with Jameson Whiskey at 8:00 AM sharp each morning, while my family back in my home state still sound asleep at 2:00 AM. They were never conscious when something invigorating needed to be told. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t miss them.
County-Clare. Home of the humidity that caused the feeling of my hair clinging to my neck as I sat trapped in a hostel-like brick room, listening to the slow and soft whispers of my home, grown Killarney professor. For five hours a day, my cognizant skills were tested as I help my head up with my forearms to avoid dozing off to the same old Irish myths that I could now recite in my sleep.
Shannon, home of spooky, broken castles like Bunratty. Nothing makes me shiver with delighted derangement in the sight of those dusty prisoner bones, newly discovered from the fortresses dungeon. I could hardly put down my medieval meal knowing that people just like me believed to be entering a temporary cell, only to be given a slight “push” as they fell to their death. Then again, I was willing to do anything; I was in Ireland.
Texas, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania; The names I gave my roommates to keep track of them. Their real names and the dreary looks on their faces that I had the great pleasure of seeing for 28 days straight didn’t matter then, and they don’t matter now. I admired the life of my quirky English professor from London. She mattered to me because she was different. Regardless of the humidity that caused the feeling of my hair clinging to my neck as I sat trapped in a hostel-like brick room, she mattered to me because she instructed us to carve our own bamboo pens to utilize them as the scribes did. She mattered to me because of the things she has done, the places she has studied. She mattered to me because she reminded me that I could do anything.
Dublin. The historic city centered around Brian Boru’s harp, Trinity College, and Viking sites. Still, the doors of Dublin dragged me in and left me alone to explore for the weekend. A bubble-gum colored entrance to a European Pastry shop here, and a plum painted portal to a traditional Irish Storytelling bar there. The clatter on the cobbled road on horse-drawn carriage ride from the famous Temple Bar to my Clontarf Castle Hotel room revealed that I was true royalty, at least in my own dissipated mindset caused by the mojitos I guzzled at the Brolly bar.
Surfing in Lahinch, the seaside Bay that left me gasping to get my warm breath back and desiring a Mediterranean climate that I would never find throughout the entire country. Keeping the faith, I found the strength to give the town a chance, when I found the gentle combination of acidity and sweetness all mixed in one cup; a simple creation known as a cappuccino, but at that very moment, I may as well have been drinking hot gold, compared to the salty fish air that I’d been choking on for the past few hours.
cotton candy butts