The Sirens

This chapter kind of reminds me of how I ended up loving Gertrude Stein. For our Modernism class, we were given a list of 20 poets and asked to read and write a couple of poems by each of them and write a report. Then we had to choose one of them to write a project on after a discussion with the prof.

When I met the prof, I confessed that I had loathed Stein and thought, basically, that the poems were nonsense. He suggested to me that I do my project on Stein because her poems were the ones I had had “the most powerful reaction to”. I knew he was being manipulative but despite this, somehow, when I exited the room I had agreed to write a paper on Stein for my final project. Although his methods were quite transparent, he had pressed the right buttons (ha! Tender buttons!): my inability to let stuff defeat me despite my pathological laziness.

Anyway, I groaned and moaned my way through half the collection… until suddenly, it was like I had discovered some sort of cipher and I began to find them delightful. I could see humour, skill, philosophy and beauty in the jumbled arrangement of words.

And this is what happened to me in this chapter. The first section just seems to be nonsense. However, it’s really a poetic conflation of the second section and the whole chapter is basically (the notes inform me) in the style of a fugue.

Now, of course, this is entirely self-indulgent. But then, I always feel that artists should be self-indulgent. They need to be true to themselves in order to create something original. Hopefully what they create will resonate with the rest of us and sound a prophetic voice. But even if it doesn’t, and strikes us as entirely nonsensical, it’s better for artists to “thine own selves be true” than for them to provide some sort of ornamentation or entertainment service to society.

So, if Joyce decided that he wanted to write a chapter in the style of the fugue (not too far fetched anyway since the Sirens are associated with music), why shouldn’t he?

And having said that, there are some phrases that are really beautifully musical as well as just delightful. (Which is why I see a repeat of the Stein episode happening here).

Blues, babies and beans

This weekend my colleague’s six-month-old son encountered a foreigner for the first time in his life: me! Chinese babies are so cute when they see a non-Chinese person – they raise their (almost non-existent) eyebrows and sport a completely surprised, verging on shocked, expression. You have to jump around and make strange noises before they get over it and start laughing, probably deciding you’re a joke their parents brought over to amuse them.

Anyway, on Saturday, went over with some colleagues from office to visit the new baby so that, as someone put it, he doesn’t forget “his aunties”. Funnily enough, the two in the group who were most adept at holding the baby were the two who were not married and who probably wouldn’t have children of their own. The three married (albeit childless) ones were all apprehensive that the baby would break if we held him.

However, another feature of Chinese babies is that they’re extremely cooperative. They don’t bawl, just wiggle. So we all had a go and made him pose for pictures with us. Probably also typical, the baby tended to be gadget obsessed and made a grab for the camera. In the end, he ended up clicking pics of us as we clicked pics of him. His shots weren’t half bad.

Other than a kid stuff it was a completely lazy weekend. On Friday evening, I had pushed the limits of my social self and done drinks with V’s friends. I only had two glasses of wine but I was already tired and I had consumed this mooncake before in the hope that it would function like cheese, only it sat in my stomach like a stone the whole time. The result of wine + mooncake + general fatigue was that I suddenly found myself drowning in a very deep well. The only other time this has happened is when I tried magic mushrooms in Amsterdam and after two hours of non-stop giggles, I started the rapid descent into the other side of madness. This time, though, I felt that letting whatever it was wash over me would be therapeutic. It was, kind of, but it lingered through the weekend.

A strange thing has happened. I realized I need to take a break from trying to discuss anything serious with people because both I and they end up frustrated. The reason I come away peaceful from conversations with people I don’t know that well is because I have no expectations and also am forced to be polite. We stay on the surface, just paddling and that’s fine. The moment I try to do proper strokes, I flounder. So I’m just going to take a break and sunbathe for a while. If I get into the water, it will be to just dip my toes in. This is weird because normally I abhor polite chatter, I always dive in headfirst.

This blog might be especially ranty for a while , because partly that’s what is blog is for. To say the things I don’t say to people because I can’t be bothered to go through the paces of deciding whether they would actually want to hear what I’m going to say.

