The Ballad of Ballyboghil: Part IV

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

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"Oh Jesus, another roundabout coming up. Which way do I go, Mom?"

"…"

"Mom?! Which way?"

"Uh…"

"GODDAMMIT!"

I don't usually swear in front of my family. It's just not something that's part of our daily interactions. But now, lost in County Dublin and forced to make panicked decisions at each intersection, I'm invoking the Lord's name so often it's like She's right there in the car with us.

Mom is holding all the maps. My sister avoids them like a demon to Holy Water, hissing and covering her eyes. 

It's not Mom's fault we can't navigate ourselves out of this maze, but it certainly doesn't help that the map is written in 2 point font and her eyes are about as effective as a Dwight Howard at the foul line.

"Just go towards the highway," she suggests.

"And where the hell is that, Mom?" I snap, plastered against the window from the G-Forces of yet another roundabout.

"That one, toward the M1," she points.

"Fine."

We fly out of the merry-go-round from Hades onto a road that will hopefully take us to the highway. I'm abandoning all my convictions from a few miles ago, flip-flopping faster than a presidential candidate from one town to the next. Fuck these fucking roundabouts, I think.

For my part, I'm not handling the stress of driving very well. All my optimism has evaporated. No longer the family cheerleader, I've become Gordon Ramsey from Hell's Kitchen. I'm snapping at Mom without reason, despising my sister's worry in the backseat, and generally stewing in a huge vat of Hate.

It's the Irish roads that take the brunt of my scathing internal monologue. Another group of signs pass and I attempt to decipher them. The destinations are printed in English with their traditional Irish names underneath, making the text small and near impossible to read from a distance.

In theory, I can understand and appreciate the Irish people's desire to preserve their native language. In practice, however, the nod to tradition just makes me angry. 

This, along with the feeling of playing Russian Roulette every time one enters a roundabout, gives the Irish road system such a sense of spontaneity and danger that I wonder if Neal Cassady wasn't a key architect for it.

Purely by chance - or a real-life instance of deus ex machina - we find ourselves driving up the on-ramp of the M1 - the I-95 of Irish highways. I spy the 120km/ph speed limit sign and give a now-rare whoop of joy. I can dig this.

The Yaris disagrees. Or rather, it disapproves of my ill-timed shifts from one gear to the next. It practically screams, "Try harder, Dummy", as I over-rev on my pre-premature shift into 5th gear. I peek up at my rearview mirror as I merge, only to realize for the four-hundredth time today that it is, in fact, on my left side.

Now up to speed and in a slightly more familiar environment, we begin to relax a bit. I, for one, am thoroughly enjoying myself. There's no need for hasty, stressful decisions on the highway. It's a place of stasis and safety for me.

We pass a sign informing us that Belfast is just 153km north. Very reasonable, I think, maybe we should just head there. At least we know where that is. But I know that isn't an option. Eventually we're going to have to locate this gawd-forsaken B&B. Eventually.

Everyday I'm Shufflin' -- The St. Kevin's Shuffle

Yesterday we made our way from Dublin to Cork, passing through the unearthly beautiful Glendalough Valley. The sights were expansive and welcoming; the bus ride long and uncomfortable.

Halfway through the ride, Colin leaned over the back of our seat and showed us the list he was keeping of every song that shuffled through his Ipod on the ride. 

I loved the idea, so naturally I did what I do every time someone else has a good idea -- unabashedly rip it off and make it my own. So consider this preface my attempt to give him some of the credit due.

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I'm not a big fan of the SHUFFLE mode on mp3 players. Never have been. My choice of which artist and song to play has always hinged on my mood at the current moment. The shuffle takes away my power of choice. 

And since there are so few things in life that one can directly control, I generally resent giving away what little remains of my autonomy to some stupid square of metal and plastic. This is know as raging against the machine.

I had a bit of change of heart yesterday during the bus ride from Dublin to Cork. I found that I could mold the meanings of the songs to fit my mood at the time, and this gave me a chance to possibly see the piece from a new perspective.

Here is my 24-track Driving to Cork Playlist:

*All songs marked with an asterisk signify, to my shoddy memory, the first time I have ever heard the song. 

1. "Minority Report" -- Jay-Z*

- Political songs always help ground me and make me forget about petty personal troubles. Imagining how people suffered during disasters like Hurricane Katrina remind me that my shit is nothing compared to what they've gone through.

2. "Science of Silence" -- Richard Ashcroft*

- Never heard the guy before and couldn't tell you how he got on the Zune, but his repetition of the line "We are on a rock / spinning in infinity" made me feel so small in a good way. There's nothing like seeing yourself as a speck of sand in the ocean to ease your stupid little anxieties about how you come across to a new group of people.

