Tag: Irish American Bar Association of New York

Join Me at Bloomsday 2015

Published on by mbcoudal1 Comment

Last year I pretended I was going to Dublin as I celebrated Bloomsday with the Irish American Bar Association in Lower Manhattan. But this summer I really am going to Dublin for the Dublin Writers Retreat (Join me!)

Just goes to show that sometimes you dream on your blog and your bloggy dreams come true.

I am going to dream (and hoist a few) at this year’s Bloomsday celebration again and see what dreams may come. (Join me!)

JoyceUlysses2Let me remind those of you who were not English majors and who do not live with your noses in books: Bloomsday is celebrated June 16th, chronicling one typical, working class day in Dublin, 1904.

Joyce found the extraordinary in the ordinary. But I don’t think he did meant to write some exotic literary masterpiece. He meant to recreate a city’s ebb and flow. And now, every year on June 16th, dozens of places in the world read or enact or discuss or celebrate this literary day. And I am one of them.

I find that Bloomsday is a more authentic holiday for the Irish and the Irish American diaspora than St. Patrick’s Day.

In the US, the book is also one reason we do not censor. It had been banned until 1933 because it was deemed obscene and pornographic. Judge John Woolsey lifted the ban, writing:

“In writing ‘Ulysses’ Joyce sought to make a serious experiment in a new if not wholly novel literary genre.

“Joyce has attempted- it seems to me with astonishing success- to show how the screen of the consciousness with its ever-shifting kaleidoscopic impressions carries as it were on a plastic palimpsest not only what is in the focus of each man’s observation of the actual things about him, but also in a penumbral zone residua of past impressions, some recent and some drawn up by association from the domain of the subconscious.

“The words which are criticized as dirty are old Saxon words known to almost all men, and, I venture, to many women, and are such words as would be naturally and habitually used, I believe, by the types of folk whose life, physical and mental, Joyce is seeking to describe.

“If one does not wish to associate with such folks as Joyce describes, that is one’s own choice.”

So, zoom back in your consciousness, people, to present-day Ireland.

I believe Marilyn Monroe was super smart. She dug Ulysses too.
I believe Marilyn Monroe was super smart. She dug Ulysses too.

Who are ‘such folks’? A minute ago, ‘such folks’ were marginalized. But today, isn’t Joyce rolling in his grave? Don’t you wish that Oscar Wilde could somehow know that Ireland is accepting of homosexuals — the first country to legalize same-sex marriage? Whoah! I am even more ecstatic to visit Ireland now. For a spirit of openness and tolerance and — dare I say — love for people is blowing! And this can only be good.

In other news, our vice president’s 46-year old son, Beau Biden, died of brain cancer on May 30. And this reminds me: gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Life is short. So short. Too short.

Celebrate Bloomsday. Celebrate every stupid, ordinary day! For in the ordinary, there is magic.

I will be at the Irish American Bar Association of New York’s Bloomsday celebration, pontificating on the beauty and wonders of the ordinary. Join me.

Get all the details and purchase a ticket here.

Happy Bloomsday!

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Grab some James Joyce. Read a section from Ulysses.

It all takes place on 16th of June and yes a day like others and yes a day like today and here we are in June in bloom and the sun and taxicabs as bright as dandelions and summer breathing down our neck like pearls…

Tonite I am celebrating Bloomsday with friends at the Irish American Bar Association at the rotunda at the Supreme Court in NY. (Thanks to my Irish attorney friends in book club).

We are promised readings from Molly’s soliloquy and general bawdiness.

I look forward to discussing the First Amendment — and how does that freedom relate to Anthony Weiner? And who among us is the first to throw stones at Weiner? I would like to know. Because, God knows, no one wants their tweets, updates, private messages, instant messages, blogs, emails, combed through too carefully. Not me.

And yes I am not a preacher nor a politician. I am a writer. And what power does a writer have?

Oh I don’t know. As the invitation to the Bloomsday celebration stated, “James Joyce did not just give us one of the greatest works of world literature. He also gave us a landmark ruling in First Amendment jurisprudence.”

Thanks to the Irish American Bar. Thanks to the Boston Globe for this article:  http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2011/06/its_bloomsday_l.html and this awesome picture of Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses.

And thanks, of course, to Joyce himself for this:

“God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with the fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying theres no God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why dont they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes”
I’ve blogged about James Joyce before. About how his writing inspired an epiphany — when I looked up and saw a bird circle. https://mbcoudal.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/my-3-words/