Ruby Circe # 2 Ulysses #19

Outtake from the Underworld; Joyce's Nightworld.

"Stitch in my side. Why did I run?" James Joyce

"Are you looking for someone?. He is inside with his friends." James Joyce
"Bloom. He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on." James Joyce

The chapter "Circe"is written as a play.
Leopold Bloom is chasing his alter ego young Stephen Dedalus in and out of scenes in Dublin's Red Light District.
In various costumes and roles Mr. Bloom tries his best to save his young image from becoming himself.
A challenging task, which Leopold Bloom take upon whole hearted, and which he inevitably is bound to loose.

The quilt is made of ties. The artist named it "All my men."

"Marion. Go and see life. See the wide world."James Joyce

Likewise our hero is torn between the many tempting females, Martha, Zoe, Gerty, Mrs Breen, Bridie, a Millionairess, a Noblewoman, Mrs. Thornton, Kitty, The Veiled Sibyl and finally the mighty queen; Bella Cohen (with whom he in a burlesque hallucination changes sex). All the time he's preoccupied of the thoughts and doings of his wife Molly, who Stephen met this very day, June 16th, and who now probably is being unfaithful with the appalling Blazes Boylan.

He gave me a flower and told it was a rare species, picked high up in the mountains.

I showed it to a gardener, and he revealed, it was a common hothouse flower.

I know James Joyce has read Henrik Ibsen's play "Peer Gynt", even in original language. Peer has an equal surreal experience in Egypt, meeting the Sphinx, being robbed by beautiful Anitra in the desert, ending up at a Madhouse with people of various nations.
I think, maybe this has been kind of an inspiration to Joyce.
The chapter of Circe is ending in a tragedy. The fighting, but misunderstood Bloom,wearing all mankind's mischief on his weak and bursting shoulders,
meets his dead son Rudy once more.

The rooster crowing about betrayal

"(Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands on guard, his fingers at his lips in the attitude of secret master. Against the dark wall a figure appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a book in his hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing the page.) James Joyce

BLOOM
(Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly.) Rudy!" James Joyce
"In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet bowknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket." (U15.4966) James Joyce

Underneath all the theater, drinking, womanizing, clown making, political issues, religious doubts, love and lust is the deep and unhealed sorrow for his dead son, Rudy. As was the case in Joyce's own life.
I keep thinking of my granddad, Gunnar's father and Terry's father. They all lost a child, and people keep saying, "the sorrow marked them for the rest of their life."
The Nordic skald, Egil Skallagrimsson comes to mind. He was a viking and served viking kings, making great poems about their victories on the battlefields.
Then he lost his son Bodvar, and his grief was so deep, he didn't want to live anymore. His daughter persuaded him to write a memory poem about his beloved son. Sonatorrek
has become unique in Nordic poetry, historic, praised and loved ever since.

Originated by MaryT, check hers for today

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TERRY DEARESTEST

RUBY CARS

This has been a wonderful, active and plentiful summer. Gunnar painted his garage floor red. Serina posing for the cell phone cam in the MG TF
Gunnar and Espen doing guy's work. Changing oil on the automatic gear box on Espen's Chevvy.
Lots of fun at the quays at Harbor Days. "Sons of Norway " lodge 8, with the slogan "We are taking care of our heritage." They were proud to participate on my blog, and said,"We are sending greetings to all Norwegian/American and embrace the Canadian likewise."

James Joyce has been resting this week, too much fun to do, and then the "restless farewell."

Originated by MaryT, check hers for today

Walking on promises # 7

Job 5 :19 He will deliver thee in six troubles; yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee.
20 In famine He will redeem thee from death; and in war from the power of the sword.
21 Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the tongue; neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh.

Photos. Serina taking yoga exercises on a steep cliff after our evening swim on the beach. The position is called "The Tree."

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

Ruby Oxen of the Sun. Ulysses # 16

Ireland 1982. James Joyce and yours truly at the National Gallery of Ireland.I tried my best, to connect. As you will see, he's an elusive guy, not easily caught.

Odysseus

"In Homer's The Odyssey, Odysseus is warned during his journey into Hades by the ghost of the Theban prophet TiresiasIthaca. If the Oxen of the Sun were harmed, Tiresias foretold the destruction of his ship and the loss of all his men. Circe also prophesied this fate. Upon reaching the island, OdysseusOdysseus'sHelios was so outraged that he threatened to bring the sun to Hades rather than Earth unless he had revenge upon the crew of Odysseus. Helios's will was immediately appeased and as a sign, the hides of the cattle began to crawl about and the meat began lowing like cows. For six days, the cattle were slaughtered, but on the seventh, the winds changed, and the fate of the crew was sealed." to leave these flocks unharmed if he wished to return home to ordered his men to avoid the island at all costs. His men overturned his rule and landed after each swore not to harm a single head of cattle or sheep. After a month of unfavorable winds and the exhaustion of all rations onboard, crew slaughtered some of the cattle while he slept. " Acknowledgments; Wikipedia.

