voyages.

the study abroad magazine of elon university13

2009 ICCIS Study Abroad Essay Contest Winners

Every spring the Isabella Cannon Centre for International Studies holds a photography and essay contest for study abroad participants. To qualify for this year’s contest, students had to have studied abroad during 2008. This year’s essay contest first place winner was Max Cantor and an honorable mention was given to Caroline Matthews. These are their stories...

The Winding Stairby Max Cantor

A story of “finding myself ” in Dublin comprised of imaginings and half-truths

In the asphalt city I’m at home. From the very startProvided with every last sacrament:

With newspapers. And tobacco. And brandyTo the end mistrustful, lazy and content.

- Bertolt Brecht, of Poor BB

“Sheads Girl” Belfast, Ireland by Max Cantor

“Belfast Boys” Belfast, Ireland by Max Cantor

As soon as I leave my apartment I know I should have worn gloves. By now I’m past the double gates of the front entrance and don’t feel like swiping my key to get back in. I tuck my

hands in my coat pockets, which are considerably warmer than my jean pockets. It’s not my coat, but I wear it anyway. Liz stole it a week ago at Hogan’s on Aungier St., a dark, little joint that caters to the PricewaterhouseCoopers crowd. The coat was a men’s large so she gave it to me. I found a couple business cards in the left pocket. The coat belonged to a Philosophy professor at Trinity College, a William something or other. I threw them out because his address was on them and I wanted to be sure I didn’t return it as penance. It’s the warmest thing I own.

It’s already five and I feel like shit. I’ve become a serious hypochondriac, convinced of all sorts of crazy things that I can’t even define like brain lesions. Something about this place makes me feel diseased. Every time I leave my room it’s like I’m going to catch something. I skipped dinner tonight. I’m out of contact solution. I’m broke. My apartment is cold, and I spent seven Euro on Neosporin for Liz’s earring hole infection, which sounds disgusting

and looks even worse. I’m starting to hate it here.

It’s a shame that there aren’t any black people in Dublin because it’s the perfect city for jazz. So many smoky pubs and bars here are just dying for some jazz. And everyone has the blues. You could drown in the blues of this city, and I do, every step another lash on the cymbal or pluck of the bass. I’m reminded of that scene in the Commitments when Jimmy says, “the Irish are the blacks of Europe, and the Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland, and the North Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud.” I turn on my iPod and land on Lou Donaldson, not the bebop stuff but a quiet track from the Blue Note Sessions.

There’s a real science behind walking in Dublin and I’ve got it down. I can get to the city center in twenty minutes if I cross the James Joyce Bridge and

hug either side of the River Liffey. I can do it in fifteen if I walk through the North side, past the crackheads who hang out underneath the Jameson Factory’s industrial tower, a menacing beast of a tower, like something from Dr. Caligari or the cover to a cheap Ayn Rand paperback; if I walk past the kitschy Korean bargain shops that sell plastic kitchenware and poorly made winter hats with Premier League logos on them; past the front-door

stoop where last month I was held up at syringe-point by a strung-out

junkie who actually believed me when I lied and said I had no money; past the low-end department stores coalescing to form Henry Street, the epicenter of the low-end shopping district; past the street whose name I don’t know but refer to as Fruit Street because every Saturday local people set up fruit stands and sell discounted fruit at discounted freshness (my favorite being the banana lady who ashes her cigarettes out on the bananas themselves).

Since I’m running late I go through the North Side, which I kind of have to anyway because I’m listening to Lou. Lou is not South Side music.

This route always looks grayer, like the whole North Side is covered in a big muslin sheet. It’s the grayest area of Dublin, and Dublin is devoid of color. Dublin is the sun killer, an underwhelming, underperforming grayscale of misfits and miscues.

The cymbal drags, the sax taps out and in comes the piano solo. I keep walking, lost in

Lou.The weirdest thing about Dublin is the number

of kids running around. I don’t know where they’re all coming from. Are the Irish Catholics still so opposed to contraceptives? The sidewalks scream for condoms with each little bastard stomping around. There are kids everywhere; kids with potatoes in

voyages.

the study abroad magazine of elon university 14

Our bridge. I like the sound of that.

“Angel on the South Side” Dublin, Ireland by Max Cantor

”

“

their pockets, no shoes, knocking around a decade-old soccer ball. Kids everywhere, in wind jackets with bad haircuts and foul mouths, kids who run around in little hoodlum gangs, wind suit armies patrolling the streets and alleys, unchaperoned no matter what neighborhood or what hour, kids who spit at each other and feel you up for a wallet on the tram. So many wind pants too, I can’t stress that enough. Redheaded kids, pale blond kids, darting through foot traffic with hurling sticks looking like little mercenaries. Little future alcoholic kids outside the off-license asking me to buy them booze. Kids calling me a fat twat when I tell them I won’t. Snarling in their ugly New York Yankees wind suits.

I wish I could figure out the whereabouts of their wind suit-wearing, neglectful parents. I don’t know what I would do if I met their parents but I think I would do something to straighten them out.

