I gave myself a little treat Saturday and went out to see the latest Star Trek flick, Into Darkness.  (Hey, I figure I won’t be looking for work forever, right?  Right?  I’m going to assume the sound of crickets I’m hearing is the sound of support.  Yep.  ‘Movin on.)

It was good, at least as far as a) Star Trek films and b) silly summer popcorn films are concerned.  It was fun, and I didn’t feel like I’d mis-spent my money or gotten ripped-off: I was entertained for two hours, which is what I expect for my (bargain matinee) dollars.

But, I wondered, was it Star Trek?

Let me say, right up front, that I’m not a die-hard Trekker (as the pros prefer to be called).  I’m a trekkie, raised watching reruns before dinner on weeknights as a kid.  So, far from being horrified, I thought the 2009 Star Trek reboot, while not without its flaws, was an interesting take on the franchise.  Moreover, I thought the writers created a novel way of resetting things in an alternate timeline that didn’t, by virtue of its existence, negate everything that happened in 10 movies and five television series that have aired since 1966.  To my way of thinking, there’s nothing wrong with a little rebooting and re-imagining now and then.  After all, Hamlet is a classic, but I don’t see people throwing a fit when the play is re-told in modern ways or getting into a snit because the original actor who played Hamlet is no longer doing so (‘cuz, you know, he’s most likely passed on by now and all).

As a personal, note, though, I do kinda think the new Enterprise looks weird and kinda unbalanced…)

Movie Enterprise, Star Trek II. Oh, yeah, baby. ( (c) Paramount)

So on the one hand, I enjoyed Into Darkness, but on the other, I find it to be a deeply flawed extension of the Star Trek franchise.  Matthew Yglesias, in his piece “I Boldly Went Where Every Star Trek Movie and TV Show Has Gone Before“, wrote eloquently last week about how Star Trek is better served on the small screen and his hopes that it will return there.  I agree with his assessment, but I still think that Into Darkness could have been a better film if only it had both listened a little more, and a little less, to the history of Star Trek.

Star Trek As Movie (A Bit of Backstory)

Going through a box of old books the other day, I ran across this:

Just look at that cover price!

Published in 1968, the book gives a pretty in-depth look into creating and putting Star Trek into production.  I’ve only read the first couple of chapters, in which it was great fun to see that Roddenberry essentially tricked NBC into buying the series in the first place.  It was sold, mostly, as an adventure tale, something that could be produced on a weekly basis and working within the modest means of a television budget.  All the things Trek would later become famous for, such as the allegorical storytelling, commentary on social issues, etc., would come about later.  The original production outline even reads:

Star Trek will be a television “first”…

A one-hour science-fiction series with continuing characters

Combining the most varied in drama-action-adventure with complete production practicality.

And with almost limitless story potential.

-The Making of Star Trek, pg 22

Right from the start, we can see one essential fact: Star Trek was designed as a TV series, not as a motion picture enterprise (if you’ll pardon the pun).  Why is Star Trek on the big screen at all?  It wasn’t really intended to be: in the late 70′s, Star Trek was slated to return to the small screen as Star Trek, Phase II, which Paramount would air on its new fourth network.  The cast was (mostly) in, ships and sets were being designed and built, the whole thing was good to go until the new network deal failed… and then Star Wars came out.

Star Wars shook the industry.  And, in traditional Hollywood practice, the studios decided that what people really, really want (and will pay for) isn’t something new and different (which, of course, is exactly what Star Wars was at the time), but more of exactly the same.  So, every studio in Hollywood looked for all the sci-fi product they could find, and Paramount had Star Trek already ready to go.  With Star Wars blowing away box office records like so many Death Stars, it was inevitable that Star Trek would be pushed to the big screen.

Today, Paramount is in something of the same boat, looking for a genre product that seems to be in demand.  Lacking properties like the Marvel or DC cannon as part of the current glut of superhero flicks, Star Trek can’t just break even for the studio.  It has to make a profit, be successful to a wide audience, and continue the franchise.  It’s that need that drove them to take an existing property (with an existing fan base) and allow Abrams and crew to restart the franchise in 2009.  On balance, both creatively and economically, they managed to do so.

Into Darkness – Missed Story Chances

So, where does all this leave me as I ponder Into Darkness?  Mostly feeling that there were a lot of missed opportunities, sacrificed at the altar of summer event picture.

[One quick note: I'm going to ignore the planet-sized plot holes and leaps of logic in the film, since I lump that all under "sacrificed at the altar".  I do want to say this, though: if you've seen the film, you know the Enterprise is under the ocean at one point.  Where no good spaceship, with transporter technology, has any reason to be.  But what's really interesting is that the editors of the trailer chose these three bits of film to include: the Enterprise-shaped space ship crashing into the ocean, Scotty insisting that the ship is dead and Kirk replying that its not, and the Enterprise rising out of the ocean.  With those three shots, the editors of the trailer put together a more logical narrative than the actual film did.  Just 'sayin.]

Part of the problem is that, given that Abrams et al have elected to re-start the Trek franchise in an alternate universe, it strikes me as a little odd that they would pull so much from what already exists, from characters to scenes to lines of dialog.  Watching Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan beforehand should practically be required.  In the end, between the repeated characters and dialog, it all started to seem a bit pandering, as though someone went through the script putting in as many Trek references as possible to “get in good” with the core fan base.

The bigger problem I found is that the filmmakers rather blow some exceedingly interesting opportunities with the plot.  What might have been an interesting espionage/political intrigue tale, one in which the direction of the early United Federation of Planets and Starfleet are torn between being, at their core, military or exploratory organizations, is tossed out the window in favor of action, action, action.  Imagine that alternate plot, one which involves subterfuge, the discovery of rogue elements, and manipulations of power (starships, after all, being pretty powerful military vessels to have control of).  Such a plot could have involved deep, interesting mysteries, plot twists, perhaps even story turns that would have taken the Enterprise crew to various new planets and cultures in pursuit of both truth and morality.

Wait a minute… that sounds like a story that could also be a commentary on the extent and intentions of modern day politics, economics, governments, militaries, etc.!  Wow, that might be some interesting territory to explore, right?

Nah.  Let’s spend the second half of the movie beating up the Enterprise in endless action sequences.

The thing is, that’s exactly what a Star Trek movie requires these days (unfortunately).  It’s what the audience demands and expects and, if I’m to be perfectly honest about such things, any time the movies have done something different, more “cerebral” like episodic series have time to be, the resulting film gets branded as being “an extended television episode”.  Remember Star Trek: The Motion Picture or Star Trek: Insurrection?  (Or even, heaven help us, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier?  The one where the Enterprise crew went in search of God and sat around a campfire singing “Row, row, row your boat”?  Yes, Star Trek V, I think we can all agree, is the Jar-Jar Binks of Star Trek films.)

