Back in July 1978, I visited my friend R.R. Skinner at Boisville, his home in Camberley, England. We had first met a few years before, in August 1974, after I attended Krishnamurti's Gathering in Saanen, Switzland. After visiting with RR I planned to spend some time in Ireland and flew into Dublin, then after a day or two I took the train across Ireland to Galway and then on to Sligo. It not only rained, it poured rain the whole time I was there. I was miserable. One day I took a bus tour to the grave of W.B. Yeat's, that was probably the same day I also visited Lissidale House, where Yeats stayed in his youth. I did my research for this trip the way poets do their research, which is after the fact... this perhaps accounts for the dismal nature of my trip to Ireland. Years later I decided I would never visit a place where I didn't know somebody, or where I didn't have a reason for visiting (for instance, a conference). The life of the tourist is not for me, it is given to loneliness and self-consciousnss, constant travel, exhaustion, trying to maintain an interest in siteseeing when I'd prefer to be at home reading a book, and associating with some questionable people. It's all perfectly dreadful! So, this is the highlight of my trip to Ireland: Yeats's grave, including the church near his grave, and a Celtic Cross gravestone, all within close proximity to each other. Yeats is (perhaps) the greatest English language poet of the 20th Century.
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