I meet Sean at the Winding Stair, a hole-in-the-wall bookshop and café I love because it has a whole

section of books about graffiti and street art that makes me feel hip, and it sells chai tea lattes named after famous authors that make me feel intellectually challenged. The Winding Stair is pompous and esoteric but in all the best ways. Above the checkout counter is a postcard with the words written on it, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. But then the Devil invented pictures.” Betina, who runs the place, has a nose ring and a stud below her eye that doctors screwed into the bone to keep in place. Consequently, their staircase is perfectly straight.

For all the aforementioned reasons, Sean hates the Winding Stair.

I put honey and sugar in my “Kerou-wacky Wild Orange Tea.” It’s important to put things like honey and sugar in your tea because it shows that you have specific drinking preferences, which shows that you are an experienced tea drinker and, by default, must be an intellectual. Sean doesn’t get tea, which is frustrating because I know he’s smart and I want him to look as smart as I do.

“I saw some guy take a shit on the bridge last night,” Sean tells me.

“Our bridge?” I ask.“Nah, two down from ours.

The one next to St. Patrick’s. Guy just dropped trou’ right

there on the sidewalk.”“Is it a sidewalk if it’s on a

bridge?” I ask.“What else would it be?”“I don’t know. A bridge

walk?”Sean ignores me.“At least it wasn’t our

bridge.” I offer.He nods.Our bridge. I like the sound

of that.That’s the thing about

cities; you have your places, your spots. There are a few constants. For example, I have my bridge. I have the Winding Stair. I have the Glimmer Man pub. You also have places that change every so often, usually food spots, particularly lunch. It’s even more important to make sure you meet people who have the same spots as you. Then when you see them too much, you know it’s time for a change.

It’s dark by the time we leave. I’d forgotten about

my appetite and its creeping back to me. I’ll try to ignore it for the walk home.

Every city is prettiest after dark. The high-rises and skyscrapers come alive like a grid of stars thrown sideways against a sheet of black flannel. Nighttime has a different effect here though because the buildings in Dublin are different than other cities. In Dublin the buildings are stunted and nondescript, but on any given night the ground is almost certain to be damp with rain, and the streetlights bounce off the pavement and glide through the narrow cracks in the cobblestone lanes.

Red, green, and amber flares dash across the roads and under the bridges, stacked down the Quays like rows of corn ready for harvest, and shine down on the water exposing the waves tinted in ethereal hues. And my bridge, the James Joyce bridge, the one I walk across every day is the prettiest of them all because it arches up like a giant semi-circle, or better yet, a flattened bicycle tire stuck in the ground. All the streetlights and the headlights on the cars flash the James Joyce and caress its white spokes.

During the day they hiss and yell but at nighttime, cities breathe. Sedated. Sparkling even.

I feel a strange allegiance to Dublin, even though it can be cruel and capricious, it can be cold, wet and lonely. It seems aimless, arbitrary, accidental.

When I first got here I told everyone it was a charming little city. I didn’t know what else

to say and that seemed to satisfy people.

“The people are so great,” I would say. “And such great conversationalists.”

“Friendly? Absolutely. So friendly.”“It’s true! They really do love America.”“Refreshing is the perfect word. I couldn’t have

said it better myself.” Cue shit eating

In Dublin the buildings are stunted and nondescript, but on any given night the ground is almost certain to be damp with rain, and the streetlights bounce off the pavement and glide through the narrow cracks in the cobblestone lanes.

grin. “Ok… well maybe I would say liberating.” Cue courtesy laugh.

Of course I didn’t feel any of those things. The Irish are damn clever. They make half their living by duping American tourists, lulling them to sleep with mystical tales of whimsy.

So many tourists are lured and trapped without seeing Dublin’s true face. In a perverse way that’s the city’s most charming aspect - it’s all one big, beautiful con. And I guess I always prefer to root for a scoundrel; the feisty, funny bastard who tells great stories and laughs at his own jokes. There’s charm in that, one that I missed at first - one that washes over the whole rainsoaked city. Dublin is as ugly as anything. Its people are plain as potatoes. It is cement and smells of beer and bathrooms. It’s blanketed with rain every day but never a heavy rain; rather a constant dripping, irritating rain that leaves the city stewing in an invasive mist. Ironically I never needed an umbrella. There’d be no point. You can’t escape a rain cloud that devours everything.

The key to living in Dublin is throwing away the fanciful Irish myths inherited from so many romantic movies and sentimental great-grandparents. To live in Dublin you have to filter out the noise - see the streetlights bouncing off the puddles. Go to South William St. and find the graffiti of the weeping angel and look into her crying eyes. You have to see the way the overcast sky casts a faint light on every fair Irish face, flattening their pale complexions; see how the soft sky’s quiet, white light reveals every wrinkle and memory on their skin, every last flicker of a smile still imprinted in their bleary blue eyes. You have to see Dublin for what it really is, not what we want it to be. It’s not a place for pretty postcards.

I’ll remember vividly, if not fondly, breathing in Dublin’s salty air for the past few months in this decaying, losing fall of 2008. I’ll remember how the cold mist feels on my hands and face in this ugly little city that breaks my heart; this nasty, gritty city, with its gritty people wearing wind suits, coughing over so many cigarettes.

“ ”