The main excursion on Sunday was down the road where we discovered in this very boring basement mall, a delightful coffee shop. The owner/manager is really passionate about his beans and swears by the siphon method of coffee making, which uses a halogen lamp instead of fire and these glass goblet thingies. Like a cross between a laboratory and a disco. But the coffee is lovely – he pushes the fair trade products – and the guy is so into what he does, it’s infectious. We came away with a bag of Nicaraguan fair trade coffee.

I don’t know if I have any Hong Kong readers but if any of you happen to be in the Quarry Bay area, do go down to Xen Coffee in Manly Plaza on King’s Road. They have a coffee and cheese cake tea set, and though we didn’t try the cakes this time, we’ll be back.

On higher education

The other day I had dinner with a friend. Actually, she’s a girl I’ve met thrice. A common friend introduced us and quite typically for HK, the girl suggested we meet up for dinner.

The next time we met up was probably after a year. She had recently been on a trip to North Korea and so showed me the video the tourist department put together. It’s pretty hard to get into North Korea but they open to tourists a couple of times a year. The tours are highly regulated so one gets to experience a very controlled version of what the country is like.

Nevertheless, while the tour guides can regulate where you go and what you hear, they can’t blindfold you or completely control what you see. So I asked her if the North Koreans were really as unhappy as the world media makes them out to be.

She started to give me a spiel on the various controls that were put on them as tourists. I clarified that what I was asking was not about visitors but about how people looked going about their daily lives. Did they, quite simply, look like they were going about their lives in complete misery?

Now, I know it’s hard to tell from just looking. But then again, one can tell a lot from just looking. Unless people are primed beforehand to look cheerful at all times because visitors are coming, one could gauge some sort of impression from looking at people on the streets. Were they uniformly grim, for example? Did they sit around lunch chatting? Did they laugh and joke with each other?

I say this because the Western media would have people believe that people’s lives in China are dire and grim. But having been to China, I can tell you that city people there look pretty much the same as city people elsewhere in Asia. They smile more than people in Hong Kong in fact. Of course, the countryside is another matter but I don’t imagine the countryside in India is very different. Granted China has opened up a lot over the past decade but till three years ago, the media was still talking about it as if everyone there lived in fear of being lined up and shot.

My point is that the political is only a part of people’s lives, a part they confront only occasionally. Yes, in places like China (and North Korea) there arguably may be more chance of daily life being dictated to by the political regime but at least from what I’ve seen in China, in actual practice, it’s not as much as the West makes out.

My friend pointed out how in her video kids were made to participate in mass drills and do very tiring looking things (like riding unicyles). And that Kim Il Sung, the father of Kim Jong Il, has been propogated in their minds as a god so that the people there consider the water of a well near his childhood home to be miraculous.

Frankly, I don’t see these as particularly telling examples. Even in India, kids are made to do stupid drills. Yes, the North Korean kids in the video were pushed much harder but this in itself does not constitute grounds for determining an unhappy childhood.” Similarly, people in India are prone to finding godliness in every corner. Again, I see this as a function of poverty and the need to find salves and explanations for ones troubles more than an example of indoctrination. Of course, there is indoctrination. But with religion and quazi-religion it’s works because people want it to. And is it really so bad if people want to go to a magical well?

I realised that my problem with this girl’s comments was that they presupposed agreement with a Western democratic ideology. Now, this is someone who has two Master’s degrees in the Humanities. It’s hard to imagine that she’s not read Orientalism. But the message doesn’t seem to have permeated.

Similarly, listening to her comments on how the North Koreans seem to have replaced God by Kim Il Sung reminded me immediately of Roland Barthes “Death of the Author” and Foucault’s response to that essay. [Do google both essays because I’m not going to attempt to paraphrase them] But for her, it was amazing that people would consider a political leader God. Coming from a country where people immolate themselves for film stars, I don’t find this particularly surprising. Part of Foucault’s argument is simply abolishing one all-powerful figure (the author, or God) is not really a solution because another will grow to take its place.

