LESTRYGONIANS Lunch – a plate of peas with gravy only 2 pence in those days, at this place time says 12.30pm

Bloom, as we have realised for some time now is a little different; not quite the run of the mill man about town.

He is avoiding Blazing Boylan whom he knows this day will spend happy hours with Molly Bloom, his own beloved. He is also avoiding Molly Bloom knowing that Molly is happy with the adultery, and most bitterly is Bloom aware that both Molly and Boylan are well aware that Leopold knows of their secret and will do nothing about it.

An unhappy situation for many men. It has turned many times to murder.
 

The bitter encounter with the Lestrygonians is but one of the more terrible episodes in book nine of Homer’s Odyssey.  Their first call after leaving Troy is the famed floating island of Aeolus, God of the winds. Here they rest a full month; a most generous gesture by Aeolus for the squadron is said to be of twelve ships each with a complement of about fifty men and are now burdened with the women and children of a city sacked. These unfortunates to be sold as slaves. These also must be fed, for a starved slave attracts no price in the market. 

Hospitality is one of the great underlying themes of the Odyssey. It is demanded by Zeus. The hospitality of Aeolus was munificent indeed.  The parting gift of Aeolus is a great bag; the skin of a full-grown ox; in this he has contained all the contrary winds which might hinder their journey home. Against orders and common sense, the men open the bag convinced that it contains an unfair share of treasure. The men were convinced that Odysseus was cheating them.
Retribution falls upon them and despite all effort they are driven by the winds back to the island where Aeolus orders them off. This time not with blessing but with curses.

Something similar happened to Captain Cook on his third voyage. The Hawaiians resenting his return to the island because of the terrible drain on their resources and their hospitality.  The breach of the unwritten law of hospitality, led to Cooks death

It is interesting to note that Aeolus had six beautiful daughters and six magnificent sons. He married the daughters to the sons, a foolish action it would seem in view of the possible consequences on an island population.

They next meet up with the Lestrygonians, a fierce race of giant man-eaters. They are attacked; the Lestrygonians hurling great rocks into the ships, of the squadron of twelve ships, only Odysseus and his ship escape.

'Put your back into your oars or die. So they escaped, driven with a deadly fear.'

After six days of hard work on the oars the winds are still contrary; the gift of Aeolus a sailors Pandora box of evil. They reached the home of Circe, the bewitching Queen of Aeaea, she who turns men into swine.  There are many such tiny islands scattered through the Western World.  The East, which has rejected alcohol as a necessary stimulant, happily free or relatively so such islands. We call them pubs here in Oz. Hotels, the preferred modern word, many serving as restaurants.  Thus Circe feasted them.

Twenty-two of his men are so magicked and Odysseus sets out to rescue them. He is given help and some sound advice by Hermes; all comes to pass and Odysseus stays in happy dalliance for a year with Circe.

Later legends, not mentioned in the Odyssey, say that she bore Odysseus a son, Telegonus, who as a young man, later kills Odysseus, not knowing him.

The day came when Circe dressed him in a sea cloak and shirt; herself in a glistening robe, loose about her, filmy, a joy to the eye, with a golden brocaded belt about her waist, a scarf to shield her head.  A sight to gladden the heart of all men, especially sailors.

She send him not to Ithica but to the Kingdom of the Dead, there he must consult with ghost of Tiresias, the blind seer of Thebes who will reveal to him his way home to Ithica; this will not be easy. Poseidon is still in pursuit of him. They must choose between the Wandering Rocks and Scylla and Charybdis and reaching the isle of Helios, where against advice, orders, and risk of their lives they kill and feast upon his oxen.  Fleeing  his wrath, all save one will perish; Odysseus alone washed up at the feet of Calypso there to remain a captive and unhappy lover for seven long years.  This a torment for him.  Odysseus reduced to a mere service provider!

At the command of Zeus she releases him but he is again savaged by the unforgiving Poseidon, wrecked on the shores of Phaecia and there Nausicaa rescues him.

Her father Alcinous welcomes him. There is a view of his famed gardens where with careful planting apples, pears, figs, pomegranates, apricots, olives and many varieties of grape, bear ripening fruit all the year round.  This bounty possible in many parts of Oz.

There with games and feasting, his long story is told and at last a safe sea passage; his feet on his own soil, home.

So Joyce makes his own usage of Homer’s magnificent story; the high adventure; a terse dramatic ten years boiled down to one grey day in Dublin and a miserable day for Joyce’s Ulysses.

The Homeric story is the better by nigh on four thousand years.
 

'Today is the smiling countenance of all our yesterdays'. A good thought from Ulysses. 

It was from memory, Carlos Williams wrote, “There is no art of poetry, but save by the grace of other poetry; Dante to me is but another name for Whitman; or is it that Whitman is but another way of saying Dante.”

A greater, more significant resonance therein than between Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses. By such thinking and an acceptable logic, all poetry can be traced back to the blind poet from Ephesus; or was it Smyrna; Chios beyond belief. 

But Williams was talking of poetry and is not Dante’s Divine Comedy anything other than Homer’s Odyssey rewritten for a generation whose once pristine minds were now corrupted with centuries of superstition; darkened with the imagery of the churches hell.

It is most difficult to understand a Church, founded on rich spiritual concepts but throughout its history preaching a vengeful God; practised a cruel ministry; insisted on hellfire and retribution; all contrary to Jesus’ insistence that we must, for our own souls sake, learn to love one another.

The real Christian surviving, in that terrible background, living the true teachings, had a hard time, but we owe a huge social structure within and outside the church to their survival, the rightness of the teaching of the founder.
 

Odysseus is angry again.
This time another folly.  Not wholly Australian, this one, its happened before,
Some army women demanding the 'right' to front line – firing line – close combat.
What wrong with them?
Imagine the headlines; 'Woman soldier pack raped on the battle field'.
Others as hideous.
That American front line soldier was very fortunate indeed.  She will write a book about her adventure.  The silly creatures, have they never heard, never read of the fate of women in War?
History is full of dreadful examples Shakespear has a word for them, 'your daughters dragged by their hair, shrieking, to the tents of the soldiers'.
Henry V, but from memory.  Have they not read of the fate of the nurses captured by the Japanese; the Japanese 'comfort women'.
Even Hitler had enough sense to keep them out of the front line: women in Stalins armies shot when they became pregnant.
And what of hand to hand conflict, fighting for life – eyes gouged, any stick or rock a weapon, fighting for life against men also mad with the frenzy for life?
Read the Iliad.  Homer has the last word on close combat.
We have killed too many good men at war.  Utter folly to kill good women.
Come back to reality girls.  There’s much better work available back here at home.
Honourable work, such as raising a happy family to a confident maturity. 
 

James has given us several good ‘one liners’.

'The smiling countenance of all our yesterdays'. Yes, a very good phrase to muse upon. Even in the universities.

There is no real reason, except this entanglement of old ideas, that our universities should be encumbered with the thousands seeking easy degrees in the soft options.

These questing souls can well be taught and gain their degree in the TAFE colleges; music in the special music academies; art in art schools; and university available for those seeking post graduate honours. 