The Odysseus of the 20th century, young Stephen Dedalus and mature Leopold Bloom meet at the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin accompanied by Dedalus' old buddies from the tower.

They are all waiting for the earlier mentioned Mina Purefoy to give birth the a child. She has been in labor for three days.

This chapter is also at least three dimensional.
First and foremost it's a praise of life and of women giving birth to new lives. Joyce is all sweet, soft and realistic at the same time when he describing the strive and blessings of motherhood.

"It is not why therefore we shall wonder if, as the best historians relate, among the Celts, who nothing that was not in its nature admirable admired, the art of medicine shall have been highly honoured. Not to speak of hostels, leperyards, sweating chambers, plaguegraves, their greatest doctors, the O'Shiels, the O'Hickeys, the O'Lees, have sedulously set down the divers methods by which the sick and the relapsed found again health whether the malady had been trembling withering or loose boyconnell flux. Certainly in every public work which in it anything of gravity contains preparation should be with importance commensurate and therefore a plan was by them adopted (whether by having preconsidered or as the maturation of experience it is difficult in being said which the discrepant opinions of subsequent inquirers are not up to the present congrued to render manifest) whereby maternity was so far from all accident possibility removed that whatever care the patient in that allhardest of woman hour chiefly required and not solely for the copiously opulent but also for her who not being sufficiently moneyed scarcely and often not even scarcely could subsist valiantly and for an inconsiderable emolument was provided.

To her nothing already then and thenceforward was anyway able to be molestful for this chiefly felt all citizens except with proliferent mothers prosperity at all not to can be and as they had received eternity gods mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when the case was so having itself, parturient in vehicle the reward carrying desire immense among all one another was impelling on of her to be received into that domicile. O thing of prudent nation not merely in being seen but also even in being related worthy of being praised that they her by anticipation went seeing mother, that she by them suddenly to be about to be cherished had been begun she felt!

Before born babe bliss had. Within womb won he worship. Whatever in that one case done commodiously done was. A couch by midwives attended with wholesome food reposeful cleanest swaddles as though forthbringing were now done and by wise foresight set: but to this no less of what drugs there is need and surgical implements which are pertaining to her case not omitting aspect of all very distracting spectacles in various latitudes by our terrestrial orb offered together with images, divine and human, the cogitation of which by sejunct females is to tumescence conducive or eases issue in the high sunbright wellbuilt fair home of mothers when, ostensibly far gone and reproductitive, it is come by her thereto to lie in, her term up."
James Joyce

My baby drinking warm coffee on a rather cold August day

The words of Joyce are reminding me of my favorite psalm 139:
"13 For Thou hast made my reins; Thou hast knit me together in my mother's womb.
14 I will give thanks unto Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
wonderful are Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
15 My frame was not hidden from Thee,
when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Thine eyes did see mine unformed substance, and in Thy book they were all written
even the days that were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them."

Our wonderful four hour hike on the beaches yesterday. Ittacha of Norway

Joyce is very upfront and personal, when talking about the excruciating pain by loss of his only son, Rudy.
The chapter is also a tribute to the English language. Joyce is joggling with quotations and styles from various authors, Dickens, Defoe, Bunyan, Shakespeare (as in every chapter), King James' Bible, Goldsmith, Malory and many more.
In a surreal scene old Bloom is trying to help and save his younger self, Dedalus. He's referring to them as Sir Leopold and Sir Stephen.
Furthermore Joyce is using Gaelic, German, French and even some Nordic languages. Blooms day is on a Thursday, meaning Thor's Day, the day of the Nordic thunder god.Late at night a thunderstorm is raging. Both young Stephen and Joyce himself were frightened of thunder.
These are but teasers and fragments, hoping to encourage more to read about the fabulous one day journey and lifetime of the modern wandering Jew and Irishman.

Ireland 1982. Posing outside a traditional Irish hut.
As usual, the pictures are made by me, except the ones where you can see me.

Originated by MaryT, check hers for today

Walking on promises # 6

Psalm 139
9 If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
10 Even there would Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand would hold me.

I'm living here, at the uttermost parts of the sea.
"I can feel his hand in mine, and that's enough to me."

