Another Big Update!! September 5th - September 15th

Once again, I have fallen grievously behind, which I truly apologize for. This appears to happen regularly - but it's only because there's so much going on here that I can't remember to keep up with this! On with the update!

Disclaimer: If I'm a few days off on some of this, please forgive me. My note-taking has been behind too, so I'm going off my memory.

Nothing so exciting happened until the following Monday, Sept. 7th. That week, my class was going to be doing two mini-units. The first was to be on Irish mythology, so I was REALLY excited. I love mythology so I couldn't wait for class. I was also going to be attempting a different strategy with my Provigil, to try to stay awake more regularly. Instead of taking half a tablet first thing in the morning and the other half later, I was going to take the full tablet in the morning and see how that worked.

Monday morning, we got to class to find that the woman who was supposed to be teaching us about mythology had sent a replacement, Brent Miles to teach us instead. The lecture was fascinating. (This is going to be really nerdy, so be warned. Feel free to skip ahead past the details of the lecture.) First, he talked about the evolution of the Irish language, which was consistently evolving significantly ahead of English. Where Middle Irish wasn't spoken after 1200, Middle English continued until several centuries later. Irish remained the dominant language until the time of the famine, at which point Ireland became English-speaking due, in part, to the mass immigrations to Britain and America.

Next, we learned that Ireland was never conquered by Rome, unlike the Continental Celts, who were swallowed up by the Roman Empire. The Celts were traditionally warriors, known for their mobility and aristocracy. Their Celtic Empire was a major military power and the Continental Celts sacked Rome and Delphi at various times, but Rome eventually overpowered them. Apparently no one knows how they got to Ireland, but there is little evidence of an invasion, although there were people living in Ireland prior to the Celts. Celtic society was made up of 3 classes: Druids, warriors with horses and peasants/slaves. The romanticized view today of Celts as fierce warriors comes from Rome, who liked to paint their conquered opponents as brave and tough, to make themselves look that much more impressive for defeating them. In Ireland, the Celts had no such romantic view of themselves which produced a cultural consistency in how they viewed themselves.

After covering some basic background information on different types of Irish sagas (there are 20 different story lines), we learned about the structure of the sagas. There are 4 major saga cycles, told in named manuscripts (like The Book of the Dun Cow) dating back as early as the 12th century. Lots of them depict stories related to cattle because cows were the main form of currency and conveyed power and honor.

We learned about individual stories, which was lots of fun, but I was particularly interested by the concepts illustrated by the story. I had never heard about the idea of the heroic biography, which basically says that all heroes have certain things happen to them which defines them as heroes. These include things like

• The mother being a virgin and the father being a god/animal/god disguised as an animal/related to the mother.
• A miraculous birth/childhood.
• Leaving home
• Defeating a monster
  
• Going to the underworld/realm of the dead
• Miraculous death

Lots of Classical heroes and biblical heroes follow this pattern, which makes it really interesting. This prompted me to go off on a weird mental tangent about other "universal" stories like Cinderella, which occurs in many cultures around the world, etc.

Anyways, class that day was great. Lots of fun stories and I came up with a ridiculous theory about the Hulk being a direct descendent of the mythology of Cú Chulainn by way of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (Involving the Ossian cycle, James Macpherson and Robert Louis Stevenson. Suffice to say that it's slightly more believable than my grand theory about Hamlet being an allegory for the Tudors.) Apparently, this is a brand-new idea that had never been brought to Brent Miles' attention before. At least I'm creative, if totally in outer space.

The next day of class was also awesome. Exciting topics that day included:

• The changing populations of Ireland: who inhabited it, what they contributed to society, and who conquered them. To the Irish, they were the descendents of the Sons of Míl Easpáine. They did not consider themselves Celts - this is a modern idea that dates to the 18th century.
  
• The love triangle-plot has a rich history in Ireland and might have inspired the more famous incarnations including King Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot and King Mark-Isolde-Tristan.
• Women in Irish myths were frequently allegories for Ireland itself and not characters in their own right.
  

