but they didn't search my bags or anything, just asked me stupid questions. I obviously must be suspicious because I have short hair.
I want to say thankyou again to Andy for picking me up at the airport. Not sure he realises how much that meant.
20:39
This, by the way, is something that Wyrd gave me as a present. While we both laughed our arses off.
If you ever get a chance, do look for the Page of Cups, which is cool, and the Queen of Coins, which is utterly hysterical. Gods know what on Earth I'm going to do with them.
20:32
Well Ireland was fun. It was also...interesting. Not sure where to start, really, or how much detail the anonymous reader (and I've started having dreams about you anonymous readers, so I hope you're pleased with yourself) can handle before getting bored. Besides, the Froodster managed to pour water into my expensive keyboard while I was away, and although I have fixed it with tissue, cotton buds and polystyrene cement, it's rather stiff and not very comfortable to use right now.
Before I left the web cam effect became particularly noticeable. It was like I was looking at the world as a series of complex still pictures, but the pictures were not simple representations of what I should have seen, they looked like those atmospheric landscape photographs in which the artist manages by some trick of composition to convey whole other levels of information and subtle meaning. I can't really describe it adequately, but the sky seemed to be boiling with hints of vast energies, rather like an overlaid scent of the Aurora Borealis, but in terms of feeling, not actually in lights. Everything seemed to have intent and that's the nearest I can come to describing it.
I stayed over with Andy and Tam on the Friday night, and Andy bought a leg of lamb so that he could see my by now infamous feral response to the possession of a bone. He seemed to find it quite entertaining. The combination of painkillers and alcohol (not very much alcohol, though), left me violently sick that night, however, which seemed a real shame.
The flight over was grand. Well worth going from Bristol, as the airport is very quiet, even if the bookshop is useless and really, please, avoid the Food Village as if it were contaminated, for the prices are extortionate and the food appalling. £1-20 for a round tea bag and some hot water. The airport is not terribly easy to get to, though. Not designed to fit in with the local public transport system very easily.
There was the immediate sense of disconnection on getting over there. This is, to be honest, a case of coming down in a different country where the Land and the People interact differently, and coming down in a city. I don't do well in cities at the best of times. It was great seeing M again - he does remind me of Frood in many ways. I reckon the pair of them would get on famously. At some point Frood and I are going to have to get over there together.
We did the museum tour the next day, meeting up with the Hare outside of Trinity College - there's an odd building, but more of that in a bit. The museum has a fair unhappy dead people in it - well, would you be happy if you were stuck in a glass case with Americans poring over you and making disparaging comments about barbarism? There are also a couple of very unhappy standing stones, lifted and brought in. They have reconstructed a passage tomb from remnants of Tara and another site, and that is definitely an unhappy exhibit. The stones almost seem to be in shock. I don't think they can have been there all that long. The other most interesting exhibit was a figurine of a man, who had a very obvious hole where a phallus should have been. He was about 4 feet high, and his features reminded me of the tall race of warriors who come from Ethiopia, famously mentioned in H Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines. I looked at him, and the first thought that came into my mind was this rather reproachful voice saying something that was parsed roughly as "This is not what I signed up for." He seemed strangely familiar in some way, as if I had seen him before. He also seemed quite glad of the company for a bit. I felt desperately sorry for him, as he stood there, trying to do the protection bit for all the exhibits, which were the only things he seemed to find even vaguely familiar. He was definitely a territorial chap, and considered those exhibits to be his territory, for him to watch over.
We went to see the audio-visual display about the exhibits, and I was frankly astonished by the profoundly Christian bias. The narrator made statements to the effect that history only really started in Ireland when St Patrick came along, and that Christianity was responsible for pushing artists to do their greatest works, implying that pre-Christian art is inferior. I was not impressed.
After that we went to look round Trinity College. It is very much an enclosed space, with it's own variety of neo-classical architecture. It is arranged in the standard quad style, although of course it has more than one quad in consecutive areas because of the number of buildings. The geography building is the one that stood out, though. It had obviously been designed to be used in some way. There is no way something like that, so carefully arranged in space with details of architecture like the ones it has, and the effect it has on you when you look at it, is just a piece of pretty stonework. It looks like a tool designed to be used by something much, much bigger than the students who study in it are. The website says that it is the result of a design competition in 1852 though, hmm. I didn't get the urge to take any photos while I was there, but I wish I had now, and thinking back on it, it's pretty weird that I didn't. I remember using a film and a half on Sir Thomas Tresham's Triangular Lodge when we did our Tresham Tour. This time I had a decent camera. It's almost as if I couldn't see it properly myself, that building, never mind take a picture of it. It was weird the way it both fitted and jarred with the things around it, as if it was supposed to fit in a certain way but things had changed since its inception. I don't think it works the way it was supposed to any more.
In fact, there is a lot of strange architecture around Dublin. Some of the aspects of the Museum Building can be seen in entirely unrelated buildings elsewhere, especially around Temple Bar. Then there was the Táin Mural. I can't believe I can't find a single picture of this on the internet, and I didn't take any, so you'll just have to go see it for yourself. It's immediately West of the Kilkenny Centre, just south off the pavement on Nassau Street, apparently (see A Pagan's Guide to Dublin, written by an American, incidentally).
