Irish notebook: arrival to Dublin.

Text directly taken from my notebook (I always travel with pens and a notebook and - ah! - a book, of course):

Written by my hotel´s window aimed to the Christ´s church:

Dublin has taken me by the guts. Not by the heart, instead by the guts. Apparently joyful - even orgiastic like its traditional, jumpy, contagious music - but, underneath the pubs and apparent  "joie de vivre" there is a melancholy which  is so deep it touches the fingertips of poetry.

No wonder great writers have rose from this blessed and sacrificed land!

Damp soulless Vikings and magical Druids still linger on the air of the city, kind of dark in its insular sunny sides of the streets. Some corners are a re-visitation to "Sweeney Todd", although such character was english. This (english) presence is everywhere, often rejected. The irish GAELIC heritage is also present in people´s characters and used language. 

The church bells awaken in me a childhood that was never lost. My grandparents village in the deep Alentejo (Portugal). All grandparent´s villages, I guess...bells belong to grandparents!

There is theater, music and alcohol every where. God Dionysus must have been irish, not greek.

Tomorrow I´ll take my first sip of irish coffee and will dig deeper into the soul* of this magical place.

From the downstairs hotel bar there is a siren´s call: very loud and lively irish music mixed with the clinking of beer glasses. In my imagination, I return to a scene of the movie "Titanic" when Kate Winslet is taken by Leonardo Dicaprio´s character to the ship basement for some wild, lose hair, skirt up, free spirited irish dance. Inside the chest of my imagination, the scene seems crazy and wild. Maybe this is Ireland, after all.

"All of us are in the gutter. But some of us are looking at the stars."

Oscar Wilde

P.S. Christ Church is in front of my hotel. The bells (a kind of obsession of mine) sound high pitched and sensuous. 

´Can´t wait to get to Charleville castle, in Tullamore. It´s supposed to be haunted but, then again, aren´t well all haunted?!