July 22, 2010. Thursday.
Situation: I have to work both this afternoon and tonight, so I’ve decided to take Mway out this morning, about 10.
State of the Path: I bring along the Audubon, my focus to identify the purple wildflower in bug land. Along the creek, I come across one specimen of a new yellow wildflower, but I’m unable to identify this – I don’t think it’s more fringed loosestrife. Disappointed I move on to the purple flower. This seems to me to have petals and bracts like a thistle, but its color is purple and not rose like all the thistles in the book. The stem and leaves look something like in the photo for tall ironweed, but the flower is all wrong. Perhaps Moi knows what this plant is.
State of the Creek: The pools holding their own, water drying up between them. On the big log at the log jam, a fungus has emerged. Will I ever have time to try to identify this?
The Fetch: Two fetches, then Mway forces me to play “Put it down” once.
3 comments:
No. A lamb gyro. How about you post your essay?
James Joyce’s Ulysses: My Obsession – Why?
by
M.
Everyone knows where Dawson is: it is a well-regulated metropolis smack dab in the middle of civilization, a commodious city with a grid of topically-friendly paragraphs to carry you around in it and clearly-marked chapter titles on every corner. Trim and neat sentences steer you always in the right direction, with colorful, but never garish, words, and as you stroll unburdened down the well-lit, pellucid meanings, every now and then an exposition greets you to provide a summary perspective on what it is you just saw. A sign on the outskirts with the municipality’s motto says “Dawson ‘The Call of the Wild’ Welcomes You.”
But look for Dublin on the globe, and you will not be able to find it: it is hidden somewhere in the uncharted expanses of Terra Incognito, a fabled city of ancient ruins, long rumored to be at the frontier of civilization, now ravaged by wilderness. Just to try to get there, you have to hire a pack and guide, after having whispered the secret password “Ulysses” for days to suspicious natives, who are more than likely once you’ve paid them dearly with your time to leave you stranded in the mountains. There, you look around. You see three stone towers etched with the cryptic markings “S,” “M,” and “P.” Suddenly, without warning, you stumble into a thicket of meandering paragraphs, full of overgrown words and jumbled sentences, and are soon lost in a jungle of unexplained characters and unintroduced settings. Again and again you fall down an allusion into an obscure well. The natives have told you stories about a mysterious king or lama who supposedly presides over this wasteland, but if he exists, he’s somewhere behind the scenes, laughing at you, paring his fingernails.
There is some evidence that Joyce originally intended Tatters and Garryowen to be the protagonists of his novel – maybe, maybe not. At any rate, the internal evidence of Ulysses itself is strong that he expected the book’s ideal reader to be a dog. What human, except for the highly compensated professor of philology, would brave its briars and brambles for signs of a city’s edifices, spoor through its weeds to uncover its artifacts, leap into the littered waters of broken cisterns to discover proof that life indeed exists here? This is a task a canine naturally takes to. If the number of dogs able to read anything other than a flashcard is few, those few, who have become dogs of letters despite the obvious biological and physical barriers, possess a passion for persistence and struggle where humans are most likely to turn aside and whimper “I don’t get it – get me out of here!” The literate dog, after all, faced at the beginning of her efforts to read the simplest of words as if they were balls of plasma from outer space. Only through long, indefatigable effort did she track their significations down, and she did so filled with love for the pursuit. Now that she can read like a scholar, she finds her passion a bit cooled amidst all the books that so readily relinquish their surface meanings. Ulysses reignites it. M.
Continued to July 23.
Following is an abstract of a recurring event of most of 2010, which I refer to on January 22 but did not have or take the time to mention much in my journal. I include the abstract here, as a framing device, because the event has some sort of relation to the journal’s central action.
Court of Common Pleas
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Sisyphus A. Gregor
Conditions of Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition Program
Condition #8 “The defendant will report regularly to his Probation Officer, as directed. Your reporting date is the [22nd of the month].
Each month you will phone the CALL-TRACK number. When you call the automated system, you will be asked to enter your social security number, then state your name. The questions are answered by pressing the appropriate key to respond “yes” or “no.” If your answer requires clarification, you will be prompted to respond.
1. “Has your home address changed in the last 30 days? If your answer to this question is “no,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 1.]
2. “Has your phone number changed in the last 30 days? If your answer to this question is “no,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 1.]
3. “Has your employment status changed in the last 30 days? If your answer to this question is “no,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 1.]
4. “Have you had any contact or been arrested by any law enforcement agency since your last call? If your answer to this question is “no,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 1.]
5. “Have you made your required payment toward fines, costs of restitution since your last call? If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “no,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 1.]
6. “Are you in compliance with your recommended counseling? If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “no,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 2.]
“You have answered “no” to this question. At the tone, please state your current status within the program.” [“I have not been able to schedule the DUI driving – DUI driving class – but I am in the process of remaining in touch and hope soon to contact Jolene Bowersox, the officer in charge of scheduling, to schedule the class soon.”]
7. “Please be advised that any information provided by you which is found to be false will be considered a violation of your Conditions of Supervision and may result in your return to this Court for this violation. Do you understand this requirement? If your answer to this question is “yes,” press 1! If your answer to this question is “no,” press 2!” [Defendant presses 1.]
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