There and Back, Again

So summer travel is mostly done. I can sit in one place for a couple of weeks at least. And get bored. I'm getting stir crazy already. The good thing about travel is that you learn stuff. Often stuff you didn't know. Or didn't even know you didn't know.

Like I'd been to Christ Church oodles of times (well three at least) and had not taken note of the heart relic. See that picture, there's a mummified heart, a human heart, in there. Some saint or other. Religious people are strange.

Or say you find yourself in Scotland only to learn it is the only country (let's not quibble over whether or not it is actually a country--viva la devolution!) where another soda outsells Coke. That soda is neon orange, stains your clothes if you spill it, and tastes...wait for it...like bubblegum, like Dubble Bubble bubblegum. That atrocious sounding concoction is called Irn Bru and I loved it.

While there I also learned that not all whisky comes from Tennessee and has to be drunk with Coke Zero. I was introduced to and fell madly in love with single malt whisky (what we'd call Scotch).

Those are only some of my learnings. I probably gained a greater appreciation of the world and its diversity. But I thought it more important to dwell on the drinking and disembodied heart.

Ring of Dingle

No jokes--it's just too easy. So I'm going to bore you again with my travels. Though I can barely drive in the U.S., I decided to rent a car and drive in Ireland. But I had GPS. Going to Dingle, I read about the great views of Conor's Pass but how "treacherous" it can be in bad weather. I bravely decided to avoid it, thinking the GPS would take me by way of the main highway. Where did it take me, you certainly would feel inclined to ask if just out of courtesy. Here, that's where:



I survived. The next day I went around the ring of Dingle. My first big site was the Celtic and Prehistory Museum where I meet this odd musician who has collected and now opened to the public a strange collection of things, including the giant skull of a Woolly Mammoth--complete with tusks as big as me. And then I was off to the Great Blasket Island. And it was great. The place is empty:



The few remaining inhabitants left the island years ago. The ferryman said that they went to American and never came back. No cafes, no convenience stores, no bathrooms (ouch). Only the abandoned houses even newer ones with stuff just left or litter piled in. As this eerie, i.e. poorly shot, photo will attest:



I hiked the island for three hours and was alone most of the time. Which is disconcerting when you find piles of bones around the place:



But the view was worth it:

Here's a Limerick for You

So I'm in Limerick. Which, of course, must remind you of that time that I wrote that post about a dirty limerick for no reason whatsoever. I thought so. You may not know that the city of Limerick is known to the Irish as "Stab City." It's not what you think. It's because lots and lots of people here have been stabbed. Unless that's what you thought, in which case you should try to not be so cynical.

Here, however, is a lovely picture of Limerick, which is not so lovely because I took it:



Here is a picture from Limerick's darker underbelly:

Going Green

Not environmental (why bother when we all know the environment is going to be destroyed by grey goo...or zombies), but Irish. That's right, I'm in Ireland. Possible home of some of my corrupt genetic material.

And here's a picture of The Hairy Lemon to prove it. Probably you can't read it, but that sign...the small and blurry one...that says, "The Hairy Lemon." Trust me, it does.

The Elephant in the Reading

Jet lag has made me into a 9 to 5 guy. I wake at 7 in the morning and get tired at 10 at night. I'm working through the pain. So I went to the Queens MFA reading tonight. First up was Margot Singer, who read from her short story collection The Pale of Settlement (University of Georgia Press), winner of the 2006 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. The other reader was Alan Michael Parker (AMP to acronym lovers), and he gave me hope for poetry with his comic listing poems and his reading of the title poem from his new collection Elephants & Butterflies. It also helps that he admitted to being a "pretentious shit" for titling a poem in Latin.

Triumphs and Disappointments

So 2 plane rides, 4 rough hours sleep in 36 hours, and some number of students (the correct number, not a one lost...physically--I'm sure they're lost in all kinds of mental and spiritual ways I'm not responsible for) delivered to the good ole U.S. of A., and I'm back in all my shabby, jet-laggy self.

Note to shabby self: write a museum guide for people who hate museums, e.g. ignore the overplayed Mask of Agamemnon at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens for the far more humorous phallic-handled spoon.

My major disappointment came when watching a round of Eurovision in an Athens restaurant where they gave me a salad with lettuce rather than that Greek abomination that contains only tomatoes, olives, and feta. Eurovision you probably know though I've never seen it mentioned in the States is that infinitely superior American-Idol-esque competition where countries send a musical act to represent them (often well known rather than just discovered). These are often pop princess clones like Greece's own entry this year, but sometimes...not. My favorite this year was eliminated that night of the lettuce salad: Ireland's entry. I'm doubly sad because mocking the contest you're trying to win is probably noble and also because the country that wins hosts the next year's contest, and I'll be in Ireland then.

So here's to the fallen Dustin the Turkey:

I Am Braver Than Henry Miller

That's right, the big man who broke literary boundaries and wrote the risque Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn is a coward when it comes to cold, dark, wet confined spaces. He twice visited Mycenae, an ancient Greek hilltop fortress, home of the Mycenaen empire. Each time he attempted to climb down the winding steps that lead into the underground cistern:

"Thinking back on it now, after a lapse of months, I honestly believe that I would rather be shot than forced to descend that staircase alone. In fact, I think I would die of heart failure before ever reaching the bottom."
--- Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)

Go to this Henry Miller blog to read more about his cowardice.

Not only did I descend the staircase, I reached the bottom. Along with a lot of other tourists. Here's the picture to prove it...okay that's not me, but a bunch of my students--I'm the one at the bottom taking the picture.

So there Henry Miller.

Banana in Santorini

So thanks to Heather and her banana lecture I did not go hungry today when faced with a green banana and unable to peel it the right way. I flipped that sucker over and opened it from the bottom. That's right, I'm as smart as a monkey. Here's a picture of the blue monkeys fresco in Santorini:

Jackass in Greece

So this fine piece of artwork was over my bed in Heraklion, Crete. You know the Leda and the Swan myth, right? Horny old Zeus wants Leda so he turns himself into a swan and gets what he wants. I mean how could he not? Look at that swan--that is one smooth lady-killing swan.

Just to let you know, we've left Crete and the creepy bestiality picture behind and are now in the island paradise (cliche deserved) Santorini. I mean seriously. This picture is from my hotel:


You know the deal: the island has a volcano in the middle, and it blew sometime before Plato, and so there's this huge crater in the island that filled with the sea and surrounding the caldera are cliffs, on which people naturally built hotels and restaurants...because really what's the worse that could happen? And now people pay insane amounts of money to get taken for overpriced rooms, food, and drink in order to hang on the side of the cliff. And yeah, it's probably the most breath-stopping places I've ever been.

Finally, this is a picture of a jackass coming up one of the winding village roads. Or maybe it's a donkey...or a mule...the point is it's a play on words with the title. This is a literary blog after all.

Greece or Bust

That's an old map of Crete and that's where I'm headed. Three plane rides and several time changes later, I'll arrive in Heraklion.

Below is an illustration of executions preformed by hoisting the victims up in the air and then dropping them on a hook, where they would hang impaled until dead. They don't practice that anymore...I'm fairly certain...


Wish me happy trails...