Without Lifting A Finger

I am nauseated by their lying drivel about pure men and pure women and spiritual love and love for ever: blatant lying in the face of the truth. I don’t know much about the ‘saince’ of the subject but I presume there are very few mortals in Europe who are not in danger of waking some morning and finding themselves syphilitic. The Irish consider England a sink: but, if cleanliness be important in this matter, what is Ireland? Perhaps my view of life is too cynical but it seems to me that a lot of this talk about love is nonsense. A woman’s love is always maternal and egoistic. A man, on the contrary, side by side with his extraordinary cerebral sexualism and bodily fervour (from which women are normally free) possesses a fund of genuine affection for the ‘beloved’ or ‘once beloved’ object. I am no friend of tyranny, as you know, but if many husbands are brutal the atmosphere in which they live (vide Counterparts) is brutal and few wives and homes can satisfy the desire for happiness. In

Two bits: To Stannie (1906): Can you tell me what is a cure for dreaming? I am troubled every night by horrible and terrifying dreams: death, corpses, assassinations in which I take an unpleasantly prominent part. & Nora has a talent for blowing soap-bubbles. While I was wading through a chapter of Dorian Gray a few days ago she and Georgie were blowing bubbles on the floor out of a basin of suds. She can make them as big as a football.

Was late to the game but he's still there, and for a few moments (on an in-and-out sun kinda day) I had him all to myself: the leucistic hummingbird in Crystal Cove SP.🎈 Thanks for the help with location: Just.birdies. #rlswihart13 #southerncalifornia #crystalcove #hummingbirdsofinstagram #leucistichummingbird #sealsandcrofts #poetryinmotion #dontflyaway #readmorepoetry2024🎈

To Grant Richards (1906): I believe Richards would eventually publish Joyce's Dubliners , but there was a lot of back-and-forth before that happened (e.g., the slang term "bloody" -- mistakenly believed to be an allusion to Christ or the Virgin -- was a big trip at the time): Perhaps this may reconcile you to Dubliners. It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.

"Ranch' io son pittore!" I cried. "Unless I am mistaken, you have a masterpiece on the stocks. If you put all that in, you will do more than Raphael himself did. Let me know when your picture is finished, and wherever in the wide world I may be, I will post back to Florence and pay my respects to--the MADONNA OF THE FUTURE!"

More from the Redheads @ Colorado Lagoon. In their fave afternoon resting spot. Had to ruffle a few feathers to get their attention.:)🎈 #rlswihart13 #coloradolagoon #longbeachca #ducks #redheads #redheadsofinstagram #readheads #bookheads #natureandnurture #readabook #readmorepoetry2024 #enjoytheweekend 🎈🇺🇦🇮🇱🇵🇸🙏

The young James Joyce has gone from Trieste to Pola. In a letter to his brother Stannie he says that Nora's making his cigarettes and that he's going to buy Henry James' story "The Madonna of the Future" (which I've never read) that very day. Then JJ finishes the letter with the seemingly frustrated:  "I really can’t write. Nora is trying on a pair of drawers at the wardrobe Excuse me." & I check my Kindle trove and sure enough: I have the Madonna. I'll pingpong between the two Jameses.:) Excerpt: We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothing but overwhelming greatness and dimness. The days of illumination are gone! We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it up to the great models and to the dim ide

To Nora (1904): My mind rejects the whole present social order and Christianity—home, the recognised virtues, classes of life, and religious doctrines. How could I like the idea of home? My home was simply a middle-class affair ruined by spendthrift habits which I have inherited. My mother was slowly killed, I think, by my father’s ill-treatment, by years of trouble, and by my cynical frankness of conduct. When I looked on her face as she lay in her coffin—a face grey and wasted with cancer—I understood that I was looking on the face of a victim and I cursed the system which had made her a victim. We were seventeen in family. My brothers and sisters are nothing to me. One brother alone is capable of understanding me. Six years ago I left the Catholic Church, hating it most fervently. I found it impossible for me to remain in it on account of the impulses of my nature. I made secret war upon it when I was a student and declined to accept the positions it offered me. By doing this I made

To Nora (1904): I have been a half-hour writing this thing. Will you write something to me? I hope you will. How am I to sign myself? I won’t sign anything at all, because I don’t know what to sign myself.

