Bloomsday in Melbourne

It started with my friend Susan posting a comment on Facebook about where she would be on June 16 – in Melbourne at Bloomsday. I responded that I was envious (after looking up what exactly Bloomsday is) and told her that I wished I could be there.

Because at that point, I wasn’t sure if I was coming back to Australia.

But then I was.

But then, she wasn’t going to be able to make it to Melbourne for the festivities.

But then, she did. And it was perfect because Bloomsday is a celebration of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. Her connection with Joyce is visceral, partly fueled by her heritage (her entire family is Irish, and many still live in Ireland). After finding the book when she was a young girl, she was immediately fascinated by it and vowed to one day understand the language she found beautiful but baffling. She studied Joyce at Berkeley. Wrote her thesis on it. Has been to Dublin. Retraced his characters’ steps.

On June 16, the day that Leopold Bloom set forth on his journey through Dublin, cities all over the world set about “re-Joycing,” presenting plays, readings, lectures, classes and so on.  Of course, there are those who travel to Dublin and duplicate his journey, in fact, that’s how the whole thing started in 1954. The Bloomsday in Melbourne Committee marked the day with a play adapted from the text of the final chapter in the novel, “Penelope.”  At first glance, Joyce’s stream of consciousness would appear ideal for theatrical adaptation. But Joyce’s Penelope, Molly Bloom, is static throughout the entire chapter, her thoughts shared with the reader after she’s retired to bed. As the director said in her introduction to the play, “A woman. On a bed. Forty-four pages.” But the adaptation worked. Five characters – including a man in lacy bloomers, chemise and corset – played Molly, representing each aspect of her character. A photo of the set heads this post.

My navigation of the tram system has improved since my last visit, so we made our way through the blustery (read: windy and freekin’ cold) Melbourne day to the Trades Hall.  The hall sits on the corner of Victoria and Lygon Streets, straddling the Central Business District and the gentrified suburb of Carlton with its trendy restaurants and shops.  It was built in the 1870s to be the headquarters for Melbourne’s trade unions, and still serves that purpose. We climbed the stairs to one of the hall’s ballrooms, directly across from another that had a stage full of band equipment on one end of the room, a full bar at the other.  We agreed that the setting, complete with the pong of stale beer and urine, was ideal for the staging of a Joyce event.

Susan is much more on top of this whole timely posting thing than I am and shared this on her Tumblr blog the next day. In the post she said, “if you have to ask you don’t get it.” I would amend that (because I did sort of ask) to: “If you have to ask, you don’t get it – yet. And want to.”

After the performance and before the lecture, we spoke briefly with Francisca (or Frances?), a lovely woman sporting short silver hair, a brocade jacket and a long plum velveteen skirt. She is one of the founders of the festival, and pointed out that 2012 is a big year. The novel has reached its 90^th anniversary since publication and the heir has just lost copyright. Next year, adapting pieces of the novel won’t be such a big deal.

One of the other founders, Philip Harvey in a jaunty green and white Tattersall plaid shirt, introduced Professor John Gatt-Rutter who presented his research. The professor is not an expert on Joyce, but discussed the evidence that points to Joyce using his friend Ettore Schmitz, better known by the pseudonym and nom de plume Italo Svevo, as a model for Leopold Bloom.  Schmitz was a student of Joyce’s in Trieste and was also a writer. Joyce championed his work, and Gatt-Rutter says that he is now regarded as one of the best Italian novelists of the 20^th century.

I enjoyed reading Ulysses. I “got” it. I could follow. But then I would doze off. Okay, stop laughing. What I mean is that Joyce’s characters’ stream of consciousness is hypnotic. Reading Ulysses is like driving on a long, straight highway and watching the white lines instead of the horizon. The blur is mesmerizing, and each line has its own life span as it dashes past, but looking at the lines is looking at the details instead of the greater image – a driver gets pulled in to that world of white flashes. Before you know it, you’re off the road.

Reading Ulysses is an experience in completely giving oneself to the language and inner workings of mind. (You notice that I didn’t say “the characters’ minds.”) The work is fascinating, not only for what it tells us about us, but for what it tells us about Joyce. I suppose that is true to an extent about all books, depending upon the skill with which they are constructed, but in this case, the author is ever-present.