I was in my own little dorky heaven. The rest of the week was a mini unit on Ireland in films. We discussed the evolution of Irish cinema out of a dissatisfaction with the portrayal of Ireland in both American and British cinema. American depictions tended towards the romantic and nostalgic while British depictions tended to come with a considerable political bias, given the political situation at the time. Each day we watched a different film after being shown clips from other films. The first day we watched a mobster movie called I Went Down which was very funny, because it played with the idea that some of the traditional motifs of the typical American mobster film just wouldn't be convincing in Ireland. Think about it - could Die Hard have taken place in Dublin instead of Century City? Not really. The next day, we watched a romantic comedy called When Brendan Met Trudy which was filled with allusions to other films of all genres. I'm actually in the process now of writing a paper about both of these and how genre is at work and subverted in the two. Anyways, I highly recommend both if you can get a hold of them. Friday, we watched a not-at-all enjoyable film called Adam and Paul. It's one of those movies that are really hard to watch, but that's why you're supposed to watch them. It's a rather pessimistically existentialist look at two addicts during the recession and technically it's a really interesting film. The attention to detail is amazing - but definitely not a pick-me-up kind of movie.

When class ended Friday, I was in shock and near tears. Not because of the movie, but because I had managed something extraordinary: I had stayed awake in class all week. I still don't remember the last time that happened. It was a breakthrough - I e-mailed my doctor and called both my parents, I was so excited.

That night, 3 of my flatmates and I went out. The first place we went was a really metropolitan bar called the Newport. The lower level was pretty standard but upstairs 3 birthday parties were being held. It was a really cool space and the projected graphics on the ceiling were really cool. From there, we went to a bar called Clancy's where I had lunch after Blarney. They have live music there at night and that night a rather bad band was covering some really good music - singing poorly and off-rhythm. We all thought it was karaoke when we first got there, in fact, before learning that no, this was actually a hired act - and in a town with GOOD music, I have no idea how those guys got the gig, but that's another story.

That weekend was fairly uneventful. Sophie, Bridget and I watched Sweet Home Alabama Saturday night (No one hit me, but I definitely got laughed at for my... involvement in the film.) and I went grocery shopping at some point, but it was generally low-key.

In class on Monday, Mary went over details of our trip to Inis Meaín. I was assigned to the house in town, along with 6 other girls. The rest of the class was divided into the house on the hill and the house by the beach. Our house had the luxury of being near the one and only pub on the island, we were told.

That night, our class went to see a play called Stones in His Pocket. It was entirely acted by two men, each of whom played at least 4 roles. The play was about the effect of a film production on the inhabitants and passers-through (including the film crew) of a small Irish town. The two main characters were a local guy whose cousin commits suicide over the course of the film's production and a guy who just closed his video rental store in the town he's from and is now traveling around aimlessly. It was really impressive the way they crafted each character's physicality and voice - each were totally separate entities. The set was really simple and the costumes were basic with minor changes depending on which character the actors were portraying at any given moment.

The next day, I woke up and packed my backpack for Inis Meaín. I didn't want to bring too much because we were just going to be walking around the island all day and there was nothing to dress up for. Sophie and I walked over to the bus, where we found people who didn't pack quite as lightly (much to their regret later, as you'll see!). Our road trip started with a stop at Coole Park, home of Lady Gregory, a major patron of the arts. She played hostess for people like George Bernard Shaw and the Yeats brothers. We walked around the grounds and saw the autograph tree, which everyone who came to visit signed. We were supposed to have lunch there but unbeknown to Mary, the snack shop was closed.

Instead, we stopped for lunch in Galway before heading to the docks to catch the ferry. We'd been told that in past years, the trip over to the island had been VERY rough, so we should definitely take some anti-motion sickness meds, but when we got there, the water was almost entirely still. The trip over was made easily. On the island, we learned that while 2 of houses were being picked up, our house had to walk from the dock to our host's house. We were hungry and tired from a long journey and now we had to walk uphill with our stuff. Needless to say, we were less than enthused.

Half an hour, we got to the house where we quickly were placed in rooms and sat down to dinner. Moira, our host, was a lovely lady who has appeared 3 times in National Geographic. She's that lady, you know? - the perfect stereotype of an Irish grandma. I honestly don't think we ever finished the food at any of the meals she had for us while we stayed with her. Our first night, we had brown bread with butter and jam, 2 roasted chickens (for 7 girls, but still) and chips (homemade fries). It felt like a feast.

After dinner, some of us went to the pub (where we learned that just because there's only one pub on the island and the island is in many ways a relic of a time long past, drinks were no cheaper than in Cork) for a little while, but we were all wiped out and went to sleep.