The universities could then resume the honourable tradition of excellence which has ensured their continued existence for so long. The schools of learning have provided the world with those qualities of human excellence which are the foundations of human civilisations.  The University tradition of ‘the whole man’ dates back to the time of Plato, Places and centres of learning respected and honoured; adopted by King and state from about the thirteenth century, and still the great creative heart of civilization despite the student unions.

We have a solemn duty to our children to ever conserve and develop such Excellencies for the sake of the countenance of our tomorrows.
 

SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS or between a rock and some hard place. Time about 1.00pm to 3.00pm.
   Stephen in trouble. 

As we see Stephen here, at the National Library, he is the maturing young man just out of Varsity. He has acquired somewhat a reputation there. He excels at debate; writes well, a good journalist, has some good reviews, is fluent in modern languages. His BA a satisfactory but modest achievement. He is a popular young man.

But he has also achieved a new identity. Gone the serious student of the Portrait; the University has brought him face to face with the New Man.
The Manfred of Byron; the Outsider of the later Colin Wilson.

So here he is. A brash young man about town. The quarter hat.  Not for him, the bowler of respectability; the swagger cane, the glint of genius in view, the determination to change the world. 

Is it not his destiny to reveal 'the undiscovered soul of Ireland'. This but a vanity. Such revelation lay in the destinies of others, notably St Patrick, or was it St Brigid who discovered that soul so long ago.  Young Stephen has imposed a great vanity upon himself.

Here today he gives us a pretty clear picture of himself.

There is no doubt he has read well enough in the subject, argues vigorously, displays an exhaustive vocabulary but it is not conditioned with the rigor of logic; this weakness in the remorseful end denying him his coveted goal; this an invitation to tonight’s literary evening; a place with Dublins intelligentsia.

Having introduced the subject he would have done better to listen rather than talk.

The Shakespeare on whom he discourses is foreign to history; the assumptions he makes are unjustified; the inferences objectionable; his conclusions faulted and flawed.

But for all that we must keep in mind that for the purpose of Ulysses, he is showing us quite deliberately the flaws and follies of Stephen Dedalus rather than those of the swan of Avon. 
 

Shakespeare’s Women.

Joyce saw them differently; through his own eyes; neither Shakespeare’s nor any other.

Anne Hathaway he sees as 'the ugliest doxy is all Warwickshire'. Elizabeth, Queen of England is 'fay Elizabeth otherwise carroty Bess, the gross virgin'.

So many others wanton whores, yes men also, whoreson fellows. This is that which makes so much of Ulysses offensive rather than pornographic.

The attitude pervades the work, says plainly that it is deliberate and as plainly says to the reader; ‘this is as I see things’.

Men and women are better than this and were better than this in Ireland as in England in 1904 and in 1600.

Little wonder than Stephen had to withstand the ‘bane of miscreant eyes’.

There could be no approval of his view and therefore no invitation to join the literary world of Dublin.
 

They are discussing Shakespeare, Mulligan saying, puzzled, “I seem to know the name.”
The dialogue undisguised, simple English spoken plain, as befitting a discussion on Shakespeare.

If you know Shakespeare this is the chapter to read first.

It stands with that first chapter on Mulligan; the Cyclops; with the history of Ireland from the citizen; parts II and III of Mabbot Street; and Eumaeus, a brave tale of the sailor home from the Sea, these the best bits of Ulysses and probably of Joyce.

Nothing like these in the Portrait or in the Wake.
 

Stephen drags HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS into the arena, but fails to present the slightly deficient anagram; 'this but a lean honour to Sir Francis Bacon'. Loves Labour Lost a metaphor perhaps, a short sharp reminder that the true author cannot be named. There are slight variations and the scholars tell us that the Latin form of the word offers a more complete anagram.

There is a rather direst connection with Rabelois, book IV; 'He was quite ESPERRUQUANCHURELEBUBLOZERIRLICED. Quite down to his heels'.

This only thirty three letters and as difficult, and amusing as the hundred letter words of James.  However the honour '_ _ _ _ _ _' word of Wm.S. is the better of this little bunch; it had a specific meaning and was in use, some years before Shakespeare made good use of it.

There are other cryptograms. One of the best may be found, of all places, in the Bible, the Authorised Version, psalm 46. Read 46 words from each the beginning and the end. They are respectively Shake and Speare. 

What is really interesting is that William was 46 years old in 1610; this the year in which the text of the revision was presented complete to the King. It was published in 1611.

Added to this is that Will often used lines or verses from the psalms in the plays. Then also Sir Francis was a member, possibly the convenor of that group of scholars charged with the translation of the poetical books; Job; Psalms; Proverbs; Ecclesiastes; the Song of Songs. Bacon also enjoyed the wisdom of the Psalms. He published his own translation of a group of them, his favourites. 

There is yet a further interesting aspect on this question. Rudyard Kipling, also a wonder worker with words, wrote a delightful little piece which will intrigue enquiring minds. From recollection the piece is 'Proofs of Holy Writ', in which Will and Ben Jonson, ever a close friend of Will, proofread and revise a small section of Isaiah. This for yet another friend, one of the translators of yet another group of the biblical canon.

We should note here 'the King has set all the scholars of England to make one Bible, which the Church shall be bound to; out of all the bibles that men use'.

These were, in the main, The Geneva Bible; the Douai, the French printing; Coverdale’s version; The Great Bible of Cramner and Cromwell; Matthews Bible; and Tyndale’s.

These were the main versions available to Englishmen. There were others, European, Latin and  some Greek texts.

Those who claim the infallibility of the word, appear to have little knowledge of the many variations, created mainly in translation, even as those who do not know the Book have little knowledge of the wisdoms enshrined within.

That Kipling story may be but an echo of Shakespeare assisting, with his beautiful metrical command of the language, in the better rendering of a difficult passage of the work, is not an impossible comment.

It may also explain that interesting 'Shakespeare' in Psalm 46.

This Psalm begins; 'God is our refuge and strength; a very present help in time of trouble'”

Strong and pure, Will makes the words flow, and the prophets vision becomes the Word and the Book makes that Word live in the minds of men today. A notable piece of work.
 

Stephen mentions several of the plays; Loves Labour Lost; it is in this play that the cryptogram appears; Timon of Athens; Othello; one or two others but not the Tempest. He makes Shakespeare to be 'bawd and cuckold'; in Hamlet, to be father, son and the wicked brother united in the unholy trinity of being all at once.

The paragraphs on this disturbing relationship could well be read by every psychologist in the West! A situation possibly beyond even Shakespeare’s fecund imagination. 

Stephen is trying his hand and our patience with a bit of higher criticism; has views on WM’s views on the theme of guilt and punishment; this drags in MacBeth and Lear; the fragile mind at risk; the toughest minds destroyed by the self inflicted wound. He uses lower criticism, men and women of the plays all sadly abused, Tybalt would have one of his nine lives.
 

He talks down the poetry Venus and Adonis, Lucrece; lewd; he thinks; the sonnets written by someone else. Stephen sees WM S., in all, in person; and all seen through the dark glass that is his minds eye. To use his own words, "But it was the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination to evil." Who?  James Joyce or William Shakespeare?

John Eglington barks at him; “What the hell are you at, are you condemned to do this?” 

Homer also has a word; “What wilful thought you let slip past you teeth.”

