Up with a jump after 12 hours sleep, as that is the cheapest way to do things, and into the station for an hour’s wait for a train to Mallow. I’m starting to look and feel like real road scum, but I’ve never felt better.

Old bum knows Truth. Not bottled Truth, but spiritual. And he also knows on this Sunday morning that Truth cannot be found in the church but is out in the street with the people. And that Truth is found within himself.

As I entered the station, I saw a pigeon walking around eating up bits of whatever. Enter the Railway Man, with his mop to clean up bits of whatever from under the roost that the pigeons keep.

Two girls sit to my left. I brush my teeth in the railway bathroom. Soon but not soon enough the ticket window has a figure behind it. Ticket to Mallow via Limerick Junction by bus to train. Outside now, near bus slots, a bus pulls in. “I will miss no more buses! “, the Post Warrior vows. And he asks the driver. “No.” Back to the outside station wall and the girls come up behind me, saying “We are following you.” I must really look like a traveler! Pride and I am happy. They are from South Shore Long Island en route to London to meet friends.

Limerick Junction Station is small and cold and blue. This is one hell of an adventure. I looked at my black & white photo of Megen and I miss her. But I cannot bring myself to listen to her Death tape, as I must keep my spirits high.

My god! Some how, I got on the nutty weirdo circus car express to some crazy hell or worse. A fat, queer in the American sense strange-o sits to my front right, listening to a radio bigger than his already very large head, or gets up and runs up and down the aisle. The nut in back of me sits listening to the songs playing in his head and rocks his head back and forth as if to say “No”, but to a beat. Every time the conductor comes by he asks for a ticket “if you don’t mind” to someplace else and upon hearing the cost says “What if I said I know Pat?” and the conductor says “That is the same price I would pay. That’s fair (fare?).”

Fat tourist American executive and his wife sit three seats up and to the right. I think of my own parents traveling Europe and laugh. A crazy nut and his wife sit right in front of me. Testament to Irish inbreeding. What great fun! All look at me with drug helmet concealing three or two day old unwashed hair and terrorist jacket and crazy beard and all think that I am the nut!

The countryside is beautiful green hilly with cows and small trees growing against oldoldold walls of fence and farm. Late November and the grass and trees are still green! Thousands of millions of hundreds of cows everywhere in every plot and field, but where is the sun? Even the crows have a brogue and the black and white Heckle and Jeckle birds tell me that what I am doing is right. Soon to Castletownroche and the crazy John Seamus Pat cousins and Mum.

The walk into Mallow was escorted by a swearing mad Londoner who was roped into moving to this “primitive country, more primitive than the Wild West ever was” by his wife. Man, was he pissed.

Walking the back road to Castletownroche with a car every 5 minutes and no one stopping no matter what I did, save one crazy young 30ish man in a bomb like my ‘Bird back home. He was going to Castletownroche anyway, so no biggy and off we went at 50MPH around this skinny turny curvy back road, balling it up and down hill until we were in the town.

Into the pub straight away, greeted by John who looked at me and my big rucksack mess and I guess they don’t get much road suck Post Warriors in this tiny town. He failed to recognize me even when I told him I was here two years ago, but Pat knew me after he removed my beard in his head and I gave them the picture of their “Auntie Eilly” (my father’s mother) and the rest of the family, thus ending my Irish quest. But they still didn’t seem too hospitable until I ate some chicken and potatoes in three flavors and went for a five mile walk at a blistering pace with Max the Dog chasing sticks and Anne the nurse who travels the world and now I shall have a shower and feel much better as the sweat rolls down my sweat stained back, and I will feel better.

Cold, cold, colder the shower of ice washes over me slowly.

(Letter to Rich)
10:30 pub in Castletownroche. Band playing slow, mellow jams of Eagles and other American bands, and Irish covers, and their own. The drummer is playing some pretty good riffs. You bastards should be practicing, as the stone you gave me tells me that you are in the “studio rehearsal hall”. Pints run free, stouts of Guinness and a Cork Murphy’s, which is good and should go international intercontinental. “You guys suck” is all I can think, knowing the opposite. Sadness comes into my head via the speakers and a crowd grows.

