Static and Rain

For the last week the rain has been driving down in solid sheets. Coming home at night, my headlights can barely cut through the wet curtains that ripple a top the road’s surface like the curtains of a stage; in anticipation of some great production, a monsoon, a tidal wave, complete with orchestral crescendo, quietly gathering it’s strength beyond the the Great Blasket Island and Am Fear Marbh.

When I finally get home my headlights illuminate our squashed vegetable garden. A head of lettuce bobs like a buoy in a wide brown puddle, a flock of misguided sheep scatter like frightened children in the dual spotlights of my car. Every so often my ancient car-radio picks up snippets of conversation from Raidiò na Gaeltachta. I can’t help but think that it’s only symbolic of my understanding of the language, bits and pieces that I can link back to Gàidhlig, or even to English, before the narration fades again into a whirl of static.

Almost four weeks now that I’ve been in the Gàidhealtachd. Lucia tells me I’m fluent. I tell her she’s biased. Still, I can navigate my way around Dingle in the language, from the grocery store, to my favorite Café, to the library and the high-ceilinged rooms of the old nunnery where I Skype in four days a week to the Gàidhlig college up on Skye, the sounds of Gàidhlig as welcome to my ears as the brief silences preceding the rain.

I’ve formed a language bond of Irish/Gàidhlig with more than a handful of people in Dingle, or re-formed, should I say from when I was first here almost four years ago strictly as an English speaker. That initial bond I find the hardest to break. You link the people you know with the language you know them in. The re-acquaintance comes with a certain degree of awkwardness.

And of course, as with everything else, there is also a certain degree of resistance. I’m sure this is true every place on earth that harbors a minority-language, the learner will come up against the extremes of animosity and awe. It’s a heady mix that keeps one feeling, even in a place like Dingle, where half the buildings are shuttered and locked for the winter, and half the population walking again the neon-glinted sidewalks of their city homes, that life is still unfolding to you in its utmost, each experience rich and crisp, your mind sharpened and engaged in the constant challenge of learning and re-learning.

There’s a café near the Diseart building that I love with an open fire, fresh scones, and more often than not a couple from back West engaging in a lively Irish conversation. I’ve passed more than a few mornings eavesdropping. Last week, I went in the late afternoon, elated by a day of speaking the language in town, I asked the woman if the Café was still open in Irish. ‘What?!” She said, I went over the words carefully in my mind, it’s a simple statement, I was right, I was sure of it. I asked her again, slowly, and more clearly, “WHAT!?” I switched over to English, ‘Oops not an Irish speaker,’ I thought. Later, I heard her conversing fluently with two women from Ballyferriter.

Over the weekend, Lucia and I drove to Killarney to see a concert. We passed up the hostel for a swank hotel room at a super-discounted winter rate. The hotel owner, seemingly from some older genteel era, was wearing the same tailored suit the morning of check-out he’d had on the evening of check-in. ‘Excuse me,’ he asked, ‘but was I hearing the two of you speaking Irish? By God that’s amazing, two foreigners speaking Irish, it’s a pity no one is hear to document this, it would be great press for the hotel, two foreigners who speak Irish, staying with us.’ Lucia gave him her reasoning behind the oddity, yes she was from Spain, but she lived in the Gàidhealtachd, it’s a minority language, it needs all the support it can get, and to top it all off, it’s a lovely sounding language. The hotel-owner agreed with each statement whole-heartedly, and I consoled myself with the thought that every episode of resistance (few and far between that they are) should be coupled with a visit to Killarney.