Category Archives: You Are Here

Questions of geography.

“Please, Mr. Connor. This is Newport.”

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There have been a few posters up around Galway advertising the inaugural Grace Kelly Film Festival in her ancestral home of Newport, Ireland.

Now when you’ve wrecked a rental car as I have (details on that to come later, when I’m sure the insurance claim has been processed and forgotten), and you aren’t quite ready to get behind the wheel again, you have to rely on the bus system. My Friday afternoon lecture series and the Bus Eireann schedule make Newport, Ireland, a very difficult place to get to for a weekend away.

But when there’s a Grace Kelly Film Festival in Newport, Ireland, you go to Newport, Ireland.

I caught the noon bus out on Saturday, dropped my bag at Walsh’s Bridge Inn, and ran through town in time to call in at the Information Office and catch the 4pm screening of Rear Window. My favorite of her films is High Society, but that had screened on Friday night as part of a sold-out opening night gala.

The films were screened in the Cinemobile, a 100-seat mobile theatre that travels around the country to smaller towns that lack their own cinemas. The sides of the travelling theatre fold upwards, creating a U shape with the seats 5 metres high. Our conductor/driver/projectionist explained that he often has to take long detours to accommodate the Cinemobile’s height.

On Saturday evening, I missed out on Dial M for Murder and Hollywood Glamour Night, which was also sold out, but made my way across the bridge to Gráinne Uaile for the Grace Kelly lookalike competition. I did wear a 50’s-inspired dress and pulled my hair back into a quick chignon (after many, many, many attempts at a French twist), but I was no match for the professional coifs and petticoats of the local girls.

I met a distant relative of Grace Kelly’s and learned about the homestead, Drimurla, located 3-4 kilometers “out the Castlebar road,” although I was told there was nothing to see these days. I met several members of the committee that organized the festival, and offered plenty of unsolicited advice, at one point taking off my shoe so I could properly spell the name Ferragamo – the Italian shoemaker who used Grace Kelly in advertisements and, in my opinion, the perfect corporate sponsor.

After the free cocktails of champagne and cosmopolitans, plus a hot whiskey with honey when I started to lose my voice, I still managed to wake up early the next morning to tour Newport, effectively walking a circle around the town… twice. I ambled through the Princess Grace Park and tried to attend a sermon at St. Patrick’s Church, but the service time I found online was wrong, so I had a quiet stroll through the church instead.

The afternoon’s movie was The Swan, not necessarily Grace Kelly’s most popular film, but one I find very moving. Afterward, I went for vintage afternoon tea at the Blue Bicycle Tearooms.

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I had to catch the bus back to Galway at 5pm, which meant I missed the evening’s film quiz back at the Gráinne Uaile. That’s a pity, because I’ve seen all of Grace Kelly’s movies and I’m sure I would have done quite well. If I’d remembered to lay off the drink, that is.

My favorite film of the festival, however, was the short Irish-language film that screened before each feature: Marion Agus An Banphroiosa or Marion and the Princess. I honestly thought I had outgrown my Grace Kelly obsession, but this film made me cry both times I watched it. Something about little girls and Grace Kelly is just timeless.

Watch it here (with thanks to the Irish Film Board): http://www.thisisirishfilm.ie/shorts/Marion-agus-an-banphrionsa.

Home is Where the Heart is…

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This feels frivolous.

Over the weekend, I’ve been staying in what’s supposed to become my apartment. It’s got a great location, only slightly out of my price range, and it comes with an extra bedroom.

I don’t want to be writing about this right now, but it’s the only thing on my mind. I was supposed to sign the lease today, but it’s almost 11 o’clock and it hasn’t happened yet. Something feels… wrong.

It’s not a safety issue. The price bothers me, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. The extra room will be nice when people come to visit. All of this is fine, but somehow the combination of slightly higher price and wondering “what kind of American spacehog princess needs an extra feckin’ bedroom?” has me feeling weird.

Like I said, I don’t want to be writing about this right now. I want to be lying on the couch watching Moneyball. I don’t have class tomorrow, and part of me just wants to go to sleep for the next 36 hours.

There was an issue last night – Sunday night – when I went to bed at 10pm and was woken at midnight by the people next door singing shitty songs at the top of their lungs. I’m talking “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys. I’ve sung some BSB in my time, but it was really disturbing to hear a male voice – accompanied by three chicks – booming boy band songs through the walls.

i just don’t know. I went to look at another apartment tonight. Price range is much better, and the location has something approaching sentimental value for me. It addressed a lot of the issues I have with this apartment (no separate taps for cold and hot water in the bathroom sink), but I didn’t absolutely love it.

