Archive - Jun 16, 2011
#bloomsday ramblings
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 06/16/2011 - 20:15Tip. Tip. You can’t step into the same stream of consciousness twice. These thoughts come to me as I sit down to write a blog post on Bloom’s Day. I had thought about writing it this morning, and had all kinds of interesting fleeting thoughts, but they are all gone.
The self exists at the intersection of our inner neural network and our external social network. Friends sharing Bloom’s day tweets, a Librivox recording of Joyce’s Ulysses, the Facebook page of the Greenwich Mountain Lion, and Weiner’s resignation; all of this mixes together into the palimpsest of the day.
What is the fascination of the Greenwich Mountain Lion? Something claimed to be extinct that we hope isn’t? Some fascination with wild danger? Jouissance? Does the juxtaposition of the ghost cat with the social x-rays add to the fascination?
And Weiner? The Scarlet Tweeter? Is it now his turn to wear the Scarlett Letter? Something Vitter has avoided? Splitting. Let’s project all of the ‘bad’ aspects of our own desires on a convenient scapegoat, Weiner will do.
Clusters of little white Mountain Laurel flowers stand out against patches of blue in the evening the sky, before the predicted storms roll in. It is just scattered showers predicted for tonight. No severe thunderstorms, gumball sized hail, floods or serious winds; nothing like the end of the world earthquakes, tornados, floods, wildfires and zombie attacks.
Yes, they are filming a zombie film in Connecticut as Fiona watches Avatar, The Last Air Bender. Too bad a Water Bender can’t take some of the floods from the Mississippi River and send them to the fires of Arizona.
Tap. Tap. Clove? No. Alone. I’ve been to the Zoo. We’ll, here we are, this is the beach. I’m cold. Lines from various plays come back to me. The Emerald Throne is dust. There has been a lively discussion on Facebook recently from my high school classmates of years ago. Stirring up ancient memories, ancient desire. Breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land. When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,
The absurdist plays of my high school years were wasted on my youth; Albee, Ionesco, and others. The twenty something evenings drinking Guinness, Guinness is good for you, while reading Finnegan’s wake with an odd collection of polyglots and polymaths disappeared too quickly. Can there be misery greater than mine? Miserable, Miserable. I always wanted to do an absurdist production of Winnie the Pooh. It’s the end, or perhaps FIN as seen at the end of an early Wim Wender’s film.
Now, it’s time to sleep, perchance to dream. I dream'd a dream to-night…And so did I….Well, what was yours?... That dreamers often lie….In bed asleep, while they do dream things true. Ah, isn’t the Internet great, allowing you to gather quotes that otherwise would have been jumbled in your mind. Pity the poor Google Engineer trying to make sense of my searches.
A tweet interrupts the stream. More results of votes on state labor contracts. A bug lands in my hair. All are signs that the moment has passed.