Happy Bloomsday From Your Hostess-Pirate

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At any Bloomsday celebration, you will see yahoos wearing eye patches, in solidarity with the blind Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses, as well as with its mostly-blind creator, the great James Joyce. I own an eyepatch, because I am a douchebag.

It represents the “ineluctable modality of the visible.”

Ulysses is, as with most things Irish, tied up with my father, and I first read the book under his guidance, calling him up randomly: “Now, WHAT is going on here?” He always knew.

My big Bloomsday post is here.

I love today.

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7 Responses to Happy Bloomsday From Your Hostess-Pirate

  1. Bloomsday Toast for 2014
    Here’s to –
    Nora the barnacle goose –
    Skin-the-Goat –
    the giggle fit of bronze by gold –
    the blind stripling piano tuner tap tap tapping along –
    the dog’s rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting from his jaws-
    Stephen deep in thought strolling on Sandymount Strand –
    socks with skyblue clocks, jaunty –
    Plumtree’s Potted Meats, which can make of each home an abode of bliss –
    Rose of Castille and rows of cast steel –
    met him pike hoses –
    Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job –
    On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins –
    Private Carr and his escalating oath –
    lame Gerty limping, a dreamer –
    those lovely seaside girls –
    the heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit –
    Could a swim duck? Says I –
    yes

  2. sheila says:

    The only answer is Yes, to JJ the “most positive word in the English language.”

    :)

    Thanks, Steve.

  3. Paul says:

    Happy bloomsday from Dublin. We did the Upysses walk and hoping to catch some readings at Temple Bar.

  4. melissa says:

    Happy Bloomsday! (Everything I know about Joyce I’ve learned from you. thank you)

  5. mutecypher says:

    A belated Happy Bloomsday to the Dread Pirate Sheila.

    “Ineluctable. You keep using that word, I do not think it means….”

    I wish you happy memories of your dad.

    • sheila says:

      Been an intense Dad week. Last week was his birthday, then Father’s Day, then Bloomsday.

      Met a couple of guys yesterday at the Bloomsday celebration who first met in a Joyce class in undergrad – one of them now is a social worker, and the other is a professor of modernist literature who has written a couple of books on Joyce. They asked me how I “got into Joyce” and I told them about reading it with my Dad on speed dial, and it felt good to talk about him.

      Thanks.

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