Bloomsday: Guinness Is Good For You!

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick rabbit giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”

-         James Joyce, ‘Ulysses’ (pub. 1922)

James Joyce by Djuna Barnes

Today is 16th June, Bloomsday.

Bloomsday is an annual celebration of the work of James Joyce during which the events depicted in his momentous novel Ulysses - set on 16^th June 1904 - are re-enacted throughout the day as live theatre in and round the streets of Dublin.

Ulysses chronicles an ordinary Dublin day in the life of its protagonist, Leopold Bloom. We see him eat breakfast, walk to the newsagent, defecate, drink in the pub, watch a funeral procession and various other mundane everyday occurrences.

Leopold Bloom, by James Joyce

Nothing of major significance occurs during Bloom’s day; there is no Tom Clancy-style ‘Rainbow' task forces rescuing hostages from evil terrorists at the very last moment; there are no beautiful and personably vampires with a rich emotional life and pained conscience with whom to fall in love with; neither are there trolls, hobbits, wizards and orcs.

It is a simply a record of an ordinary day in the life of an ordinary man living in an ordinary city.

During the course of the eighteen “episodes” of Ulysses, and using unusual and innovative literary devices, we gradually learn a very great deal about Leopold, his wife, his children, his sex life, his friends, lovers and enemies, his fantasies, his religious and political beliefs and all the rest.

Leopold, 38, is employed to sell advertising space for newspapers. He was raised in Dublin by his Hungarian-Jewish father and Irish-Catholic mother.

Ulysses reveals that although Leopold has a Jewish heritage he has in fact received three different Christian baptisms, one of which was to convert to Roman Catholicism so that he could marry Marion (“Molly”) Tweedy in 1888. We learn he is uncircumcised.

Molly Bloom, by Robert Berry

Leopold and Molly had their daughter Milly in 1889. She is now 15 years old and works in a photographer’s studio. A few years after Milly’s birth, they had a son Rudolph (“Rudy”). Sadly, Rudy died in infancy. His death wreaked emotional devastation on both parents. In the eleven years since Rudy’s death, Leopold and Molly have not had sex together. They continue to sleep in the same bed – but positioned such that Leopold has his feet by Molly’s head.

Whilst Leopold is having a certain flirtatious correspondence with Martha Clifford and has almost certainly visited Dublin prostitutes on occasion, Molly is having an out-and-out affair with Blazes Boylan.

Bloom is aware of Molly’s adultery to some degree or other, and in fact seems to grant silent and tacit agreement with Molly and Blazes having sex that very afternoon when Blazes visits her at their home at 4pm.

Stephen Dedalus, by Robert Berry

Some interpreters of Ulysses have said that Leopold displays cuckold tendencies. This idea is reinforced in a later episode when Leopold brings home the twenty-something, broody, sullen and drunken Stephen Dedalus (whom Joyce first introduced us to in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, pub. 1917) after the pubs close and while Molly is asleep upstairs. Stephen declines Leopold’s offer of a place to stay for the night. Both men urinate in the backyard.

The final episode of the Ulysses, and my personal favourite, is formally entitled “Penelope” but has come to be more commonly known as “Molly’s Soliloquy”.

Molly’s Soliloquy uses the literary technique called “stream-of-consciousness”. It consists of eight enormous run-on “sentences” – one alone of which comprises 4,391 words – without any punctuation. The episode starts and ends with the word “yes” which Joyce once described as “a female word that indicates acquiescence and the end of all resistance”.

While her husband is in bed beside her, the episode describes Molly’s private, internal thoughts and fantasies. She recalls her past and current admirers; she compares Blazes and Leopold; and she considers Leopold’s possible past infidelities. She (correctly) guesses that Leopold has masturbated that day.

Molly goes on to ruminate on how she wished she had more money for stylish clothes and how Leopold should get a higher paid job. She remembers how Leopold once suggested she pose naked for cash. Her thoughts turn to the sexual intercourse with Blazes earlier in the day, and the orgasm she had with him. She intuits the start of her period, confirming she has not been made pregnant by Blazes.