3. "Laughing With" -- Regina Specktor*

- Couldn't really hear the lyrics with the noise of the bus and highway, but I heard "God" a few times. Not in the Christian "Praise the Lord" way, but in the "God as a eternal concept and symptom of the human condition way", which I prefer.

4. "Red to Black" - Fort Minor

5. "Cemetery Gates" -- Between the Buried and Me*

- I generally avoided heavy or borderline metal music during the trip. Screaming has its place and time, I agree. Just not on a bus in Ireland. Still, these guys are such good musicians I had to let it slide.

6. "Know Your Enemy" -- Rage Against the Machine

- Zach De la Rocha is God-Poet. 'Nuff said. I dream of crafting venomous lyrics like his. RATM is surprisingly big in Ireland, too. We've heard the intro baseline of "Killing in the Name of" at pubs a couple times already.

7. "Old White Lincoln" -- The Gaslight Anthem

- My favorite band in the entire world. I've been looping their albums endlessly for the past three years and still can't get enough. Brian Fallon could publish these lyrics as straight poetry and win awards, I'm positive.

8. "Just Wait" -- Blues Traveler*

9. "The Upsetter" -- Jack Johnson*

10. "Closer I Get" -- Rebelution*

11. "KRS-One" -- Sublime*

- Bradley Nowell's voice always gets me. And I love how the hip-hop vibe leaks into a lot of the band's old stuff.

12. "Flesh" -- Atmosphere*

- Slug's introspective and fiercely personal lyrics never cease to inspire me. I would love to be able to hold a mirror up to my life the way he does. It's hard, a lot of of people (myself included) don't want to face the sad or ugly sides of ourselves. But I think facing the pain might be the only way really break free.

13. "Your Favorite Late Night Song" -- Racing Kites*

14. "On a Bayonet" -- Beirut*

- I love Beirut's sound. I'd would love them even more if I could get past thinking that every song sounds the same.

15. "Dream House" -- Dane Cook

- The downside of having stand-up albums on my Zune: I had to make a half and hour detour from the playlist so that I could hear the rest of Retaliation Disc 2. Helluva comedian.

16. "Nights of Wine and Roses" -- Japandroids

- I've listened to this a lot since boarding the plane for Ireland. It's the concept of wild and reckless life that really gets me. We should all live for nights filled with wine and roses.

17. "You Really Got a Hold on Me" -- The Beatles

- If my love-interest doesn't swoon when I play her a Beatles love song, she's not the girl for me.

18. "Car Radio" -- Spoon*

19. "High Speed" -- Coldplay*

20. "Later On" -- Kate Nash*

- By far the most striking change from this song to the next. On second I'm in the mind of some girl with boy trouble and the next I'm back in junior high, a skinny white kid walking the halls and rapping DMX songs under my breath. God, I love gangsta rap.

21. "Niggas" -- Notorious B.I.G.*

22. "Dreams" -- We Came As Romans*

23. "Colorful Language" -- You, Me, and Everyone We Know

- On of my roommate first showed me this band. His cousin used to be the guitarist for them. Since then their two EP's have been a mainstay in my listening rotation. Clever, overtly-sexual lyrics mixed with frequent group vocals guarantee a good time.

24. "Lord, I'm Discouraged" -- The Hold Steady

- I sincerely wish I had more of their stuff / listened closer to the songs I do have. It speaks to the exhaustion and helplessness all of us feels sometimes and conveys everything we want to say in just three words: "Lord, I'm discouraged." Me, too.

NOTE: Some Ipod purists may decry my having music I've never listened to on my player. They may call me a music hoarder who simply wants to say he has X number of songs or artists. But 'tis not true, dear reader. To my detractors I have three things to say: 1) It's a good thing you can't see my bookshelves at home, because the effect is much the same 2) As with the books, I fully intend to read/listen to everything eventually and 3) Screw you, it's my freakin' blog. I do what I want.

Till Next Time.

The Ballad of Ballyboghil: Part III

Read Part 1 and Part 2

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"Curtis, I want you to drive."

"Okay. Just pull in somewhere."

"Okay. Here?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." Turn. Shudder. "Shit."

We are just meters from the parking lot, stalled out, stretched across the wrong lane, with another car driving right toward us. Everything is NOT okay.

The Yaris limps to a stop in the parking lot, straddling the line that is supposed to separate one spot from another. But this is no time for precision. Mom shuts the car off and we consult the map.

