It is Just Belfast

I've long struggled to explain Belfast.  What is it about the city that makes it so indescribable?  What is it about the city that makes it itself?  I thought I had settled on a comparison to Bruce Springsteen's music.  Both have a rugged, working-class attitude that scoffs at the establishment.  At once, they enjoy being what they are, but seem upset that they were not asked.  They also both have an existential and poetic bent; Belfast will always be what it chooses.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

My bags are in a fluctuating state of preparedness.  My tickets are ready.  My housing is sorted.  I've said all the goodbyes I needed to say.  Everything is ready to go, but that train has yet to pull into the station.  This is the most difficult part of leaving.  It's also the most difficult aspect to express: I remain keenly aware that there is a balance one must strike between being ready to leave and being too eager to leave people behind.

What's in a Name?

The name of this blog comes from a poem entitled 'Carrickfergus' by the Northern Irish poet Louis MacNeice.  The Belfast-born MacNeice declares he was 'born in Belfast between the mountain and the gantries/To the hooting of lost sirens and the clang of trams'.  It is a fairly typical description of the largest city in the North of Ireland: in addition to a sense of tension and conflict, it is the industrial qualities of the city that seem to dominate the environment.  

The Gantries of Harland & Wolff