What’s got me irritable is not really whether people in North Korea are repressed or not. I’m not saying that life there is wonderful or supporting the absurdities of Dear Leader and their consequences.

It’s just that someone who’s studied at a university that I wished I had gone to, one of the best universities in the world still has such a blinkered world view, one that is not in keeping with the currents in intellectual thought at all. It would be fine if she acknowledged the counter-argument, then denounced it. But it was like she wasn’t aware at all that there might be an acceptable system that was not pretty much the one she’d grown up with. That while many aspects of what is happening in North Korea are problematic, not everything about it is.

And it’s not just her. The friend who introduced us had also gone there and has knocked off the same sort of remarks. It seems like the universities harden this kind of “west as the centre” attitude layered with the arrogance of the university’s brand and sugar-coated with cultural sensitivity.

One of my Chinese friend pointed out that universities in the UK tend to be very traditional in their curricula. That they are just coming to grips with Judith Butler. I guess I had never realised how this plays out in real life.

It’s scary.

Scylla and Charybdis

Reading this chapter was really like being caught between the devil and the deep sea (which is kind of what the title refers to, so clever I am) – continuing to read or giving up.

This is the toughest chapter I’ve read so far. Impossible to read without help from the notes. It’s complete free associaton and needs a lot of help to make any sense of.

It’s basically this long intellectual conversation in a library about Shakespeare, how much his biographical leanings influenced his work, whether Shakespeare himself was Hamlet (ironic because Joyce has modelled Stephen as Hamlet). Much of Stephen’s long theories are paraphrased from three Shakespeare biographers.

For good measure, there are the usual sprinklings of quotations from all the plays. Plus dollops of Socratic and Platonic philosophy thrown in.

And of course, meditations on Christian theology mixed into all this – the Father being the Son etc. as also the odd reference to Freud with regards to the Oedipal complex and homosexuality.

One interesting idea. He quotes Maeterlinck:

If Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend.

And Joyce/Stephen goes on: Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-ove. But always meeting ourselves.

That is, basically, what happens to us is a function of who we ourselves are. Cool huh?

It continues to amaze me how thinly Joyce has veiled his own personna in the book, even as he (as Stephen) rather ironically, in this chapter, argues for how thinly Shakespeare veils himself.

It reminds of the film critic who said that Tarantino is beginning to bore becuase the only thing he is interested in is movies. And that’s basically what his movies are about. Guess I don’t know enough about movies to see Tarantino’s films as only being about movies.

But this book sure does seem to only be about literature. It’s so self-reflexive that it’s opaque. It’s Joyce trying to write the great Irish epic even as his characters talk about (and diss) the revivalists call for the need for someone to write a great Irish epic.

PS: I seem to be racing ahead with this book – partly because my beautiful book of notations is due back to the library this week. Obviously not going to finish the whole book this week but is anybody out there? That is, is anybody else reading it? Posted about it? Speak now!

Weird things are happening to me

1. I have started to love Desperate Housewives. There’s nothing weird about this in itself, but the series started ages ago. What prevented me from watching it then? Especially during those desperately boring years in Hyderabad? (Same thing with AI actually. So is it possible that I had more of a life then? Surely not.)

2. I’m also loving Everybody Loves Raymond. It’s not like I disliked or ignored it before but I didn’t find it that funny. Now it’s hilarious. But this is more easily explained considering I now have a mother-in-law. In fact, ELR is like therapy because I actually feel like a) everybody goes through this (even though I already knew that but it’s on TV and funny, so it’s ok) and also b) Marie is worse than my Mil, or at least there are distinct similarities. Anyway, I feel like I should strike a Deborrah-like balance between exasperation and affection.

In a corollary to this, I actually suggested to V that he bring his mom back wtih him when he visited Bangalore this year. Didn’t realise that would probably mean his dad would visit too. But even just his mom… what was I thinking? Arrrgh! Damn you ELR!

3. I have started watching documentaries and enjoying them. I mean, I would valiantly catch the odd docu-flick before but now I’m actively seeking them out. Weird also that V, whose tastes in movies tends to the Jim Carey and Adam Sandler side of things, also enjoys documentaries.

