A Momentary Taste of Being

Giving up book buying Even reading the title I start to shake a little, and my mouth goes all dry, and I get this dull headachy feeling like when you've been without caffeine for, oh say thirty seconds or so.  If books came in IV drips, I'd say sign me up even though I'm constitutionally against the use of piercing metal objects on my body.

On Greenwich Mean Time.  And so today I went to see the Book of Kells--yes, it's overpriced and touristy, but it helps to support the college library and I did get to see two full spreads of the original.  It is a book and it is important. Afterwards toured Dublin Castle.  As with most of these things, the locals are singularly unimpressed, but I can tell you that I enjoyed it.  The plasterwork alone was worth the price of admission--that and seeing the Poddle River--it was in part the confluence of the Poddle and the Liffey that gave rise to the Black Pool from which the Anglo name for Dublin is derived.  (The Irish do not call the city the Irish spelling of Dubhlinn--they call it something else entirely--I can't even spell it and have no notion how it is pronounced.)  So after Mass this morning in a Church run by Discalced Carmelites, I finished the day with sung, choral evensong at Christ Church Cathedral.  I was floored both by the beauty of ...