5.16.2025

In Galway in 2006 I went looking for the house where Nora Barnacle (James Joyce's wife) grew up and within a minute of leaving my hostel with map in hand I was completely disoriented so I embraced it and got to know and appreciate the town and chatted with a couple of buskers and asked them why everyone says 'thanks a million' there and they didn't really have an answer but I hope I gave them a euro anyway, then I walked around some more and got impressions of the place, as you do, and found a little bookstore where I was pretty confident someone would be able to set me on the right path. I chatted with the owner, an affable guy in spectacles, and mentioned I was reading Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman while I was there and his response was, do ya get it, though? and I didn't know what he meant so I clearly didn't and I said I hope so, and he said yeah, but do ya get it and I told him if I could find my way back after finishing it I'd let him know if I'd figured it out. Then I asked him for directions to Nora Barnacle's house and this is what he told me: go out the door, take a left, then another left, go over the bridge, take a right, go past the church and take a left at the other church, take another left, careful now you don't fall in the water, and it's right in front of you, can't miss it. Three hours later I gave up and found a pub with a table on the sidewalk out front and drank a Smithwick's while holding the book open with one hand and drew crazy zigzag lines all over my notebook in an attempt to decipher the code I was sure I'd missed after the bookstore owner's prompt, coming up with equations like I'm trying to prove Einstein wrong, and as I sat there reading the sun set over the town and music floated from every direction and I finally understood what the bookstore owner was talking about but that's because it's explained clearly on the novel's last page. If I ever make it back to that store I will tell him this story but the more I tell it the less likely I think he exists.