Bloomsday

It's been awhile. I had decided to put this thing to rest--both as a symbolic gesture of moving beyond all the frustrations and annoyances of my "new life" and because things started to get a bit better. And I got some fucking perspective. Moves are hard, jobs suck, there is no place that promise all I thought Austin could deliver. I grew up a little bit more...duh, I always forget that has to happen. So, here I am writing again. I'm thinking that perhaps this might serve as a source of catharsis and to document some more of those interesting growing pains moments that (I'm learning!) will never stop. This is life, I guess.

Bloomsday was June 16th. It's a day that celebrates the novel Ulysses and in Dublin, there are parades and walks around town that mirror the route that Leopold Bloom takes the book. I forgot about it until today. Ulysses is, of course, hailed as a masterpiece of modern fiction and really is worth all the work (especially with a little help from a companion reader called The Bloomsday Book).

Somehow I remember the ninth chapter this way: Leopold goes the hospital to check on a woman who is in labor and the language of the chapter progresses in nine stages from some of the earliest forms of English to the modern-day version of the novel. It's incredibly difficult to read. It is the gestation and birth of the language of the novel. For some reason, I'm thinking quite a bit about it today--wishing I could have my own Bloomsday, to walk this new city and think about how life is played out in these small intergers, day by day, full of enough hassle to blur the larger picture. I haven't been able to look at the larger picture for a while, but I'm thinking I might be able to see it better...at least for today.

It turns out I'm completely wrong. Leopold goes to the National Library in the ninth chapter and reads from Hamlet. It's chapter eight when Leopold is imagining the birth of a child by a former girlfriend. And again, I have to re-adjust the view. If only I could get rid of expectations and just be for a while...