4. I have started reading Tehelka. Has the paper become suddenly more interesting or is it just me? I’m suspecting it’s the latter. Maybe it’s something to do with my renewed interest in news thanks to, ironically, no longer working for a newspaper. But I’ve been interested in news before but found Tehelka a little bit too serious, too ernest even while I’m admiring of their mission to be proper journalists. Suddenly, I find their stories fascinating and the writing (largely) excellent.

5. I am not pregnant (which I am no longer averse to) but I no longer fit into any of my clothes. Hmph!

Proteus etc- tweets

I’ve now met all the principle characters in the book and I’m realising I don’t like any of them. Stephen is a whiner, Molly is gross, and Leopold is creepy.

Leopold on the pot must be the most famous crapping scene in literary history.

Lotus Eaters is the nicest chapter so far. Love how the flower theme runs through everything, so that the grey Dublin landscape is blooming.

Telemachus had a mockery of the mass. In Lotus Eaters, Bloom attends a mass and offers the interesting perspective of a non-believer who’s still completely well versed with faith he doesn’t believe in.

Why did Joyce choose a Jewish protagonist? At one level, it’s hard to remember that Bloom is Jewish. But then his Jewishness crops up every now and then. Actually, not sure how I know Bloom is Jewish? Is it mentioned anywhere so far (it’s certainly hinted) or is it in the notes.

Space

Chandni recently wrote an interesting post about space, which was triggered Rambler’s thought-provoking post. Both posts got me thinking because some of the issues they discuss have preoccupied me for a while. I had similar discussions with MinCat about this some time ago, and I think my post on the relevance of marriage does cut to the heart of this discussion. But so that I don’t go off into that discussion again – since I’ve decided to view marriage as haute couture, remember? – I’ll frame this one a little differently:

Does your spouse/life partner have to be your best friend? By “best friend”, I mean in the 16-year-old-schoolgirl sense. The person you’re emotionally closest to, who you tell the most important things that happen to you, and probably everything, first, who you do most (I’m not saying all) stuff with. I think fundamentally this is the question that Rambler is asking in his post.

Chandni makes some good points in her response. She talks about the importance of both partners having the space to develop as individuals, in order for the marriage to be healthy. One of the things she says is that her relationship with her spouse is just ONE of the important relationships in her life.

This makes sense.

However, questions still persist.

It’s true that one’s spouse cannot match one’s every interest and it’s silly to expect that. And it’s also true that even if one’s spouse does match one’s every interest, it’s just healthy to go out and spend time with other people anyway (there is such a thing as too much of a good thing).

But it’s a question of proportion. Are we assuming here that the spouses share most interests and so a minority of time would be spent with other people on interests that one doesn’t share? If not, wouldn’t that lead to situation in which either one sacrifices some interests or ends up spending more time with miscellaneous other people, or in some cases, that one other person who shares the other interests?

The question of interest, however, is generally more easily resolved than the more tricky emotional issues that collating the discussion of “space” into a discussion on “interests” won’t resolve.

What Rambler’s post is about (I think) is about the shadow line between compensating for what’s lacking in your spouse/ what your spouse cannot offer you and cheating (ie- betraying your relationship with your spouse) .

This is not about whether you choose to dedicate time separately to different sports, have independent friends or go for the odd holiday separately.

Rambler’s post uses the question of interests and hobbies only as a starting point.
The real question relates to less concrete “lacks”. To use his example, if you like to talk about what happened at work every day (which most women do) but your spouse doesn’t (generally the male here), would it be fine to find someone else to talk about this with? Sounds harmless enough, right?

In fact, some time ago, V actually quoted this exact example to me. He was watching this show on TV where a counselor was brought in to help a couple having marriage issues. The wife complained that her husband never listened to her talking about her day in the evenings and this really bothered her. The counselors told her that this is how guys are, get over it and find someone else to talk to.

