A lady on the bus
On the Dublin city bus back from the airport over Christmas, I became fascinated by every part of a woman a few seats ahead of me, across the aisle, because she dressed in a way that I can't describe except as a fin-de-siècle Viennese aristocrat's dress; and because she dressed so simply perfectly. From her immaculate red nails to her fine longfingered leather gloves, her gorgeous white fur coat to her patrician cheekbones, ensconced in a soft scarf, her stately straightbackedness to her self-assured stare, her blonde hair tied in a simple ponytail even to her elegant white iPod earphones (perhaps the closest thing to a crack in her appearance (apart from the bizarre fact, that I only cottoned on to later, that she was in a Dublin Bus), but in fact I think not: it seemed rather exactly how an aristocrat would listen to music; and they were attached to the newest iPhone, the most elegant of phones) - from everything to everything, she was the perfect aristocrat.
What I found astonishing about this - and why she still sticks with me - is not that someone in Ireland could decide to dress like a Viennese aristocrat - Irish people are as fascinated with other times and places as any other people, and I never forgot this much - but that she could do it so immaculately. She was this type of person so entirely that I wondered whether she was Irish - perhaps a Polish immigrant - but regardless, the lesson for me is the same: that Ireland is not the monocultural place it was. It can have communities so culturally unlike the stereotypical Irish community that they can be uninfected by that sensibility at all, and create ladies like the one who in polished black heels disembarked well before me, whose royal bearing the cruel white light of the bus could neither tarnish nor humanise.
What I found astonishing about this - and why she still sticks with me - is not that someone in Ireland could decide to dress like a Viennese aristocrat - Irish people are as fascinated with other times and places as any other people, and I never forgot this much - but that she could do it so immaculately. She was this type of person so entirely that I wondered whether she was Irish - perhaps a Polish immigrant - but regardless, the lesson for me is the same: that Ireland is not the monocultural place it was. It can have communities so culturally unlike the stereotypical Irish community that they can be uninfected by that sensibility at all, and create ladies like the one who in polished black heels disembarked well before me, whose royal bearing the cruel white light of the bus could neither tarnish nor humanise.