Lines from Ulysses
“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”
-- Ulysses, James Joyce
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"Day after Day": signifies an endless creativity, endless continuity, endless construction.
Robbers: seems to imply a lack of morality, and the humane impulse of the literary mind to understand all kinds of people and/or be hopeful for their souls.
Ghosts: synchronous ghost (of a living, faithful friend you are no longer in touch with), after-life ghost, holy ghost etc.
Always meeting ourselves: operative word /always/ -- there is no denying that our search for our self is our primal instinct or should be anyway.
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Dark Implication: If we are not careful and recognize our journey of self-discovery, we might lose track and potentially become wayward minded (lacking sense). A safe 9 to 5 job, in your own land is the safest bet then. It is not everyone's cup of tea to explore limitless possibilities of the self. A guide is recommended.
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Interesting to note that my novelette Queiha, has declarative thrust in the same direction - 'queer multiplicity of selves'. Queering look in the valley of mirrors - you see yourself everywhere.
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"— The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That's why she won't let me have anything to do with you.
— Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily.
— You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you..."
- Telemachus, Ulysses
This passage is strangely reminiscent of Camus' following line from his novel, The Stranger:
“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.”
The tension between conservative and modern values is palpable.
A certain arrogance is visible but it is rather Stephen's sheer inability to act in any other way.
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CONCENTRATED SANGRIA OF THE SAND DUNE OF A SPANISH MOUNTAIN SONG
Dedicated to the memory of TFH
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There's a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, he said.
—Who is that?
—Your son and heir.
- Hades, Ulysses, James Joyce
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Concentrated as ice was, I spun a fairy-tale rider on the spy of eve X, the one that came before eve Y. Interestingly, the funniest element was the satanic cap she wore, as a scribble princess woe: so are you my friend or my foe? This I don’t know. This, who knows. This, I know nothing of. She came Vincent glowing one afternoon like a cherished may flower and he held her and shook her till fright left her body and she swayed as damsel as distress; I’d like to know now why you hadn’t considered winsome wood den days, those wed-nest-days, that Wednesday you were promised to me. Had there been an ounce of elemental sun on you, I could have called the second puppet ‘Sol’ as well – as long as it’s Spanish it reminds and reminds me of you spinning in far-off galaxies, threaded hair, braid-boxed planets held together by a shawl brooch, yours. It dusts off star patterns to a winkling kite fantasy. I heard you were going over old songs, you ask, hesitant at first for what can’t be said must be won over by summersaults – the kind that bohemian eyes know as they roller-coaster on tranced. Enough of all this, it isn’t supposed to make sense to the sensate, only to the hypnotized rancor of a raccoon on a night as odd as magic.
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Hands off. This is not an obituary. This is a salute or a tribute or a triptych tri-shoot in the diana dark. Archery was forbidden so we used hands to fight. Dancing in the first way. I remember you sat like a silly parrot chiming a-has as if there was no tomorrow. If there wasn’t, and if this was all there was – couldn’t you have said so? Prophetically Cassandra, you knew the very artery of Egypt, Abuu, your cat assured me in solitaire – a game in which no one played but him. We all had to be a reluctant but fixed audience, you still carry that albatross around on your shoulder? If I had been a monkey I could have traveled with Virgil back to terrestrial shores, sadly, however, in the middle of the woods the only way to go was to look up. The stars, shatterstars, all burst. Wounds flew out of three mused ladies of splendor. Each one dances alongside your memory in a preserved painting. I wish you hadn’t left me these heirlooms, this poetry, these lilacs, this all-the-way hill. I could have avoided reaching summits, and then thinking of them as mere plateaus. This all could have been possible had you not died – and let me know – that now the earth and the books and the ice-cubes were mine. I was the son of Lazarian resurrections, I was the daughter of many Eves. I was the first born of Sheherezade since you spelt the F minor as a side-note in those days you were teaching me Bach. The piano bigger than my scope. Like you. I was a keyboardist. Shouldn’t jazz-fuss that. You could have said “I Know.” But you, with your queer eccentricities would never say that. You would, instead, play along fantastic whiteness of lies just to see in them patterns you alone could draw out as mystical stars.
I want to say more. I want to say forever. There is no end, really. I’ll say ab-e-zam-zam – for you are the water that never stops. Stop, please. For now. I must braid my hair in a Scottish flair, and wear a midnight blue bandana on my wrist. This is how I write today. “It is very fine.” You said that of a poem which was so rumi that it was past romantic. What would you say today?
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I guess I’ll never know for sure.
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Fatima Ijaz, Sep 22' 22
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