I think this is a slippery slope. I can say this with conviction because I’ve seen the results firsthand. Talking about our day, our life, our worries and our joys is something women (I’m generalizing here) like to and probably need to do. We need this in the same way that guys (again a generalization) need to not talk about their day.

One could, of course, through much discipline learn not to talk about one’s day but it could lead to a lot of pent up stress. Or one could find someone else to talk to. One could, say, start a blog (ha ha!)

As someone who has tried the above, here’s why it’s not ideal. Women form emotional bonds with those they talk to and share their lives with. Men too, but they tend to need to share less.

Let’s assume that one decides, as the counselor suggested, to restrict oneself to sharing only the important stuff with one’s husband but to distribute the dregs of their day among other people. The other people could take the form of numerous other friends/family who are available for this kind of listening or could be just one person.

The danger with this is, one finds oneself slowly becoming more emotionally close with this other person/persons than one’s spouse. From here, it’s a short leap to telling the other people the important stuff before one tells one’s spouse and then, to skipping telling one’s spouse the important stuff altogether. When one no longer feels the need to tell one’s spouse either the mundane or the important, one’s relationship with one’s spouse becomes pretty much that of a roommate one has sex with.

Believe me, it’s quite easy to fall into this pattern. Frankly, this is how marriages have traditionally functioned and probably why they were so resilient. Before I got married, one wise aunty actually advised me not to be bothered if my husband didn’t want to do stuff with me. “Just do your own thing,” she said.

And this brings me to the heart of the matter. Which is, why be married at all then?
1) For stability in child rearing. Good point, though challenged by the stability of single-parent households. What if you’re like me and don’t really care about kids?
2) For financial security. Another good one. However, why not just get a good investment advisor or form a business relationship with a trusted friend or sibling.
3) For unlimited and free sex, conveniently available. Also good point. Though sexual drive does seem to decrease with age so seems like a bad reason to bind oneself to someone for life for.
4) For some to be with in good times and in bad (emotional capital). Aha! But example above is arguing against this one.
5) Others – religion, duty to one’s parents, desire to fit in with society. Excellent reasons if you subscribe to these beliefs. I don’t.
6) A bit of all of the above. Probably.

Why not just get each of points 1) to 4) from different people as suggested in example above. That is, why not have a separate sperm donor, bank manager, sex partner, friend one can talk to instead of a spouse who fulfills part of the above and leaves you to forage for the other parts yourself? And why elect to live with this one person for most of one’s life?

Curly thinks (I think) 6) is the key. After drawing pie charts and venn diagrams and making many many notes on paper (really, I did all this), it seems to be that this is pretty much right.

Modern marriage is the romantic version of a supermarket. I could go to ten different quality niche shops to get what I want but it’s more convenient to get everything of decent if not stellar quality under one roof. Hell, the convenience of it all does make us rather fond of the supermarket, now called spouse. And soon, it’s this convenience, brand loyalty, whatever that keeps one coming back.

Thus, unlike in the past where 5) was the glue that held it all together, today it’s 4).

And part of 4) means that one’s spouse is the one that one mainly tells one’s stuff to and does stuff with (ie – the 16-year-old version of best friend). “Mainly” does not mean “always”, but it does mean “mostly”. The reason one lives with this person is because it’s convenient but also because it forges an emotional bond. But an emotional bond that has to be fed, not assumed to exist because you sit in front of the telly under one roof together.

The line which demarcates how much time and space you dedicate to the other important people in your life, in my mind, should always be drawn in favour of your spouse. Where exactly this line is drawn really depends on the couple.

Whew! Ok finally it’s out. That’s my two (very long cents). What do you think?

At your risk

It’s possible to read this novel without the notes if:

a) You’ve read and are very familiar with the Greek epic Ulysses

b) You’re very familiar with Shakespeare (ie – you can recall and recognise individual lines)

c) You are familiar with Christian theology and the Latinisms of the mass

d) You are familiar with Irish politics of that period

Basically, you have to be very very well read. Otherwise nothing will make sense.

And just as I was getting very smug about having the best choice in my reference book with notations, I received a note from the library informing me that someone else had requested the book and so I needed to return it in four weeks. Meh!