Recognizing, after The Motion Picture, that the whole “exploration” and “ideas” thing didn’t work on the big screen (the movie was, in fact, blamed at the time for being just a lengthened version of The Changeling episode and is routinely derided as “Star Trek: The Motionless Picture”), Paramount changed direction, focusing more on action and the personal relations of the characters that had been sailing around the galaxy together for decades.  Those elements work far better on the big screen.  (Besides, the fact is, you can’t blow up much on a weekly TV series: your standing sets are pricy to build, anything new costs money, and weekly TV shows are much more strictly budgeted.  In fact, entire shows filmed on the standing sets are called “bottle episodes”, and the studio loves them because they’re cheaper to shoot.  So, in TV, ideas HAVE to prevail over action, by-and-large.)

Yep, exploration of ideas, cultures, and all that is, in a word, boring.  Moreover, exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new civilizations, while fine for an hour a week over 24 episodes, is not what the general movie audience is looking for in a summer popcorn flick.

They want to see stuff blow up.

So, that’s what the studio gives us in Into Darkness, because that’s what you can do when you’re spending $200 million to make a movie.  So out goes complex plot and in goes a script where the entire second half consists of action and damaging or destroying the Enterprise (and, oh, Lawdy, how I’m getting sick of that one).  It’s a feedback loop: to be successful, the movie gives the audience largely what it expects, and the audience shows what it likes by buying tickets.

So What About Character? The Missing Triumvirate

So, forget the complex storyline and exploring brave new worlds.  What about the characters?  Could the film have done better?

I’ll give the Abrams and crew credit: they did a particularly good job in re-casting the characters in Star Trek.  It’s just a shame that they seem to have no idea how to write for those characters.  In Into Darkness, the characters seem to be written more as simple character archetypes than people.  Kirk is brash.  Spock is cold and logical (or outrageously emotional).  McCoy is, uh, southern.  That sort of thing.

Subtly is gone.  Spock is the worst example: he’s either cold and logical or highly emotional; I never really got a feeling for the struggle between the two that is the core of the character.

What’s really missing, to my mind, is the traditional exploration of Kirk’s character, with Spock serving as the logical angel on one shoulder and McCoy the emotional one on the other.  This three character dynamic was at the core of the original series and even the previous movies, though gussied and actioned up for the big-screen, still managed to do it justice.  Take this bit of dialog from Star Trek II, where McCoy and Spock debate the Genesis Device as Kirk looks on and weighs the issues:

McCOY: But, dear Lord, do you think we’re intelligent enough to… Suppose, what if this thing were used where life already exists?

SPOCK: It would destroy such life in favor of its new matrix.

McCOY: It’s new matrix? …Do you have you any idea what you’re saying?

SPOCK: I was not attempting to evaluate its moral implications, Doctor. As a matter of cosmic history, it has always been easier to destroy than to create.

McCOY: Not anymore! Now we can do both at the same time! According to myth, the Earth was created in six days. Now, watch out! Here comes Genesis, we’ll do it for you in six minutes.

SPOCK: Really, Doctor McCoy, you must learn to govern your passions. They will be your undoing. Logic suggests…

McCOY: Logic? My God! The man’s talking about logic! We’re talking about universal Armageddon, you green-blooded, inhuman…

Kirk is the window through which the audience sees into this world, and he represents all of us who have ever been torn between the logical thing to do and what our emotions urge us to do.  In the example above, Kirk is US, the audience, debating as we might be the potential of the Genesis Device (rather uniquely among doomsday weapons) to be both bringer of life and harbinger of death.  (In the new Trek, if Kirk is our window, it’s into the world of being a supremely in-shape frat boy, or something of the sort.)

Oddly, the ethical voice in the new Star Trek seems to have been moved from McCoy to Scotty, whose ethical dilemma at accepting unknown weapons onto the Enterprise ultimately leads to his dismissal from the Enterprise for much of the film.  While Simon Pegg certainly pulls off the role, and brings a great deal of humor to it, there’s no re-creation of the triumvirate dynamic.  Instead, we’re given a lot of bromance stuff between Kirk and Spock, which is fine but ultimately simplistic.  Instead of an intellectual face off, we have the jock being tempered by the nerd.  The intellectual relationships have been downgraded from college-classroom discussion to jock-vs-nerd debate.

The Missing Histories

As is probably no longer a secret, Into Darkness lifts an enormous amount from Star Trek II.  I’m not always sure it works.

Khan is the primary example.  Don’t get me wrong: I loved watching Cumberbach chew through the scenery.  Ultimately, though, his Khan doesn’t have the same weight as Montalban’s in Star Trek II.  It’s a matter of character history: the new Khan is defending his people, the old Khan is defending his people AND avenging the death of his wife, the blame for which he places squarely on Kirk’s shoulders (with the added benefit of having had 20 years to stew on it). The new Khan doesn’t like Kirk because he represents the Federation.  The old Khan hated Kirk, and it was personal.

A few scenes and bits of dialog were repeated from Star Trek II, in some cases directly and in some cases inverted.  I think I know what the writers were going for, but I still had a difficult time buying the emotional resonance the scenes were supposed to have.  The difference, again, is the lack of history between characters, a history which doesn’t exist in the new Star Trek universe.  This group hasn’t yet gone on its five year mission, yet they’re repeating dialog and ostensibly experiencing the same emotions as the group in the other timeline who spent 30 years working together in the depths of space.  It doesn’t ring true.

What give the scenes gravity at the end of Star Trek II is that history: that there was a depth to the friendship between Kirk and Spock that had been forged over time.  It’s what made the sense of loss palpable.  These re-imagined characters, within the time frame established in the new timeline, have only been together a short while.  Certainly bonds can be formed over short, intense periods.  Strong bonds, even.  But the point where working relationships cross to friendships that cross to family, perhaps something even deeper than family, take time.

(As I watched the scene of Kirk dying, I also kept thinking of another potential (and missed) story path: Spock Prime apparently (offscreen) told Spock what happened in the original timeline with Khan.  So, in one timeline, Spock had to perish to defeat Khan.  In the other, Kirk perishes to defeat Khan.  Perhaps it was destiny that someone had to perish to defeat Khan, in any timeline?  How would the logical new Spock, having embraced his Vulcan side, approached the idea of destiny?  Destiny, of course, flies in the face of logic, but it’s precisely that kind of conundrum that Spock’s Vulcan/Human nature was designed to explore.  It might have made a helluva subplot but, again, these kind of ideas just aren’t going to fly in a $200 million summer blockbuster.)

Women Characters Take a Giant Step Back

Women characters, I think, have suffered.  Don’t get me wrong, both Zoe Saldana and Alice Eve are talented actresses, and have a couple of interesting scenes (particularly Saldana’s Uhura vs. the Klingons).  Ultimately, though, they’ve come off as weaker than in previous TV series.

The first weakness is visual.  Have we really come all the way back from Captain Janeway to the era of miniskirts?  One of my biggest gripes about the revamped Star Trek is the return of the skimpy 60′s mini-dresses.  One of the best changes that happened when Star Trek went to the cinema was in Star Trek II, when Robert Fletcher revamped the costumes to look more like true military uniforms and worn by both genders.