But let Shakespeare have the last word. This from The Tempest, “Fie, what a spendthrift is he of his tongue.”
 

Words are powerful things.  They say a lot!

James, dreaming of genius, sees a girl on the beach; this pleasant sight brings him back to a semblance of reality; poetic, romantic maudlin, thinks of her as his Bird girl.

True enough, she would probably fly at his advance.

But the commentators talk of the spirit redeeming the claims of the body, such redemption a transmutation of his religious training.

Most readers will make a stronger demand for rational interpretation of a writer.  Such metaphysics need to be supported by a dramatic change in the thinking and the life style; but we know that whilst he suffered ‘epiphanies’ he suffered no such conversion as befell Saul of Tarsus, or St Augustine, the many others who were redeemed from the claims of the body, or the transmutation of their religious training.

He has simply reached that time in life when he notices that little girls have miraculously become young women, endowed by Mother Nature with 'the nameless grace'.  In short; in day to day words he has grown up.

He is entering upon his maturity, a few years of experiment with his new found world; and if he is not brutalised in the process, he will achieve a reasonable maturity, and will transmute the experience into his work.

In the meantime, Mum and perhaps Dad are worrying about how to best tell him about the birds and the bees.

But not to worry.  His peers have long since informed him of such mysteries, and this in the plainest most honest words.

He is now seeking the experience of the transformation of his dreams, not into redemption, but into a living and very pleasurable reality.  He would satisfy the claims of the body.

This, the experts might well note is the experience of the entire world.  That Bird Girl also experienced 'claims of the body'.  She would have come to her maturity some years before James, and here on the beach beside that illimitable sea, is a prospective companion; but there would be no vague thoughts of either genius or redemption in her mind.  Perhaps he might like her, perhaps love and companionship, perhaps a good mate – for life.

Dream on, little Bird Girl.  May all your dreams come true.
 

There are other assumptions based on the supposed impossibility of a 'country boy' having the vocabulary, or the art or the wit or the creative imagination for such monumental work.

This argument is without foundation. Many, if not most of this world greats have had humble beginnings. An essay, citing examples could be a most interesting project. 

James himself from no gifted family.   Shakespeare had a grammar school education; this usually up to about year 1 at Uni, in our days and, in those days, with a strong literary tradition. 

Ovid, Horace, Cicero, Virgil Seneca and others were the text books.

Few do as well today with the easy B.A.
 

This segment is the most chilling self-realization in Ulysses. There are several such but this the most powerful.

Here in Joycean language is a plain picture of the mental block which dominates Ulysses; a terrible recollection of things past; his immature sexuality; his hatred of his father, his contempt for the faith of his mother; and in his attack on the character of Shakespeare, his bitter envy of the country boy who so greatly excelled his own perverted talent; and in the bitter end, the rejection of his peers. It is this which drives him inexorably out of Dublin, away from his critics, into the life he lived by choice as an intellectual exile, far away from those social contacts which would have modified and given better direction and support of his talent. In such exile, his work became subjected to the plebeian slavery of teaching; time for creative writing restricted to the small hours; fortified, and thus marred, with Dutch courage.

Yes indeed, Sylvia Beach saw the promise, but as ever with James, the fulfilment of the promise was to demand years of steady encouragement and effort, and even with the loyal support of Sylvia, Harriet and Nora, a third of Ulysses was provided under the immense pressure of the printing process. God, however, helped the printer and the work was completed; perhaps not completed but the end parts just flung together. Had the printer taken another month to complete the job, Ulysses would have possibly been another month longer, but how much of that month the creation of artistic integrity or just Joycean padding, we fortunately can only speculate.
 
 

It’s a commonplace to point finger at McDonalds these days.
This is not fair.
The company has done more then most to hear the word, and alter its offerings to meet modern standards.  The real enemy is breakfast people.  Those who products are so heavily laced with sugar.
Sugars are a component of our blood.  Too little, and we can die; too much and you’re equally at risk.
Diabetes – one of the social diseases on track to be No 1 killer fuelled by excess sugar in the diet.
Too much triggers imbalances which cause hyper activity and stress in children.
Put the kiddies on oatmeal for a week or so and marvel at the difference.  But no added sugar, you idiot.
In the listed contents of the product sugar is all too often disguised as ‘energy’ but in many prepared breakfast foods it is usually anything from 30%.
Don’t be fooled.
In the Ireland of Joyce, there was little sugar and begob, the Irish have colonised the world.
 

Our Odysseus has raised yet another comment on life in Oz.

He knows with unflagging certitude that there is an antisocial 10% at the bottom end of the national family; he is reasonably certain that a similar 8 –10% flourish on ill gotten gains at the top of the heap; he is beginning to think that yet another 8 –10% exist happily in the middle of the heap, and, as usual, he wonders why we scribblers are not doing that everlasting 'something' about the matter.

I console him; point out that without condemnation I have done a paragraph or so about all or nearly all of his complaints; told him quite seriously that he is a better observer; more stern a critic than most; that his opinions speak for the other 70% of the social body; that many readers will agree; but that the scribbler must expect on publication to receive earnest letters of protest from many readers and a couple of social misfits.

If, and only when, published, possibly a mauling from some influential reviewers; all of this and more; even strangers at my door, earnestly hoping to correct me; more painful than any such, may be utterly ignored by book buyers, as being merely another old malcontent, lucky enough to be published.

Even more remorsefully the work to earn only such blunt recognition as 'The publisher regrets'.

So, my doing 'something' is to note my friends complaints, record such, and hope for the best!  Not ever indulge the impossible dream of reforming even one of the mob of ten percenters from either end of the heap.

I tell him that his 10% is more likely to be only 1 – 2% at both ends of the social scale, perhaps 3% if we include the operators on the Stock Market.

There is however the bare chance that some aspiring politician, seeking a 'cause'; fired with opportunity for reform, might tackle one or another of these gritty problems in which case, "Good Luck, mate, Go For It!"
 

Shakespeare was lucky not to be buried in Poets Corner, Westminster.

His shrine is properly his hometown, Stratford. His epitaph a rhyme and a curse and but naturally his own verse 
“Good friend for Jesus sake forebear
To dig the dust enclosed here
Blest be the man that spares these stones
And curst be he that moves my bones.”

This plain verse compared with those he provided for Cleopatra.
“Give me my robes, my crown; I have immortal longings in me”.

Ben Jonson spoke of him, “Thou art a monument without a tomb and are alive still whilst thy book shall live, and we have wits to read and praise to give.”
But Jonson’s personal last words came from the heart; “I loved the man and do honour his memory this side of idolatry.”
Neither Stephen Dedalus nor James Joyce appeared to understand the worth of Shakespeare. 
 

Two distant relatives of Shakespeare were hanged, and an aunt of his mother burned alive for refusing to conform with the new prayer book. 

King Henry hard on the Church, his daughter on the people.

Attendance at Church on Sundays was compulsory; Shakespeare’s father as alderman, conspicuous by his absence and twice fined for such absence.

These regulations were strictly monitored in the smaller towns where everyone knew everyone and a zealous priest could force strict compliance. 

In the cities the rules are relaxed somewhat as with most things, rules, regulations, social attitudes, manners; all tend to be different in the city.  Life in the city strongly influenced by the Lowest Common Denominator.
 

