Happy Bloomsday!
"-- History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal. What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?
-- The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.
Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
-- That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
-- What? Mr Deasy asked.
-- A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders."
— Ulysses by James Joyce
On June 16, 1904, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom set out on their respective journeys across Dublin, and Bloomsday was born. Joyce’s novel is a treasure trove for lovers of language, and a playful, modern epic written by an inveterate rascal and trickster. It’s the sort of text you could spend a lifetime with, and it would be well spent.
This is your reminder to take a walk, masturbate in the bath, consider the relationship of Father and Son in the Trinity and transubstantiation in the Eucharist, make the sign of the cross over your shaving bowl, eat (with relish) the inner organs of beasts and fowl, ask questions, smash lamps, hear God in a shout in the street, wash your hands more often than Stephen Dedalus, and say yes.
Happy Bloomsday!