Much better than the pajama look. ( (c) Paramount)

Then there’s character.  Unfortunately, Saldana’s Uhura also suffers from being saddled with the “hurt girlfriend” role.  Given her choice of career and the fact that she’s chosen to be in a relationship with someone in the same profession (one which is, by its very nature, downright risky), it seems a little weird that she should be shocked or hurt that Spock might actually perish while carrying out his duties and have accepted that as being part of his job.  Perhaps she should watch this speech about the inherent riskyness of exploring the galaxy by a certain other Enterprise captain…

As for Eve’s character, Carol Marcus, for the life of me I’m still trying to figure out exactly why it was that her expository dialogue scene had to be delivered while she was changing clothes.  In a scene that had no real reason for being staged as it was, and which ended abruptly, not even leading to a “Kirk gets the girl” scene.

Is that Starfleet regulation-issue matching underwear?

Some have argued that the films are fair, in that Chris Pine has shown up in his underwear in both pictures, so it’s the same as Zoe Saldana in her skivvies in Star Trek and Alice Eve in her underwear in Into Darkness. (That sentence alone should get me some good search engine traffic, eh?)  But at least in those scenes, Kirk was doing his Kirk-thing and bedding the alien ladies, so he had (theoretically) a reason to be in his underwear for the scene.  Carol Marcus has no motivation for the strip-tease.  Was it just to prove that Jim Kirk is a perv who can’t resist looking over his shoulder, as if the scene of him waking up with two women (with tails because, you know, sci-fi) didn’t convey that point already?  Because Abrams is a perv who wanted to get a shot of Maxim-girl Alice Eve in her underwear?  Because the studio wanted a little T&A in the film?  Actually, that last one has the most probability of being true…

(UPDATE: As of this morning, one of the films writers has apologized for the scene.  Science fiction fans truly are unique.  In probably no other genre would fans, male and female alike, have issues with a gratuitous T&A scene simply because it doesn’t make sense.  Assuming there’s some gratuitous sexiness in, for example, the next Fast and Furious, I doubt people will raise much of a fuss.  Go geeks!)

It’s All About Mass (Not Weight)

One of the things I found myself missing in Abrams’ Star Trek is the slowness of things.  Visual effects can do anything now, and that works great in Star Wars films, where little ships fly and fight quickly.  The Enterprise, though, isn’t small.  It’s a big cruiser holding hundreds of people  Which is why it’s a shame that Abrams has it moving as though it was an F-18.

This might seem like an extremely geeky complaint, but the fact is it took me out of the narrative.  Even in fictional worlds, I wouldn’t expect a Star Destroyer to turn on a dime, nor would I expect an aircraft carrier to in the real world.  Fiction or no, the mind has a definite sense of how massive things are and, as a result, how they should move.  Put simply: big things move slower.  All the ships in Abrams universe seem to be able to move like X-Wings (such as the spin when the Enterprise is forced out of warp).  Star Trek is starting to look exactly like Star Wars.

Contrast this change with the Battle in the Mutara Nebula in Star Trek II,where director Nicholas Meyer created obstacles to slow the ships and blind the crew, making the “space” battle more on par with a slow, tense submarine warfare fight.  The result was some beautiful, well-paced action.  Those scenes had a sense of tension that I never felt in the action sequences in Into Darkness.  Instead, Into Darkness, with phasers and torpedoes firing all over the place (even, somehow, at warp) and ships bouncing all over (why can’t they fly level at warp speed?) is a light show.  Maybe Abrams was using this as his calling card for Star Wars, which he’s slated to take on next.

(Hopefully his Star Wars won’t also suffer from the Apple store design of the Enterprise bridge.  How everyone works with all those crazy lights in their eyes (the ones also creating lens flare) is beyond me.)

So, Where To Go From Here

The end of the movie comes with Kirk and crew setting off on their five year mission.  For some reason, I find this odd… if this is going to be a three-film trilogy (as modern day three-picture contract deals tend to be), shouldn’t they have set off on their 5 year voyage a bit sooner?  Like, say, at the end of the first film?  Somehow it makes the film seem a bit superfluous.  Make a big budget, crowd pleasing action picture, throw some reference bones to the die-hards, watch the dollars flow in.

Maybe, in that, Paramount succeeded.

Even if they have, the more I consider it, this Star Trek (and I refer, here, to the entire reboot, not just this film), is starting to feel like a Star Trek stripped down to its basic elements by the marketing department and recast in a way to ensure maximum profitability.  In truth, of course, that’s exactly what movie studios, now part of larger interconnected corporate empires, are supposed to do.  So I suppose I can’t really fault them for that.

One of the things that I find most depressing, though, is that while the movie is fun, it’s not inspiring.  It’s a slam-bang summer action flick.  That’s all well and good, but unlike the series or even, perhaps, some of the earlier films, I don’t see this film inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers, or explorers.  Many in that group of people specifically cite Star Trek as having been their inspiration.  (And previous Trek series have had science consultants, even though they were science fiction.  I’m fairly sure such consultants were kept well away from the Into Darkness script.)  Who knows?  Maybe Star Trek II inspired some kid to start considering how to make a Genesis Device.  Maybe Star Trek IV inspired someone to go into marine conservation and save the whales.  I don’t know.  Given his omnipresence in the marketing campaign over the last month, it’s probably more likely that Into Darkness will inspire kids who see it to try and be the next JJ Abrams.

In the end, I still enjoyed the movie.  It was a fun couple of hours.

But Star Trek?

I’m not so sure.  The parts are there, the cast is good, and they can obviously put together an exciting big-screen film.  Moreover, all the things I’ve talked about, from complex plotting to character dynamics to effects scenes to getting rid of gratuitous T&A, ALL of them can be fixed.

There will, of course, be a third film.  With the 50th anniversary of Star Trek coming up in 2016, you can be damned sure Paramount will have a film in the theaters, come hell or high water.  So I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the next film, somewhere on that 5-year mission, will be a little deeper, a little more character-driven, and a little better.  Action and adventure, of course, but maybe a new world or a new civilization or two, just for kicks.

One can hope.

* * *

PS – One thing that I absolutely DO love?  Michael Giacchino‘s score.  Brilliant beyond compare.

Maybe they’ve ruined you, too.

It’s been a couple of weeks since the last “deep” post, wherein I wrapped up my little tale of Dublin.  Not a whole lot has happened in the intervening time.  Mostly I’m still just going day-to-day, applying for various positions, frustrated at the whole job search thing.  Truthfully, the search was going better back in December, but since the sequester kicked in I’ve seen businesses pull back in hiring.  I’ve never been particularly political here, not having any desire for flame wars on my blog (though in real life, I rather enjoy a good political debate), so I’ll just say that the effect of the sequester on the hiring market is bloody frustrating.

Anyway…

Am I feeling better since I wrote about Dublin?  I’d have to answer that question with a “yes.”  But only marginally, incrementally.  Now, that isn’t a bad thing, but I find myself unhappy about it, and I think that’s where TV and movies have messed with my head.

When 1Cent was here, we went to see “Silver Linings Playbook“.  As the credits rolled, we chatted about what we thought about the film.  “Well,” I said, “it got where it was going, but it certainly took a while to get there.”

