Categories
Books Ulysses

Shut your eyes and see …

I’m still stumbling through Ulysses, mired in the mind of Stephan Dedalus’ musings in Proteus. Dense stuff, but fascinating.  I’m getting good info from the podcast I follow. It’s going pretty much line by line, with about 45 minutes of discussion on each segment. I’m astounded at the nuance and depth of Joyce’s thinking, and the humor. I made a run through it without explanatory text, and it’s much easier to navigate this time than it was the first few times I read the novel. The whole Aristotle (Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno.) vs. Berkeley/Boehme approaches to the physical world.  But still. Damn. Wish I’d read more philosophy.

I think my favorite section is where the dog encounters a dead dog on the beach and goes a bit Hamlet/Yorick in the moment.
Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping, soused their bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf’s gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody’s body.
 
— Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel! 
Heading to Florida next week, and planning to take Joyce along for the ride. Reading Ulysses by the sea seems somehow necessary at this point …
Categories
Assorted Bob Gravity's Rainbow Innisfree

Inherent vise …

No, not the Thomas Pynchon novel. Nor the movie. I needed a vise for my workbench and with images of my grandfather’s vise in mind I found one I liked and ordered it. Before attaching it to the bench, I glanced at the directions, which turned out to be a word salad that resulted from a feeble attempt to translate Mandarin into English. Needless to say, I followed them to the letter.

Categories
Assorted Bob Innisfree

First snow, first fire … and flying squirrels

Athea snoozes while the fire roars.
Athea snoozes while the fire roars.

Our first snow was little more than a dusting, but I used it as excuse to light the fireplace for the first time this season. My wood stove is out of commission and I’m awaiting the install of a new Jøtol stove. The fireplace is great for ambiance but crap for heating the cabin … though Althea wasn’t complaining.

Captured southern flying squirrel (Glaucomys volans)
A southern flying squirrel (Glaucomys volans) I captured.

And the colder weather brought my squatters back with a vengeance. I woke up around 3:30 a.m. to the sound of something gnawing. I keep a flashlight by the bed, but it revealed nothing. The gnawing continued for the next hour until I got out of bed to go to the bathroom, where I found a southern flying squirrel (Glaucomys volans) on the window, apparently trying to figure out how to escape while his buddies partied like rock stars up in the ceiling. I used a hand towel to nab him and put him in a plastic container. The next morning, Althea and I drove him a few miles away to Strouds Run, where I released him and hoped he wouldn’t find his way back.