My Luck of the Irish

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

~Jonathan Swift

I like to think I’m independent and don’t care about following the crowd, but I’ve gotta say I’ve got some major party envy. Damn you movies, TV, and embellished, cloudy memories of people I usually don’t really care for because you’ve all got me believing that people who party hard – getting wasted and belligerent with a group of strangers – is partying right.

I’ve never really lived this lifestyle. Drunken times are few and far between for me, not that I can’t be a lush when I put my mind to it. But when a holiday like St. Patrick’s Day rolls around, I feel obligated to try and participate in this amazing world of drunken partying that I always feel like I’m on the outskirts of. So I started doing some research, hoodwinked one of my best buddies, Rima, into joining and was ready to find a good place to stumble home from.

But then my awesome luck happens, I get a stomach flu two days before. I don’t care how much of an alcoholic you are, alcohol in no way sounds good two days after a riotous bout of vomiting. And it’s rainy. Not ideal bar crawl weather, even though I bought an adorable umbrella at Target. I have to admit, I was a little saddened. We hopped on the LA Metro and ventured out to Downtown nonetheless, despite my wobbly stomach and the threat of rain, hoping there would be enough to occupy us without copious amounts of Guinness. But there really isn’t anything to do on St. Patrick’s Day but drink. Seriously. Nothing. There is booze and bad cover bands in bars. This is probably why I didn’t even realize St. Patty’s Day was a big deal until I was in college.

But it was after we arrived in Downtown to find that really the only thing happening was people going to bars – the same thing that was happening everywhere – that the fun really started to begin. Armed with only a slight buzz from a Jameson’s on the rocks for myself and a fancy vanilla Russian for Rima (a fabulous photographer), we whipped out our adventuring skills and made our own party – all the way from the LA Metro and back to my cozy little studio. This is the pictorial poetry of our adventures. As Jonathan Swift says, “Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”