Ruby Circe Ulysses #17

Herring jazz, south quay end pub and regatta.



Intoxicated dreams of Marilyn Monroe.(The diva's father came from our town, ergo are we entitled to a statue of her honor.)



"(The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green will-o'-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of grimy houses with gaping doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fans."James Joyce introducing chapter Circe.


According to Homer Circe was a woman with extraordinary power. She spellbound men, and then turned them into swine. Odysseus' men were captured and degraded this way, but the hero from Ithaca managed to force Circe to set them free.

Transcending to "the underworld"

During the festival anything can be bought. Bloom probably would have felt he needed a dream catcher.

Rabinowitz, "the man who loved Haugesund", was sent to extermination camp by the Nazis. He was a brave man, who fought racism with his pen in all the papers of Norway in the thirties. He also created a rather great clothing company, producing and selling manufacture and shoes. This wall ad has been seen on the quays since Rabinowitz was on the height of his power.

In Ulysses our antihero Leopold Bloom meets Circe in form of a brothel owner, Mrs Bella Cohen.
Bloom stumbles into the "night town", the red light district of Dublin, to save himself, young Stephen Dedalus, from the yarns of the prostitutes.

Bloom then find himself in a toxic, hallucinating world, where everything is turned upside down and anything impossible can and will happen.
In this state of body and mind he is tried for court for having sent obscene letters to the female noblewomen of Dublin. Great scandal, he's found guilty and sentenced to public flogging on his bare behind.
He is miraculously transferred into Ireland's next king with pomp and circumstance. Then suddenly persecuted as a traitor and condemned to "be hanged from his neck until he's dead".
Beautiful Zoe (meaning life) lets him in to her brothel, and so far our tormented friend is safe.

Needed these days; eye-contraceptives.

Boozing session.

Strange fruit; Jazz musicians from New York.

To find ruby pictures for this sequence, I had to transcribe reality. We have no brothels in our town. Buying sexual services is forbidden by law in Norway. To prevent trafficking and exploiting of the helpless this law was made about ten years ago. A strong woman's group stood behind this act of law.

A certain nightlife has grown forth in shade of so called "herring jazz festival".
It used to be a four day celebration with rather good and exotic trad jazz bands.
After 24 years, its content has changed. The quays have been filled up with several hundred meters of pubs, pouring alcohol over thousands of guests. The red, green and purple fluorescent lights along the sidewalk remind me of the term "red light district".
In the movable stalls one can buy anything a tourist may want.
Do I sound negative? Well, let me hurry to add that the waterfront of Haugesund is a most beautiful sight and place to be any time of the year. The armada of yachts and sailboats revives proud memories of this historic harbor.

Originated by MaryT, check hers for today