Half an hour to midnight and I still haven’t done a thing to celebrate Bloomsday here in Bloomfield, but there’s still time to reap the harvest of sacred seeds sown in the heavy metal-rich loam of the quotidian…
I read from Stephen Hero
Her eyes had begun to « imitate the expression » of Father Moran’s – an expression of tender « significance » when the conversation was at the lowest level of banality. Often as he walked beside her Stephen wondered how she had employed her time since he had last seen her and he congratulated himself that he had caught an impression of her when she was at her finest moment. In his heart he deplored this change in her for he would have liked nothing so well as an adventure with her now but he felt that even that warm ample body could hardly compensate him for her distressing pertness and middle-class affectations. « In the centre of her attitude towards him he thought he discerned a point of defiant illwill and he thought he understood the cause of it. » He had swept the moment into his memory, the figure and the landscape into his treasure-room, and conjuring with all three had brought forth some pages of « sorry verse. » One rainy night when the streets were too bad for walking she took the Rathmines tram at the Pillar and as she held down her hand to him from the step, thanking him for his kindness and wishing him good-night, that « episode of their childhood seemed to magnetise » the minds of both at the same instant. The change of circumstances had reversed their positions, giving her the upper hand.
and from Ulysses
-Who? Blazes? says Joe.
And says Bloom:
-What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility and training of the eye.
-Ay, Blazes, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on the beer to run the odds and he swatting all the time.
-We know him, says the citizen. The traitor’s son. We know what put English gold in his pocket.
-True for you, says Joe.
And Bloom cuts in again about lawn tennis and the circulation of the blood, asking Alf:
-Now don’t you think, Bergan?
-Myler dusted the floor with him, says Alf. Heenan and Sayers was only a bloody fool to it. Handed him the father and mother of a beating. See the little kipper not up to his navel and the big fellow swiping. God, he gave him one last puck in the wind. Queensberry rules and all, made him puke up what he never ate.
It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns. Handicapped as he was by lack of poundage, Dublin’s pet lamb made up for it by superlative skill in ringcraft. The final bout of fireworks was a gruelling for both champions. The welterweight sergeantmajor had tapped some lively claret in the previous mixup during which Keogh had been receiver-general of rights and lefts, the artilleryman putting in some neat work on the pet’s nose, and Myler came on looking groggy. The soldier got to business leading off with a powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of Bennett’s jaw. The redcoat ducked but the Dubliner lifted him with a left hook, the body punch being a fine one. The men came to handigrips. Myler quickly became busy and got his man under, the bout ending with the bulkier man on the ropes, Myler punishing him. The Englishman, whose right eye was nearly closed, took his corner where he was liberally drenched with water and, when the bell went, came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of knocking out the fistic Eblanite in jigtime. It was a fight to a finish and be best man for it. The two fought like tigers and excitement ran fever high. The referee twice cautioned Pucking Percy for holding but the pet was tricky and his footwork a treat to watch. After a brisk exchange of courtesies during which a smart upper cut of the military man brought blood freely from his opponent’s mouth the lamb suddenly waded in all over his man and landed a terrific left to Battling Bennett’s stomach, flooring him flat. It was a knockout clean and clever. Amid tense expectation the Portobello bruiser was being counted out when Bennett’s second Ole Pfotts Wettbeing threw in the towel and the Santry boy was declared victor to the frenzied cheers of the public who broke through the ringropes and fairly mobbed him with delight.
Transcribing these depictions of ritualized conflict I have to smile: conflict is based on divisions, dichotomies or splits, and the local connection here is a tasty one.
In 1904 (19 + 04 = 23), the year that Joyce met Nora and set Ulysses, 23 year-old apprentice pharmacist David Evans Strickler invented the banana split in the 2.3 sq mi borough of Latrobe. Lose the toppings and a banana split consists of two halves of a banana separated by three scoops of ice cream, representing, as Strickler clearly intended, the emergence of wholeness, harmony and radiance from between the twin pillars/energy channels/cerebral hemispheres.
Bon appetit and happy Bloomsday, blogosphere!
Tags: 23 enigma, banana split, bibliomancy, Bloomsday, David Evans Strickler, James Joyce, Latrobe, Stephen Hero, Ulysses