I got my pictures back, and frankly it looks like I sent my camera on the trip, and I wasn’t there at all. I only have one picture of Allison, walking up the stone steps at the Cliffs of Moher, but other than that? I cannot even tell that I was there at all, judging from the photos.
Got some great pictures of the murals of Belfast. The day we were there the sky was a dark heavy slate grey, but with beaming shafts of sun gleaming from beneath the clouds – very dramatic lighting. So the murals look even more striking, and violent and interesting with this heavy heavy sky behind them. (“You take a right at the chicks with the guns, you take a left at the guys with the guns …”) And Gerry Adams’ car, too. I got a lame little picture of that, too. Parked next to the gleaming Sinn Fein headquarters. I figured, what the hell. It’s a bit of an historic moment … might as well snap it.
Just wish I had taken some photos of some of the ACTUAL PEOPLE WE MET.
But it’s all right … I wasn’t camera-obsessed this trip. I didn’t feel an overwhelming need to capture, pin down, solidify. I knew I’d remember it. And I actually got to be present during the trip, as opposed to those tourists you see who walk around holding up a video camera, and they see their entire trip through that lens. Making it a second-hand experience in the middle of the first-hand one, if you get my meaning.
