Indeed, it does rain in Eire. The last day and a half has been rather quiet.
I don't start work until Monday but, before I do that, I have to schedule and complete a confirmation interview with Cllr. LaHart to make sure that it's a good fit. I've been unable to raise him on the telephone thus far, however, so I've been sitting around rather quietly. I'd go seek some sort of adventure, but I don't want to risk being unavailable when he calls.
Thankfully, there is plenty to do around the flat. The most desirable feature of my room is that it has a window that stretches from the floor to the ceiling. Outside my window, in front of a cement-like wall, a tree grows. I've become used to having a tree outside my window over the last few years: it's good to tell the weather by, to shade the sun, or to stand in quiet dignity. For whatever reason, I'm glad to have a tree in front of my window, and glad that I have a window even if most of what I can see is a magnificent vista of the sides of other apartment buildings.
"Put even a fool in front of a window and you'll get a Spinoza."
And so I spent most of yesterday in front of the window, waiting for the phone to ring, watching the clouds, and reading. I refreshed the political news websites every few minutes to watch the end of the laboriously lengthy democratic nominating process.
Every now and then I shuffled into the kitchen to review the 4 items of food that I own and try to decide if I was interested in eating any of them. Usually I wasn't, so I returned to my room to carry on with Ulysses. I have found, to my elation, that the convent I discovered a few days ago in the back alley is one of the places that Leo Bloom visits in Ulysses! In fact, I now recognize much of the streets, statues, buildings and landmarks that Bloom passes by from my own preliminary perambulations about Dublin. It's a very interesting sensation to be able to recall from my own memory - even as Joyce is describing it from his - what Bloom would have seen had he actually walked down Nassau Street to Dawson and across Stephen's Green. Reading this book is a much fuller and more gratifying experience now that I've been to Dublin for a few days. As silly as it sounds, that's one of the reasons I wanted to come: to walk and to experience Dublin as it remains in the pages. I'm not surprised, now, that I was totally unable to make any progress through Ulysses before: its setting is unusually integrated into the pathos of the characters, to the extent that knowledge of the setting is required to fully appreciate the books' events. Lacking a knowledge of the city, as I did, meant that I also lacked the ability to grasp one of the most powerful elements of the novel: the way in which the people are inseparable from their city, and the way their environment exerts forces upon them. Landscape need not be passive, and the fact that this particular landscape is real makes the novel's project all the more compelling. Joyce said that, were Dublin to disappear, he hoped that people would be able to reconstruct it from the pages of his books. Perhaps such a thing could be accomplished.
Today has been slow so far, as I'm still waiting to set up my interview. I walked out to the market to get some milk and bread (since the free supply in our welcome package has dwindled) but, other than that, have been stationary. Tonight we're all meeting in a pub for food (which I will happily attend) and then we're having a "treasure hunt" (which I shall almost certainly skip).
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