Sent Forth with the Gift of Eloquence

Ah, the joys of emailing/blogging from cheap hostels along the road... Marvelous trip so far, with a big weekend still ahead. Much of the plan flowing according to form - kissed the Blarney today and so now have the gift. More in due course.

Off...

And with little time to spare. For the first time in (he counts 1996, 1999, 2000, 2002 x 2, 2004, 2005, 2006) 8 cross-Atlantic flights, I might actually get some sleep tonight.

The Thames awaits.

The Days Ahead

A sampling of emails from friends abroad, whose paths I'll cross shortly:

Dude, great to hear from you, I thought you may have been swallowed up by the great law monster. South Africa was full of adventures...but lately I am splitting my time between Cambridge and Down Under. Tis a hard life. It would be fabulous to see you and I am sure I can come over from the Dark Side to Oxford for some drinking. My mob is ( - ) ... or best emailed on - I don't check this account that much. can't wait.

...

MacDuff,

Great to hear you're coming home. I've booked you in for the Ireland v. England Six Nations Rugby match (in Croke Park) on Saturday afternoon. There's a bunch of Irish heading out to watch it in O'Neills of George Street. You won't need need me to tell you how historic this is - the last time the English entered Croker, it was in armoured cars to gun down a dozen unarmed hurling supporters - plus a hurler on the pitch. Seeya soon.

...

MacD, Just revisiting your itinerary. I may not be in Oxford on the day you return, as I'm thinking of doing research if the funding is there. The good news, however, is that I'll be in Cork from either the 23rd or 24th until the 1st so we can probably rendevous for a few pints of Guinness and I can show you all my old haunts in the self-proclaimed European Capital City of Culture (they really claim this). See you on the River Lee (hopefully).

...

Okay, nice! Text me Sunday. Somewhere round Cov Garden would be fairly easily for us both to get to to watch the footer. Think I'd like to see Arsenal do Chelsea!! So the good news is we can sit on the same side ofthe pub.And if for any reason, neither of us can make that, we'll do Mondaylunch or beers Sunday 4th. Deal?? Safe flight. See you soon raccoon X

...

MacDuff lives! Will be great to see you. I take it you mean this Friday as in four days away? There's a bop this Saturday, so your timing is on song. Looking forward to it.

...

Watch out baby yaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhooooooooooooo of course I want to dress as a princess!!! ha ha ha! becoz I am a prinzess ;obThat is going to be just awesome youpidoo... ok I really have to go but i'll wright more later babes!ciao jamesaloushkabizou

Yup. 5 hours until the bus, and definitely hard not to be excited given the broad range of character acquaintances to renew. My three least favorite letters at the moment are L, N, and G. Not much of which I'll be remotely thinking about once I shed this suit in short order. Just as soon as this last memo gets rattled off and the hours recorded and the dash to the Airporter shuttle is complete! Focus! Argh.

Travelogue Reading List

At the packing stage now. Getting extremely excited. More tomorrow if I have the time, otherwise from the other side. Here are the stories for the next 10 days. I love days like these:

1. The Electric Kool-Aid Test, by Tom Wolfe

2. Zuleika Dobson (or an Oxford Love Story), by Max Beerbaum

3. Half-Moon Street, by Paul Theroux

4. The Incredible Mile, by Harold Elvin

5. The Matisse Stories, by A.S. Byatt

6. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger


Oh baby. Lunch on the Thames in about 31 hours. The surrealness of time and the magic of modern day travel. We are here to go. On and on into the grand abyss that is the morrow. Can't wait to see what it brings.

The 031707 Front

Life is beautiful.

Yesterday I lamented a bit the lack of new inspiration and adventure, and then proceeded to a Rum and Coke and Guinness infused evening. Awoke hungover to an email, and as quickly plans fall into place for St. Patrick's in - wait for it - CHICAGO.

Oh baby. It takes only a few minutes more to realize that the NCAA tournament opens that weekend. Perhaps there is a location nearby to catch some games? Uh, how about the United Center in Chicago?!?! Absolutely perfect, since the games fall on the 16th and 18th, making attendance possible while conserving the Saturday to attend to the dying of the river and then the multiple Irish pubs (note the "Howl at the Moon" piano bar as well). At times like this... my oh my... it is to marvel.

