These Dirty Details

There's something gorgeously mundane about the days spent in Dungarvan, often when I have classes. These are the days I don't plan any adventures, and yet they still find me. Like, for example, walking across a new section of town, catching a glimpse of a seal sliding smoothly from the water onto the Colligan surfboard, or trying a new café or food. 

The little details of these days, inevitably lost to memory and time, are what astound me most. They keep me hoping for a spark of adventure and joy in the next day. And most of the time, they bring me out of insular thoughts into the day to recognize the shadows of the passing globular earth. 

I've been thinking about how many cafés I've seen since being in Ireland, and specifically in Dungarvan.  They are so much a part of the culture here: café culture, I'd like to call it. It's an essential part of everyone's day, and I can imagine that there's a warming peace from a pot of tea surrounded by buzzing morning breakfasters or town meet-ups, from an outside view. Some of these café details will stick with me most, I think, after this trip since it's such a contrast from American hustle culture with 4am gym lift sessions and morning drive-thru queues. (As a side note: I just learned that the everyone but the Americans call Curbside pickup "Kurbside," and I'm obsessed). 

Upon a Google search, there are approximately 34 cafés (places to sit and drink coffee, tea, and maybe get a scone) in this small town. That's a lot, considering the limited options for cafés in Erie, and the higher amounts of ever-present coffee chains in America. It got me wondering how these businesses exist in such a high volume, unless there is a demand for it. And the culture to sit, relax, and settle into the day together helps to foster this business. Walkability also plays a lot into the accessibility and prevalence of cafés, most of them nestled next to each other in the square. 

Now that I understand this culture more, I can see how Joyce relays and remembers so much of Dublin, that even when he was away, he drew the details to astonishing likeness and accuracy. His details in both Ulysses and Dubliners capture the essence of the place with a shrewd and keen eye. I was most struck today while reading "Counterparts," especially when characters from his other novels and places like Davy Byrne's pub show up. These places are living, still today, and do so in a different way in the novel. "Counterparts" especially handles the troubling results of culture in an unbiased way. It's as though the narrator presents the facts and lets the audience make of it what they will, which makes this piece my favorite of the set we read for class. His lines get more advanced in his later books, but even in his early writing, it's clear that short and long-form stories are among his strengths. 

Knowing that Joyce couched for money from his richer friends while living abroad in Paris, I can't help but relate some of his more personal adventures to these stories too, even if he hadn't yet gone abroad. His personality and charismatic ego absolutely stands out in his writing. Thinking of Joyce as an expat incites me to wonder if I will ever truly know the place I've lived for most of my life, Erie. 

Here's one of my favorite lines from the night: 

"He paused. He felt the rhythm of the verse about him in the room. How melancholy it was! Could he, too, write like that, express the melancholy of his soul in verse?"

 ("A Little Cloud", Dubliners, p. 69)

His writing is painfully beautiful and visionary, but not for its own sake. Instead, it questions the characters, where they are asked by the landscape and detail to stretch off of the pages and jump to life. Just like Dublin comes alive in his description: "Dear dirty Dublin."

Portrait of Nora Barnacle and James Joyce, by John Nolan