The City tells the story, Sydney with it’s four million about 90 percent of them carve out the good life, so excellent the means and ways available; the 10 percent one supposes happy with what they get.

Same in the libraries the good always in demand, the remainders ever on the shelf.

It will be the same with literature; a different creation today from the florid style of the 19th century, but wherever men and women find themselves, the good things, the excellencies of life will ever have a place in their lives. Such ever presented in tangible form, accessible and good to the eye. The computer cannot offer such gifts; not for a long time yet.

The criterion is excellence. We have valued the best from our far beginnings; our excellencies in creative thought have created slowly but surely our carefully wrought civilisation.

This is a challenge which the word processor, windows, and the web throw at us today. A magnificent opportunity to make the excellencies of thought and imagination available to the planet; to the world’s people, and probably to others in the galaxy with the ability to tune in to our wavelength. Because we radiate our ways and our Excellencies into space, together with a considerable amount of inane nonsense, we are making ourselves known to the surrounding reaches of the galaxy in a rather inharmonious manner. One hopes that 'they' will judge us by our best.  This paragraph must of course be conditioned by ??
How does this paragraph relate to Ulysses? Simply that Ulysses is now part of the world’s story and stands with all that is as a measure of mankind.
 

We hear a word from Russell, impatient with the trend of this attack on Shakespeare.

This Russell is AE of England’s literature. Painter, writer, poet, mystic, and a very practical newspaper man, editor with a voice for the soul of Ireland.

He asks, “But this prying into the family life of a great man --- peeping and prying --- the drinking, the poets debts --- we have King Lear and it is immortal.”

Well, such prying and peeping is hot news today. You would, no doubt about it, have read a few strong editorials over this morbid curiosity of the modern media.  The morbid exploiting of the life of Diana, a particularly cruel instance.

From the nastiest criminality of some decaying suburban horror, the strident exploiting of some royal indiscretion; priests and prelates; powerful business or sportsmen; there are few lines drawn, and all such drawn in chalk.

It has ever been so; another million years before the human entity achieves its reasonable maturity, and even then, a long, long way to achieve that state of being just a little lower than the angels.
 

People like a bit of purple.

After the publication of The Portrait, the great sea change in Joyce’s style; the abrupt transition from the Victorian prose of his manifesto on Stephen Dedalus; the soul search; to the mind search of Ulysses, and to the structure of Ulysses, these changes have intrigued three generations of students and their dons.

James makes no comment on Free Trade.
It was immensely difficult, no thanks to England, for Ireland to have any trade at all.

There is an undercurrent in the Press.  It talks of Free Trade.  Free Trade with America – of course, and the pundits are demanding that it be Fair Trade, which is fair enough.

Uncle Sam is already immensely wealthy the GDP measured in trillions: he is also the most powerful man on earth.
What does he want?
He is also rather greedy, and is ruthless when it’s business.
Come on man, enough is enough.

So many see Fair Trade as another giant step forward in the sullen outflow of American culture; and its not nice.  No human enjoys being subject to another.  Uncle Sam has need to pause, have a look at himself; at what he’s doing; realise that he is but a citizen of a world that is in no mood to accept a master.
 

THE WANDERING ROCKS - Time about 2.00pm to 4.00pm.
Yet another traverse of the city, and a beautiful segment of Ulysses. 

This segment of Ulysses takes a close personal look at the many characters. It is an interesting amble; for the single entity which we call 'society', or the public, is comprised of individuals, loosely tied together by the industries, crafts, sciences, clubs, parties or groups which they create and energize daily; the schools in which they are educated, the suburbs in which they live.

The collapse of the good lifestyle is never the work of the Gods but of the system. It is ever, through the sev’n thousand years, the work of the individual. One foolish man or woman is simply a personal tragedy; a mere three or four such can ruin a small town; an hundred or so ruin a large town; a few thousand, a city; all this is but historical fact. The world is littered with once viable towns; with hollow poverty ridden cities, their few rich still enjoying the good life, but living in fenced and security guarded enclaves. We have many such here already in Australia. When the folly is acted out in the life of millions of its citizens, the country, its civilization, its society and its families, have truly dug themselves into trouble.

Generations may elapse before restoration can be made.

The risk of defeat, and the pleasures of success, in any society, in any city, depend upon individuals. You, Sir and Madam, and me. 

When enough, that is, a critical mass is reached, failure occurs, it affects the entire body.

We might notice that our police force is greater than we thought; its methods more harsh; that we are bound and constrained with an incomprehensible mass of laws and regulations; we note the rapid increase in lawsuits and the cost in time and money of justice; we note also that justice is now servant of the lawyers and poorly paid and treated as such.

We might note the ever-increasing prison populations and the ever-rising cost of their imprisonment.

We might note the crime is as prevalent in the white collar populations as in the blue; that it invades the banks and the big corporations; that it appears in our local councils, and God help us, is no stranger in our parliaments and when we note that our women folk are an increasing number amongst the unreasonable then our society is under dire threat indeed.  It is painfully evident in the now widespread use of what an earlier and wiser generation knew as gutter language.

We see it in the rapid increase in bullying in the schools, in the intimidation of nurses and doctors in our hospitals and shamefully in an increasing domestic violence.  This depressing a wider segment of society and with strong, down spiralling effects.   The surfdom which engaged thousands in the old days now unemployment in the city.

Strangely, Joyce does not mention the degradation of petty crime in Dublin of that late Spring day in June. Obviously not a problem amongst his associates. Nor does he mention the unemployment of the day. Other than observing two men 'unlabouring'. 

Mrs Joyce applied to the bench for an order against her husband, who was duly lectured by a police sergeant on the evil of domestic violence.

This must have been a bad experience for James, ever a compassionate man at heart.

The level of civilization that we enjoy here in Australia is the work of so many good men and true. We needs must put the same effort into the sensible preservation of that civilized state, as did our Fathers and theirs.

In Dublin, strong men were aware of such flaws in society and planning a renaissance of the Irish soul.
 

The episode is interesting because of some of the historical references. The Phoenix Park murders for instance, mentioned without detail. The reference is to the murder of the administrator Lord Cavendish and his secretary Thomas Burke in 1882.

Another is the reference to Penelope Rich, a noted beauty of Shakespeare’s day and thought by some to be the Dark Lady of the Sonnets. 

James almost certainly knows such detail, and as on many other occasions offers just the bare fact; check the details yourself. 

He mentions in this segment Bloom buying a second hand book on astronomy. This book no doubt the source used frequently in the course of Ulysses as a reference book for several apparently useless bits of information. 

But the simple fact that the book is Bloom’s adds a small measure of relevance to all those quotations. Typical of his complex mind.
 

'Virtuous; but occasionally they were also bad tempered'. This is one of the pleasures of trawling through Ulysses. Ever and anon the truthful and pertinent observation.

Little old ladies are so often thus and with good reason. Growing old without the support of an income can be not only a hardship but a grave disillusionment; a jolting letdown. It is so too with men.

A lifetime of reasonable service often appreciated; then that last day, the few gathered in the office or on the floor of factory or workshop; the simple compliments the good wishes, and, fare thee well. But then, come Monday morning; nothing to do, but get used to it. For a few days the odd jobs undone around the house completed, then the armchair, a recliner, these days, and the slow death.

