Cead Mile Failte, postscript

So. Lessons learned. After finally visiting Ireland, what did I learn and what do I want to take back to improve my life here?

I mean, this is what I do. I go abroad and discover things I want to apply to my mundane workaday life. In 2007, London and York made me actually want to start visiting my local farmers’ markets regularly. 2010 in Europe opened my eyes to Spezi, elderflower and long haul train travel. Japan in 2015 made me want to drink highballs again, and London last summer made the half-pint of session ale an aspirational desire. So what did I come back from Ireland with?

For starters, wool. I bought a tweed flat cap and a dark gray fisherman’s sweater – certainly not the dingy off-white lanolin-rich tight-weave actual Aran sweater, but something more suited for a part of the world that never seems to get below 5 degrees Celsius no matter how hard I try to will it so. Sure, I look like somebody’s dad, but to be blunt, my whole life has consisted of me waiting to age into actually being that auld lad in the pub.

For another, I now realize that the pubs of my frequency in the South Bay are actually not that far off from the real thing if done right. The Tuesday night trad session in San Jose. The Kilkenny on tap in Sunnyvale. There’s no one place that will actually give me a snug, a fireplace, half pints, comfy chairs and live trad all at once, but I can probably get three out of five in any given spot if I play my cards right. Having experienced the real thing, my hope is that I can now embrace the local spots as warm reminders rather than cold comfort.

(And as much as I do enjoy the cheeky half, it’s nice to have the full long Imperial pint of Guinness or Smithwick’s or (insert local sub-5% ABV milk stout that I will move heaven and earth to find now) and I’ll probably have to have it in the 20 oz Yeti tumbler so that it can stay crisp and cold to the last drop. I got back, didn’t have a beer for almost a week, then had a Sonoma-area IPA and my actual tongue puckered. Lesson learned. Stick to the stuff that isn’t stunt-hopped to a fare-the-well and try out milk stouts and brown ales instead.)

Third, and this one could be big: it might just be time to knock Twitter on the head once and for all. I was very little in social media on this trip, Instagram notwithstanding, and it was proof that of all the social media outlets out there, the one that genuinely works and counts is…the group chat. Whether it’s in WhatsApp or iMessage or what have you, the group chat kicks the very ass out of the Twitters for being a good environment where you’re not constantly wading through the crap of the wider world. So there’s a nonzero chance that my various attempts at a private friends-only Twittersphere will get disposed of in favor of just maintaining the existing public presence (which in itself is less of a big deal, somehow) and I will stop trying to make this toxic thing somehow be nutritious for me. That would be nice.

The other thing I learned about myself is that in addition to fog and stone, I apparently have a thing for urban running water. The problem is, we don’t have a lot of that around here. Stevens Creek or the Guadalupe River are probably the closest, but they are dry for months at a time and don’t have buildings butting right up against them the way the canals did in London or Dublin. What I did do was change the white noise app in my phone from rain to running water…and it seems to be helping, even as I struggle to get my sleep cycle back to normal. (Naturally, I get it sorted just in time to make an early morning flight to the East Coast. Typical. Of which.)

Other than that…just patience. Wait for cold. Wait for fog. Wait for the darkness to pass you by and endure in the meantime. And just remember that someday you get to be back on the Sea Road, half eleven, listening to the session sounds drifting out of the Crane Bar and into the coal-smoky night.

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