"Above all--we were wet"

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"Above all--we were wet" is a line in the book Angela's Ashes that I am reading. It's about a boy's irish catholic childhood in Limerick, Ireland in the 1940's and in it he writes about the sheets of rain that would come up from the River Shannon and keep the city wet all the time. I recommend it.

It reminded me of today in Dublin...it is cold and rainy and windy as hell. Right now I'm sitting at my internship at UCD's campus. I can hear the wind blowing around the building and it makes a hollowing noise that is so loud you can't help but notice it. It is almost comforting. It's pouring out and it has been steadily since I woke up. It's so interesting the kind of mood the rain puts you in. I think that the rain is a good thing, it makes this place "emerald" and it feeds all of the earth's creatures. Humans are the only creatures that complain about the rain.

Still, the grey weather changes people. I noticed on my bus ride this morning from Santry to Belfied (about an hour and a half commute) the people on the bus looked more tranquil, perhaps sad, everyone was looking out or down, no one was speaking to each other like other mornings. It was silent. People moved slower.

I got off the bus and walked across campus to where the Geary institute is. My cheap H&M umbrella flew backward because it was so windy and this umbrella is not very sturdy. Kind of felt like the women in "Mary Poppins" who were walking around in all black with umbrellas and Mary Poppins swept them all away using her magical wind powers and their umbrellas went reverse. Yeah, that's exactly what it felt like.

Now I'm at my internship which is a research center on a college campus. There are mostly graduate students here, working on research projects for their dissertations or maybe for other reasons. I love the feeling of an academic setting, everyone is so into their work yet it is not rushed or uptight at all. Well this is from what I can tell, I bet others would argue otherwise. But there isn't an emphasis on time here, you can get here later and stay later or leave early and it's grand. Different from my last internship when it did matter when I came in, and that was even through the Democratic Party, the most disorganized institution of all time.

Still, I am 150 percent out of place because I don't have any work to do yet. Most days I have been sitting on my laptop listening to Jewel or Jets to Brazil on YouTube, browsing the interweb, and when I sick of doing that, I'll sit here in read. That's what I'll do now, and ill try to not let these dark rainy days get the best of me spirit...cheers!

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