Reflections on Howth: August 3rd
The world melts away as my group slowly advances up the fading concrete road.
Worn, gray homes, once a milky white, clash violently against our colorful clothes.
It’s day three of my one-week literature camp excursion to Ireland. The only words of wisdom in the past couple days have come from bygones like Joyce. And Wilde. Notably, Yeats. I try reciting some lines from The Lake Isle of Innisfree as both my mind and feet wander off to strange places. I’m not very successful.
I stare down at the hills lush with vegetation. There’s an incredible variety, from the stereotypical fern to tortuous bushes that can pass for disturbing, miniature trees. I chuckle. My gaze moves upwards. I meet a few cliff faces, a good distance away from my own. They’re a muddy brown, and I think I see streaks of rust in the seams of weathered rock. I squint my eyes. It looks like rust, but if I look away for a moment or close my eyes a second longer than I usually would—
A particularly strong wave breaks through the even darker rocks down by the shallows.
The water drenches the one cliff face I’ve been eyeing, the wetness forming a haunting, ephemeral visage. Combined with its roar, the sea is daring me to believe what my morbid mind is thinking the rust could possibly be. I shake my head, and look forward once more. By the time I turn away, I’ve already forgotten what it looked like.
As I continue my journey on the tight dirt road, delightfully cold sprinkles pepper my immediate vicinity, giving off pleasant, oh-so-light taps as they make contact with my backpack, the ferns, the haunting bushes. The constancy of the drops are soothing. I find solace in the ambience
as I run a hand through my jet black hair. The rain gods have answered my calls of desperation, I think to myself, the corners of my eyes wrinkling slightly in amusement. I spread my arms as I go, reveling in the freshness, the smell, the sensation of it all.
My face breaks out into a rare, genuine smile.
I suddenly realize the group has stopped to enjoy the view. As they chat minimally in hushed tones so as to not disturb the peace and quiet, I notice a minuscule strip of land that juts out from the main trail. My instincts take over, and I’m suddenly a step away from a precarious drop, some hundreds of feet from the black rocks poking out of the sea floor.
Surprisingly, no one tells me to back off. My stolid, midnight black pools meet the mouth of the abyss. An indescribable feeling fills me. I recognize the sheer vastness, but also my humbling transience.
Out in the sea, far away from where I stand, the cloudy weather is further emphasized by curtains of what I imagine are torrential downpours, creating outlines that run over some great, invisible entity. Cataracts, I ponder. Of the sky. Or maybe drops of water to some other thing. If not, what does one call something smaller than a drop of water?
The bleakness of the day means there’s no sun, but I’ve never felt more at peace.
It fills me, conveys a sense of being complete and satisfied and…
There’s no better way to put it.
I turn to my friends. The sudden change in my normally slouched posture surprises them, for they know me as a pensive, metaphorically tired one.
“I could die here right now and I wouldn’t mind at all.”
When I say those words, I don’t shudder. So I know I mean it.
The grey-blue waters continue shifting. They never rest.
