(Crider) Still Blind, Not Yet Dead

“North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free.  An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors in a square ground.  The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.”

North Richmond Street, still blind, is as quiet as it was a hundred years ago.  Though the entire length of its curbs are lined with cars, one encounters little trace of activity in the depressing cul de sac.  No giddy school children run up and down the street in outright elation that they have been released from class.  The neighborhood doesn't offer as much as an abandoned tricycle as testament that children even inhabit it, and the two story house that stands at the dead end remains detached on its square ground.  A small plaque on the front of the building demarcates it as the setting of "Araby," but the appearance of its location gives the impression that few passersby acknowledge it.  The only purpose that the building seems to serve is to give Joyce fans a faded snapshot of literary Dublin en route to more exciting destinations.  That little plaque is all that is keeping it from withering away like the decrepit house just behind it, which teeters on a fenced-off lot ravaged by weeds and bears a roof just waiting to collapse in desolation.

The remaining one hundred metres of North Richmond Street are not any more redeeming.  The complexes may have been painted since "Araby" days but they look at each other with the same imperturbable faces.  What could threaten a home whose walls are lined with barbed wire, razors, and rotating spikes?  One would sooner expect a jailbreak from the homes than residents sauntering from their doors.  If any welcome mats rest on the entryways they are overshadowed by the anti-climbing security and "no junk mail" notices in the letter slots.  The street is sad, not inviting, and while much of Dublin has obviously improved or changed since its days in poverty and oppression, paralysis still courses through this dead end's bricks.

A scarcely recognized tribute to Joyce, the two storey house at the end stands between North Richmond Street and the signs of progress that have sprouted up around it over time. Just beyond the serrated sheets of metal, one catches a glimpse of Croke Stadium, the Gaelic Athletic Association's headquarters boasting a capacity of 82,300.  One can only imagine the cacaphonous drone that swarms over the cul de sac during a rugby match.  Even so, North Richmond street may not be eternally doomed to stagnancy after all.  Perhaps life within its walls is decent, as Joyce writes in the story.  An examination of the street's windows will reveal flower pots in many of them.  Growing from ceramic shoes with frogs climbing on the toe box or not, perhaps these flowers are a sign that North Richmond Street has not reached its end, that it still has the potention to obtain some vibrancy while the city continues to develop and move forward.