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!
