Some Startling Realizations 1) The Kitchen closed down indefinitely one week ago today. I had been hoping to go there since this trip started. Ouch. 2) I now understand, have internalized, what Richard Ashcroft meant when he titled his album Alone with Everybody. Here I am in a big city, and I know no one. It's odd. For basically the entirety of my natural life, I could count on walking in somewhere and knowing at least one person. It's something I've come to socially rely on. In Dublin, the only people I really know are the members of U2. And they do not know me. I'm just another of their billions of fans, to them. This relates definitively to Fight Club, and Jack's Single Serving Friends. The friends I meet on this trip, with the exceptions of the friends I met through extended contact (Nice people), are single serving friends. I meet them, use them or their time up like the little sugar packets on airline flights, then they're gone. In a trash bin, or their next destination, or enviably home to loved ones.