Drunk and back only two drinks, one full pint I have paid and tomorrow I leave Castletownroche, rain or shine, and probably rain. The last 15 minutes of some old Laurence Olivier movie plays in the house parlor, after the pub closed. All I can think is that it is an American training film for greed, sex and cocktails.

In bed, under seven layers, SEVEN, of sheets, blankets, comforters, lays the cold Knight Post for a cold Post night!

Hungover as all Hell in a hostel lies the Post Spoiled American Warrior, missing his friends and girlly and ready to kill for even a warm glass of Tropicana Pure Premium OJ.

The law says that in order to be a nightclub, a meal must be served. To do this most cheaply, the place we were last night charges a £3 cover and gives you some good drinking and dancing, slop & rice. Pretty good idea.

I am in the Select Bar, for pub grub, on Shop Street. Good food, great soup and pretty good prices. It looks really la-dee-dah, but isn’t. Full of regulars, they took me in with no problems.

Back in Quays, waiting for the artist, from last night, to arrive at 3. 2:30 now and so bored. Body still in pain from last night. I crave no beer or cigarette, just a hot bath, some good OJ, and my friends. Megen’s crazy depressed tape plays on shitty $15 Walkman with even shittier £4 earphones. Little ones, that go in earholes, attached to headband. What is she doing to me? She knows I will listen to her tape the most and it is even more depressing than Tarbox’s! Black Death on magmatic media.

Coke bottle empty and 10 more minutes until artist arrives. He has to make it on time, because my bus leaves for Mallow at 3:15.

* Quays on Quay Street, visit it, very nice.

3:02 – where is the bastard?!? I NEED my beret, muthafucka!

The kid didn’t show so all I have is a drug helmet, with my growing longer dirty hair sticking out the back. And I saw my bus, the Cork bus, cruising down the street from the station as I take the diagonal path across the park in the middle of Galway City and I have to stay here now until 6 and will only get as far as Limerick tonight. Limerick sucks. It is dead.

I started reading “Lonesome Traveler” while sitting out in the cold in front of the station, but it got too cold so I finished my reading session in the pub/lounge. Not drinking or smoking and listening to everyone and some old drunks can’t remember who ordered the last pint. All want to drink it, none want to pay for it.

Long, dark bus ride to Limerick finds me thinking sleeping hearing smelling seeing my friends. Megen’s Death tape plays on and on and on. Midway through trip, bus stop, five girls get on. One sits next to me and we say nothing. At bus stop in Limerick, she gets off and says “Thank you. Nice to see you.” The Irish are really truly nice people.

* The best cure for loneliness is to keep on moving.

Yesterday, after I missed the bus, I went into a small pub near the station and had my first pint of Guinness on this adventure. Then I walk Limerick with pack on my back. This is a dead city.

On the bus, finally, to Galway, I played a small game of pass the ashtray with this crazy Irish kid and slept. It was raining, but not hard, as we pulled into the Galway station and I immediately found the B&B Terry and I stayed in two years ago. This place is getting run down. The woman is very unsocial and was unimpressed when I told her that I had stayed here before.

Off into the night. Pizza at Super Mac’s is still really good, and the place was full of beautiful Irish girls, one in particular. There was a shrew-faced male, young, eating alone, like me, wearing a crazy looking suit and tie. I was going to talk to him, but he seemed distraught about something.

Off to the bar. This is a nice place, classy like, in a hotel. There was the shrew, with friends, hundreds of them! Graduation at some university. I figured it would be cool to hang out and meet people, but they weren’t into it. There was some old, 45ish, drunk next to me and he would talk and told me about how nice “hippies” are and about two hostels. He had a small bag of writing paper that he claimed the contents were 145 pounds. It was a gift from the missus. But he soon left. Pint of Guinness and a pint of Bud and I hit the street. I actually got lost. Wrong turn out of Mickey Dee’s or something and I was on the fringes of town. Nice place. Rivers and some crazy big cathedral.

