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Lone
Wolf
Howl:
OH, THE LUCK O' THE IRISH, IT'S BLOOMSDAY
(Originally
published
in
Cochrane Times :
June 14, 2006) for the Cochrane Times — Ever since performing in The Playboy of the Western World in first year university, I wanted to be Irish. But curses to my father and his herring-stained Scandinavian lineage! I was Norwegian (and German if you count my mother’s ancestry). My sudden thirst for things Irish was cruelly quenched with a bitter draft of Teutonic waters. Despite having dark curly hair and being named Barry (from the Irish for ‘fair head’), I was forever locked in the white and red cells of my Nordic blood and did my best to accept it (I later learned that after the Vikings sacked Ireland, many remained and became – according to legend – ‘more Irish than the Irish’. Sometimes we do get our wishes after all). As time went on, I acquired more of a taste for Guinness then Aquavit (which took some doing, but once done there was no going back), listened more to James Galway than Grieg, and read James Joyce a bit more often than Knut Hamsun. Or tried to. I can still recall the pride I felt with myself upon completing his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It was just before Christmas, 1995, and I was piss-poor broke nursing an illegal third refill of coffee at Heartland café in Sunnyside, Calgary. The weather was white and icy and the radiator wasn’t cooperating by my table, but still I was fully heated from within after reading the penultimate entry in the closing diary section of the book: "Welcome O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." Great stuff. He got pretty far too with his vow, did James Augustus, before glaucoma, peritonitis and white wine took him away in 1941. By the middle of ‘96 I had read his Ulysses and the following autumn found myself cycling through Ireland (a five-pound copy of Joyce’s massive biography taking up the majority of the weight in my panniers). While in Dublin, I signed up for a Joyce walking tour, commencing at one of his many former homes in the city. A fine young docent with a lilting music box of a voice led the tour, and asked the dozen of us gathered there if anyone had read Joyce’s work. Half of us raised our hand. She asked who among us has tackled Ulysses. Mine was the sole arm floating up in the air. Did I feel brilliantly chuffed? You bet your socks. She said "Oh, then, you’ll reap the most from our little stroll today, surely you will". Every stop on the tour she mentioned an episode from the novel (wherein the Odysseus character, Leopold Bloom, wanders the streets of Dublin in a single day). "You remember the scene in the book when…" she’d lilt and sing and I’d shake my head with a "no I don’t recall that one" every time. After the fourth or fifth stop, she mercifully quit asking me. Apparently I was so amazed with myself for actually reading the book that I somehow neglected to absorb a single glorious word of it. I was, in Irish parlance, ‘a right bloody eeejit’. I left the tour at the end, with all eyes on me as a pretentious liar (luckily not a sin at all in Ireland but a virtue), and went to Davey’s pub and drank away my shame with five pints of the Devil’s Milk (heeding the local axiom to ‘never trust a beer you can see through’). I came home and quickly re-read Ulysses. A bit more of it stuck the second time around. The day Bloom wanders Dublin is June 16, 1904. The sixteenth of the sixth is ever after known in literary circles (and to those of true or wished-for Irish descent) as ‘Bloomsday’. Any self-respecting Irishman will tell you the same: "to feck with Saint Paddy’s day, for it’s a right load of shite". If you want to raise a glass to the real deal of Irish holidays (sans commercialized nonsense of green beer and ‘kiss me’ buttons) do so this Friday, June 16 -- Bloomsday. Wander into the Cumbrian Arms where they pull a fine pint of Guinness. Or stay home with your Molly and pour some Bailey’s. Or – better than both – drop by my place in the middle of the afternoon with a bottle of Bushmills and we’ll raise a glass together (if I’m not in, then just leave the bottle in the shed out back with a note – written in Gaelic – to say you were by). Whatever you choose, be sure to eat the inner organs of beasts and fowls with all the relish you can mustard upon this day. Close it off in the arms of a loved one crying out a lively orgasmic Yes to all that is. Welcome O life indeed! (www.lonewolftheatre.com) |