I don’t love this one either. Part of it was the landlord rushing me into a decision; part of it was me wanting to have a damn address already because that is the first step in the entire bank / loan money / getting legal with the garda / finding a job process. If I move, I’ll need to file a change of address, which I’ve heard is a pain.

I had to choose between this apartment and another on the Claddagh. It was pretty much the same price, but more practical. One room. And he would have let me have a cat. No one else in Galway is willing to let me have a cat.

I don’t even regret letting that apartment go. I just don’t feel right in this one. It’s growing on me, a little, but I haven’t figured out the washer/dryer and I’m worried these late night serenades are going to be a common occurrence. But hell, we’re in the middle of a city; what was I expecting?

There was another apartment that I saw online a few weeks before I got here. It was supposed to become available today, but of course it was already gone when I arrived nearly two weeks ago. I feel like that was my apartment, even though I never saw it in person. I keep waiting to hear from the punk-ass realtor, saying the people (in my mind, it’s a couple) who stole it out from under me can’t move in and would I please take it? Ridiculous.

Honestly, every time I look for something else, I realize there’s nothing better than this apartment I’m in now. It’s not perfect, but it’s very nice and it got me out of the hostel. I’m a little scared about making the rent every month – I’ve got to get cracking on finding a job.

I’m probably going to regret posting this. I just don’t know. I need help.

“This is the brightest timeline.”

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I’m sitting at JFK, waiting to board an international flight.

Exactly ten years ago, I was in this very same place, having roadtripped from Texas to NYC to hop a flight for a semester in London. I tend to think of this as my Sliding Doors moment.

My family life was in shambles. My best friend accused me of running away from my problems. I was demonstrating the early signs of an alcohol addiction. The guy I was traveling with, my partner in crime, cared so little about me that months later, after we had seen the world together and arrived back in Texas, he would abandon me at the baggage carousel in Houston airport so his family wouldn’t see us leaving the arrivals gate together.

I often think that the decision to get on that plane ten years ago was the point of no return. Up until then, it might have been possible to turn things around. I could have spent more time with my family; I know I was not capable of fixing everything, but I would have equally shared in the suffering. I might have gotten my grades up, maybe taken an internship that would have advanced my career. I would have waited to turn 21 like every other American, instead of jumping the queue by spending a semester in a country with a lower drinking age.

I know, I know: hindsight is 20/20. It’s possible I just had to struggle, regardless of location or which friends were by my side or the relative ease of access to alcohol. I believe I simply had to wander aimlessly for a while.

I think this is where the timelines merge. If we end up where we’re supposed to, no matter our mistakes, then this is where it all starts to make sense. Instead of looking back on this as a moment I regret, I can look back at this as the moment when I finally came into my own.

It’s funny, because I’m looking around at groups of undergrads who are flying away toward semesters abroad and piles of self-discovery. If someone had asked me back then where I thought I would be in ten years, I would have said, “I have no idea.”

If that someone had then told me I would be in this very same airport, heading to Ireland for grad school… I think I would have been okay with that.

A Bookstore in a Library

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Yesterday was my last day volunteering at Second-Hand Prose, the used bookstore inside the Georgetown Public Library. SHP is the cornerstone fundraiser run by the Friends of the Library, who also led the bookmobile campaign and host the Hill Country Author Series.

I have been volunteering once a month for the past 18 months, at first filling in whenever I could as a substitute, then finally landing a regular 10am to 1pm shift every fourth Saturday. Georgetown is home to a Sun City retirement community, which makes volunteering a competitive sport. Not a bad problem to have, if you ask me.

It seems counterintuitive, selling used books inside a library, but the store turns a healthy profit. Since the library provides the space rent-free, the store is staffed entirely by volunteers, and all of the stock is donated by the community, there is absolutely no overhead. The money gets donated back to the library, and it is one of the best libraries out there.

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Volunteering at Second-Hand Prose can be dangerous, as the books are ridiculously cheap and there is plenty of time to peruse the shelves. I still regret the book I let slip through my fingers; a Texas Monthly Press edition of Bud Shrake’s Strange Peaches. It sat in the Collector’s Corner for months as I waited for the price to go down so I could pay for it with my $5 Book Bucks; then one day, it was gone.

Not too long ago, I hit my quota for volunteer hours, which meant a bookplate in a library book dedicated to me. The book was a work of juvenile fiction called Kitten’s Winter by Eugenie Fernandes. I brought it into the library’s coffee shop one day to read with my Literary Latte, and I found the story delightful.

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