Cataractic planets

and astronomical illusions

This country’s gone mad, hasn’t it? Made mad been mad gone mad all mad. Mad as in insane but not the good kind. Mad absurd. Living in an SNL skit or Gulliver’s Travels while others live under bombs. Piles of dead children. What’s it like in your part of the world?

I’m reading something beautiful and marvelous. The word marvelous. I’ve found a group online that reads James Joyce’s Ulysses in 80 days. Here’s the link if you want to join. Perhaps mad but joycean mad. Here’s something beautiful and marvelous:

Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent. The seas’ ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat, vague on the bright skyline, and a sail tacking by the Muglins.

Or this:

“Oomb, alwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring wayawayawayawayawayaway.

I’ve never read Ulysses — have tried several times but this group and the very neat way someone has organized the website and the schedule and the comments is seductive, really. The audio version that I listen to (Irish accents!) while I read is great. I also have a remarkable illustrated edition that is so heavy I can barely hold it in my lap, but if I rest it on the dining room table, I can read it while I listen. Do I know what’s going on? Not exactly, but I love the language. I let it wash over me.

What do you think his cataractic planets are? So many astronomical allusions. Or illusions. Grateful to be pulled into a text quite literally and live in it.

I saw an aerial view of a blue whale just under the surface of the ocean right down the coast a bit. How can we complain when such a creature is swimming nearby? Or maybe we can complain but why bother when such a creature is swimming nearby. The word ripple. She looked effortless weightless and blue in blue. The spiracle at the top of the head through which she breathes air. I’d like to draw a spiracle right here, or maybe even a spiral. Something endless and endlessly beautiful.

What else is there to tell you? Do you need anything but Joyce’s cataractic planets and my blue whales? Shall I rant about the Claw in front of the House, the beast who lives inside and his blue bruised hands, his grift and graft? The young finish high school and wait on university yet. Yet. The children of the Palisades whose schools burnt down last year make moving speeches. The head of the department of war continues his relentless scouring of Black people and women from his ranks, his limbs sausages packed into a smug blue suit. A nasty man. People wear crosses as jewelry. The skies are hazy then blue, the June gloom. My eyes are heavy and dry and paradoxically water and leak. I dab at them with a tissue and peer at my peering, the tiny red veins behind which is a globe of sorts, a planet, an orb. I did have cataracts, but were they cataractic?

wayawayawayawayawayaway

Do you hear that echo?

I wish sometimes that Sophie could talk.