That wasn’t meant as a huge criticism.  Overall, I liked the movie, even though I thought that the mid-section dragged a bit.  Thinking back on what I said now, though, I find I’m reflecting on the fact that big life changes don’t happen very quickly, and certainly not within the two-hour time frame of a movie, the one-hour time frame of a TV drama, or the 30-minute time-frame of a sitcom.  Yet, there I was, off-put because the changes the characters were going through in the film’s timeline were taking too long.

It kinda makes me wonder if it all hasn’t warped my feeling about where I am now because, although I feel marginally better about things since having written about Dublin, all the way to the point of starting to look at pictures from the trip and digging out the books & brochures I collected and considering writing travel posts, I’m feeling impatient that I’m not feeling better faster.  It’s as though I want to wake up one morning, feel full of energy and inspired, and sit down and write about a year’s worth of travel for 12 hours a day.  And send out a dozen applications.  And get back out hiking.  And pick up the camera again.

Not that I would expect to do that all in one day.  I just want to wake up wanting to, feeling motivated to.

(As a side note, I’m pretty sure this means I’m never meant to be an author.  If I were truly meant to be an author and write the great American novel or whatever, I’d feel a burning pressure to write, no matter what.  Instead, I’m finding it difficult to sit down and write because I’m still looking for work.  If someone said they were going to pay me to write a piece (I’ll pause for a moment here while any real authors reading this laugh uproariously), then I’m sure I’d buckle down and do it because a check would be waiting for me on the other side.  Nobody starts out as a writer with paid book advances; they write because they have an internal need to fulfill, because they have to, because it’s their passion, not because they expect it to pay the bills (not right away, at least).  Frankly, finding any position to pay the bills is more important to me than writing at the moment. An author, I think, I am not.)

So I’m feeling marginally “up”, I suppose, but wishing I felt more so.  I want the big dramatic moment (with sweeping musical cue, natch) where everything is better and the end credits roll.  Of course, that’s not going to happen, because life’s problems don’t get solved in two hours.

Those who know me well will remind me that I am, once again, being too hard on myself.  And I probably am.  Although I was initially dismissive of the idea of PTSD, unwilling to consider what happened to me to be anything remotely like what servicemen go through on a daily basis for months at a time in war zones, military veteran “me” of More Blitherings and I exchanged a number of emails in which he told me not to be so quick to dismiss the idea.  One thing that he said that particularly struck me was “Your experience to me is so much more shocking, and from my perspective should be so much more…  traumatic emotionally, and maybe a trigger for PTSD because you weren’t prepared.  As you said, you weren’t were you weren’t supposed to be, out looking for trouble.  We were, and we weren’t surprised when we found it.  And we were a built in support group for one another.“  That really made me think, because if you’re not in a war zone, you can’t be in fear of everything all the time… but it also means that when the unexpectedly bad happens, you’re not as mentally prepared for it.

It’s a lot to consider.

At least I’m not alone in feeling a bit down, which I find oddly comforting.  Blog friend LeafProbably (who I had the pleasure of meeting last year) wrote beautifully about this sort of thing today.  And, of course, there was the post by Hyperbole and a Half that made the rounds on the internet last week.  (Sidebar: is it strange that I found myself oddly jealous of her getting thousands of comments after having not blogged for months?  Perhaps I should start adding cute-but-crude drawings of things to my posts, rather than the silly pretty pictures I’ve been using…)

I have no idea if there’s a moral here.  Maybe I just need to keep reminding myself that life isn’t a movie and that improvement, such as it is, isn’t going to come in a sudden moment ten minutes before the picture fades to black.  And that that’s okay.  So, I’ll just keep getting up and searching for work, and trying to figure out some way to start attacking the massive number (as in, quite literally, thousands and thousands) of pictures I took.  Anybody wanna buy me a copy of LightRoom?

I’m here to tell ya all, it just ain’t true.

For example, check out this picture:

For a map geek, this is “art”

That’s a picture of the course of my road trip from late 2011.  I’d kept track of the route state-by-state in an atlas and then, when I got back, highlighted the entire route on a paper U.S. map.  It’s currently taped up on my living room wall.  Simple.  Probably took 20 minutes, mostly due to the fact that I tried to stay off the interstates and stick to the backroads, which are a teeny bit harder to find on a broad map of the whole country.

Looking back over my notes and contemplating what to write (or even where to start), I struck upon an idea: “I’ll do a map in Google.  I’ve drawn routes in Google Maps before, it’ll follow the roads automatically, even track the distance of the route.  Then I can put markers on the map with links back to the posts.  It’ll be brilliant!”

And so I tried to execute my brilliant idea.  Oh, Lordy, how.  I.  Tried.

First problem I encountered is that Google maps tends to stick to the most straightforward routes which, in the States, is gonna be the Interstates.  That was okay, though, because I could add points on the actual backroads I took to make the route follow the correct roads.  Which would have been fine, except in the free version of Google Maps, you’re limited to 20 points.

Then it stops drawing the line.

Oh, they don’t explicitly explain why the line stops drawing, mind you.  You can still add points to the route.  You can add all the points you damn well please.  Google Maps just stops drawing the line showing that route.

A might bit frustrating, that.

Okay, fine.  So I decide to break it down: I’ll do a separate line for each state.  Not quite the single beautiful route line I’d hoped for, but it’ll do.  A little line for each state.  Fine.

And it did do.  Just fine.  Peachy-keen, as they say.  Until I got to the 16^th state.  At which point, the first fifteen states I’d drawn… vanished.

Turns out, Google Maps would only show me 15 states at a time, so I could only see the route in blocks.  There was no way to see the entire route I’d drawn.

Who would want to see that?  That’s crazy talk.  So sayeth the Google.

By this point I’d started from scratch two are three times, each time meticulously following the highlighted line in my atlas and re-creating the exact route in Google maps.  It was a start-stop operation, too, as occasionally the whole thing would freeze up while the computer was downloading new map data.

Or the line would suddenly stop drawing the road and only draw a straight line.

Or it would stop tracking distance because I hadn’t clicked on something Google defined as a “road” even though it was a… road.  With a name and everything.

Or I would drag the cursor across to move the map and the whole thing would take on a beautiful, and incredibly hard to work with, shade of deep Google Blue, as if all of Nebraska had suddenly been flooded.

I spent three days on it, and I’ve only made it from California to… Ohio.  And, bonus, I can’t even see everything I’ve drawn so far at once because, again, crazy talk.

So computers obviously don’t kneel before me like some technological god, either.  Just so you know.

The really frustrating thing is that THIS primitive analog technology, made with only a paper map from AAA and a blue highlighter, took only 20 frakking minutes.  Twenty.  Frakking.  Minutes.

And the pen didn’t even run out of ink

Bah.

I’m gonna get some map pins and go old school from now on…

Well, at not least apart from a few in-depth conversations in New Zealand about how the new “Battlestar Galactica” might have very well been the best dramatic television series ever, sci-fi or no.  But I digress.

By the time I’d arrived in London I found myself seeking out comic book stores, watching “The Avengers” and “The Incredibles” at a discount theater I found, and even doing something I hadn’t done in years: going to a sci-fi/comic book convention.  I felt this strange sense of hunger, as though not being around anything particularly geeky for several months had left me with some unfulfilled need.

