Port of Cork

I've been in Cork for two weeks now. Cork is a town whose center is contained between two rivers. In late October it hosts an annual Jazz Festival sponsored by Guiness. I was here for the festival and saw only a few street performances. Everybody says that no one actually sees the jazz at the Jazz Festival. I think this has something to do with the festival's sponsorship.

You may also know Cork because it is near Blarney Castle, where the Blarney Stone is. You climb up through the old ruined castle and an old guy holds you while you lean backward and kiss it. I told him I was afraid of the rumor that locals go up and pee on the stone at night. He said that was a load of bologna, I thought he said blarney.

My words were bottled up--corked, if you will--for several days and so was I. I was stuck in Cork, if you choose to see it that way. I did, mostly. I couldn't seem to leave Ireland. I felt in a hurry to do something, maybe to become something, and at the same time paralyzed. I could not seem to choose what to do next, and neither could I quite convince myself that it didn't matter.

Things I did in Cork those days: walk around the center of town. Buy soda bread, apples, sausage sandwiches loaded with onions and peppers (yellow, green) in the English Market. Drink cappucinos in a cafe called Puccinos.

Things I do in Cork these days: walk around the center of town. Walk around one or two streets just out of the center of town. Buy soda and other types of bread. Buy apples, cheese spread, sausage sandwiches with onions, peppers, chili sauce, ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise in the English Market. Eat this every day with Natalie sitting on the fountain by where the happy crinkle-faced old Irish man sells vegetables. Drink cappucinos in every cafe in town.

What changed is difficult and silly to describe, but it had to do with standing at the port where the boats and factories are and seeing what it is to observe myself with compassion. It had to do with Rilke's letters and the words of friends and teachers, the music of my friends through headphones on a bus to Kinsale, and meeting no one on my solitary walks but myself.

I met Natalie when she came to stay with the same couchsurfing host as me. She is french and nineteen. She loves food. We get along. She is traveling around Ireland, then living with her boyfriend, then taking a train across Russia, all on a gap year before starting university. She dominated the BAC and is waiting to hear back from Oxford and Cambridge, though I am trying my best to pitch Brown to her, because she reminds me so much of people freshman year at Brown. Before we all got jaded, haha. Oh dear.

Natalie and I stayed about a week with Carlos, but things went sour. There was never any good connection with Carlos The Passive-Aggressive. He spent hours every night watching TV in the tiny space living room/kitchen which was our bedroom, never telling us he was bothered by our talking and doing other things. He never asked us any questions or showed the faintest curiosity in us, other than to ask if we'd buy some beers and if we wanted to smoke with him. We really did try to create some sort of friendly atmosphere, making our best conversation, trying to help with dinner, cleaning up the kitchen and so forth, but Carlos in the end got drunk one night and mustered the courage tell us we were lucky he wasn't kicking us out. We are in a hostel now, and though it's costing us much more than we have been spending, it's worth it. It feels like such a luxury to sleep in a tiny clean twin bed on the top bunk in a warm room with four other people, just because it doesn't involve any tiptoeing around, and because we get to use the huge communal kitchen to make our own food, and there are plenty of really cool people hanging around here. I suppose bad couchsurfing experiences are bound to happen, and that is le story.

I take a bus to Rosslare tomorrow. From Rosslare I am taking a ferry to Cherbourg, France. The ferry takes eighteen hours. I take a bus from Cherbourg to Mayenne. I like the names of places. In Mayenne I meet a guy named Julien, who will host me for a few days. He is a couchsurfing host, but I was given his contact information through another host I had here, so I feel there is a higher degree of connection, of some kind of familiarity, than with other hosts. He is an artist, he wants to do art projects together. He wants to take me on a discovery trip, as he calls it, to a place near Paris where he knows other artists. He sounds full of the little things (joy, curiosity) that I am also learning to fill myself with.