Yesterday would have been my brother-in-law's 90th birthday if he hadn't died when he was 84. Two days before that would have been my mother-in-law's 114th birthday if she hadn't died when she was 79. Earlier this month would have been my step-sister's 80th birthday if she hadn't died when she was 62 (I think). I miss them all.
All I'm really saying, I think, is Time Marches On. One by one we shuffle off this mortal coil, we strut and fret our hour upon the stage and then are heard no more, to quote from a couple of Master Will's works.
To complete that last fragment, life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I don't know whether I'm waxing eloquent or I'm mired in depression. Possibly both. But Someone Else (not Master Will) said I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish, so there's that.
This kind of rambling in blogging is the "stream of consciousness" style of writing that James Joyce was so fond of. It came almost automatically to Gertrude Stein, rose is a rose is a rose; a sparrow in the grass, alas; and so forth.
All but my most loyal readers might be put off by all this folderol, but if you come here, it goes with the territory.
More proof of my advancing decline, I suppose. I get more like the late, lamented Putz every day. Most of you don't know who I'm referring to. I don't actually know if he is late, but he is very much lamented in these parts, him with his odd spelling and innovative punctuation.
I must close now as the men in white coats are coming. I feel it in my bones. <<< >>> <<< >>>
Showing posts with label James Joyce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Joyce. Show all posts
Friday, June 18, 2021
Friday, March 25, 2016
I'd like to thank my agent, and my director, and all the people who made this evening possible, and all you wonderful people sitting out there in the dark...
...and thank you, William James, for inventing stream-of-consciousness, and thank you, James Joyce, for employing it so well. Here's Molly in Ulysses, seeking sleep:
a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office the alarmclock next door at cockshout clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it twice better lower this lamp and try again so that I can get up early... (p. 642)
Well, that's enough of that.
Today's post will contain a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
Okay, here goes.
this
that
I don't know why I continue to bother to try to blog when I have nothing whatever ofworth value interest to say.
I guess it all boils down to Bloggo, ergo sum (thank you, Descartes).
For those of you who didn't take Latin, it means "I blog, therefore I am." It is as simple as that, and as complicated.
Nevertheless, I plod on valiantly to fill the ether with blather that can be traced directly to me, so that extra-terrestrials finding these words ages and ages hence (thank you, Robert Frost) will know that while it may not necessarily be true that I came, saw, or conquered (thank you, Julius Caesar), it will be irrefutable that I did at one time, someplace, somewhere, actually exist. Looking at it from their perspective, I blogged, therefore I was, which is so much better than their having to use the past imperfect conditional (I think I just made that up), as in if he had blogged, he would have been.
Immortality. To be remembered. To be not just remembered but celebrated. To have counted. To have mattered. I think that is all any of us really want, and it is something hardly any of us will get. After only a generation or two, perhaps, of being fondly remembered by our own descendants, no one will recall the sound of our voice, how we parted our hair (if we had any hair), what toothpaste or deodorant or cereal we bought, what we believed in our heart of hearts. Like all the others except for a very precious few, we will become non-entities, as anonymous as those rows and rows of skulls found under the streets of Paris.
Speaking of perspective, I need my morning coffee. This is getting too depressing.
There, that's better.
The Psalms are always a good way to start the day. I will read a couple. Psalm 30. Psalm 118. Psalm 23.
I almost forgot. Today is Good Friday. Things may look bleak, but Easter is just around the corner. There is hope.
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning (thank you, Psalm 30).
a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office the alarmclock next door at cockshout clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it twice better lower this lamp and try again so that I can get up early... (p. 642)
Well, that's enough of that.
Today's post will contain a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
Okay, here goes.
this
that
I don't know why I continue to bother to try to blog when I have nothing whatever of
I guess it all boils down to Bloggo, ergo sum (thank you, Descartes).
For those of you who didn't take Latin, it means "I blog, therefore I am." It is as simple as that, and as complicated.
Nevertheless, I plod on valiantly to fill the ether with blather that can be traced directly to me, so that extra-terrestrials finding these words ages and ages hence (thank you, Robert Frost) will know that while it may not necessarily be true that I came, saw, or conquered (thank you, Julius Caesar), it will be irrefutable that I did at one time, someplace, somewhere, actually exist. Looking at it from their perspective, I blogged, therefore I was, which is so much better than their having to use the past imperfect conditional (I think I just made that up), as in if he had blogged, he would have been.
Immortality. To be remembered. To be not just remembered but celebrated. To have counted. To have mattered. I think that is all any of us really want, and it is something hardly any of us will get. After only a generation or two, perhaps, of being fondly remembered by our own descendants, no one will recall the sound of our voice, how we parted our hair (if we had any hair), what toothpaste or deodorant or cereal we bought, what we believed in our heart of hearts. Like all the others except for a very precious few, we will become non-entities, as anonymous as those rows and rows of skulls found under the streets of Paris.