That evening we went out to dinner at the house of some of Wyrd's friends. I was on best behaviour, with several layers of Hospitality Protocol in force, but even so I managed to make my presence felt, indeed. It wasn't until later that I found that Wyrd hadn't told any of them anything about me, and I just assumed that they knew at least the basis. Oh well, never mind.
It started off with one of them (whom we shall call Maire, for the sake of arbitrariness) giving me a hug. I don't like being hugged by strangers at the best of times, but when she hugged me it felt like she was physically shrinking and something metallic with lots of legs was tapping me on the chest, as if trying to penetrate my skin. Uh-oh. Shields on full alert, Cap'n. Maire spent the evening getting more and more sozzled and acting the sage wise woman, despite having been active for the grand total of two years, which amused me. She and her friend, whom I shall call Niamh, had just befriended a lovely young woman whom I shall call Arabel, and were proceeding to do the "Come to us, young neophyte, and learn the secrets of the universe" act. There were some very interesting and not totally undisturbing power plays going on.
In fact, those power plays became increasingly sexual as the evening went on - there was a whole seduction routine going on. Throughout the evening, I watched Niamh particularly, as she had a group of her bods around her, all of whom were fixed on Maire, or, rather, at this thing living inside her structure (looked rather like a metallic yellow harvestman or spider crab, the body placed over her heart), with a look that said "Touch her and the gloves are off". I saw no bods around Maire, or Arabel, for that matter, but Arabel definitely has a spine, and shows promise. I was quite surprised when it became evident later in the evening that Maire and Niamh are an item, although it looked like a power based relationship expressing itself sexually, rather than anything else.
Perhaps the most interesting point was when Coyote turned up - Dad had been sitting on the back of my chair and fiddling with my hair most of the evening - sidled up to me and said "Mention which cigarettes I smoke." I didn't hesitate, and added that he'll shag everything that stays still for long enough. At this point Niamh turned white and walked out of the room. Later she explained that she had gone through a phase of manifesting Coyote, and had indeed smoked Gauloise and shagged anything that stayed still. Maire didn't seem entirely happy about my insight, but never mind. I little hint from Coyote that perhaps she shouldn't turn her back on him entirely. Maire tried to tell me that Coyote is vicious, but I was having none of that, as he's one of my favourite Uncles and was always nice to Andy and me. Niamh looked very ill, in fact, and I think that might be due to this thing inside Maire, which had a go at me again on the way out, but I had its measure then.
That night I dreamed of talking to Maire, and that she showed me this thing, dropping what she thought of as her "nice, normal, human being masks" to show me the power she was, the power she had. I was obviously totally unimpressed and no longer bound by Hospitality - she was in my dream, so I returned the favour. She left me in tears.
When we visited them at Niamh's studio the next day, however, Maire was in fine fettle while both Niamh and Arabel looked sick and depressed. Niamh said she felt terrible, and I wasn't surprised, quite frankly. I don't see that relationship lasting long.
The rest of the week we spent up at Rush, at Wyrd's brother's place. They have the most fabulous house, and the village reminds me a lot of where I grew up. I got on really well with Ty, the housemate - I rarely take that much of a shine to someone so quickly, but he's really lovely. I did commit a huge faux pas by bringing fish and chips into their house, when they don't allow meat in the house, but I didn't know. I was mortified, and offered to take it outside (was refused), but I fixed their video so I think I'm forgiven. We visited Four Knocks, which was great. Definitely one of Spider's, that, Wyrd and I both saw Her there. I also saw shadows on the walls of people fighting. One would be lying on the ground with the other, upright, thrusting a spear into him. I had to sit in the chamber opposite the wall to see them at first, but after I had seen them once I could see them from anywhere within the chamber. I was disappointed to find a candle, candlewax, and chalked markings, but it wasn't as bad as a similar site in the UK would have been. Not sure how the photographs I tried to take will come out. All underexposed, no doubt.
We also visited a Rath, which is not known to anyone really, bar the locals. Raths are the Irish equivalent of Duns - forts. This one was up in some trees, in very long grass, and it was very wet weather. We got soaked, but it had a triple bank and ditch emplacement, which had originally been stone clad, rather like Barbury, only it was a mere 50 feet in diameter. It was great. The local "residents" were ever so friendly to me, showing me how to get up there most easily. They weren't so keen on showing me the way back down however! It was a truly great site, totally unspoilt, mostly unknown, a family fortification most likely.
Wednesday we spent on the beach - well, on a couple of beaches, one with some fantastic geology, the other hoaching with rooks who were only too keen to show off their acrobatic skills right above our heads in the strong breeze - as long as I didn't try to take a picture. As soon as the camera was pointed at them they withdrew to a safe distance, the rotters. It was a really nice, relaxing day, with no stress and no fuss, just ambling about looking at stuff. Then it was back to Dublin, dinner with the Hare, some lively debate about the way pagans and "paganism" seem to be becoming more and more dogmatic, and a last night listening to the nightlife before having to come back again.
I did enjoy myself, but then I usually do in Ireland. It never fails to strike me how much more deeply they feel for the Land over there. It seems that there is still a level of respect for the Land there that we have long since lost here. Over there it is something that must be taken into account, treated with regard, not something to be bulldozed under and ridden over roughshod in order to get what people want. People who would never consider describing themselves as pagan have more idea of how to treat the Land with respect in Ireland than most pagans do here. I find it astonishing, and not a little saddening.
Wednesday, October 04, 2000