Monastic Sites and Garden Getaways: Ireland Trip with Troy
Monastic Sites and Garden Getaways
Troy Alan Cox
Marinating in the Morose
It has been almost two months since my father passed here at the house. Since then, I have completely rearranged everything in the house and begun stripping his room of carpet ruined from flooding. It is amazing the emotions that come out from simply removing carpeting. Each strip that I cut and roll up causes a deluge of tears. My nervous system is equating the removal of terrible carpet with the removal of memories. Although I know the two are unrelated, the feelings that are coming up are almost unbearable.
While I wait on getting a mold assessment for the drywall, everything my father owned or brought with him from Kansas is piled in boxes in the office and adjoining spaces. It has to be done, but it is almost too hard to handle.
It has been apparent to me since one time in Southern California when a young man who was my neighbor took his own life. It took several weeks for anybody to come after he was discovered, and maybe longer to clean out his space. From what I overheard, he had no direct relatives, just distant folks. Therefore, it was apparent when they came that there was not much caring for his personal belongings. I remember a dumpster was backed up to the stairwell, and almost all of his belongings were thrown in the dumpster. While I did not know the gentleman very well, the impact of seeing someone’s entire life reduced to a portable dumpster caused me to face the fact that everything we create around ourselves, that we think defines us as a person, can be easily erased over a period of a few days.
Unfortunately, this happened to me again in Orlando two decades later. A young man living below me lost his whole family. Again, I did not get to know him, as he was much younger than I was. However, when I left on a business trip to LA and returned a week later, he had taken his own life. Nobody discovered his body for quite a long time until the smell in the building became too bad. It was explained through the gossip mill that he too had lost both of his parents and had no remaining family. This time, everything was removed in hazmat suits because of his method of suicide. That followed a long period of cleaning and sanitation right below where I was living.
Again, I was profoundly impacted by materialism and the lack of importance of the things we accumulate. However, in the context of my father, it is hard to live the practice of deciding what stays and what goes. Thus, everything is sitting in boxes, and I am marinating in morose feelings.
Everything we create around ourselves, that we think defines us as a person, can be easily erased over a period of a few days.
Gardens and Monastic Sites
Places designed for contemplation, not stimulation, are calling my name. Places where people will not ask me how I’m doing, because as well as they intend those words, each time I am forced to face that I do not know how I am doing.
Escape and observe is always my go-to plan. I have learned from my extensive travels that being in a new place where nobody knows you allows one to safely look at everything they are using to define themselves. Getting away from familiar surroundings, especially in a place I have never been before, forces one to examine: Who am I? Am I happy with my current definition of myself? Do I need to create change in my life, whether it be my surroundings, things I have accumulated, or the people around me?
I have thoroughly planned my trip to land at sacred spaces, monastic sites, gardens, and coastal refuge spaces.
Guinness Beer or Gardens
I will not be going to the Guinness distillery, although at one point I would have, as I preferred the darker the beer the better. Although Scottish whiskey was my favorite, Irish whiskey has its own attributes to appreciate. However, I quit drinking several years ago when suddenly one or two sips would result in a migraine.
This trip is not about tourist traps or pub crawls.
I will be landing in Dublin and immediately leaving for Enniskerry, where I will visit planned gardens from an old estate turned public. I particularly want to walk in the Japanese garden. The next morning, I will be departing for one of the culturally iconic landmarks of the entire country of Ireland: Glendalough.
Fifteen hundred years ago, St. Kevin arrived at this site to live in a cave and retreat from life to find himself. That is the exact feeling I am looking for. While he developed a following and built a monastery site that has endured, including the tallest circular stone tower in the whole country, I will be walking the trails, hopefully in silence. I want to sit at the banks of the dual glacial lakes and contemplate who I am and what my life looks like moving forward without my nuclear family.
From there, I depart to what is considered the best example of wild gardening, created by the rebel William Robinson, who took it upon himself to change the entire establishment of gardening in late 1700s England. He challenged the strongly held belief of Italian-style gardening, which is planned and organized around foreign, non-native plants, clean lines, and wealthy estate gardening. He worked with native plants, and while his gardens look completely wild, they are actually obsessively researched and planned.
This sums up how I am feeling right now in my life. I need to do some deep research and planning because I am walking into the wild unknown, facing a future I never contemplated: a life without any blood relatives.
The next stop is the cold, gray, austere coast of the east of Ireland in a place called Greystones. Here I will find cliff walks if I am brave enough to walk north. If I walk south, I will walk along the planned harbor and into a town considered one of the healthiest in Ireland. I need the ocean and have often found the cold winter ocean to be starkly confronting, forcing contemplation of what I consider safety. Nearby will be the comfort of a famous vegan restaurant and an unchanged Victorian neighborhood. But I think I will learn the most about myself walking along the craggy shore, with the gray buildings and stone surrounding me, forcing me to face the future.
I will end my trip in Dublin for only two days, going to specific green buildings. An ancient cathedral built on a college campus filled with heavenly aspirations and stained glass. I will stop at a former castle that now has a rooftop garden in one of the biggest libraries in Ireland before heading to the National Art Gallery. The ocean being my first place of comfort and consoling, art galleries are my second. Sitting in a mostly silent space, gazing at other humans’ expressions of their emotions, thoughts, and contemplations is so comforting to my brain. Some people cannot stand museums because it forces us to face how we are expressing ourselves in life, or not.
My hope for my trip is not a collection of photographs, but researching spaces that create sanctuary and safety.
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