A Most Humorous Sadness

Another Friday already - almost as quickly as it seems this blog has dwindled to mere weekly Shakespearean Friday updates. Work has been occupying and (fairly) interesting, so it must shoulder a part of this blame. But the main culprit of the lengthy silences, in truth, is simply a sad dearth of inspirations odd, random, and spectacular. A lack, in brief, of new-found adventures.

Happily, that is destined to change and quickly, as 6 days from now mark my welcome return to the old haunted grounds of Oxfordtown, and to the banks of the Thames's comforting waters, and even a few days in the southern counties of the Emerald Isle.

Again I'll walk beneath the dreaming spires and scheme out new plots over English ale amid goodly company. Again I'll hoist W. Whitman into the side pouch of my backpack and inhale great draughts of space and let large and melodious thoughts descend upon me and seek the rough new prizes. Again I'll laugh along at the foolishness of great friends and snore hungover on morning buses through the countryside and board planes armed only with passport and printed e-ticket. Again I'll smile at the memory of plans imagined and realized. Again I'll fall in and out of love with exotic-seeming women on a glance across a room. Again I'll plead for the travels to continue.

And for the first time I'll traverse the Cork and Kerry mountains in search of Captain Farrell (and the money he was counting). I'll touch lips and fingertips to the Blarney with hopes of absorbing its charming qualities. I'll watch Patrick Stewart recite what's past is prologue and again toss an empty can of Super Strongbow from Millenium Bridge. I'll curse time's fickleness and praise its persistence in spurring us on to what is next. I'll take voluminous pictures of faces. Ich gehe nirgendwo hin. Ich bin nur unterwegs.

Ah, yes. I'd trade rich eyes for poor hands any day, so long as the critical pence remain for drink. Another merry T.F.I. ahead, I'll raise one of the celebratory glasses to the one week anniversary of a West Coast hot tub engagement. Phoenix in October sounds lovely.

JAQUES
I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is
emulation, nor the musician's, which is fantastical,
nor the courtier's, which is proud, nor the
soldier's, which is ambitious, nor the lawyer's,
which is politic, nor the lady's, which is nice, nor
the lover's, which is all these: but it is a
melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples,
extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry's
contemplation of my travels, in which my often
rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

ROSALIND
A traveller! By my faith, you have great reason to
be sad: I fear you have sold your own lands to see
other men's; then, to have seen much and to have
nothing, is to have rich eyes and poor hands.

JAQUES
Yes, I have gained my experience.

Wise Enough to Play the Fool

A grand day. Why? Because it is Friday, of course. Off to catch the bus, with Rum and Cokes awaiting my arrival in Moncton for festing and foolery and toasts. Seems decisions have been made for Patty's in the nation's capital. Lovely. Have a good one.

Maybe

"And I went upstairs to the balcony and I sat down and you know the movie was a film I'd seen many times in my life since I was a kid and I always loved it, and you know I'm watching these people up on the screen and I started getting hooked on the film, you know? And I started to feel, how can you even think of killing yourself, I mean isn't it so stupid? I mean look at all the people up there on the screen, you know, they're real funny, and what if the worst is true. What if there is no god and you only go around once and that's it. You know, don't you want to be part of the experience? You know, hell, it's not all a drag. And I'm thinking to myself, jeez I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I'm never going to get and enjoy it while it lasts. And after who knows, I mean you know maybe there really is something, nobody really knows. I know maybe is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that's the best we have. And then I started to sit back and I actually began to enjoy myself."

- Woody Allen, Hannah and her Sisters (el Ron testing tonight, who shall the Academy select as triumphant? Time will show)

"I think your colleague is in trouble..."

Ouch would be an appropriate word to describe the Rabbie festivities of Saturday night at the Burns Club supper, the highlight being a marvelous and magnificent "Immortal Memory" to the great poet that I honored by promptly losing mine own. Alas, such was inevitable when the bottles on the table are free, and full of not wine but Bowmore. You keep telling yourself it won't happen again, then it does and where are you then? As I found myself typing earlier today:

"That's the way she goes boys. Sometimes she goes, sometimes she doesn't, 'cause that's the way she fucking goes."

Indeed. Off we go, merry wanderers, to another eve awaiting laughter.

Fairy
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?

PUCK
Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.

Fairy
And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!