The geek side of me has been simmering in the back of my mind since I returned, thoughts about which merit a much longer post than this one.  My focus has been elsewhere, not pursuing anything particularly geeky and, sinuses cowering in fear, currently staying pretty much indoors and away from pollen, leaving my “Hiker” side a bit dormant as well.

A viral video going around the net today brought the geek subject back to the fore of my mind, though, making me write this post and putting serious thought into writing a much longer one as well:

Wil Wheaton sends a message to the future…

It was a good speech, and it reminded me of how different being a geek is today than when I was a kid.

It also reminded me of one of my favorite quotes of all time from Simon Pegg:

“Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It’s basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating.”

Both of them are reminding me of the fact that my geek side, which I haven’t touched on too much in the blog of late, is important as well.  Perhaps I’ve left it a bit too dormant for too long.

Maybe I’ll see if there’s any May the 4th activities going on around town…

Not because the bike trails around here are particularly dangerous.  No, my sanity was on the line because I suffer from spring allergies and hayfever.  Having lived near the coast for 20 years, I’d forgotten just how bad it could be.

I went on the ride because I needed to get out of the house and do a little exercise.  It wasn’t a very long ride, only about 10 miles or so, taking about an hour.  Which was followed when I arrived home by two hours of sneezing, a runny nose, and red, itchy eyes.  So, it seems I have a choice in springtime (in the Central Valley, at least): 1) stay inside, and go batshit stir-crazy or 2) get outside and get some exercise and sneeze for two hours straight which, as you may have guessed, can also drive a man batshit stir-crazy.

If it weren’t for the allergies, I might actually like spring.  Instead, I tend to prefer fall.  Nothing is pollinating, everything that pollinates is dying off… yeah, morbid, but it works for me.  Or my sinuses, at least.

* * *

As part of the ride, I rode out towards was the edge of town, where the suburbs end and a mix of rolling grassland, farmland, and ranchland begins.  It’s a bit of a ride out there, but it’s a good destination: quiet, little traffic, rather peaceful.  Since the local government has made an effort to preserve wilderness corridors, mostly along stream riparian areas, it’s also a good place to stop next to a quiet creek under some oak trees and relax a bit (or blow one’s nose, accordingly), before turning around and heading back into the city.

Looking down on one of the preserved stream courses

As I approached the area, though, I heard beeping.  Then grinding.  Then the noise of diesel engines.  Not exactly the burbling creek and chirping birds I normally encounter.

Curious, I turned to cross over an abandoned bridge, heading towards the loud noises on the other side of the creek.  As I slowed to a stop, a rabbit hopped up onto the bridge, and stopped in his tracks, staring at me.  Now the rabbits around here are notoriously skittish, and will hop away from you at a moments notice.  It was easy to see why a couple of weeks ago when, walking through one of the wilderness areas further south, I saw a terrified rabbit ripping through the brush at full speed, someone’s off-leash dog tearing at its heels.

So I fully expected this one to do the same.

Instead, the rabbit stared at me for a moment, apparently decided that I was far less of a threat than the loud mechanical noises behind him, and hopped right past my bike’s rear tire.

A few yards later, I got a glimpse at what he was running from:

The march of progress continues (this picture is just to the right of the picture above)

My peaceful Saturday morning ride, interrupted by the noise of construction, growth, progress.

I sighed, snapped a picture, and turned around to ride home…

…after sneezing three times and blowing my nose.  Maybe, along with everything else that blooms in springtime, I’m allergic to “progress,” too…

Like the assault, the next couple of days that followed are kind of a blur of memories.

The start of the day after mostly involved going back to the Garda station to give my statement, a long process where the officer hand-wrote everything down during a long question-and-answer session.  After I finished rehashing the previous day’s events, I headed out with Irish A and Irish K, walking around a few places in Temple Bar.

It was nice to have the company

Since both were busy the following day, I walked from my hostel to the Guinness Storehouse.  This was more of a personal challenge, just to see if I could force myself out of the hostel, and I was jumpy the whole time.  Whether it was a little kid or a lady in her eighties, I tended to see just about any passing stranger as a potential threat and kept having to remind myself that they weren’t.

It was strange being at the Guinness Storehouse.  I felt more like observer than participant walking through the brewery, watching the relaxed tourists reading displays or sipping on the sample beer included in the ticket price.  Even worse was walking through the gift shop, seeing travelers picking up any manner of kitschy souvenirs labeled with the Guinness logo.  It was as though I was watching the whole thing on TV: seeing it happen, but not really there myself.  When I stood at the top of the building at the Gravity Bar, sipping my pint, I looked out over the city and felt nothing.

Well, not quite nothing.  I missed my friends back home.  I missed the companionship I’d had traveling in New Zealand.  I missed 1Cent.

At least I can say that the rumor is true: Guinness (which I’ve never been a huge fan of, being more of a pale ale man myself) really does taste better at the brewery.

I didn’t take the camera with me those two days.  It stayed in my backpack or in the locker under my hostel bunk.  After doing everything I could to save it, and the few days worth of pictures I hadn’t yet had a chance to back up, I didn’t want to touch it.  I didn’t want to have anything to do with the camera, even after having shot thousands of pictures on it.

Other than a cursory inspection when I returned to California, it was months before I picked it up again.

* * *

[Interesting side-note: the picture of the Dublin street in the first post of this story was not, as it turns out, the last picture taken on my trip.  The very last picture was taken on my cell phone: Irish A took one of me in the ambulance with a bandage wrapped around my head, my jacket and shirt stained with blood.

But I figure no one really wants to see that.

I will tell you this, though: somehow, dazed as I was, I still managed a smile.]

* * *

The following morning I packed my bags, took a bus to the airport, and boarded a plane to get the fuck out of Ireland.

* * *

There were lingering effects.

The wounds took about a month to heal.  It was weeks before I could wash my hair, because I had to wait for the wound to heal properly and for the staples to be removed.  Due to the kick in the side my my head, the area around the right side of my jaw had swelled so that I couldn’t close it properly.  The teeth wouldn’t line up, like something out of a Warner Brothers cartoon where Daffy Duck has his bill knocked at an angle.  It would be days before I could chew properly again.

For months after I came back I couldn’t walk around in public without feeling some sense of unease.  I was staying for a couple of months with my Parents, who live in an incredibly safe part of town, but I still viewed everyone I passed on the street as a potential threat, and anyone walking behind me, out of my sight, doubly so.  Walking around, I always tended to think of what I had on me that I could use as a weapon.  My old, trusty metal water bottle could be used to hit someone, I figured, and I carried it often.  Sometimes, when I saw someone who looked particularly untrustworthy, I would finger the pocketknife in my pocket.

Of course, none of them were really a threat.  Months later, that instinct has mostly passed.  Mostly.  Every so often, such as when I was invited to drinks in an older (but still very safe) part of town a few weeks ago, my defensive instincts kick up again.