Le weekend

The weekend gone by was not a long weekend but felt like it. I can’t even remember what we did on Friday night. It proves my theory that the more you do on the weekend, the more it stretches on. In contrast to the notion that sitting on the couch all weekend will make it seem longer.

Anyway, on Saturday, V had this deep burning desire to go to this Watch Exhibition at the Convention and Exhibition Centre. Basically, the HKCEC hosts these huge trade fairs with various themes and though the target is generally serious buyers, there are retail bargains to be had too.

Now, I’m a bit anti-watches. I even went a huge length of time without a wristwatch. Sure, I had my mobile to tell the time but it makes a difference not to be able to keep track of the ticking minutes with just the flick of a wrist. It’s quite liberating, all you punctualanals out there! Anyway, I don’t have a good track record with holding on to wristwatches (ie- I lose them on a regular basis) so I’ve stopped buying them. Instead, I’m using one of V’s 3 watches, which mysteriously I’ve managed to hang onto for over two years (fingers crossed!).

And I don’t see any reason to have a clock in every room. One small clock somewhere should do fine, I think. However, V has been going on about getting a “cool clock” for some time so I decided to go along with it.

Unfortunately, when we got to the registration desk we were informed that we couldn’t go in because we weren’t in the trade. The next day was open to retail buyers. Fair enough, but V’s not used to not getting it right so he kept whining on for some time.

A strange thing happened while we were getting into the queue. This white guy, going the wrong way, brushed past us and said loudly: “Too many Indians fuck the place up.” What was strange about this was:
a) This kind of virulent racism is more the exception than the norm these days so it was surprising
b) I wasn’t so much outraged but amused that these relics of a time past still walk the earth. Don’t they realize they’re soon going to be swallowed up by Indian and Chinese people? Or is that what’s making them so angsty?
I didn’t feel motivated to do anything except stare at him like one might gawk at a particularly ugly breed of dinosaur. Though, of course, had I had opportunity to pass him again, I might have given in to the impulse to make some kind of rude counter-comment. But fate deemed that I do the mature thing which is roll my eyes and move on.
Clearly, I wasn’t as unaffected by the whole incident as I’d like to believe because I’m still thinking about it three days later. But the quality of my disquiet is different. And I think it has something to do with the confidence that Indians (or at least the rising middle class of Indians) has gained over the past five years or so. We’re as good as or better than anyone else and we don’t need to go out of our way to prove it.

* * *

The clock idea shelved, we walked down to Wan Chai in search of a chandelier. The current one in our living room is the one thing we both want to change in the new house. However, the perfect lighting centerpiece seems to elude us.

V then insisted on eating this flat rice noodle thing in a roadside shop, thwarting my plans for a big fry-up lunch at Flying Pan. After this, we walked down to Wan Chai market in quest of sporting attire for moi.

The tragedy of my life is that I no longer fit into any of my old shorts. And my old tracks are now more suitable for sleeping in. V, who is always dismissive about my “need” to buy clothes, realized that a shortless wife could prove to be very inconvenient when one has signed up for a golf lesson. Not that I went for the lesson pantless (in the US, and not UK, sense) just that I spent 40 minutes beforehand wailing “I have nothing to wear!”

The lesson, which happened two weeks ago, was disastrous, in case you’re wondering. I decided I wanted to learn because two years ago I had done pretty well at a trial class (ie- I had managed to hit the ball after two tries). Unfortunately, this seems to have been a one-off wonder because at the lesson I was terrible and V was great, which always annoys me. Now, I have decided we are going to go swimming, which is one thing I’m better than him at.

Anyway, the weekend gone by was one of those rare events when V actually facilitated a shopping spree. Maybe because, in this case, I too didn’t want to want to spend much money. My theory is that since one is bound to look sweaty and unattractive when exercising, there’s no point in investing in nice clothes. It irritates me no end that sneakers and gym clothes cost so much in sports shops.