These days we have the pension, super; or many own the home; none of that in 1904 in Dublin.

The alternative, have a brief holiday then, GET SOMETHING TO DO, volunteer or paid, anything, but cast off and die. 

'Virtuous but occasionally they were also bad tempered', a fair comment on old age, so often cursed with vacant hours.
 

Enter Blazes Boylan, a strong contrast to the rather drab introspective Bloom.

Here is Blazes, in name and nature. 

Money to spend, somewhere to go, a clear strong purpose, buying fruit and flowers for one lady, flirting with another. A real man about town and no doubt as he goes about town, an eye for every pretty Irish Colleen and any English miss who may be airing her attractions in Dublin this day.

Every city needs a Blazes Boylan, and praise the Gods most cities have one. 

Don Juan, a perennial human character.
 

Here in Oz, our bright boys have already world reputation for excellence in research, innovation and in education generally. An Australian University preferred by many to an American one. The Universities, now, through political interference, now hampered with the thousands seeking only a minor degree, and this not for the pleasure of learning, but merely as a supporting reference in the C.V., an adornment in the personal dossier in the getting of a job.

Here is a desperate need for change. Leave the University its time-honoured task of the development of mankind; our arts, our skills, our administration.

There are a hundred cities in the world with populations in the millions, and the need for men and women with skills in administration, in civil engineering, in public health and associated disciplines, unrelenting.  Without such people, the cities will slide into decline, decay inevitable.  Through Asia there are skyscrapers, factories and other, all built with World Bank money, but empty.  'See through' buildings.  This for want of men and women with the ideas; these the real energy of any city.  Money merely a tool which men use;  so often foolishly. 

One World is coming along, and at a fast trot; we must for our own sakes see that it develops in a civilized manner. There can be no room for the fanatic bigotry of the twentieth century. So, free our Universities of the terrible drag of the soft options.

Let the boys and girls get their B.A. and equivalent in the High Schools and the TAFE colleges. The first two years in the High Schools, the degree in TAFE. And at the cost of a standard High School education. HEC’s are a terrible, folly. A good education for all our children, this for the strength and good of society. Society ever and only the product of the excellence of its people. The huge investment in educational buildings is grossly underused. There will ever be the ten percent of illiterates; these should be weeded out in the infant classes and educated in special schools their parents educated with them.  We should not tolerate the folly of fifteen year olds unable to read and write. For the normal bright active children, the 90%, schools should ask more; and teach more. European children learn several languages in their school life. When we ask more of the children they will respond.

There’s another thing; our Education Department needs a good vigorous shake up too much theory; not enough common sense. An easy going bureaucracy has ruined many a good government.
 

The exegetists make much of Joyces subconscious world; much of it simply speculative.

Freud et al. began their poking and prying into the human psyche in good faith. That the theories were quickly taken up and exploited in a flood of books on murder, violence, rape, and other human degradation, is ample evidence of the frailty of the original concepts.

The acute stage did produce some good literature. Woolfe, Joyce, Shaw, Conrad, Lawrence, and others, but became entrenched as Modernism; Post Modernism, Relativism, and a flurry of lesser ‘isms’ still with us. All are ably supported by political correctness and modern economics.

Rather tragically, the 'do as you please' doctrine is still active in the visual media, a strong formative element in the life of the community, with clear effects.  We need to control such, even as we found it wise to control the witch doctors and the medicine men.

Fortunately clear thinking and good writing are still the main stream in the literary world.

We walk our streets; drive our way round our island continent; swim at our beaches; picnic on the fringes of our beautiful wild places; shop in our malls; attend our theatres and sporting venues in relative safety. Offence maybe enacted in all such places by a small few, savage or foolish still, and desperate or criminal at heart. Such have ever been with us.  Sadly such failed children are the fault of the parents, of society, in the shape of the peer group, TV; the magazines; Literature also a formative issue for the modern child.  All children are born innocent.  All are shaped and moulded after birth.

It is a great pity and a great shame that such actions are accepted in our literature, in our arts and the vast entertainment media. We are capable of much better, and our children deserve our best.

The one legged sailor, begging alms, hobbling the streets, crying 'for England' to excite sympathy; the white arm of Molly Bloom, flinging a coin, speaks to us of the more compassionate times in which we live.

England had little sympathy and less help for her wounded warriors in those days.  Her wounded, of lucky, retired on a shilling a day!
The unlucky – nothing;

With a leg in deep need of amputation he was either lucky, or unlucky, to be left alive; so many grievously injured sailors given a blow on the head and thrown overboard with the dead. This a merciful act in those not so distant days; the seriously wounded on the battle fields given the same merciful ‘coup de grace’ the death blow. 

Molly’s small gift of much greater worth than the blessing of Father Conmee.
 

This English. God help the ethnics, learning English.

Take the dictionary definition of, say, 'Hold'. The Collins English offers forty plus definitions. 'Open' opens up fifty-three; 'Load' is loaded with twenty-seven options; 'Pass' forty-four; possible passes; 'Positive', which seems positive enough, has twenty-six. 'Pull' pulls thirty-eight possibles; 'Score' scores well, thirty; 'Raise' raising thirty-five is a surprise; 'Ring' as both verb and noun, rings in forty-four possible uses; 'Square' which seems simple, squares off at forty-five; so does 'Stock', with a good stock of derivations; 'Turn', turns up sixty-two applications with a score of so of derivatives. There are many others. Some even more complex. James missed a beautiful purple paragraph here, with a bit of patience he could have worked up a thousand words. No trouble. 
 

Jason’s Argo is symbolic of the first voyages the Greeks made through the Bosphorus and up the Danube into the fabulously rich country we now know as Turkey. Gold, copper, later iron, came from these lands, the hereditary land of the original colonizers of the Ionian seas. 

Legend has it that Jason’s ship killed him as was prophesied long years before his death. As an old man, full of tales of the olden days, he slept beside his beloved ship; a rotting beam from its prow fell on his sleeping form and so, as foretold, he perished. As a mark of respect for Jason, the city fathers repaired the ship, and over long years gradually replaced every board of the famous vessel, a shrine for the tourists and travellers for a thousand years.

So repaired and refurbished regularly, it gained increasing fame as Jason’s fabled ship, though no part of the original ship remained. Piles of board ends and scraps of timber were left in the ship to be quietly appropriated as souvenirs by innocent tourists, for tourism is no modern experience. Men have ever travelled far for love of new things. 

Jason’s ship became, as well as a tourist attraction, an axiom in philosophy, something which is, but is not that which it is. We know the same thing as granddad’s axe. Three heads and ten new handles later it is still granddad’s axe to another generation. 
 

SIRENS:  BRONZE AND GOLD - Time say 2.30pm to 4.30pm.
We move back in time in this segment, to Ormonds hotel to meet the boys and girls, another delightful segment of Ulysses. 

It’s the easiest thing in the world to be critical, but I wonder why Joyce missed the opportunity to write a more creative note into the life of Stephen.

There’s a vast input of human energy into the grey side of life; even the black side; the theme the survival of frailty. This possibly his intention; but why disguise it? Why not clear and powerful?