Speaking of perspective, I need my morning coffee. This is getting too depressing.
There, that's better.
The Psalms are always a good way to start the day. I will read a couple. Psalm 30. Psalm 118. Psalm 23.
I almost forgot. Today is Good Friday. Things may look bleak, but Easter is just around the corner. There is hope.
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning (thank you, Psalm 30).
Monday, June 16, 2008
Bloomsday and other oddities
(1) Today, June 16, is Bloomsday, a day celebrated around the world by admirers of author James Joyce. The events in his novel Ulysses take place on a single day, June 16, 1904, and the novel’s chief character is a man named Leopold Bloom; hence, the name Bloomsday and the date June 16. I have just told you absolutely nothing about either James Joyce or Ulysses or, for that matter, Bloomsday; if you want to know more, you will have to find out on your own. I don’t want it said that I influenced people in a negative way.
(2) I once wrote a poem called “Glossolalia, or The Gift of Tongues” after the manner of Joyce, sort of, although I didn’t realize at the time that that’s what I was doing. Here it is:
Glossolalia, or The Gift of Tongues
Not like a finely crafted poem of old
with much attention paid to rhythm and rhyme,
precision sought within a rigid frame,
and fourteen lines to do the will of God;
No.
More like an explosion of heat that whooshes into the room
so quickly that it takes your breath away,
shattering the cold silence of December,
a sudden Presence where none was before;
Yes.
More like a young girl bursting into the house
with news of great importance, unexpected and unplanned,
but completely welcome,
Yes
because she is
Yes Yes
Alive.
I wish I knew how this blamed blog thing works; the 5th, 10th, 14th, and 16th lines of my poem (“No” and “Yes” and the other “Yes” and “Yes Yes”) are supposed to be indented, but I can’t figure out how to make it happen.
(3) The strangest sentence I have read today, or lately, or maybe anywhere in my liftime, is found in next Sunday’s online edition of The Writer’s Almanac in a thumbnail sketch about the German author Erich Maria Remarque who wrote All Quiet On the Western Front. How I know what’s going to be in next Sunday’s online edition of The Writer’s Almanac is, as they say, a mystery (and just who are they, anyway?). I present it here for your perusal, consideration, amusement, and consternation:
“He worked as a test-car driver, a gravestone salesman, an organist in an insane asylum, and eventually got a job writing for an athletics magazine.”
(4) I think I missed my calling. I would have made a great organist in an insane asylum.
(5) Don’t mind me today. I’m always this way before I have my morning coffee. But I think I’m being adversely affected by the approach of the summer solstice. (If gamma rays can have an effect on man-in-the-moon marigolds, why shouldn’t the approach of the summer solstice have an effect on me? Plus it takes a little while for me to recover from a week in Alabama.)
(2) I once wrote a poem called “Glossolalia, or The Gift of Tongues” after the manner of Joyce, sort of, although I didn’t realize at the time that that’s what I was doing. Here it is:
Glossolalia, or The Gift of Tongues
Not like a finely crafted poem of old
with much attention paid to rhythm and rhyme,
precision sought within a rigid frame,
and fourteen lines to do the will of God;
No.
More like an explosion of heat that whooshes into the room
so quickly that it takes your breath away,
shattering the cold silence of December,
a sudden Presence where none was before;
Yes.
More like a young girl bursting into the house
with news of great importance, unexpected and unplanned,
but completely welcome,
Yes
because she is
Yes Yes
Alive.
I wish I knew how this blamed blog thing works; the 5th, 10th, 14th, and 16th lines of my poem (“No” and “Yes” and the other “Yes” and “Yes Yes”) are supposed to be indented, but I can’t figure out how to make it happen.
(3) The strangest sentence I have read today, or lately, or maybe anywhere in my liftime, is found in next Sunday’s online edition of The Writer’s Almanac in a thumbnail sketch about the German author Erich Maria Remarque who wrote All Quiet On the Western Front. How I know what’s going to be in next Sunday’s online edition of The Writer’s Almanac is, as they say, a mystery (and just who are they, anyway?). I present it here for your perusal, consideration, amusement, and consternation:
“He worked as a test-car driver, a gravestone salesman, an organist in an insane asylum, and eventually got a job writing for an athletics magazine.”
(4) I think I missed my calling. I would have made a great organist in an insane asylum.
(5) Don’t mind me today. I’m always this way before I have my morning coffee. But I think I’m being adversely affected by the approach of the summer solstice. (If gamma rays can have an effect on man-in-the-moon marigolds, why shouldn’t the approach of the summer solstice have an effect on me? Plus it takes a little while for me to recover from a week in Alabama.)
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