a Bouyant Bloomsday 2009

Hi friends, & again, Happy Bloomsday. As you may recall, 105 years ago to th day, took place th events of James Joyce's Ulysses, altho some miles away in Dublin, & not here in Urbana, Illinois. (& of course, in another Dublin than th one that exists today, since time & space remain inseparable in practice indeed.)

(He flourishes his ashplant shivering the lamp image, shattering light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)

I don't have big plans myself; some folks're gathering in Champaign later on, says Facebook, so I'll probably join. It seems I forgot all about it last year, so simply taking a moment to poke thru Ulysses, which has sat on my shelf unread for a few years, counts for something. I quietly recited some of Finnegans Wake to myself last night, & may do that again today. But for th most part, no big plans.

However, for "old time's sake" & to renew a worthy fascination, I'll do a quick bibliomantic divination using th good FW. Ahem. Page 126:

Who do you no tonigh, lazy and gentleman?

Here Comes Everybody

Finnegans Wake, James Joyce's otherworldly experimental (many say unreadable) epic, has occupied my consciousness, time, & happyspace in recent weeks, as I have diligently read it aloud to myself page by page, whilst tallying hours spent (my chart currently shows seven hours & ten minutes of reading). Altho I've had th book for a while & have often enjoyed thumbing thru it whilst grinning, this represents my first cover-to-cover reading. First of many, I hope.

Th experience of reading no other book comes close to that of Finnegans Wake; it defies rational grokking. Its 628 pages of complex, multilayered puns, riddles, dreamscapes, bits of wordmusic & total lucidity entrance me. Altho oodles of articles & books have been written on it, nobody on Earth understands it completely (or probably ever will), & I think that rocks. Timothy Leary claimed that "Joyce's prose prepared [him] to enter psychedelic space."

So I plan to read it first cold, without any guidebook to help make sense of it, simply read it from cover to cover. After this, my second reading will allow one or two guidebooks (of th very many that are available - perhaps A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake: Unlocking James Joyce's Masterwork, by mythographer Joseph Campbell &/or A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake by William York Tindall). My third reading might incorporate another (perhaps Annotations to Finnegans Wake, by Roland McHugh, considered quite encyclopedic). After a while, perhaps I'll start writing my own guidebook.

At some point, I may take to th bustling streets on my weekends & recite th Wake one chapter at a time to a baffled Chicagoan audience.

It's been said that not until a person has put in 1000 hours of reading time does one start to grok th Wake. Hence my tally chart.

While not reading guides exactly, I've been reading a bit here & there about the Wake. Here's an interesting bit from Robert Anton Wilson, from his book Coincidance: "The 'nat language' of Finnegans Wake, in fact, can best be described as hologrammic prose. Just as a hologram is so structured that each part contains the whole, Finnegans Wake is structured in puns and synchronicities that 'contain' and reflect each other, creating the closest approximation of an infinite regress ever achieved in any art form."

This study may eventually lead up to a massive music project. I won't go into that now, because it may take years to get around to.

~a

Troytown Ithakatown Dublintown

Today I did arrive in Troytown for th doings of wed & happies; also, I did complete one full reading of Ulysses by James Joyce (here you can find an interesting essay on Ulysses & cybernetics slash hypertext).

THAT'S RIGHT! I'M A GREENPEACE ADVOCATE!

Two days ago, I discovered all my job leads had fallen thru th proverbial cracks & I found myself back at square effing one. No record store retail; no full-time dog-walking for rich white people in fancy neighborhoods. In fact, I found myself discouraged & miserable about it; yesterday, I ignored th problem & slept until 2:00.

But today I remembered a pretty girl who stopped me on th street a few weeks ago soliciting for Greenpeace. I told her I'd love to join but I can't afford extra expenses, since I quit my job & all my bills lie in wait to ambush me at th end of th month. She rocked, though; we talked about jobs a bit & she said, "By th way, Greenpeace is hiring..." That got th wheels turning.

So today I called Greenpeace at 11:00ish (after having applied for another coffee-sloshing job that I didn't feel too thrilled about), & I got invited to a group interview at 1:00. I zipped down to my apartment (from Tiffany's), washed up, threw on a tie-dye shirt for good karma, & got all sweaty again biking downtown for th meeting. Th girl who interviewed us rocked & got me excited about environmentalism (something I've always felt strongly about anyway). Th other three job-hunters there also rocked. We had some good conversations between th one-on-one interviews. Two of them have come from Ireland for th summer (but they haven't read any James Joyce), and th other comes from Michigan. So after each of us finished our one-on-ones, we all four got hired in one giant ecstatic moment of relief!

I start training on Monday! Hot dog!

On th bike ride home, a guy came up to me, "Hey, man, would you like to join Greenpeace!" & I was all like, "I am one of you, my man, I just got hired today!" So I introduced myself to my new comrade Drew.

Kickin'!