Seems life in the explicit lane, to be the money-spinner in the modern publishing house and the media; though I notice some happy chappie offered his opinion that Thomas the Tank Engine is unsuitable for children. Unsuitable for some adults also it seems.  Not so many years ago Enid Blyton was hacked down for similar reasons. However, it is certain that both will survive the criticism.

Thank God for Harry Potter and the Wiggles and the Bananas in Pyjamas, at least they are not violent, though Harry is a lot more vigorous in an unworldly way than the others. 

I wonder too, how long before the librarians begin to tell us that HP is not good for us; that Playschool is juvenile and the Bananas a bad diet for our rugrats.

Our rugrats now have Nintendo and Playstation; such a world of choice; the interesting thing is the universality of appeal; all classes rich and poor, when they can get access to it. The computer contending with Coca Cola the international icon, available and enjoyed by President and peasant. The computer with the same easy access to 'The House of Everyman'. 

Telly also a viable catalyst for the future and most of the audience there is rapt; as with Coca Cola, enjoyed by rich and poor.  Despite the trivial content, the excellencies so often offered make it acceptable.

One thing is certain, at the end of the day, it will be the same old human animal, it’s just that he’s filling in his time here in a rather different way. Or is the child reared on such diet going to be different?  And this either a hope or a threat?
 

Heard in Margaret Throsby’s hour, of a lovely Hawaiian woman seeking an education in the cloisters and shade trees of a great University in the heartland of America and required to read Ulysses.  She scoured the work in the ancient search for Order, Beauty and Purpose but found little of such Unity.

So she lives, not lost, but lone, in a strange country a world away from her own native world, and the only reality in this so difficult world came, as it so often does, as a gift; for surely the Gods know our sore need; and appear to us in the form best suited to the moment.

She found a place, a seat in the shade of a great tree adjacent to a hall of learning; there sat entranced with music, floating down, settling with the leaves of the tree, quietly and gently sinking into the deep waters of her spirit; the music flooding down from some open window; every day after lectures from the same window. Behind that window a man she felt, as deeply in need of a sane contact with the spiritual reality of his self as was she; so each day his solace, his vision, his music, was hers. 

She sat immersed in the rich harmonies of Bach’s 'Jesu, joy of mans desiring', flooding her spirit; an ecstasy of joy not ever felt in the hectic life of the campus; not ever felt since she rode the great surging breakers of the Island home; so long ago; she wept tears of compassion, of joy, in the blaze of understanding of the song. 
 

Thus sustained, she developed her exploration of the 'intricamysterys' of Ulysses; argued about Dedalus; surely he had no part in the Odyssey? Discussed this anomaly with her tutor, amicably, accepted the dictum that Bloom, not Dedalus, surprise, is Ulysses; finds no satisfactory explanation for the use of the Latin name! The whole thing is Greek! Was not greatly enlightened when much later she read in the Wake, Shaun’s cryptic, “Greek. Hand it to me. I’m after dusk nobly Roman as Pope and water could christen me.”

This, in reply to H.C.E.’s question, “How good are you in exposition. How far flung in your folkloire, and how veltingeling your volupkabulary?” All pertinent to an understanding of this strangewrote anagenorisis. “No," she said. She couldn’t see that. Surely Stephen must be Telemachus; why then Dedalus? The unhappy tutor could give no satisfactory answer. Only James Joyce would have known. Perhaps he discussed it with his wife, the faithful Nora. Here, she argued, is a Greek amongst all these Roman misfits. Is he Joyce himself; the observer, the outsider, as he writes up Dublin as its people; the people from that quarter of the city? But the answer is speculation only, perhaps you must read the Wake for the answer.  Book 3 of the Wake tells all.
 

No, she couldn’t see that. Perhaps she should think of wearing glasses. Her tutor saw the point, decided she was worth saving, suggested that she read some of the papers on Ulysses, now rank on rank in the library, flotsam as it were, cast up by the sea of learning. She discovered that hundreds of others have had the same problems in digging something out of Ulysses, and that help is necessary and not lightly refused.

So gathered the few jewels from a well-rifled treasury of earlier explorations of Ulysses. Her search quickly revealed the common denominators required by the staff and soon her reports glowed with the coveted B’s, rarely the signal A, but rich reward for her. The principles acquired and exercised in the dissection of Joyce applied to the poets, to Papa himself, and her reading of a dozen others. 
 

Such simple arts to resolve a pun, to sniff out an influence; to compare a phrase, a thought; to strengthen the fiction of the allegory. “Yes,” he said so clearly “There’s no moral to the story,” but knew as he said it; was he not himself a teacher; that the disciples would corrupt the teaching? No moral, indeed! The thing is a vast moral indignation against the poverty and the ignorance so easily accepted by all four of the great governing Estates. No moral, indeed!

Well, she obtained her coveted degree; lives since with the holy beauty of  'Jesu joy of man’s desiring', ever a living reality for her; and to her sometimes surprise, still reading; occasionally; Ulysses and the Wake. 

A striking, memorable illustration of the great gulf between our intellectual pursuits, and that other reality of spiritual experience.
 

St. Augustine

Some old time cynic asked
Out of the darkness of his night
Pray tell us St. Augustine
What then is light?
The saint replied
His logic not denied
What light is, thou and I
Know full well;
But what it is,
Not I, nor any man can tell.

Light. Life itself and Death
Are full well known by all
Though little understood
By all who draw breath.

Another little treasure. This another from one of America’s great magazines, 'The Ladies Home Journal', a gleaning from the fabulous sixties. The writer, Katherine Anne Porter, had the honour of the Pulitzer Prize for her collected short stories in 1965. 

Of Sylvia Beach, Katherine Porter writes, “For she was wild; a wild, free spirit if ever I saw one; fearless, untamed to the last - which is not the same as being reckless or prodigal, or wicked or suicidal. She was not afraid of anything human, a most awe-inspiring form of courage. She trusted her own tastes and instincts, and went her own way, and almost everyone who came near her trusted her too.”

“She was thin, she was a thin twiggy sort of woman, quick-tongued, quick-minded and light on her feet. Her nerves were as taut as a well-tuned fiddle string, and she had now and then attacks of migraine that stopped her in her tracks, before she spun herself to death just in the usual run of her days."

Of Joyce, Katherine wrote, “James Joyce, his wife, his children, his fortunes, his diet, his eyesight and his book Ulysses, turned out to be the major project of her life; he was her unique darling, and all his concerns were hers. One could want a rest cure after merely reading an account of her labours to get that book written in the first place, then printed and paid for and distributed, even partially. Yet it was only one, if, the most laborious and exhausting of all her pasttimes. She was solely concerned with bringing artists together; writers preferred, any person with a degree of talent practising or concerned with the art of Literature.”

Sylvia wrote her own memoirs. They tell us of a new side in this complex man. Hard, demanding, exacting and utterly self-oriented in his business dealings. A wasp to publisher, printer, even the typists, and sometimes their husbands, all driven to distraction with alterations and additions to galley sheets and proofs. He gives the impression of a writer who has looked critically at his work only at this last stage, and is still unsure about what he wants to say.

To those who lived through the war, Katherine adds yet another memorable fragment; of Hemingway, a close friend of Sylvia, shooting German snipers from the roof above Sylvia’s flat on the day the Americans entered Paris.  How that man loved a fight.

