Coming down the mountain.

Though not wearing pink pajamas we were coming down the mountain in a downpour, going the long way round to avoid the rising creeks which were red brown and frothing at the bottom of the bridges on the way up the hill three hours earlier. The mist came down, the wipers twitching helplessly under the flood, the headlights smudged and useless.
Following the curve of the central white line, thanking someone for the indicators on the sharp bends.
"Where the creeks run dry or ten feet high/and it's either drought or plenty".

So this morning for the first time, driving to the offices of SURG. Odd not to walk in. So very un Bloom like.
Realising the question, as we follow Bloom in his search for lunch, though one of the best and ugliest descriptions of the uglyness of people eating, through my own memories of trying to feed the sea gulls on the bridge and eating in Davy Byrne's, how much of literature is about aberrations and marginal activity? How much of it is a willful playing with and pandering to the perverse?

How much of it is playing the game so that someone else can tell you how well you did it? (so you can do them the favour in return.)

Beyond the fog the road open outs into familiar landscapes. We have escaped the flooded roads, the possibility of swift water ruin the fog distorted views. The world is clean and cold and the pure view is clear from here to the coast.

A cleared head. A renewal of conviction. The destination suddenly obvious after a long time waiting for the view to clear.

Who else but?

One of my favourite Joyce stories, well known but worth repeating with a gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of red:

And what have you been doing all day, asks a friend.
Writing a sentence says Joyce.
Ah, says the friend, looking for the 'Mot juste'.
No says Joyce, the words I had. It was their order I was working on.

Joyce, Syntax and another S.U.R.G.. meeting

Writing as performance. Reader as audience. Free to sit back and enjoy, or marvel at the skill, or use the experience as a free master class...a bit like listening to Martin Simpson playing the guitar...

This I love:

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

It's the grammatical slippage of dullthudding I think, as much as anything else. Exactly what it's doing in that first sentence is ambigious? It seems to have become an adjective in the second. The rhythm and sound seem near on perfect.

Which does raise the question: for someone who was so inventive with syntax, why was his poetry so dull?

pre S.U.R.G thinking...

When Donovan sang:

Yellow is the colour of my true love's hair/
In the morning when we rise


it's impossible not to wonder what colour her hair was in the evening when they lay down?

It's not on the same level as:

Star falls from horse after snapper ambush

where if you knew snapper is a fish, and didn't know a snapper was slang for a photographer you could be forgiven for thinking that the world was even more interesting than it is.

Saturday's S.U.R.G

This photo of the hospital at the top of Eccles street in Dublin.

In the offices of S.U.R.G. we follow Bloom as he sets out on his longest day. Weird juxtaposition, vivid memories of Dublin, of walking along Eccles street, of the deeply creepy front door preserved in the Joyce Centre and the clouds moving across Surfers in the distance, the high rise buildings disappearing as the rain moved in from the Pacific.

To which Joyce’s syntax could probably do justice.

Each reading differs. This time I pick up the lost key, the left open door, the ten years of marital abstinence echoing Ulysses’ ten years wandering from Troy. The fact that he keeps his card in his hat. We speculate about the Blooms’ relationship, about how the book doesn’t judge it, although Critics have. Most of all, we enjoy Bloom and the language. The humour.

And of course the skill.

Mrs. Marion Bloom.

It’s neat.

Saturday afternoons are time for a S.U.R.G

From time to time a detour from the middle ages or versions thereof are necessary and where else to go but Dear Old Dirty Dublin. So I walk into town for the occasional Southport Ulysses Reading Group. Their offices have great views.

If we had a logo it would be two blind eejits reeling merrily along Sandymount strand, giggling uproariously and bumping against reality every once in a while.

But the beauty of the Blue Book of Eccles is that it is resolute and friendly enough to welcome us in and survive our visits. We laugh at the jokes, admire the language, puzzle over the references. We digress. It’s such an anecdote to the way we are supposed to teach English. “Analyze the discourses in this text”. Any one like to try that on Ulysses?

How good is "I'm Almosting it"?

My pattener in climes against culturally accepteddy finations of sanity clams Ulysses is more a bobby than a hook. I tink it’s what the sweaty Jock personal fatness roaches bang on about: “a healthy lifestyle choice”.

You lift weights: I’ll follow Stephen and Bloom into the labyrinth of Joyce’s imagination and out into the possibilities of language. And when it gets a little claustrophobic, one can always take a holiday and read Beckett's novels or work on the Anglo-Saxon grammar.