This year the LiberateUlysses project took a Bloomsday staycation in Baltimore to see if James Joyce’s Ulysses could live in 2014 as comfortably as it does in 1904 and in any city as naturally as it inhabits Dublin. The #UlyssesPic photographic evidence from the streets of Baltimore is displayed below for all to see.
Excerpts from Ulysses that inspired this Baltimore #UlyssesEpic:
1
Wish I had a full length oil-painting of her then. June that was too I wooed. The year returns. History repeats itself. Life, love, voyage round your own little world. And now?
2
Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy sweat perfume. Always the same, year after year.
3
—Hello, Bloom. What’s the best news? Is that today’s? Show us a minute.
—You can keep it, Mr Bloom said.
—Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo. Maximum the second.
—I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said.
4
Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really? Plant him and have done with him. Like down a coalshoot. Then lump them together to save time.
5
I do not like that other world she wrote. No more do I. Plenty to see and hear and feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you. Let them sleep in their maggoty beds. They are not going to get me this innings. Warm beds: warm fullblooded life.
6
He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type. Reads it backwards first. How quickly he does that job. Practice makes perfect. Seems to see with his fingers.
7
Astonishing the things people leave behind them in trains and cloak rooms. What do they be thinking about? Women too. Incredible.
8
Beauty: it curves, curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world admires.
9
—Three cheers for Israel!
—And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God.
—By Jesus, says he, I’ll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name.
10
She looked at him a moment, meeting his glance, and a light broke in upon her. She drew herself up to her full height. Their souls met in a last lingering glance. Yes, it was her he was looking at and there was meaning in his look.
11
Mr Mulligan had resolved to purchase the freehold of Lambay island. He proposed to set up there a national fertilising farm to be named Omphalos with an obelisk hewn and erected after the fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman services for the fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever.
12
Professor Bloom is a finished example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many have found him a dear man, a dear person.
13
(Against the dark wall a figure appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an Eton suit.) BLOOM (Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly.) Rudy!
14
Would the departed never nowhere nohow reappear?
Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic planets, astronomical waifs and strays
15
those fine young men I could see down in Margate strand bathingplace standing up in the sun naked like a God or something why arent all men like that thered be some consolation for a woman like that lovely little statue he bought I could look at him all day long curly head I often felt I wanted to kiss him all over
16
a nice plant for the middle of the table Id get that cheaper in wait wheres this I saw them not long ago I love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven theres nothing like nature
NOTE: This project would not have been possible without the enthusiasm, imagination, and skill of my friends Dan and Mary. Dan provided the Joycean expertise, vehicular muscle, and modeling endurance; Mary the photographic hardware, artist’s eye, and a magical way with light and lenses. — Steve Cole, Baltimore, Md. USA