To His Mother (1903): He had recently met JM Synge in Paris: Every Sunday I try and get out into the country. Last Sunday I went out to the woods of Clamart and walked through them to Sèvres—coming back by steamer. I read every day in the Bibliothèque Nationale and every night in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. I often go to vespers at Notre Dame or at Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. I never go to the theatre—as I have no money. I have no money either to buy books. Synge was over here selling out and gave me his play to read—a play which is to be produced by the Irish Literary Theatre. I criticised it. Synge says I have a mind like Spinoza!

To Lady Gregory (1902): All things are inconstant except the faith of the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light. And though I seem to have been driven out of my country here as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine.

She was a little vulgar; sometimes she said I seen and If I had’ve known. But what would grammar matter if he really loved her?

Brewer's Blackbirds @ Schat's Bakery in Bishop CA. The line of hungry skiers et al. wound like a snake through the bread racks and pastries. The blackbirds were atop the roof and sign. Beneath your feet or in an empty chair, waiting for the crumbs to fall. Too chilly to sit outside? Go eat in your car at the park across the road or the Vons parking lot.🎈 #rlswihart13 #bishopca #schatsbakery #travelingwithoutcharlie #ontheroadagain #brewersblackbirds #blackbirdsofinstagram #goblue💙 #readmorepoetry2024🎈

I was talking to a friend of yours last night, I said drily. I mean Mr. Trellis. He has bought a ream of ruled foolscap and is starting on his story. He is compelling all his characters to live with him in the Red Swan Hotel so that he can keep an eye on them and see that there is no boozing.

Biographical reminiscence, part the first: It was only a few months before composing the foregoing that I had my first experience of intoxicating beverages and their strange intestinal chemistry. I was walking through the Stephen’s Green on a summer evening and conducting a conversation with a man called Kelly, then a student, hitherto a member of the farming class and now a private in the armed forces of the King. He was addicted to unclean expressions in ordinary conversation and spat continually, always fouling the flowerbeds on his way through the Green with a mucous deposit dislodged with a low grunting from the interior of his windpipe. In some respects he was a coarse man but he was lacking in malice or ill-humour. He purported to be a medical student but he had failed at least once to satisfy a body of examiners charged with regulating admission to the faculty. He suggested that we should drink a number of jars or pints of plain porter in Grogan’s public-house. I derived consid

—You are a native, I suppose? —No, no. No indeed. Mick toyed with his glass, showing nonchalance. —My own little trip to Skerries, he remarked, isn’t really for the purpose of holiday. I came here looking for somebody who’s in the town, I believe. —A relative? —No. A man I admire very much, a writer. —Ah. I see? —My good sir, I will not be so presumptuous as to ask you your name. Instead, I will tell you what it is. The weak eyes seemed to grope behind their glass walls. —Tell me . . . my name? —Yes. Your name is James Joyce. It was as if a stone had been dropped from a height into a still pool. The body stiffened. He put a hand about his face nervously. —Quiet, please! Quiet! I am not known by that name here. I insist that you respect my affairs. The voice was low but urgent. —Of course I will, Mr Joyce. I shall mention no name again. But it is a really deep pleasure to meet a man of your attainments face to face. Your name stands high in the world. You are a most remarkable writer, a

It was after seven when he entered a rather poky establishment on the periphery of the harbour. One drink and the use of eye and ear told him there was nothing there. There was a big enough assembly, mostly of strangers, but they were loud and rowdy, and well on the highroad to a late night. No quiet, sardonic novelist loitered there. Yet was there any unhurried nook deemed seemly for a writer’s presence? Or was Joyce a recluse tucked away in chimney corner, avoiding all occasions of public concourse, fearing and despising the people and keeping to himself?