Deeper and Deeper

Kate and I just celebrated our second anniversary, not the first day of spring this year (well, the first complete day maybe, but the earth actually moved into its springtime orbit Sunday night). We were limited by budget, as we are in most all other respects these days, so our celebration was cards given to each other and a big pot roast dinner (featuring cauliflower instead of potatoes since I'm now back on the diet).

My erratic work history since early January (when Triton's roof caved in from snow), including about four days of cab driving, along with difficulty securing another cycle of unemployment payments, has badly damaged our already feeble budget. We have telephone, internet and TV service right now largely by the graces of the service provider, since we're about two months behind on our bill. But now that Kate's through her winter cycle of vacations and snow days, and now that I'm at least receiving steady unemployment aid, I do see our situation remaining modest but stable.

So while I apply for work and stay at home minding Eva, I have lots of time to engage in other things.

I wasn't particuarly literate as a teenager. I was nerdy, imaginative and solitary, and I loved singing, but I wasn't really a serious student of anything at all (except maybe Saturday morning cartoons). I still remember how, when I was in 6th grade, my cousin Monie (who was going to Dartmouth at the time) gave me a book as a present and told me that she knew I loved to read.

Really, I loved to read? Honestly, it was news to me. I had no idea at that age that I loved to read.

I remember how, in third grade, one of those book fairs came to my elementary school, with all the tables spread throughout the library. It was thrilling to see so many colorful books in one place, and of course I wished I could buy them all, but that was really a pretty shallow kind of interest. My best friend bought The Hobbit, and I resolved to buy a thicker book, so I bought The Return of the King.

In fifth grade I tried reading it, made it about a paragraph in, got confused and bored, and set it down until eighth grade.

But back to Monie's gift: A Wind in the Door, by Madeleine L'Engle. I'd never heard of her, and though the back of the book described it as being the second part of a trilogy (1: A Wrinkle in Time; 2: A Wind in the Door; 3: A Swiftly Tilting Planet), I gave it a go. It was very entertaining, and I quickly read the other two. And still, when I think of cherubim, the lower angels, I still tend to think of a whirling mass of wings and eyes, like in L'Engle's book. (As an aside, when I learned that the original concept of seraphim was winged cobras, I was very, very impressed. I mean, that's worthy of Calvin & Hobbes. Ain't nobody messing with a legion of them.)

So, maybe Monie did kind of get me on the love-to-read thing, but it's not like I became some super-literary prodigy in high school. I just did my homework, generally found it pretty easy, and got into college. It was really that simple. By the time I got there, I'd read perhaps two Shakespeare plays (Julius Caesar and maybe Romeo and Cleopatra), and I know I'd heard of James Joyce and Dante, but I do know I'd never read a thing by either. Heck, among American A-listers, by college I'd read Huckleberry Finn by Twain and maybe four or five short stories by Poe. I've still yet to read my first book by Hemingway. I wasn't much of an aficionado, at all.

Among the many other causes for my complete spinout and utter failure at Dartmouth (yes, I had a B average, but you could almost get that by showing up), not realizing in high school what hard work really is, is probably a part. But I had four years at Dartmouth to figure out just exactly what hard work is, and I didn't, so my results are all on me.

Fortunately, I've had two big occasions in the past year to cool my heels for weeks or months at a time: severe colitis last spring, and unemployment this winter. Among other things--like spending lots of time raising and getting to know my daughter--I can devote several hours a day to reading, like I haven't in many years. (Reading science and studying math aren't literature, so I'm not counting time spent doing that.)

And all over again I'm feeling regret for the opportunity I blew in college to spend time doing nothing but this--reading and exploring ideas. I have no idea what direction my study might have taken had I deferred for one year between high school and college (my original idea), and gained a bit of social maturity before heading in. Would I have stuck with literature or tried something else completely? I don't know.

But I can say that this winter, moving from Thoreau to Homer to Joyce has been one of the bright lights during a season that at times has been very dark. I've posted a few times about Finnegans Wake, and won't go into great length here. I have my commentaries and annotations and I'm delving into the book itself now--still in Part 1 chapter 1, having skimmed it once and now going through with a finer comb to get at least a working sense of some of the puns (stay us wherefore in our search for tighteousness, O Sustainer, what time we rise and when we take up to toothmick and before we lump down upon our leatherbed and in the night and at the fading of the stars!). It's slow going, as you might imagine.

Not without its reward, however--you might liken it to climbing a very tall mountain with no clear path, only a jumble of rocks to keep clambering over. Or there's Joyce's own analogy, that the Wake was him burrowing into a mountain from several different sides. The book's incoherence is a result of being about the dream state, when the mind's unconscious thoughts and desires are manifest, and the elements of myth are revealed as the building blocks of our dreams. Religion and mythology are the external product of our sleeping neuroses.

Now the book is much more than that. Joyce, like most expatriates, remained deeply concerned with his home country, and the plots of his books were all located in Dublin. He believed that by understanding Dublin thoroughly, he could understand any city on earth. The all is contained in the particular. So Dublin of Finnegans Wake is used as a prism for all times and places in human history (and prehistory).

But even with all these fragments of history and literature and language scattered within the book's psychological matrix, still a disproportionate number of the fragments refer to Irish heritage, history and culture. And there's plenty of amusement in the references. One series of puns goes: Sobs they sighdid at Fillagain's chrissormiss wake, all the hoolivans of the nation...There was plumbs and grumes and cheriffs and citherers and raiders and cinemen too.

Now to unpack this just a bit. Fillagain's wake = Finnegan's wake. Chrissormiss...hoolivans...plumbs and grumes (etc.) = Mrs. Hooligan's Christmas Cake, another folk ditty.

And that ditty goes:

MRS. HOOLIGAN'S CHRISTMAS CAKE

As I sat in me window last evenin'
A letterman came unto me.
He'd a nice little neat invitation
Sayin' "Won't you come over to tea?"
I knew it was Hooligan sent it
So I went for our friendship's sake
And the first thing he gave me to tackle
Was a slice of Mrs. Hooligan's cake.

REFRAIN:
There were plums and prunes and cherries
There were raisins, currants and cinnamon too.
There were nuts and cloves and berries
but the crust it was stuck on with glue.
There were caraway seeds in abundance,
It would give yer a fine stomach ache
'Twould kill any man twice to be eatin'
A slice of Mrs Hooligan's Christmas cake.

Now Bridie Mulligan wanted to taste it,
Ah but sure it was all of no use.
Though she worked at it over one hour
Still she could get not any of it loose.
Till Hooligan went for the hatchet,
And Kelly came in with the saw
That cake was enough, by the power,
To paralyse any man's jaw.

(REFRAIN)

Now Mrs. Hooligan proud as a peacock,
she was smilin' and blinkin' away
Till she tripped over Flanigan's brogans
and spill'd the whole brewins of tay.
Mrs Hooly, she cried: "You're not eatin'.
Won't you try a bit more for my sake."
"I've a roof to repair, Misses Hoolie,
so I'd like the recipe for that cake."

(REFRAIN)

I'm not even going into the history or the dream interpretation stuff. One really thrilling aspect about this book (about any good book, really, each in its own way): it's an education in itself.