I went back into the same pub and was received even less than before. Single pint of Guinness poured to say “Get out fast”. 100’s of these kids all over the place.

By 8PM, I was asleep at the B&B.

I woke once in the night, at 5 to midnight, from a dream about Megen and Matt McLaughlin.

Woke this morning and 8:45. No shower, because it didn’t work. I haven’t bathe since America! Now, after a pork breakfast, I must find a hostel.

There was no real challenge, but I am spending money much too fast. 10 pounds for the B&B, 4 for the hostel, my headphones broke so there is another 4 and change, food. I’m spending way too much money. I had to even buy a towel for 4 pounds on sale, but this I needed because I just had a lame shower but still feel great. The Post Warrior still is a spoiled American, but not for much longer. If I can learn not to spend so much cash, I’ll make it.

The bar (pub) I frequent, I just learned is a yuppie bar. Oh well. It is nice, but the people suck. After a long walk down to the fucking Oasis disco, which was closed when I finally got there After pissing in a combination Texaco/funeral parlor, it was closed! I couldn’t believe it.

(Letter to Terry)
Oasis is a hike.

I went back to the hostel, where everyone was making dinner. Sorry, I like being out. And I couldn’t eat even if I tried…no microwave or nukeable food! I met one of the two guys that I started out with in JFK, in some travel agency, as I walked the streets of Galway. Digging the people and sights. Holy shit, I’m in Ireland. So far from family and friends and Mystic. I’m in a pub now, which came highly recommended by one of the few people in that other pub. Yup, this is better. Called “Quays” (“Keys” as I looked for it). This is probably the nicest pub I will ever be in! It is beautiful and old with brick arch doorways and two bars. If anyone ever reads this and gets to Galway, Ireland, come here!

(Letter to Dawn)
Any Irish in you? I’ve seen you coming up the street several times now.

By the way, it is only about 7PM and clocks are hard to find in this really old country with walls older than God being just now knocked down to put up more pubs and butcher shops. Ireland, in any pissant little town, blows the Mystic Mile away. I saw those two young punk girls, that I saw yesterday in the center of town, daring all in the yup pub. Yesterday I felt actually threatened by the two probably 17 year old girls, but tonight, as they walked by, I wanted to talk to them but could not get my coward’s nerves up to say “Excuse me, please let me hang out with you.”

Loneliness hits hard. I am so lonely I am answering my own questions, but this is where Truth is found.

(Letter to Michael)
“Yah, Boy!” Listened to your tape in Limerick and Galway. “How low can you go?” That’s correct. Big into J. B. I’ve got names and addresses. Let’s go international, man!

On the walk down to Oasis, I gave a very drunken bum a Camel. I lit it at his request and asked him if he wanted me to smoke it for him, too (a line I learned as a janitor). He tasted it, expecting a Major, and said “What is this?!!?”

The busboy/barback wears a Talking Heads shirt. Very cool place, this Ireland. Tomorrow I think I’ll get on with it and get my ass planted on a bar stool in Castletownroche. Ireland, no matter how hard you fight, is a pub crawl. Soon, I’ll visit New Order’s disco in Manchester, and then on to see Maura in London.

Ireland is like a strange state in America. US news, music, cars, etc are here. But Bud is an import and you pay import prices for it!

The trip is worth whatever and whoever. I’ve hooked up with the potheads. Yeah, too cool. Drunk and kicked out of one pub and into another and into another. Take-away beers and smoking spliffs all the way back. Expensive and weak, but cool to sit around the circle; an artist with everyone’s voice ever, two English majors, and a worker. One of the English majors is by God too funny. Drinking beers by a canal by a river and people passing by and pot and Bud and drugs and all kinds we keep going and it isn’t even 10 o’clock and one wears a Jimi H. shirt. And they know Public Enemy and I Am happy smoking, now listening to a sound painting by the artist whose name I cannot remember, but god they are cool.

