river liffey

this morning marks day 9 of my Northern work, and it makes me think sunday mornings are meant to be spent in your own town. a late start, a local paper. certainly does not leave room for the forty tasks and hundreds of miles (ninety percent of the hundreds being efforts to find your way back to where you started) that will make up my sunday. when tempted, i'd say after this week that every day is a day meant to be spent in your own town. but that would reveal a poorly fit travel guide. my spirit has weathered a fair chunk of punches and my eyes are closing automatically every two hours now to keep me from seeing anymore that might confuse me further. this place isn't easy. but that's what it's about. and how many people get to turn 25 in belfast? aside from the belfastians. i will go downstairs today and reject the sausage and bacon and fried tomato and beans and toast and eggs that come with my peeling wallpaper and mini-twin bed in the heart of the city, so that i can floor it into the suburbs in my pint-size chevy and see if i cant make one of these towns my town, sit down and read the paper. i'll pretend that john o'sullivan on the front page is my distant cousin, i'll talk about the odds on 'laugh n' cry' in the next horse race with the pink-face next to me, and in a fit of good luck i'll win the local lotto. and then it will be worth spending a few more sundays on the banks of the river liffey.