* * *

As for Dublin and Ireland?  Well…

I don’t blame the Irish.  Bad eggs exist wherever you go.  Moreover, everyone, from the Garda to the hospital staff to the hostel staff to strangers at businesses, everyone who I met after the incident was, without fail, kind and sympathetic.  Everyone was also shocked that the assault happened in Merrion Square, so at least I knew my decision-making wasn’t faulty.

Irish A and Irish K are still friends on FB, given that it was a bonding experience to say the least.

I don’t blame Ireland.  Like I said, bad eggs everywhere.

Yet I would by lying if I said I wanted to go back to Ireland.  Ever.

I’ll be the first to admit: that’s totally unfair.  It’s unfair to Ireland.  It’s unfair to the Irish people.

But, while I can rationally, intellectually tell myself that it could have happened to anyone, anywhere, the fact is: it happened to me, and it happened in that location.  So the emotional, illogical side of my brain ties that location, and that country, directly to an extremely bad memory.  It’s not by any means fair or right or just, but that’s the way it is.

Maybe that’ll change in the future.  Maybe it won’t.  I have no idea.  What I do know is that there’s no way I’d pay money to go back.  In fact, the only way I would go back would be to testify in the court case (still, I suppose, a possibility) in which case the court would pay the costs.  I doubt it will happen, though I can’t help but think of the interesting conversation at customs: “What’s the purpose for your visit to Ireland?” “Well, lemme tell ya…”

Someone suggested that Irish Tourism should bring me back, all expenses paid, so I won’t go around telling everyone what a terrible place Ireland is.  I laughed at the idea, but maybe I’d consider it.

But only if they paid for 1Cent’s ticket from Australia, too.

* * *

Funny side note: I made the papers.  Page 2.

I bought a copy and brought it home.

Definitely not the souvenir I was expecting.

* * *

I lost time when I came back.

I didn’t realize it until sometime in December, but a low-level depression had settled over me.

I was doing everything right, or so I thought: moving out of my parent’s place, starting the job and career search, going down to see my friends in San Francisco.  It wasn’t until December, talking with a friend on the phone who was telling me about the lack of motivation he’d been feeling of late, that I hung up and realized that I felt the same way.  I’d come back from my travels, needing to get back into life, back to work, all of that.  But even though I was going through the motions, the motivation and energy weren’t there, and the lack of results has been tangible.

The energy, the excitement, the motivation… everything that I was feeling as I neared the end of my travels was gone.  Although the depression is abating (yes, once I realized it was there, I headed off to counseling post-haste), what I felt in London hasn’t come back.

I’m angry about that.  Yet I have no idea how to go back to where I was before.

Having the shit beat out of you isn’t exactly a memory one can forget.

* * *

The thing that strikes me writing this now is that what happened doesn’t affect me in obvious ways.  There’s no lasting physical damage, other than a bad-ass scar on my head should I shave my hair off one day.  I don’t lose sleep at night, don’t have nightmares.  I can walk out in public and, unless somebody really shifty is walking by, don’t feel very defensive while doing it.

Mentally, the depression, which I’m sure was tied to a lot of things (the assault, the end of the trip, dealing with a long-distance relationship), is slowly working its way out of my system.

The biggest lasting effect so far is the lack of motivation.  Certainly 1Cent’s visit helped with that, and I’ve hit the job market with far more gusto than before.  But I still don’t feel the way I did in London.  The confidence I had there seems to have been beaten out of me in Dublin and, even though I can recognize that fact, I can’t seem to turn the switch back on.  So the motivation I had in London languishes, the ideas go nowhere, the pictures and notes from my travels remain untouched on the computer.

They say travel changes you, but I don’t know if I’ve felt it yet.  I worry that what happened in Dublin somehow, on some subconscious level, overrides everything else.  I don’t want it to.  I’m trying not to let it.  But I don’t know how much control one has over that sort of thing.  I have often wished in the time since that, if the assault was destined to happen, that it had happened at the beginning of my travels rather than the end.  I imagine that I might have been better able to put the whole thing in its place had I continued traveling, seeing and experiencing new things for several months rather than returning to the familiarity of home.

It’s possible, as I’ve theorized before, that writing all of this down might open the floodgates.  Might make me eager to go back and start writing about the travels.  As I write tonight, that’s not the case.  My mind is still more worried about getting a job.  (Seriously, if you, gentle reader, have any leads…)

I can say this: as I walk by the large box filled with stuff that I picked up during my travels, I keep thinking more and more about delving into it.  Maybe, now that everything about Dublin is online for all the world to see, maybe now that urge will become stronger.

Only time will tell.

First, can I say how much I wish Earth Day was an actual federal holiday?  I’m not trying to get really political here, but imagine if that were the case.  One day off, mandated for the whole country (or, even better, a holiday shared amongst multiple countries), to celebrate and think about the planet we all live on and share.  Even if most people just used it as an excuse to lounge by the pool and barbeque, and only think about the planet in passing, one day out of 365 still seems like a decent idea.

Especially since, last time I checked, we don’t have any spare ones.

Anyway…

You may remember a post a couple of months back of some pictures that I took in the winter tule fog.  Two of the pictures were of this tree which I actually assumed was dead.

So much so, I referred to it as a “ghostly tree”

Turns out the tree is very much alive.

Leaves and blue skies

Though, of course, without the fog, the green of the tree does blend a bit more into the background:

In the fog…

…and in the sun, with power lines and houses behind

Riding by it the other day, I just had to take a few pictures.  Despite its rather odd shape for an oak tree, its nevertheless bursting out in springtime glory.

Maybe not a traditional tree shape, but pretty nice for springtime nonetheless

So, what’s it got to do with Earth Day?

You’re probably going to read a lot of articles like this one this week.  Yes, they’re depressing.  The magnitude with which things are changing can become downright overwhelming.

Every so often, it’s good to look at a tree or two, I think, to remind us of what we’re trying to save on Earth Day.

Which, ultimately, is ourselves.

I first saw them on the other side of the field, three men walking directly towards us with a decidedly less-than-steady gait.

I felt uneasy about them the moment I saw them, but pushed the thoughts from my mind.  If there was one thing I’d learned from my travels, it was that while a certain sense of street-smarts was necessary, my own gut had proved too often to err a bit too much on the side of paranoid.  Besides, I had a couple of locals that I’d just befriended right next to me, and they didn’t appear (on the surface, at least) to be overly concerned.

As we sat on the bench, they sauntered right up to us, and started talking.  They were clearly inebriated in some way and, sighting the large green wine bottle one of them was holding, I simply concluded that they were drunk.  They were definitely young.  Early twenties, I supposed.  One was taller than the other two, standing directly in front of Irish K.  The shortest one was using a crutch and seemed to have a sprained ankle.

For the first five minutes, the conversation was pretty friendly.  They asked us where we were from and that sort of thing, and we replied, keeping it light.  It was a stilted, odd conversation; the type of conversation that takes place when one side is drunk and the other totally sober.  We tried to keep it friendly, and continued sitting, lest our standing be perceived as any sort of challenge.

Then it all went south.

They first demanded Irish K’s cash, which he handed over.  Then they demanded his cellphone, which he also handed over.  For the moment they were ignoring me, but my phone was in my front pocket.

The next fifteen minutes or so are kind of a blur.