All gone now, Porter, Beach, Hemingway, Joyce and the others, all gone; but the vision, the spirit, the courage, all their work, part of the rich inheritance of our children.

What shame that we feed them plastic nonsense.
 

Remember the books you just cannot put down? Books you read through the night; books that warmed your heart, fired your spirit.  The Dons can have the literature, the professors, the philosophy, the priests, the theology.

Give us dear Lord, just good books.
 

Of all the set pieces in Ulysses, this episode in Mabbot Street is the longest. Eighty odd, some very odd, pages of extravagant erotica.

Strongest, strangest, scariest, yet studied, as deeply crafted as any other section in his book.

Typists refused to type it; though having read it, how could they ever forget? The damage is done. Publishers refused to publish, printer’s to print it, censors refused to approve it; Nora hated to be associated with it; his gentle little benefactress, Harriet, wilted at it; Eliot said he wished he had not read it; and so does this commentator.

Seekers after porn will be disappointed, or at least perplexed; if they are Japanese they will be perplexed in Japanese which is probably more perplexing; an old joke but in some ways appropriate. There are pages of shadowy midnight on the corner; dark imaginations; what’s going on here; monologue and polylogue if that’s the plural and if not why not? Comedy in a courthouse, apparently introduced into the story to bring out the richness of the character of Leopold Bloom, and bring every other character in the book down to the same bawdy level.

Years later, the episode is used in the Universities to bring out the full richness of character in thousands of aspiring BA students, whilst the vast river of modern literature is skipped over. Why afflict them with this?
 

Woman is the essential other half of man; man the essential other half of woman. Each has elements of the other in their composition. This is dictated by evolution, by Mother Nature herself, understood by every mature man and every such woman; and the great unrest of the man or woman alone, can be assuaged only by union as we enter our maturity. 

All other association is but of the search, the dream of reality, the Maya of the ancient wisdom. That we sometimes fail can be traced to our own folly, weakness, greed, hot desire, ungoverned sexuality, social or family pressures, ambition, even the mindless devotion to some improbable cause; an infinity of either reason or unreason.

In many smaller communities a neighbour is our limited choice. Even then with understanding, the ideal maybe achieved, for we are human with a strong measure of adaptive control.

This is of course an ideal, even ethereal view of our humanity but the first statement is true beyond argument, we, each sex needs the balancing influence of the other to reach a full maturity.
 

Bronze and Gold. These young women, the daydream of all men? A pleasure to the eye, the very promise of life. 

Even the old in the form of Simon Dedalus attempts a twang on the strings of his lute in their heart-warming presence. 

But they are ever in full control of the bar. No nonsense here, even the bold walk and talk with care.

But given the right man, and the right word, at the right moment, one will ping her garter against that challenging white thigh. Saucy Sirens indeed, rather more like Circe than the deadly Sirens.

Bronze and Gold, two of his better creations.
 

Odysseus has me – caught and defenceless.

He, well knowing my ambivalent stance on certain social problems, hands to me an extract from a well known Sydney paper.

It is an article, written by an equally well known lady journalist; well written; witty; but advocating free and liberal sex, any time at all.  She also recommends oral sex.

“What do you think of that?” he asks.

So I read the article; shocked slightly, not at the content; it is common these days, but surprised that a daily newspaper would allow it. What’s happened to the editors? Newspapers used to set standards.

“Even in women’s magazines,” I say.

“But do you approve?"

“No. Most definitely not.” I see the one night stand as amateur prostitution.  Oral sex as a sure generator of sexual disease.  God alone knows what children inherit from a promiscous mother.  Haven’t they heard of Aids, and a dozen other diseases.  It’s increased libido, perhaps a side effect of the pill.  I think most girls are well aware that nature has designed them to have children and most girls have enough self respect to enter marriage as virgins.  That’s what the hymen is for; and to many its reasonable to marry young and grow up with their children.  Not grow old with them.  I said, “I’ll do a paragraph for you in my Ulyssess.  OK?"

His smile a reward.  “Thought you would.” 
 

At a recent, press club luncheon, a guest of honour was Sir Garry Sobers. A journalist asked Sir Garry if he thought that Australia could find its elusive National Identity amongst our sportsmen.

Sir Garry replied, amongst other sage observations. “Don’t try to invent your identity. In time you will achieve one.”

Same with writers, don’t try to invent an identity, just achieve it. Applies to every discipline, do the work honestly, it will speak for itself.
 

Odysseus is in a good mood.  There is a string of onions and a ravishing smile for Monet, and he has an idea.

Perhaps the Americans, having taken over the burden of Stewardship should consider the advantages of a monarchy.

World wide, we, that is, the people; have learned little respect for republics; they so often slide into dictatorships. 

Kings are a different thing.  They have an air of supreme authority; in a not so distant past it was a divine authority, with a due regard for the people.  Then the grandeur; how America would enjoy a Royal Progression; imagine the Palace!

The shadow of the Horse Guard!  Four hundred Harley Davidsons, all with bells and whistles!  The gilded, extended, bullet proofed limousine; Air Force One, now gold plated, and with knobs on, and Sir, the Honours List.

The name of course; the first King of America must be George VI; a fitting descent from K George III, the last king of America.

Yes Sir; dogs and horses and a Royal Yacht, and Elizabeth or Charles in the background with some sage advice; the nod of encouragement; and praise be to the Gods, no more elections!

George Bush, has been, had a few words for us; and gone, but he left a strong impression behind.

Also, the President of China has been, and had a few words with us and an equally strong impression but rather different impression.

The one somewhat a great display of power; an ostentatious flourish of security; escorted by war planes and a radar shield; the other came quietly, with a decent decorum.

The differences striking; in no way reflecting any importance of rank; China well able to stand alongside the USA.

Uncle Sam always inclined to be that way, despite his great middle class; the accomplishments of it’s scientists the real heart of America.

The images of Hollywood and the Box, aggressive intruders in many places; as are the activities of the big corporations.  Modified seeds invading the grain belts of the world; modified foods the markets.  At all the modifications, Uncle Sam.

There is a growing resentment against the invasion, the World Bank ever a shadow behind the Box in The Third World.  It’s a difficult problem, free trade clearly free for the great USA; but whatever the opening, Uncle Sam behind it.

There is much good in the States, and much that is weak, self seeking; and inimical to the general good despite the vigour of Uncle Sam; a long way yet to a national maturity, this never to be reached whilst a decent quality of life is beyond the reach of so many of his fellow citizens.
 

CYCLOPS After lunch, a session at the pub.  Another excellent creation. Time say 4.00pm to 5.00pm

The Citizen, modal man of Dublin circa 1904 is Caesarean, but this one eyed Irishman is like the Cyclops, one of the last of his kind.  A new Ireland is waking.

A rather feeble giant amongst his fellows. Joyce’s description beggars description, but is one of the bright lights. The passage also does homage to Homer, his Cyclops; by God, a monster built like some mountain crag, a shaggy peak.

So the Citizen, thru the eye of J.A.J.; by an interesting coincidence both J.A.J. and Cyclops were more or less one-eyed.

