- didn't anybody tell you ; this river is full of lost sharks -

...it's time to admit it: I'm afraid of Ulysses.

Not so much the myth or the man, but the behemoth novel sitting on the third shelf of my 'show' bookcase.

I dabbled in James Joyce's classic for a class in University; it may have been Irish Lit, it might have been Lit Theory, but I remember looking through the first part of the novel with a wonder at the play on words and space within the pages. Something about its unusual formatting must have stuck with me, as the memory might have tweaked my interest, a couple of years later, with Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves in the surprising cold of Japanese winter.

But it's time to face the original. May 2010 was all about output - I tried to draw and/or write every day of the month, and while I wasn't successful, I sure came closer than I did in the preceding few months. It was a good return. I'm still working on the write-something-you-wouldn't-show-your-parents challenge (aha!); time will see where that goes.

But in the wake of returning from two centres of the universe (Los Angeles: timewarped and well-walked; epicurious, sun-warmed and full of old friends and moon-boy topiaries and new diversions; Toronto: brick and ivy and Singapore-clean in the leadup to the g20 summit; rhubarb jam and Oka in the Financial district and Wit-ty beers in the Distillery; blistering sun, genteel history, family ties, and remembering what the my heart wants) I decided that June 2010 will be about input. Let's see if I can mind-walk those Dublin streets beside Leopold Bloom more successfully this time.


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♥ music of the moment: secret meeting