One of them said, several times, that it “wasn’t right to hit a girl.”  Irish A would end up untouched, physically.  Irish K and I weren’t so fortunate.

Irish K’s cellphone wasn’t enough.  The tall guy who was confronting him started to slap Irish K.  Then he started to hit him.

Irish A tried to intervene, but to no avail.  They wouldn’t hit her, being the gentlemen (*cough*) that they were, but they also wouldn’t stop hitting Irish K either.

That was when the other two turned their attention to me.

I remember them going after the cell phone in my pocket.

I remember trying to fight back.

I remember being shoved down onto the park bench.

I remember being kicked in the side of the head, my skull between the park bench and the boot that left a bruise on my jaw and neck.

I remember the stars in front of my eyes.

There are things I don’t remember, too.  Things I was told later, but fit with certain flashes of memory I have.

At some point, the guy with the aluminum crutch lifted it over his head and slammed it down on my skull.  I don’t remember this.  Either I was dazed or just wasn’t looking in the right direction, but I have no visual memory of the silver crutch coming down at me.

I do know now that it would lead to the three-inch gash on my scalp.

I may not have any visual memory of that crutch, but it fits with a memory I do have of a massive hit on my head.  Like the kicks, there were stars in my eyes.  Unlike the kicks, I remember my skull vibrating from the impact, my ears ringing.

The crutch was later found nearby, bent or broken in two (I don’t recall which) and with blood on it.  My blood.

I never saw when the guy holding the wine bottle took a swing at my head with it, and missed.  Irish A told me about that later.

Don’t think I haven’t thought about the fact that if that bottle had connected, I might not be telling this story at all.

I don’t remember being scared.  I’m sure I was, but in the rush of adrenaline that hit my system, and the rapidity with which things were happening, there wasn’t ever a clear “I’m scared” thought.  It all just… happened.  Higher-level thinking went out the window.

I do remember yelling out “why?” over and over again.  I’m embarrassed to admit that, for some reason.  I didn’t scream, or call for help, just yelled out “why?” again and again.  It seems like such a stupid, useless thing to say in retrospect.

I do remember my glasses being knocked off, and how, for whatever reason, it became my mission to recover them.  I remember crawling off the picnic bench to pick them up off the ground.  Somehow, I held on to them the rest of the time, and the lenses still have cracks and scratches.  (I won’t be able to replace them until I’m employed again.)

There’s a couple of flashes of memory.  At some point I moved to the other side of the bench, then somehow I ended up on the grass a few feet in front of it.  I have no idea what was happening to the other two at the time.

For some reason I held on to my backpack almost the entire time.  Of course I should have handed it over immediately, but in the heat of the moment, some instinct just had me continue to hold on to it.

Don’t think I haven’t questioned myself about it since.

I eventually did hand over my pack.  My wallet too.

Somehow, the cell phone was forgotten entirely.

Even after getting the pack, the guy was too messed up to know what to do with the contents.  One moment he was holding my SLR above his head in celebration to his companions; a moment later he’d dropped it to the ground.

A minute later, they all started to run off.  (Irish A would later tell me that during the ordeal, bystanders in the park saw what was going on and did nothing.  I wish I could say I was at all surprised by that, but in our non-involvement world, I’m not.)  Irish A & K’s friends had started to arrive, and were chasing them.  I don’t really remember that.  I just remember standing in the grass, completely dazed, blood coming down the side of my face, yelling something about “that guy took my wallet.”

The Guardi (police) showed up a few minutes later.  What happened in the intervening time, I don’t remember, though I do know I never lost consciousness.  No doubt I was in shock, though.  Despite that, somehow I had the wherewithal to call my bank and cancel my credit cards.  In the end, all my travel wallet contained was a bunch of receipts, two cancelled credit cards, and about forty euro.

As my fellow victims and I were being led to the ambulance, we saw another person loitering about the scene.  It took us a moment, then we realized why he was familiar.  It was one of our attackers, so strung out on whatever he was on that he apparently couldn’t find his way out of the park and had wandered back to the scene.  He was taken into custody.

A short ambulance ride later and I was at a Dublin hospital.  My jaw and hand were both x-rayed.  No breaks appeared in either.  The open wound on my head was closed with a series of staples.  Since the adrenaline was starting to drain from my system at this point, I remember each staple going in being enormously painful.

When Irish K and I met in the hall a short time later, I would discover that his nose had been broken, along with some bruising from the punches.

Next was a stop at the Guardai station, where our contact information was taken, business cards received, and instructions given to return the next day to give our sworn statements on what happened.

Irish A & K’s friends gave us a lift to the local pub.  I called my Parents from outside the pub and asked them to send money via Western Union since, for whatever reason, my backup credit card failed to work at the local ATM.  Or maybe, still being a bit shaky at that point, I just couldn’t work it.

I have no idea if going out for a beer, held in very shaky hands, is a good idea after being assaulted, but they were giving us rides (a far better option than walking across Dublin in what was, now, nighttime) and being around other people seemed like a good idea at the time.  The beer helped to calm my nerves somewhat.

Somewhere along the line, I managed to post the following on FB for my friends back home:

So, my first day in Ireland, I did the following: I went to see the Book of Kells, I went to a museum, I went to a pretty park in a nice part of town where I met some very nice jugglers, we were mugged and had the crap beat out of us for a few quid, I got to see the inside of a Dublin hospital and the inside of a Dublin police station. Kind of a busy day.

Other than going back to the station to give my statement, no big plans for day two…

So I guess I retained my sense of (morbid) humor.  (To wit: at the bar with the others, I joked that I should keep my blood-stained t-shirt, and have it printed with “I went to Ireland, and all I got was this bloody t-shirt”.  My fellow attackees and I found this enormously funny.)

After the beer I was given a ride back to the hostel.  With the adrenaline gone from my system, my entire body was sore on the thin hostel bunk.

It mattered little.  Sleep came quickly.

For some reason, I find this strange.  I mean, it was over six months ago.  There was no permanent physical damage.  There are bloggers out there who’ve had far worse things happen to them and show a strength and resolve that makes me tend to categorize Dublin as a minor incident, about which I should have no difficulty writing at all.

Yet here I am, struggling to figure out where to begin.  Or how.

So much so that the day I started writing this (Sunday), I managed to faff (one of my favorite words the Brits taught me) so much that I didn’t open the laptop until 3:00 in the afternoon.  I wonder if procrastination can be listed as a resume skill?

* * *

You know what else makes it strange?  I’ve told so many other people already.  Friends, family, strangers.  So why is this different?

Actually, I know why, but I have no idea how to put it into words.  I’ll try anyway.

Somehow, when I’m recounting events to someone else, it’s easy to separate myself from it.  I’m detached, compartmentalizing what happened into a dry tale.  Reeling off a series of events that took place in a cut-and-dry, just-the-facts-ma’am kind of way.

Now I’m alone in my bedroom, having put a bunch of words in a word processor and re-writing this intro for the nth time.  What I’ve discovered is that when I’m here alone thinking about what happened, it’s a hell of a lot harder than telling the story to someone else.