The findings aren't good. Apparently "straight" is a tough directional concept for us to grasp: instead of continuing on the road through the Swords that would take us to our lodging -- a B&B in Ballyboghil -- we've unconsciously decided this village-turned-labyrinth is a fitting place to spend the rest of eternity.

Emotionally, we are a wreck. Mom is more frazzled than I've ever seen her. She's staring at the pedals and gear-shift as if they have personally offended her. My sister is shaking in the backseat, just a paper bag to the mouth away from a full-blown panic attack. I'm in the front seat talking with such forced optimism it's like I've been possessed by the spirits of Dr. Phil, Oprah, Richard Simmons, and the collective cast of Bob the Builder simultaneously. 

We've been on own for half an hour.

The lot where we are parked is for a supermarket called Lidl, the same place I visited in Madrid during my semester in London. 

There, on a beer run from a nearby hostel, my groupmates and I discovered perhaps the greatest of all European alcohol deals: a six-pack of Amstel 40oz.s for 3.50 euro. Needless to say, recollections of the next morning's flight have been wiped from our minds like we were exposed to a neuralizer flash.

I reflect briefly on this, wishing Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones were here now to tell me this is all just a bad dream, that we didn't sign up for four more days of this, that Elvis isn't really dead, but to no avail.

Instead, Mom and I pull a Chinese fire drill in the lot and I'm suddenly faced with the task of left-hand driving, even though the instruments on the dash and gear-shift now resemble something out of Ridley Scott's Prometheus. 

Mom unfurls the map(s) that sit in the passenger seat and my sister takes another deep breath to keep from turning blue as I creep out of the parking lot onto the road again.

The Ballad of Ballyboghil: Part II

Read Part I

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"Are you sure they don't have automatic?"

"Of course they do, Mom, but that's like twenty euros a day more. We'll be fine. It's the same thing, except the gear-shift is on the other side."

My mom looks at me in the driver's seat, nervous. "Okay," she says. "You got this," I reply as I unravel the twelve-foot scroll of a map that details every tiny township in the whole country. The car starts up. "You just gotta take a left out of the lot and go straight toward Swords. That's what the rental guy said." Mom shifts into first gear. We wait.

We are still waiting. I hear the thunderous whimper of the Yaris' hundred horses under the hood and look over at Mom. She is about three steps into the thousand mile journey of releasing the car's clutch. I look around. We are parked directly in front of the car rental office. Another family is waiting to enter the car next to ours. This is going to be fun.

Mom tries again. She creeps slowly out of the space and we roll toward the exit determinedly in first gear. Now the intersection. The Beast shudders a bit as Mom makes her first left hand turn, but she keeps it alive. Now we're on the road. It's true Dublin driving. At nearly 30km/ph I reminder her about second gear.

Two roundabouts later, we are still cruising along towards the village of Swords, just north of Dublin airport. I am convinced that roundabouts are THE peak of efficiency in road-traffic management. Far superior to our massive intersections. 

Mom stutters the car to a stop at our first red light. We've got the hot seat, first in line at the light. The pressure is on. The light flicks to green. She eases out the clutch and the car shakes in response.

We stall out. "No problem," I say, "It's okay. You got this." She starts it up, we jut forward, and stall again. "Shit." Mom doesn't usually swear. We stall twice more before she catches it just right. She accelerates quickly to evade the honking motorists. Again I inform her about the benefits of second gear. She shifts and we cruise along as before.

"See? You're just not used to it," I say encouragingly. "You got this."

I look out the window. We're almost at Swords. Everything is going to be okay.

The Ballad of Ballyboghil: Part I

We take the corner tight, the passenger's seat glued to the short lip of asphalt on the side of the unmarked lane. The wall of shrubs and ivy block our view of the field beyond and, more importantly, the road ahead. 

The car strains to accelerate in the wrong gear. Rounding the corner, sounds of relief escape us for a brief moment as the road straightens out. But then, from its own little blind corner behind the fields of green, it appears: a hatchbacked silver bullet barreling toward us on the narrow road. 

Gasps are heard in the back seat. The co-pilot, buried under a pile of maps, makes an effort to speak (or perhaps just prays). Spacial sensitivity peaks. 

The bullet charges on. Nothing else to be done: the brakes slam their eyes shut, unable to watch; the left-side tires cross themselves and leap off the asphalt ledge; gravel splashes and spits on impact. We, too, brace ourselves until the moment just before The End… as the tiny hatchback passes in the opposite lane without incident. We crawl along in anti-climax.

"What the HELL was THAT?!"

I am driving a rented Toyota Yaris around the country roads of County Dublin, Ireland, with my most beloved family members…and we are all about to die.