There are times, like Bloomsday, where I feel woefully inadequate as a writer. That concern comes not only from reading the work of a master, but also from the gaps in other literary reading. I was not an English lit major, but a theater major. I did not read Joyce – I read O’Neill. And O’Casey.  And Beckett (which I guess is sort of like reading Joyce…). I read theatrical literature: plays. So thankfully, I know the story of Ulysses as told over and over by so many writers.  Best-selling novel The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Nefenegger also told the story from Penelope’s point of view, but certainly not Joyce’s Penelope, Molly Bloom. Molly is a wonder unto herself.

Since this site is dedicated to the concept of home, it’s worth mentioning that Joyce left Dublin in his early twenties and never returned, choosing instead to live in Trieste, Paris and Zurich. In fact, his remains do not reside in Ireland – his grave is in Switzerland. Ironically, the Irish government refused Nora Joyce’s request to have his body transferred back to Dublin shortly after his death. Although Joyce rejected Dublin, all of his fiction is set there.  He said that he always wrote about Dublin because he felt if he could get to the heart of that city, he could understand anything: “In the particular is contained the universal.” If it is true (as Napoleon reportedly said) that geography is destiny, then Joyce helped prove that maxim.

Coburg

   It is Sunday morning (Saturday around 6 p.m. for my Pacific Standard Time friends) and I have just returned from my marketing in Coburg. I am currently housesitting (and cat sitting) for a lovely couple – the daughter of a couple I stayed with in Bendigo last December.   Many of you know my hesitation in coming back to Australia this year. The email from J’s daughter tipped the scales and here I am, happily ensconced in a nearly new three bedroom with my very own room and bath, full kitchen with lots of pots and pans to use (some of which I don’t quite know what to do with) and a couple who has urged me to help myself to the perishables in the refrigerator and the pantry. Say no more.

  The house where I’m staying is just a few blocks from the train station and shops. Shops with names like Ottoman Kabobs and Pizza, Pantheon Cakes, Parthenon Shoes, Continental Groceries, Dong Natural Therapies, etc. line the Coburg section of Sydney Road, a main north-south artery.  There is also a plethora of Asian-owned variety stores where a person can find everything from salad spinners to ladies’ girdles. My stops this morning included the fruit and veg stand (a kilo of mandarin oranges for $1.99; a kilo of gigantic navel oranges for $0.99), Crystal Bakery (a terrific apricot Danish), Coles supermarket (various and sundry items) and finally to Al Alamy,(which in Arabic translates to “world of foods”) a grocery and café that has the very best flat white in the area. Joey and George, the baristas there, have memorized my order. So far I’ve received two free coffees. Not sure what that’s about, but I’m grateful for the treat.

   Melbourne reminds me of the American Midwest – specifically, Kansas City, where I lived for 16 years. Much of the architecture is of the same mid-19th Century vintage. And the other day I smelled something that was vaguely familiar, something that evoked a feeling of nostalgia … fallen leaves. Maple leaves, actually.  I’ve lived in the southern California desert so long that I have almost forgotten that there are places where trees lose their leaves.

   I do have responsibilities while I’m here, though. Actually a responsibility named Willow, who is an adorable (if a little needy) kitty-cat. I arrived to an empty house, but knew that there was a cat in residence. After a couple hours moving a suitcase, using the bathroom, getting comfortable, no feline showed up to investigate, so I deduced that the cat was outside or in hiding under a bed. Turns out that she was where she usually is – hidden under blankets on the couch. And I do mean under.  I had to pull back her covers to get the photograph. When she’s out from under, she’s talking to me about being hungry, or needing to go out or wanting attention. She’s quite content sitting on my lap while I work. Makes it harder to reach the keyboard, but it is cozy.

   I arrived Melbourne and was greeted by the worst weather they’d seen so far this Fall – 9 degrees C (about 48 F) and raining cats, dogs and ponies. For all that, I was still grateful to be out the Sonoran Desert, where the temperature was 104 the day I left. And even though I’ve been cold a great deal of the time since I’ve been here, Mom had a point when she said that you can always put on enough clothing to get warm, but you can never take off enough to get cool. True. The photo to the right is a view down O'Hea Street looking toward Sydney Road.

