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Lightly Child, Lightly

April 23, 2015 by 16 Comments

birds-gif-fly-blue-sky

It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don’t spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the ethereal bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness…”

– James Joyce, Ulysses 

Notes:

  • Image Source: gifdrone
  • Quote: Fables of the Reconstruction
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
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James Joyce. His Bell Tolls (for me).

August 7, 2014 by 12 Comments

It continues to haunt. James Joyce and Ulysses. Unfinished, brooding on my book shelf. I first discussed his book in a earlier post: Just Can’t Finish. Then I tripped into this video. Luck? I don’t think so. It’s time. Time to pull it off the shelf and give it another whack…

Larry Kirwan, 71, Irish writer and musician, on James Joyce:

Never once did he doubt his own genius, and God knows he had a awfully hard life. He became almost blind to his always broke, always borrowing. And yet he knew his strength. His strength for story, and words and music. I think we read him because of his music and his rhythms.  Catching the soul of a person. And catching the inner dialogue, say in the Molly Bloom thing, you could never have met a woman and read Molly Bloom and know what a woman is about. He’s that strong a writer to me.

Frank Delaney, 71, Irish journalist, author and broadcaster, on James Joyce:

This is what he does better than anyone else. He understands the tiny sins, the tiny virtues, the tiny venalities, the tiny advantages that people will look for in life. And nobody else ever did that before and nobody, I would contend, has done it as well since.

Filed Under: Books, Inspire, Life, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yes.

June 24, 2013 by 13 Comments

James Joyce - Ulysses

 

Interpretation of passage in James Joyce’s Ulysses by shmoop.com:

“…The prose in the last few pages of Ulysses is breathtakingly beautiful. Throughout Bloom’s day, we’ve been forced to see all the banal unattractive parts of life: boredom, hunger, despair, the need to go to the bathroom, broken trust, small-mindedness, unrealizable dreams, apathy, our own insignificance. Joyce gives us a lot of very good reasons to think that life is a pretty tiny and horrible thing. Of course, we read this and we think that our life isn’t going to be like Bloom’s. I mean, he’s one pathetic guy, our life will be infinitely better than Bloom’s. But, truth be told, we have no way of knowing what our life is going to be. It’s quite possible that one day we’ll find ourselves in Bloom’s shoes, in a marriage based more in fondness than in romantic love, in a place where most of our dreams are stretched out behind us rather than laid out in front of us. And for all that, Joyce is telling us: Do not despair. He’s telling us to say yes to life, to swallow it whole, to find happiness wherever we can…”

Quote Source: proustitute.  Image: wallquotes.com.

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Just can’t finish…

August 30, 2012 by 41 Comments

Ulysses by James JoyceI’ve read books.  Let’s say hundreds.  Maybe more. (That’s not to brag, the point is coming.)  Rather than focus on the wonderful books that I’ve read and the vast amounts of information, learning and pleasure that I’ve derived from this pastime, I spend an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the less than 1% of the books that I haven’t finished.  The incomplete.  My inability to finish.

Resting firmly on top of this list is Ulysses by James Joyce.  That’s the cover on the right.  The book, the same hideous cover, has been sitting next to my desk for eight years.  It stares me down.  It torments me.  Here come the low guttural whispers:  Quitter.  Not capable.  Not good enough.  Over your head.  Farm boy.  Loser!  Public school project.

I happened to come across a recent article in Publishers Weekly titled “The Top 10 Most Difficult Books” and the festering sore opens wide again.

“…The “Difficult Books” series is devoted to identifying the hardest and most frustrating books ever written, as well as what made them so hard and frustrating…If you can somehow read all 10, you probably ascend to the being immediately above Homo sapiens…”

Here we go.  Intelligentsia slapping me around again.  You want to hit nerve – – hit me here.  Hit me.  Neanderthal man immediately surfaces.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Books, Grow, Inspire, Life, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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