June
5
Always by Steven Spielberg was Audrey Hepburn’s last role.
7 [ongoing]
{Ulysses (Joyce), from a few pages in}
A little Newtonian physics in Ulysses, a rumination on weight by Bloom.
A voyeur he is, no doubt about that. No denigration towards Joyce – Bloom is a character he created, nothing more.
Gem of a line: Hate company when [it’s] you.
He (Bloom) seems to have kept a valise lent by one of his friends, Bob Cowley.
His father was fond of Kate Bateman (promoted by P T Barnum, no less) when she acted at the Adelphi in London.
Same line: he was born in 1966.
Italian seems to be the second language in this part.
People singing Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
A little stream of consciousness in flowery language while reading his paramour’s letter.
Coombe, a Dublin landmark, is mentioned twice – but in the same, rather unflattering, context.
Buddha is compared to Jesus (Ecce Homo).
Christianity’s sacraments are dwelt upon, mostly unfavorably except in the choice of wince over other types of beverage.
Under the bridge – reminds me of the RHCP song.
Who is the man in Latin, and, perhaps appropriately, a paragraph on eunuchs in choirs.
Confessions, and their furtive futility.
A “quest for the philosopher’s stone” at the chemist.
“The first fellow that picked an herb to cure himself had a bit of pluck.” – Truthat (the usage of an)!
“Clever of nature.” Indeed, Mr. Joyce.
The repetitive ‘I’s that will be thought (and/or said) by Molly Bloom at the end are foreshadowed.
A very brief critique of college advertising.
“Always passing, the stream of life, which in the stream of life we trace is dearer than them all.”
The funeral procession proceeds through Dublin.
Mr. Dedalus badmouths Mulligan, possibly with good reason, and threatens to “tickle his catastrophe”, whatever that means to Joyce.
“It’s as uncertain as a child’s bottom”, regarding the sun. Lolz :D
Some rhyming of stones and owns bookend Bloom dwelling upon death.
Quite a few morbid thoughts, including about cadavers.
Simnel cake is a marzipan plus dried fruits cake.
Hindu widows – given recent events, this strikes a deeper chord in me than it would have barely a quarter of a year ago. Time-life. Who knows? The future is unpredictable. My wife could be forced to join ranks with DM, if they were to fall in the same category through my demise. What ways the world weaves.
V & A Museum springs to mind due to the Pink Floyd showcase: Our Mortal Remains. More of the death theme today. Seems like a pallid undercurrent.
Book, rook; priest is toady so he croaks for the recently croaked. Named like a coffin, too.
“Once you are dead you are dead.” Couldn’t be any more precise.
A couple of characters attract Bloom’s relatively fleeting attention. Coitus is hardly ever far from his mind, even among graves. The graveyard (rather, the ground beneath it) is dwelled upon by a character, literally, while Bloom thinks about it grotesquely.
“Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.” Every moment buries its predecessor.
“Silly superstition that about thirteen.” Even my apartment complex doesn’t have floor number 13 – triskaidekaphobia, as I said yesterday to a relative. That reminds me, my family has grown in number.
“If we were all suddenly somebody else.” – Common wishful thinking.
“Out of the frying pan of life into the fire of purgatory.” – How differently Tolkien used this phrase in The Hobbit!
“Out of sight, out of mind.” I’m (only instinctively) sure he wasn’t the first to coin this phrase.
A few euphemisms, and thoughts I cannot place in context offhand.
Cheese = corpse of milk. Zoroastrianism referred to, for their rituals for the dead. Significantly moribund thoughts.
A character Menton-ed before walks by with Cunningham, reminding Bloom of some other character and Molly’s interaction. Courtship?
{TBC in July}
15
27
cri de Coeur
29
Almost, biopsy and chintz – alphabets in alphabetical order
Chintz is from Hindi, btw.
