Happy Bloom's Day, June 16

Somehow everything went wrong today. A fat guy passed me on the bike trail; my internet connection failed; articles that caught my eye in a journal were all gloomy ones about the coming Islamic takeover of the world -- somehow related to Hillary's health care plan; and after three days' biking and swimming both, I've gained a pound a day. Then I was reminded, today is Bloom's Day, celebrated by fans of Joyce's ULYSSES world wide. The novel follows friends of Leopold Bloom around Dublin, from waking to sleeping, on the day June 16 in the year 1904. (Info, please)

On this day three years ago, I ran out and bought a copy for myself and resolved to read it through. It was a struggle, but I enjoyed each succeeding chapter more and more, until I hit a wall, in the middle of chapter nine. I think it was taking place in a library. I gave it up and went on to Raymond Chandler, a great new pleasure.

But I decided to try again, and, before I'd reached the end of the first page, all was right with the world. "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan" steps out on the deck of a stone tower in a dressing gown "sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air" and raises his bowl of shaving lather and intones "Introibo ad altare Dei" and calls down the stairs to wake up his pal Stephen Dedalus. If the sheer sound of the first lines don't make you smile, then Mulligan's playfulness does.

And if that doesn't, then there's the playfulness of the author, tossing around much of western civilization by free association: liturgy, Greek lit, Shakespeare, folk songs (and a satire called "Song of the Joking Jesus" that's fun), and Ireland's long sad history.

On another level, we're watching a scene in a play -- in the manner of Wilde, who's mentioned two or three times -- the plump clown, the thin self-conscious poet, and the pompous straight man (Haines, an Oxford man studying quaint Irish ways for his research) whom they mock freely without his ever guessing. Stage business of shaving, dressing, fixing and consuming breakfast, leaving for work, all continue through the banter. There's also a bit of old-fashioned exposition: Stephen's mother has died, he feels guilty about it because he didn't kneel and pray at her death bed when she asked for him to, and he's dressed for the funeral. And they plan to meet later at The Ship.

As I read, the concentration it takes to follow it drew me in to Joyce's world. It's a world without God, his characters say, but not without significance. The criss-crossing of references underlays that world, connecting the physical to the moral (imagination, history, philosophy, emotion). Somehow the same trees that tower over my house began to look to me like a benevolent circle of old friends, and the sun was golden, and the trusty old ceiling fan was bathing me in the same gentle breeze that pervades the opening scene on the tower.

I may never finish the book, but I've already internalized its attitude towards life expressed in the last word: Yes!