Yesterday was Bloomsday, a date for great celebration in Dublin.  Kristen and I planned a day filled with adventure, and in our attempt to follow Bloom’s footsteps, we designed our own 24 hour Odyssey (Well, technically 17 hour).  We made things additionally hard on ourselves by trying to include events from both Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus’ June 16th, 1904.

Telemachus

We started the day off in Sandycove.  What a wonderful beginning!  Walking through town, we were greeted by restaurants and stores decorated for the occasion.  We also passed a group of children dressed in their Edwardian best who all wished a joyous “Happy Bloomsday!”  There was an exciting air of festivity, and it gave me a deep appreciation for a city and nation that could celebrate a work of literature with such enthusiasm.  At the Martello tower, we saw where Joyce stayed with St. John Gogarty, and where Ulysses was born.  This is also the opening scene of the novel.  From there we also visited the Forty Foot, a swimming place described in the novel.  We didn’t swim, but we did exercise our right to be there.  In Joyce’s time it would have been reserved exclusively for males, but a 1970’s “Attack of the Forty Foot Women” changed that.

Nestor

Next we walked in to Dalkey, the coastal town where Stephen Dedalus was a school teacher.  We warmed up in a little restaurant called the End Note, where we exchanged ghost stories while sipping tea with milk, the way Buck Mulligan would have insisted it be done.

Proteus

After Dalkey, we took a Dart train in to Sandymount.  Walking to and then navigating the train system was definitely a strenuous part of our odyssey.  This, in fact, was not our first time in Sandymount that day.  We had accidentally already been there once after getting on a train going in the wrong direction.  This time, however, it was our actual destination.  We walked in to town, where we happened to be arriving just in time for a presentation of 6 skits from Ulysses.  We watched Stephen walk blindly down the strand, Leopold shop for liver and explain to Molly the definition of “metempsychosis,” Bloom and Dedalus stumble drunkenly towards home, and Molly recall the day she agreed to marry Leopold (“Yes!”).  After the presentation, we went to the Sandymount Strand ourselves.  The tide was out, and it was an amazing place.  One can perhaps not understand Stephen’s walk “into eternity” without seeing the strand itself.  The packed sand stretches out almost as far as the eye can see, merging with the water and the the horizon off in the distance.  I also walked along with my eyes closed, listening to the world around me.  In some ways, it was similar to what Dedalus would have heard: the wind through the grass, the far off crashing of waves; but my experience was modified by the cars whooshing past and the sounds of construction not far off.  When I opened my eyes and discovered that the world was still there, I saw winding roads, towering cranes, and far in the distance a carrier ship.  At first it made me think that my experience was less authentic because there was more man-made interference, but it is not so much interference as the reality of my unique experience, instead of a failed recreation of Dedalus’.

There was much, much more to the day, but this was perhaps my favorite part.  It is also one of my favorite parts in the book (not just because it comes early on, either).

“Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.”

That certainly wasn’t the end of our day, but it is the end of this one!  More adventures to come!