Happy 104th Bloomsday, folks!

Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.

Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the Nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o'er his base, fell through the Nebeneinander ineluctably! I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the ends of his legs, nebeneinander. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of Los demiurgos. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'.

Won't you come to Sandymount,
Madeline the mare?

Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No, agallop: deline the mare.

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.

Molly should have crushed you like a slug, Leopold, but instead, she gave us this:

I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Thank you, James Joyce, for making the final chapter something separate from the rest of the book and allowing me to write a long essay on Ulysses for my Modern Lit final without actually reading the whole damn thing.

My college girlfriend has a t-shirt that reads: "The Ineluctable Modality of the Visible" and she will be wearing it today.

I hope there's not actually a "the" at the beginning of that t-shirt. tsk.

I'm sure it's textually accurate and my post is the errant quote.

Back to Woman's World for a minute: the "twist" I thought I guessed at the beginning isn't really the twist.

Or, rather, what I guessed is *part* of the twist, but there's more to it. It's like a twisty twist.

And I'm not finished with it yet, so it may end up being a half-gainer with a twisty twist.

Ah, it's "gibberish that's supposed to be exquisite flights of literary brilliance day."

Find the non-fan of Joyce.

Ah, it's "gibberish that's supposed to be exquisite flights of literary brilliance day."

Wow, that's freakin' ignorant, Connie.

If you've read Ulysses you'd know better. Go read his short story "The Dead" and tell me that Joyce didn't know how to write.

It's not gibberish, but it is really, really difficult. I think it's like Shakespearean English in a way--it can be very off-putting at first but once you learn the language of the writer, it's a total pleasure to read. It's like Sci-Fi world-building, but instead of creating a different world using regular language, the writer is describing this world, using a whole world of words, which has its own sense and layers.

I was in Dublin on Bloomsday a few years ago. It was kind of neat -- I was taking a cab to the airport, and the cab driver was listening to a broadcast about Joyce.

I've never read more than a few excerpts of Ulysses. I did read all the way though Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in high school, and didn't particularly enjoy it.