I found some cheapie tracks and one pair of shorts and then we broke for lunch at a curry place. This is one of those curiosities where a Chinese person runs a curry house. So the dishes are all Indian but the cook is Chinese. The food reminded me of dhaba food. The mutton curry was a bit thin but yummy anyway and scored points for being proper mutton (ie- goat). The chapatis were the kind an Indian mother-in-law would approve of.

V was inspired to buy mutton from the market himself and cook us a biryani. This proved to be the most awesome biryani I have had in a while… or maybe ever. I find myself repeating that Sound of Music song in my head (“must have done something good”) a lot these days.

* * *

That evening, we went for a swim in our building pool, which we discovered the week before. It’s so so peaceful and awesome even if we are the most out of shape people in the pool. And also the most splashy. Did I mention I’m a better swimmer than V?

Then out for an enormous dinner at Ruby Tuesday with friends S&S. My thirst for getting drunk had been reawakened after a night on the town with a girl friend from a time past who visited HK recently. I realized I could count the number of times I’d had that kind of night out in HK on my right hand. Even though HK makes that sort of drinking very easy. Or maybe because of it. But also because of the people. Sure, V and I got tired of Friday night drinks at some point but also, we kind of lost touch with the people we used to do it with. I love S&S but they’re not the type to go crazy.

However, V picked this night to let his hair down. That is, he decided not to eat dinner and only drink long island ice teas. I’ve seen what these do to V and it’s not pretty. And it wasn’t. I felt bad for shouting at him for being an idiot later, but I guess it’s fine to be an ass when everyone else is but not if everyone is sipping one cocktail and being la di da.

* * *

To my chagrin, V woke up without a glimmer of a hangover. And made me an awesome breakfast to cure my impending one (“something good” playing in my head again). Then down for a swim again… not sure how much actual exercise we get in the pool but it’s better than nothing.

In the afternoon, we went for Star Trek at an Imax theatre. Watching this film on Imax is a good choice. I spent the aftermath of the film really confused about which character I liked best (this is always an important choice for me) and kept vacillating between Kirk no Spock no Sulu no Chekov no… ok shut it! And before the film started I managed to buy two pairs of shorts and a skirt in the mall downstairs.

Crowned the weekend off with a massage at this tiny place V discovered. Unfortunately for me this was one of the worst massages of my life. The ladies who run the place are very sweet but the woman who massaged me had fingers like knives. Never again!

And that, dear very-bored-person-who-read this, was why I woke up very surprised on Monday that it was all over.

Impressions – Telemachus

The first “episode” of Ulysses casts Stephen Dedalus in the role of Telemachus, Ulysses’s son. My impressions (which probably some scholar has written a thesis on so I’m probably making already eluciadated points but anyway…)

– There are two themes that come across in the first chapter: 1) Religion in overt references and through the trope of the mockery of the mass 2) Ireland and Irish art – through the fact that Stephen is a struggling artists, his last name Daedalus, his comments etc

– The role of Oscar Wilde: Wilde is named overtly and on reading the notations, referenced through a metaphor that gets emphasised; that of the art of Ireland being like a cracked mirror. The Wilde quote is rather deep and startling for Wilde, almost post-structuralist. Despite this, the whole tone of the first chapter, and in particular the character of Buck Mulligan, is very flippant, very Wilde.

– The sea is a recurring motif, but that’s obvious because the Greek epic is concerned with the sea.

Weird – Joyce’s desire to make Stephen both Telemachus and Hamlet seems rather clumsy.

-There also seems to be a homosexual undercurrent in the relationship between Buck and Stephen though maybe this is just the modern penchant for construing any kind of friendship between men as gay.

– Reading the Richard Ellman essay at the back of my copy it appears that this entire first chapter was inspired by Joyce’s own experience with a patron, who Buck is modeled on. The similarities in that incident and the events of the first chapter made my admiration wane. Just presenting the events of one day and then peppering in some historical references is a lazy form of art, I think. Or is it?

Also, the entire construction seems rather rough. The epic exclamations etc (even though serving a purpose) intrude in a similar manner to songs in a Hindi film.