She gets out of bed to use the chamber pot. On her return to bed, she fantasizes about having sex with Stephen Dedalus and thinks about Leopold’s strange sexual habits.

Her thoughts, with inevitability and finality, turn to Rudy’s death - but she cannot bear to think on it and quickly switches the subject to avoid depression setting in. She wonders whether to sexually arouse Leopold when they awake in the morning, and reveal to him her affair with Blazes whilst so doing.

The book ends with Molly remembering her acceptance of Leopold’s marriage proposal. It is a wonderful piece of writing that causes me to experience body streaming and makes me want to cry…

“…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.”

For its depiction of the ordinary day of an ordinary man in an ordinary city, Ulysses is truly remarkable.

The following embedded videos are adaptations of Molly’s Soliloquy for screen. Molly is here played by Angeline Ball who won Best Actress from the Irish Film and Television awards for this performance.

Happy Bloomsday to you all!

And as for Guinness, I really can't abide the vile stuff!

PS: To my friend Herc who is currently cruising the Greek islands while reading Homer’s Odyssey (on which Joyce’s Ulysses was modelled), hugz and kisses and see you on your return!

Synchronicity, Serendipity & Coincidence in Virtual Worlds

In the Name of Annah,

the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities!

Haloed Be Her Eve!

Her Singtime Sung!

Her Rill be Run!

Unhemmed as it is Uneven!

from ‘Finnegan’s Wake’

James Joyce

(orig. pub. 1939)

This blog-post discusses the intuition that instances of synchronicity, serendipity and coincidence occur more frequently in Virtual Worlds than in the Atomic physical world.

I was intending to use as examples recent occurrences I have had in Second Life with Squonk Levenque and Phillip Sidek, and our respective connections to Treptower Park - both in RL and, photographed on this blog, the SL version.

However, all too rapidly the events became too intense, too entangled and too personal to try and unravel and make sense of on a public blog.

(Click images to enlarge)

In at least one respect, coincidences are very much like dreams – to the person experiencing them they can be interesting, absorbing and intensely meaningful - but, the sad fact is, that it is often awful to have to sit and listen to others’ tell of their dreams and coincidences!
And I wouldn't want to inflict that upon you, dear reader.

So with this in mind I decided to make this blog-post somewhat more general and impersonal - discussing how events in time in Virtual Worlds often seem to “flow” at an accelerated rate in comparison with their atomic equivalent.

I am not thinking here of the rather commonplace “time flies when you are enjoying yourself” experience but rather a sense that ones personal learning curve, ones personal “life experience quotient” if you will, is somehow accelerated by having a virtual presence.

It seems sometimes as if virtual living allows us to pack more life-experiences into a given unit of time than would be possible in the atomic world. I think it is therefore possible to conjecture that virtual worlds could – by design or otherwise – facilitate a kind of “emotional incubator”.

Just as we already use computerised simulators to learn skills like flying an aircraft, surgery and other mechanical procedures, it might be possible to develop virtuality to help individuals emotionally and psychologically mature at an enhanced rate.

In fact, even with the shortest time immersed in some of the many various sub-cultures in Second Life you’ll hear people say how their affinity for different types of music has expanded; tell how their understanding of, for example, the GLBT community has been improved; describe a new-found ability to communicate and empathise with people quite unlike themselves – an ability which they never previously even suspected they had.

There are many more examples beside, but the point I am trying to stress is that without any co-ordinated effort or central planning, many people are already experiencing in Virtual Worlds a rudimentary form of the “emotional incubator” I am trying to describe.

In my mind’s eye I am visualising Virtual Worlds being employed in a manner analogous to, say, the so-called “astral journeys” used to experience the Sephiroth of the Qabalistic Tree of Life or maybe some of the techniques employed in Jung’s analytical psychology - perhaps even to Timothy Leary’s and others’ claims for the therapeutic uses of psychoactive drugs like LSD.