'The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was that of a broadshouldered, deepchested, stronglimbed, frankeyed ..….,'  and so into a wonderful fifteen hundred word paragraph, the detail of which would astonish even King Solomon for all his wisdom.

This segment has many such paragraphs; some, but not all, bright spots in Ulysses and of course, a rare but fairly clear relationship with the Homer story.

Eureka! A definite reference to Homer.
 

A neatly potted history of Ireland explored by Joyce, no doubt in search of Ireland’s soul, much of which surely went overseas with the great waves of migrants; their descendants now numbering millions in the one-time colonies; backbone of a score of police forces; legislators and councilmen in a thousand states and shires; children of the modern Ireland with a new vision of their future.  Some of them happy to send money home to support the IRA.

That the new vision of Ireland included a tourist board is a mere concession to the times and it is such a tourist board has given a new lease of life to J.A. Joyce. Both Trinity and the University College, at least now have copies of his work upon their shelves; for many years they refused to hold them.

And until the Tourist Board, Joyce an exile from Ireland.
 

Odysseus is amused.  His children are, but naturally in and out of the Net, and were talking of the latest virus scams; debating possibilities.  One said, “Bin Laden probably in the back room with a bunch of boffins, and George W. unable to do anything about it.”

Well it’s a possibility.  Certainly could be manipulated to shut the net down.  The problem developing into a terminal disease.

What’s wrong with Pine Gap? Suburban myth has it that they can intercept any telephone message.  Every message if they want it.

The Net uses the telephone system.

So?!

One wonders just what damage they could do amongst the computers of the Defence Department; the Police computers, or perhaps at the CSIRO – the possibilities are horrendous.

The big banks also victims; clearly the scams are dangerous.

Like the flow of juvenile crims through our courts, we should be attempting to stop the flow at its source.  Foolish to let it develops into serious crime.

So we sit in our little world opposite the river, and chat about the problem.  No solutions though; it is up to better men than us.
 

My Greek friend is an excellent critic; he tells me, “Words are very powerful, they say a lot,” the tautology is innocent, but adds somewhat to his comment. 

He is critical of my waste of time, he says, “Writing so much, all your time here, writing, you should be growing something – flowers, onions, something to sell.”  He grows onions, the purple ones on his half-acre, spring onions for the early crop.  We see him only on his infrequent trips into the city, business or something, a special on at the Greek club.  He also knows that one becomes rich only by making something, buying and selling.  He tells me that Socrates, a great teacher wrote nothing, but people still think and talk about him.  I tell him that the man Jesus also wrote nothing and people still think and talk about him.
He nods, “Both killed for teaching us how to behave.”   We are wiser now? This a question.

When was Socrates with us? 

“About six hundred years before Jesus,” he says, “A long time but we still haven’t learned much, have we?”  It is a challenging thought.  Neither of these men wrote a book, possibly never a word; yet their thoughts and teaching the foundation of western civilization.

He smiles, perhaps Ares and Pan and all the old Gods are still in charge. The Hebrew God Jehovah isn’t doing much for his people these days, and hasn’t done much for a very long time.  The promised land still mainly a desert; still in the hands of those other people; the city divided the temple but a dream.
 

The Greek theme intrigues, entraps us, but them eggheads, they got our beginnings wrong.

It was a lady chimp said, “I’ve had a gutful of foolin round in these dam trees.  Dangerous for the kids.  I’m off.”

So she hopped it; down into the savannah.  Her mate yelled, “Hey, where ya going?”  She yelled back.  “I’m off ta see the world.  Coming?”

So he went, and they was the Homo Sapiens thing; built a house; started a garden.  Been that way ever since.  Always been them kids, getting into trouble.

Abels fault, not keeping his dam goats out of the sage patch.

Everything since, just a variation on this eternal theme, the Holy Grail of woman kind. A better deal for our kids; and its ever that lady chimp, prodding us blokes along; getting the job done.

Sure, some like things the old way; too lazy to get out of asking for help; some crooks, some con men; some this or that; so its been a bit uphill all the way.  

None of the big shots, Caesar, Napoleon nor that fella Hitler and his pal Nemesis.  None of thems beat us; we just go on, steady as it goes boys; thru all the troubles, and now, we’ve had our big flat feet on the moon and we got satellites, and our kids got computers and we got TV and credit cards, and we’ve got one of our toys sailing serenely thru the uncharted abyss of deep space.  Oh, my volkalabratatory!

How my daemon rejoyces to tweedledum and tweedledee with wraithwords, following that thread through the maze of thoughtfuls.  Do you get me?  Do you perceive the purpose?  Glimpse in the numinous halo the dim outline of the Reality; glimpse the sweet dancing filament; feel the vibrat energy; there she is. 

Grab her; it is indeed that lady ape, still elusive, exploring the world with her kids, or as stronger minded people say, her children.

Dear James; much have we learned from your book, roaming the labyrinth of your deep understanding; plunging the deeps of your depths; and no fears, tho the water is oft over my head.

So many others in the turgid stream that infernal internal monologue, that inpouring of our emotionabilities such our days in the maze; our daze in the labyrinth of this worlds literature.

Despite the wiles of Shem the Penman, all has been said before; the limits reached back in King Solomons daze, 'There is nothing much new under the sun'; just the bells and whistles indifferent.  The Queen of Sheba had no metal rings in her knows, or Ibet, on her belly button.  Oh no, she was a lady.

Today our literature are discoloured with Wilde Joycean imaginations and so the ageless girl woman is a bit different; the Kids smarter.

Bill Gates, and young Apple and hoary old IBM and satellites have oped windows for us into what looks like eternity.

Let Mandelbrot get his fractals into their modems any day now, we may reach them, out there; or God help us, they may reach us.  One of the hackers, clever little devils, will lead them to us.  As the Master said, “A little child shall lead them.”

Soon, we will all believe in Eternity; those avatars in Los Angeles will be talking to us about Immortality.

Mrs Hoyles little boy Freddy, right after all.

Its time the boffins gave us the dinkum oil about ourselves.  Who was it said “The proper study of mankind, is Man.”

So life goes on.  Day after wonderful day.  If its not wonderful, props you’re looking at things the wrong way.  Go home, have a chat with Mum.

First it was the lady chimp; did the sensible thing.  Got down from the tree, out in the world; then it was Cybele, then Lilith, Eve; then there was Helen – what a bitch, and Cleopatra and Messalina; a real bad one then Athena, flitting about and things changed and we had a Mary and Elizabeth and a Moira, and lately a Diana, and, you can put your shirt on it mate, sooner or later another Eve or an Ashtoreth or Athena will lead us back into the garden, home at last.

We shoulda never have left it.
 

Hardy writes of the beautiful English countryside about his Dorchester as being 'shaped by a kindly hand'. Elizabeth Barrett Browning thought; 'As if God’s finger touched but did not press in making lovely England'. So many others with a love for this beautiful earth, the life it gives us. 

Of Ireland, David McKee Wright an Australian poet, gave us a rich glimpse of that soul, 'God made Ireland for love with her green dress trailing the sea'.

James did not once in the maze of Ulysses, nor in Wake, see such beauty in Ireland; his mindset locked into the shady side of the city and of man’s inner life; never is the soul of Ireland revealed in Ulysses.