Paths through the Ivy

It’s taken me longer to post an update than I had hoped. My first week in Dublin was bracing and disorienting in many ways, but incredibly fulfilling and satisfying in other respects. Suffice to say: classes are going great and yes, I am having fun. But this post is about a discovery I made.
I must confess that I still have trouble navigating downtown Dublin. I have used street signs and GPS to guide me for so much of my life, and without them I flounder. (Dublin street signs are few and far between and inconspicuously placed, and I suspended mobile service for my phone). Now, residents have assured me that Dublin is especially tricky, and I absolutely need to — and want to — spend more time just walking around without having to rush to class, but the root cause of my spatial confusion is that I am accustomed to relying on those external systems of organization. I do not instinctively form a mental map of an area based on what I physically see: buildings, rivers, public art, etc. Rather, I look to the street signs to divide and order an organic urban sprawl into tidy cross-sections, reduced to the names of their axes. I check my GPS to make sure I didn’t take a wrong turn or to look up short cuts.
Which is not to say that street signs and GPS are bad things — far from it, actually. But I discovered that for me, using them to navigate meant I wasn’t paying attention to the city around me. I was focused more on getting from Point A to Point B successfully than actually seeing anything along the way.
I came to this realization quite by accident. On a recent trip to Howth, just outside of Dublin, I noticed what appeared to be a slight path through the dense thicket of woods surrounding a castle, and choosing to follow it, I stumbled upon this incredible ruin of a chapel, completely overgrown with ivy. It felt like I had walked into another world, one removed from time and still humming with magic. And I’m sure that the staff that keep the castle running are aware of this building, that it isn’t actually a secret. But it *felt* like a secret because the path wasn’t obvious. And that is part of why it left me so awestruck — I wasn’t expecting to find it. But I looked. And I saw.
One of the biggest recurring instructions in all of the many acting classes I have taken is: “See.” See what is in front of you. Don’t just acknowledge. Really see. And if this trip is about improving myself as an actor (which it is), I need to take that (very good) advice to heart and see more often. See the paths through the ivy; see the buildings on the street; see the people I meet. Because when you take the time to see, well that’s when you make discoveries. That’s when you get surprised. That’s when you live.