Ruby Nausicaa Ulysses #15

"The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand,"(Joyce, Nausicaa)


"In Book Six of the Odyssey, Odysseus is shipwrecked on the coast of Phaeacia. Nausicaa and her father's servants go to the sea-shore to wash clothes. Odysseus emerges from the forest completely naked, scaring the servants away, and begs Nausicaa for aid.
Homer gives a literary account of love never expressed: while she is presented as a potential love interest to Odysseus – she says to her friend that she would like her husband to be like him, and her father tells Odysseus he would let him marry her – nothing really results between the pair."Wikipedia


James Joyce let Gerty MacDowell portrait the role as Nausicaa in modern Ulysses.
She's watching the sunset at Sandycove beach with two friends and the three little children they are lookinig after.
Gerty is dreaming about a hopeless fling she has, a young, wealthy protestant boy. Like young girls of today she's constantly referring to authorities in various woman's magazines, directing the adolescences about beauty, cosmetics, clothes and love.

"Her hands were of finely veined alabaster with tapering fingers and as white as lemon juice and queen of ointments could make them though it was not true that she used to wear kid gloves in bed or take a milk footbath either." (Joyce)

Gerty sure is a young woman, longing for romance, but also for physical love. Impressing how old, grumpy James Joyce is able to depict the feelings of a longing virgin, accompanied by an ongoing mass in a church nearby.

As Gerty has reluctantly, but somewhat frivolous revealed first her ankle and then the profile of a perfect leg and white, lacy undergarment to the strange, handsome man staring at her while the sun is going down, not a word is spoken between them.
The fireworks from the festivity around the vice king is lightening the sky, while our friend Leopold Bloom is having a discreet orgasm and poor Gerty is limping after her friends.
Bitter sweet like only love without love can be.

"Love loves to love love." (Joyce) Text carved in the birch,"H+T= true" Out side the heart."Yes No (Jo Nei)

Originated by MaryT, check hers for today

Walking on promises # 5

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Ruby Cyclops Ulysses #14

The Barony of Rosendal with its famous renaissance maze rose garden.


Friday Gunnar, Serina and I drove for four hours to see the play The Merchant of Venice performed by English actors at the Barony of Rosendal (Rose-valley).The anti-hero of the play, Shylock, have much in common with Leopold Bloom, both Jews, fighting for their right to be accepted by society.

Serina posing on Friday's stage.

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." — Jaques (Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166) William Shakespeare

The fuchsia is called "Drop of Christ's blood" in Norwegian.I'll never forget the huge fuchsia hedges of Ireland.

"In a famous episode of Homer's Odyssey the hero Odysseus encounters the Cyclops Polyphemus , the son of Poseidon and a nereid, who lives with his fellow Cyclopes in a distant country." So far Wikipedia.
The one eyed giant, the cyclops Polyphemus held Odysseus and his crew prisoner in a cave.He threatened to kill and eat our hero, but was blinded by a burning pole, our cunning hero Odysseus brilliantly overpowering the enemy.

Leopold Bloom had to stand up against the "one eyed", meaning shallow, narrow sighted and judgmental citizen, in the bar. While the cyclops cast rocks after the fleeing Odysseus, the citizen threw an empty biscuit box after Bloom, as he made a narrow escape from the bar.


.The Cyclops ate in a cave. Leopold Bloom was in Barney Kiernan's pub.
We had coffee and pancakes in the rose-garden on Saturday, day after the play.

Gunnar, reddened by the sunset, will have to pose for Shylock/Bloom

"Mendelssohn was a Jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. And the Saviour was a Jew and his father was a Jew. Your God.
-- Whose God? says the citizen.
-- Well, his uncle was a Jew, says he. Your God was a Jew. Christ was a Jew like me." Leopold Bloom finally lost his temper after being bullied for a long time by the citizen and his drinking buddies. (James Joyce)
Gunnar outside the courtyard where the play was performed.Ruby behind.

"SHYLOCK To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. " William Shakespeare .


The Cyclops chapter is taking place between 5 p.m. and 8p.m.in Dublin, June 16th 1904. Perhaps a little early for sundown?
Nevertheless; while Bloom is trapped in the bar/cave, his rival, Boylan is seducing Bloom's wife Molly. (At the same time in Venice, Shylock's daughter Jessica is steeling her father's belongings and fleeing away with Lorenzo to convert to Christianity).


Like Odysseus on his way to the harbor, Gunnar is posing at the quay of our hotel. Serina being the cyclops trying to stop him from getting on board in his boat. The sundown gives them their golden color.

Originated by MaryT, check hers for today