And that completely explains why it’s different.

And totally doesn’t.

* * *

Dublin wasn’t even on my original travel itinerary.

Sure, Ireland was on my long, long bucket list of lifetime travel destinations, as I’m sure the Emerald Isle is for a lot of people.  I’ll be perfectly straight right up front and admit that it wasn’t all that high on my personal list, though.  Truth be told, I headed to Dublin after London as a matter of thrift and convenience: it was simply a hell of a lot cheaper to fly from Dublin to New York, and thence to home in California, than to go through Heathrow.

I was in Dublin as a matter of being financially prudent.  Or cheap.  Whichever term you prefer.

* * *

I’d arrived in Dublin in good spirits.

By that point in my travels, I’d been traveling for about five months and I was tired, ready to see the familiar territory of California again.  Yet spirits were high: I was full of interesting ideas, projects I might tackle, directions in which I might take my career and, ultimately, my life.  For the first time in a long time I was feeling ambitious, creative.  Even though the future was totally uncertain, I was excited by the possibilities, which is something that I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Plus, I’d met a girl.  That kind of thing does absolute wonders for the ego.

* * *

I departed my hostel in London early one morning, making the long walk (always fun with heavy bags) to the Tube station to get to Euston Station in time for my 8:10 Virgin Train to Holyhead.  Once again putting American public transit to shame, the train pulled out of the station at 8:10 on the dot and, after leaving London city limits, whipped through the English countryside (they can travel at up to 125 mph (200 kph)), in quiet comfort all the while.  As much as I enjoyed my trip on the Coast Starlight a few years ago, rail travel outside the States really is a wonder to behold.

At Holyhead I boarded the massive Irish Ferries Ulysses ferry.  It was similar to boarding an airliner: checking luggage, heading down a huge tunnel with hundreds of other people… only instead of a crowded pressurized tube you stepped on board a multi-deck ship with restaurants and comfortable seating.  At the same time I was boarding, I knew that on the decks below me were rolling on cars and semi-trucks.  The ship can carry 2,000 passengers and crew, 1,342 cars and 240 trucks.

Cell phone shot while boarding the Ulysses

I grabbed some lunch (overpriced fast food, unfortunately) and wandered around the boat to find a good place to sit.  There are some points traveling solo that you really miss having a travel partner for completely practical reasons.  Having to give up a good seat and take all of one’s belongings with them just to go to the loo is most definitely one of them.

The remainder of the day was standard travel stuff: docking, picking up luggage, getting some local currency (the Euro, in this case), buying a bus ticket to the city, walking to the hostel, checking in, grabbing dinner, falling into bed.  Yes, some parts of travel are exciting, but moving from place to place is sometimes exactly as mundane as it sounds…

* * *

Even though I was only to be in Dublin for a couple of days, I wasn’t so tired from my travels that I was going to spend the whole time at the hostel.  I headed out the next morning, over to Trinity College Dublin.  It was a bit cloudy and overcast as I took the walking tour of the campus, founded in 1592 and full of buildings of brick and stone, then made my way to the library to see the Book of Kells.

Entrance to Trinity College

Trinity College campus

Waiting outside the library to see the Book of Kells

After grabbing a simple lunch at the campus cafeteria, I walked over to the National Museum of Ireland, looking at various exhibits on the history of the area.  Finally, I ended up at the Natural History Museum, which turned out to be little more than two whole floors of dead, stuffed animals in glass cases.  The locals, I would later learn, refer to the place as the “Dead Zoo”.

Inside the “Dead Zoo” (image brightened due to severe underexposure); yes, that’s a row of nothing but animal heads

With the midsummer sun still high in the sky at 5:30, I decided to simply wander the city a bit.  I took a few pictures before deciding to do a little reading.  Consulting my tourist map (and remembering the widely-known advice to avoid North Dublin), I decided to head to one of the nicest and most highly-recommended public spaces in Dublin: Merrion Square.

Row of townhouses near Merrion Square. As it turned out, this would be the last photograph from the trip.

I walked into the park, pausing briefly at the memorial to Oscar Wilde, then headed a little deeper into the park to find a good reading spot.  The sun had gradually emerged over the course of the day and, not having put on any sunscreen, I eventually found a shaded bench facing out over the wide grassy field that made up the middle of the park.  I cracked open my “History of New Zealand” book and started to read.

After a while, a young woman arrived (Irish A, I’ll call her (yes, I know, I’m crap at thinking up nicknames for people)), sitting on the other end of the bench.  Travel, for whatever reason, had helped to ease my natural shyness measurably, and it wasn’t long before we struck up a conversation.  It turned out that she was from Dublin, a street performer who did juggling and was waiting for other street performers to arrive.  As it turned out, I’d happened to be in the park on a Tuesday, when the group met up to practice and learn tricks from each other.  In fact, on of her friends (Irish K) showed up a short time later, chatting for a bit and delving into his own book.

* * *

99.9% of the time, I could have accurately predicted well in advance how the story would have gone next.  One of the gifts of travel is being able to meet and learn about remarkable people around the world.  I’d read enough travel blogs to know that it happens all the time.  Hell, it had even happened to me, on the Great Barrier Reef.

So, 99.9% of the time, here’s how the story should have gone: I happened upon a group of street performers in Dublin.  I watched them practice.  Took some photographs.  Maybe they even taught me how to juggle a bit.  Then we all ended up at the pub before I headed back to my hostel, tipsy and happy and with a good story to write down the next day.

I’ve been told by a lot of people that it’s that other .1% that makes travel interesting.  It’s that other 1% that makes up the good stories, the memorable ones.  And perhaps I’ll think differently 5, 10, 20 years from now.  Right now, though, the interesting story isn’t enough of an upside for me, and I wish it had all gone right instead of wrong.

[Sorry to leave you there, but this has rambled enough for tonight.  More to come in a day or two.]

Maybe it’s just stress, but I used to write as a way to relieve stress.  Maybe it’s because more people in real life know who I am, particularly after my travels, but then I remind myself that they were people I came to know because of the writing I did.  Maybe it’s because, while I’m unemployed, writing seems like a luxury and triviality which, given that one can’t realistically search for work during every waking minute, seems downright silly.

It’s not like I don’t have things to write about.  I could be writing about local trails, or my travels, domestic and international.  I could be writing about nature issues, like the recent report about Yosemite a few days ago, or about geeky stuff, like the fact that Doctor Who has just come back on.  I could be writing about 1Cent, the most awesome and amazing woman who has come into my life and all the good and happiness that comes from that.

So, what’s stopping me?

Well, I’m not exactly sure, but I have a theory.

The theory goes like this: there’s a single event that’s blocking my creativity, like a cork prevents good wine from escaping the bottle. I haven’t written about it because I’ve been afraid to write about it, afraid to face it, afraid that it might bring to the surface emotions I may not want to experience again. Whenever I think about writing about anything else, though, my mind ends up going back to that single event.  Writing these last two posts has been more through sheer force of will.  Usually, because of my fears, I’ve generally ended up writing nothing at all lately.

So, my theory goes, perhaps it’s time to tackle that fear.

It’s time to write about Dublin.