I’m preparing a presentation on Dublin, and thought you might enjoy this quirky story of mystery, humor and art. When I was strolling down O’Connell Street in Dublin, I discovered this strange sculpture near the Post Office. It was of a larger-than life, thin, wispy, ragged female form lying as in a bathtub-like container on the sidewalk. I could not figure it out so asked a number of passers-by. Everyone shrugged or politely shook their head. To add to the mystery, when I finally got back to Dublin many years later, she was gone. Where? Why? I got no answers to those questions either.

But traveling by train across Ireland from Dublin to Galway to meet up with some friends, an interesting young woman accountant with wit and a love of all things quirky in her native city filled me in. “Aye, you men the floozy in the jacuzzi now.” I looked a little confused, so she continued with a big smile, “the complaints came in “til the lady was moved you see. To a park somewhere, in a fountain, I hear.” I got why she was referred to as the floozy in the jacuzzi but I was still puzzled by who she represented. My new travel mate went on to say she was a personification of the goddess Liffy, for which the River Liffy running through Dublin is named. As a piece of art, she was exchanged by a gigantic, plain liberty pole. As my accountant friend quipped, “sure, don’t we go from one extreme to the other.”

Just google “floozy in the jacuzzi” the hear more about this controversial piece of art, more specifically a statue of Anna Livia Plurabelle, a character in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.

You can also read about her new home, in a  park near Guinness Brewery. Where I must say, she seems more at home.