(Letter to Tarbox)
Get out of your house, boy! Your sounds have a way to go, as I listen to “just some tape.”

(Letter to Rich F)
Pixies are BIG in Ireland.

My beret has gone missing. These guys smoke resin, dance to Hip-Hop and Funk from the ‘70s. I gave them my address.

(PS to Michael)
Use wooden matches to pack jibbers!

{A separate page tucked into my notebook}
Quays 111789
Lovers sit quiet talking hand holding.
Please, please someone talk to me!
I’ll sit and smile and laugh and talk.
Just please talk with me, to me, but not about me.
Megen look-a-like sits ten feet away.
Much older, like old when the ring is around her finger
and I am long long long forgotten.
Hunger and loneliness and Guinness and Murphy’s
envelope me with fear and Death.
Help me, please.

Sleeping on the plane, I had a weird dream. All the regulars were there, but lots of us, kindda like party “Group”, we were all trying to chill out at different people’s houses and drink and talk. Tarbox and Alex were going off. We were poor. There were turkeys and sheep and large-headed mules in the backyards. We kept getting yelled at and kicked out by parents, moms mostly. We were drunks.

(Letter to Dolph)
I saw this chick in the terminal at JFK. Pretty good looking. Saw her next morning after sleeping on the plane. Pretty bad. I had to piss, the sign read “VACANT”, I turned the knob and there she was! I closed the door. When she was done (which she was anyway, as she was standing), she flung the door open and stomped back to her seat.

Shannon Aeroport to Limerick:
Standing at a bus stop, a nice, young, mid-aged woman asks me when the next bus is. I don’t know. She goes and finds out it isn’t for two more hours and asks if I want to share a cab to Limerick, as the bus will go there anyway. OK and she goes to call for one. I, putting on a warm shirt, catch her in the aeroport and she has hooked a rent-a-car business American who will drive us to Limerick for free. Cool, as 100 bucks is 66 and change pounds.

Now in Limerick, and I just missed my bus. Guess I’ll go to the pub.

So here sits the Post Warrior, alone, in the crazy aeroport, alone, naked and vulnerable. Let’s Go, cheap Walkman, Dawn’s tape, two packs of Camels, and that is it. Loneliness starts and I cannot wait to see Maura in London and sanity will return. Trapped in this reality, waiting, and all the nuts and crazies walk past me without a look. Hundreds and thousands trickle past.

One man, waiting for his oil rig worker friend who is four hours late, starts laughing because that is all he can do. He tries talking to me but soon stops.

On the ride down to this crazy place, NY, that once was my home, I saw a mad throwback to Lowell, MA. A white, blank billboard on the side of I-95 South with the one word, not even on the space for the ad, “MURPHY”, the name of the crazy, big, old beatnik, and I smile as I just finished reading in the van “Dharma Bums”, stolen from Kerouac’s grave by your small little sneaky author. But Jack said it was OK and so it was.

After a half hour delay and a Beck’s Dark, the New Way of the adventurous Post Warrior begins. Talking smiling laughing with two Irish cyclist nuts and some Irish now New Yorker lady, I realize that all I can do for the world is make it better. Better by being in a good mood 24hrs a day and all the rest.

There is a stewardess that looks very new and very young 21ish and from a distance resembles Megen back in Mystic who promises to wait for me. I could talk to her, the stewardess, and ask her why she looks like she is so lost and confused and hope to find out thru her what makes Megen look the same. But I don’t because she is working. So sad she looks but must smile and be humble because it is her job, but she knows Truth and Sadness.

Fog caused the half hour delay and when we finally broke out of it and stars and moon were out I realized that what I was doing is going to be amazing and the Post Warrior has gotten out of basic training and is ready to be alone and make do.