"What is home without / Plumtree’s Potted Meat? / Incomplete. / With it an abode of bliss."


"What relation existed between their ages?
"16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen's present age Stephen was 6. 16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of Bloom's present age Bloom would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54 their ages initially in the ration of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing according as arbitrary future years were added, for if the proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable, conceiving that to be possible, till then 1904 when Stephen was 22 Bloom would be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen would be 38, as Bloom then was, Bloom would be 646 while in 1952 when Stephen would have attained the maximum postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom, being 1190 years alive having been born in the year 714, would have surpassed by 221 years the maximum antediluvian age, that of Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Stephen would continue to live until he would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Bloom would have been obliged to have been alive 83,300 years, having been obliged to have been born in the year 81,396 B.C."


"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 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'm done!)

The lack of posts recently has been because I'm trying to minimize my computer use--I'm dead set on healing my wrists as quickly as possible. (I'm also not playing piano at all, which is sad.) But quick update: Latin is good, and I've started reading Ovid, though I have to look up about 9 out of every 10 words in the dictionary; teaching is looking fine, and quite easy (turns out the instructor mainly expects me to show up and do the grading); I start "summer early music ensemble" today, which should include some stunning sacred pieces by Gesualdo; I have fruit flies infesting my African violet, which (the fruit flies, not the flower) I set aside a few minutes every day to hunt down, to no avail; it's hot; I'm swimming pretty regularly; ista decent umeros gestamina nostros/qui dare certa ferae, dare vulnera possumus hosti,/qui modo pestifero tot iugera ventre prementem/stravimus innumeris tumidum Pythona saggitis,/tu face nescio quos esto contentus amores/inritare tua, nec laudes adsere nostras!" (Take that, Cupid!)

The Calf-Path, by Sam Walter Foss

I.

One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;

II.

But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day,
By a lone dog that passed that way.
And then a wise bell-wether sheep,
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep;
And drew the flock behind him too,
As good bell-wethers always do.
And from that day, o'er hill and glade.
Through those old woods a path was made.

III.

And many men wound in and out,
And dodged, and turned, and bent about;
And uttered words of righteous wrath,
Because 'twas such a crooked path.
But still they followed - do not laugh -
The first migrations of that calf.
And through this winding wood-way stalked,
Because he wobbled when he walked.

IV.

This forest path became a lane,
that bent, and turned, and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load,
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half,
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

V.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare;
And soon the central street was this,
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half,
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

VI.

Each day a hundred thousand rout,
Followed the zigzag calf about;
And o'er his crooked journey went,
The traffic of a continent.
A Hundred thousand men were led,
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent,
To well established precedent.

VII.

A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind,
Along the calf-paths of the mind;
And work away from sun to sun,
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move.
But how the wise old wood gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah! many things this tale might teach -
But I am not ordained to preach.

In my last post I mentioned that I'm caring for four different places (a house, two apartments, and a condo), including two cats. Well, today, I biked my whole route, with a stop at the health center for physical therapy (which I just started) for my wrists and a stop at home for dinner. Here, courtesy of gmap-pedometer.com, is a map of Bloomington and my route:

All of the friends who I normally hang out with have left town, as of this morning, and I now have the dubious honor of being not only Master of Music but also Master of Keys to four apartments besides mine, located in all different parts of town, and a few associated mailboxes. So if anyone needs an apartment showing, I've got some contracts, and you can move in anytime this weekend.

Singular, communed the guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere acquisition of academic title should suffice to transform in a pinch of time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an art which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest.
-James Joyce's Leopold Bloom, thinking about the bawdy younger men around him

Kyle needed a ride to the airport last Friday, so Sara and I took the opportunity to visit grandma and grandpa. It was a really nice stay. We took the usual boat ride, and Sara caught a lot of fish. Then the next day we were planning on biking door-to-door from grandma and grandpa's house to the art museum--there's actually a combination of 4 bike paths that would take us the whole way--until about 3 miles in I made the mistake of changing the back gears on my borrowed bike, which promptly stopped moving. The back gear shift mechanism had somehow bent dramatically. In fifteen minutes we'd gotten the wheel to move again, but the gear shifter was hanging off the side, so we walked back and drove to the museum. The museum, fortunately, was wonderful--we toured the whole contemporary art floor and walked around the Lilly House grounds with their beautiful gardens, followed by a trip to Trader Joe's. (Wow, two Chenettes blogged about Trader Joe's in one week.) Then we had dinner with grandma and grandpa and aunt Nancy, which was really fun. This was the third fun weekend in a row: first the trip out to LA for Nate's graduation, then the canoeing trip, and now this trip to Indy. Maybe I'll take a weekend to be lazy next week, but we'll see.

In the meantime, I can't wait for my trip(s!) out to Colorado--first in early July (less than a month!) to Ouray for the Kern reunion and then in mid/late August to camp and visit Claire at Aspen. Both trips sound great. It's been too long since I've seen, hiked, and camped those beautiful mountains!

Ouray:



from the Bridge of Heaven: