Ireland: Day Thirteen where I jump ahead and process some thoughts about the Troubles

I have a few more days on which to catch up - pretty much all of my time in Northern Ireland.   I can’t deny it has had a few more hiccups than the first week.  But that is part of the adventure I suppose.

The thing that puts it all in perspective, of course, is the main provocation for me wanting to visit here - Belfast, I mean.  I got it in my head as I started writing my novel that I was going to set some of the stories in Ireland.  I feel very strongly that to do that, I had to come here and not just get ideas from the internet or even a book.  I can tell when someone has written a book about Boston and they have never been there.  Obviously, history allows some more interpretation… but also some more contemplation.

I got it in my head as my characters have tended to end up in periods of American history that deal with a fight for freedom or social justice (I bet that is shocking to you readers), that if they are from Ireland originally they would probably have landed in similar fights over here.  I found one of those fights in my trip - 1641.  I feel like I only scratched the surface in my visit.  Indeed, today I got confused as I visited a history exhibit and pulled away another layer of that revolution/ rebellion.  But I digress.  Even before I came here, I knew I wanted my characters to be in Belfast in the 1970s.

Two years ago I was in a play called Ourselves Alone.  I stepped into a role five or four weeks before production, in the madness of my last Banned in Boston.  It was about three women and the men in their lives during the Troubles.  I learned a lot doing that play - mostly because we were rehearsing when the Boston Marathon bombing took place.  It undoubtedly shaped how I absorbed all of that and really started to grasp the fact that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.

That’s a loaded statement that deserves a lot more context and conversation.  And yet… I very much started to comprehend through that play that there is another side to every story.  A mother or lover or sister or child.  I also told myself that I wanted at some point to know more to the story of Northern Ireland.  More than the whirligig of learning lines and running a show could allow.

There are a lot of things I’ve observed in the last few days that will require more time to process.  And even then, I am still and will always be an outsider so I have the distance and biases of my own world and perspectives.  I suppose, ultimately, my conclusion will eventually play itself out in a novel.

But for now.... well, I opted to make a swift turnabout after checking into my b&b this afternoon and head toward the Botanic Garden.  I remembered this as referenced in Ourselves Alone - there was even a scene there, I believe.  The Ulster Museum is also there and is at the top of my list of visits for the day and a half I have to spend in Belfast.  Luckily I got there with 90 minutes before close, allowing me to walk through the history floor.  They are an art, history, natural history museum combined.  Maybe more - but I was there for history - specifically 20th century history.  I did visit the 17th century briefly so that I could see what they had to say about 1641, but I wanted to spend most of my time with their exhibit on the Troubles.

It was pretty stark.  By their own narration, they admit that it is still too close to have a proper perspective.  I mean the last date on the timeline is 2007.  It was a series of panels in black and white with descriptions of significant topics - civil rights, internment (prisonment), the police, Bloody Sunday, Bloody Friday, and the Good Friday agreement.  

As I started walking through these panels, I asked myself what it must have been like to live through it all - after walking through the city and admiring the vibrant shops and restaurants, enjoying a cup of tea on the sidewalk as tourist buses went by.  Obviously, such things didn’t happen then… and yet… life still happened.  As it happens in the US.  As it happened in Boston two years ago.  As it happened in Baltimore.  Or Ferguson.  Or Charleston.  We don’t have the IRA, but we have civil rights issues and terrorists birthed from our own soil.  We have a division of how a country should be governed that doesn’t make sense with the vitriol that spews from it sometimes.  I’m NOT saying it is the same thing.  And yet, I am saying we aren’t very far from it in some ways.

That’s the thing about theater, about writing, about history… it is a lens through which we see things that happen within humanity.  Sometimes that lens is a mirror and it is quite profound.

I confess that is as far as I can conclude at this point in time.  I found an excellent book on the Troubles in the shop, confirmed by the pleasant staff member who rang through my purchase.   I look forward to reading it and seeing more of the history tomorrow.