Understand that I am not stating that “virtual worlds are like astral journeys”. Nor am I advocating the use of psychoactive drugs or expressing a preference for the psychological philosophy of Carl Jung.

Not at all. What I am attempting to do is make a comparison between their *claims* (whether real or imagined) for the “accelerated evolution of human consciousness” with what I am envisaging could be a possible similar use for Virtual Worlds.

And I do feel that there are valid grounds to compare the internal image-making consciousness-exploring techniques of the Qabalah, Jung’s psychology and psychoactive drugs with an immersive presence in Virtual Worlds.

In my First Life I have noticed that instances of synchronicity, serendipity and coincidence seem to occur more frequently when I am “in the zone”, or “riding the wave”, “on the crest of a wave”, “on a high” etc.

Things just seem to fall into place at such times – the right people call; someone passes me just the right link; the right DVD is returned to the library the day I go looking for it; I get introduced to a friend of a friend who happens to have an expertise I need. I am sure you have similar experiences.

I believe I have noticed a direct correlation between the frequency of these things and my own internal sense of well-being.

That is, the better I feel about myself the more frequent are the occurrences of synchronicities, serendipities and coincidences.

In and of themselves, it is not the synchronicities, serendipities and coincidences which are making me feel good about myself – they appear to be a side effect of some sort.

No, I think that other things are contributing to me feeling good about myself and the synchronicities, serendipities and coincidences follow on from that.

Sure, there is likely a feedback loop from there – the synchronicities, serendipities and coincidences sometimes result in changes in conditions or circumstances which then reinforce the feeling of good about myself which then in turn results in further synchronicities, serendipities and coincidences… and so on.

But there is a more fundamental cause in this chain of events, I believe.

Something, or more likely some things (plural), is/are occurring to make me feel good about myself in the first place – and this initiates the chain which we have just described.

My sense of well-being seems to be directly proportional to my sense that I am “being me”. That is, that I am behaving in a manner that is natural for me – as an individual human being – to behave; that I am creating in a way that is natural for me – again, as an individual – to create; that I am dressing, working, playing and resting as naturally befits who I am as a unique individual.

When these elements of my life are smoothly functioning like a well engineered machine, my sense of well-being sky rockets and, seemingly magically, synchronicities, serendipities and coincidences follow in abundance.

In Virtual Worlds, we find that many conditions are easier to control and influence than their Atomic World equivalents.

Objects can be moved and positioned with pin point accuracy without many of the frustrations experienced with physical objects. The avatar body can be adjusted in so many ways that it is possible to have the perfect body – no matter how one might define that. One can dress in any way or have tattoos or piercings, hairstyles, jewellery and all the rest which just may not be possible in Atomic Life, for whatever reasons. One can conduct oneself in practically any way, if on the right region or parcel, without being questioned or harshly judged.

In short, for those motivated enough, it is possible to build a simulation of the environment and personal conditions that that particular individual needs to express themselves in a more natural way than their atomic life might permit.

This, I believe, leads to an increase in ones sense of well being and, as such, has genuine therapeutic possibilities.

In this blog-post, I’m suggesting that the ability in Virtual Worlds to effortlessly manipulate objects, easily change looks and the ability to reside in a community of likeminded individuals who will allow you to behave in most any manner you wish without repercussions, sets up the exact same set of conditions which simulate the “being me” that leads to an increase in well-being.

And that, I submit, is why instances of synchronicity, serendipity and coincidence apparently occur more frequently in Virtual Worlds than in the Atomic physical world – because we are more easily able to create environments that are natural to who we are as unique human beings.

Pixie xx

Credits:

All pictures taken on 'Treptower Park' region owned by Squonk Levenque and Miuccia Klaar (co-owners of Kamikaze fashions).

Special thanks to Phillip Sidek for providing the inspiration for these thoughts and ideas.