   In the past weeks, I’ve spent a good deal of time working on queries and scouting out how to make my blog better. In fact, there just happened to be a writers’ conference in progress when I arrived and I participated in a class concerning that specific topic.  Don’t worry – you won’t really notice anything besides a new look. My readers should also find it much easier to get email updates and so on. There might be a RunNorthGoWest Facebook page in the works, too, so all of you will have to Like RNGW on Facebook.

More soon – about Blooms Day.

And Back Again

   ‘Round about April 1, I started getting really antsy, the sort of restlessness that some have called wanderlust, but in my case, I’m not so sure. That will be a discussion for another time.

   As my friends have told me, I’m a doer, and I felt that I wasn’t doing much of anything. I was staying with my brother and sister-in-law in Phoenix. I had prepared a good proposal and sent it to several agents in hopes of having someone invest in my book project so that I could return to Australia with more money in my pocket. I had also sent off many applications for work, and even tested with a temporary agency that was quite optimistic about placing me. Nothing. In all of this, I was plagued with doubt about what I should be doing. Sometimes on a morning walk I would pass an apartment complex, the sort that is a series of boxes dressed up to look like something classier. People walked their dogs, moved in, moved out, nearly fell down the stairs carrying too many boxes, struggled to fit the box spring around the corner. I watched these people living their lives, becoming  inordinately depressed, because I imagined myself getting a job, moving into one of those boxes, trying to get my piano up the stairs.

   My sister-in-law and I became good friends during this time, and I would share some of my frustrations – and fears – with her. I know that there were times that she noticed my swollen eyes after a particularly anxiety-filled day. I was working my plan, being responsible, mapping things out, determined to do this the right way. I talked to my oldest sister, who has always been supportive of my dreams. I talked to my other sister, who is analytical by nature, but told me, hey, if this is your dream, you better do it. And my brother, no stranger to risk, who farmed for years and runs his own business, said pretty much the same thing. My sister-in-law, when I confessed so much doubt, said “stay the course.” And finally, my brother, who is an engineer and whose life has been lived in concrete and sequential terms said, “I think you should go for it.”  I also spoke with the dogs about these issues, but found that they were more interested in what they thought was going on outside.

    My friends asked when I was going back. I told them , it depends on this. And that. And this and that. One day I confessed to one that I had plenty in the bank to buy a ticket, and maybe I should just do that.

   And still, I didn’t do it.

   Finally, during a visit to Rancho Mirage I spoke with my spiritual advisor. We sat down together and I started explaining what was going on, how there wasn’t a job and there wasn’t an agent, but there was a great proposal, and that everything was in place except the balance of the savings account.  She listened. Asked a few questions. As I answered them I understood that (once again) the only one getting in the way was me.  I started laughing (a little hysterically) and surrendered.

   Shortly after that, an Internet search revealed a pretty good one-way fare to Melbourne. My travel agent found one that was $200 more good. I bought it. After which my dear friend M. pointed out, “Hey – it’s the leap of faith, not the fall of faith.”  I’m counting on that.

   Part of that leap was letting my car go. Little Ms. Putt now has the honor of being a young girl’s first car. Her Mom has a Beemer, so does her grandmother and her aunt, and her cousin … they know what she’s getting into. Her dad has a detailing business, so Ms. P. will always look good.  It is the last remnant from my old life.

   A couple weeks before I left, my sisters and I had a weekend together, just the three of us. We goofed off, ate too much. I bought a pair of earrings that I didn’t need but were too nice to leave for a stranger; K. found a really cool vintage dress and K. found a plate to add to her ceramic collection. We visited and went ice skating and got awesome foot rubs and visited museums. I cried when I got on the plane to leave. As much as I wanted to return to Australia, I wanted to cling to something that I no longer have here, and maybe never had, if I even know what it is. One thing I know for sure: leaving feels different this time.

   Since June 2011, I have lived in 21 different places, some only for a couple nights, others for a few months. In just a couple weeks, it will be a year since all of my possessions have been in storage and I have not had a lease. To those of you who have supported my goals and dreams by sharing your homes and lives with me, thank you.

   And to those of you who will be allowing me to stay with you in the next year, I can’t wait to meet you.

   It starts in Melbourne.