Transubstantiation for the Guinness Weary

When I think of Joyce I think of spindle-elm, rectors’ benches and ash-switches, the thrash and wail of God’s will into the seats of little boy’s knee-pants. Joyce’s inimitable understanding of Aquinas is evident throughout A Portrait, Ulysses and the Wake, Stephen’s exegesis on substantive form, Jesuit dogma and surplice, a Hegelian kick at the merciless mercy of a higher Jesuit education. As I am rereading Aquinas, under the tutelage of an inimitable Thomistic scholar, I can see the connections that Joyce makes between religious messianic and dogs’bodies; James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, Young Hegelian, slayer of transubstantiation and dogma, canon fodder for the intemperate and Guinness-weary.

Private Joyce

1. From Molly at 1pm on a morning where she had simply become part of the bed linen. Wondering if she had the energy to get out of the bed, she lay there instead. Contemplating limpness, finally she enjoyed her own company in a valley of warm strawberry dreams.

2. Bloom wandered into the bar and ordered two eggs and bread. The eggs were like the the coughed up throat of an old man. Two greasy smears of lippy yolks on his lips. Two snot-rods of toast and a warm, brown beer.

3. A walk down to the beach and I picked up two stones. I brought them home and put them in a glass jar. They were trapped. I wondered what death would be like to a small pip of a shelled creature. Globed and happy, a head that can retreat, retreat, retreat.

4. Molly wondered how his words had gone all wrong since she had gone. They were not full of passion any more. She had gone away, away, away. How, when they had talked, his words had been much stronger, full of joy. Now they had lost all heart and the saddest part was that he knew it. Words that were like confetti at a divorce hearing.

5. Look into the sky. The clouds make words and they are only there for a moment. People are tangible, they go, go, go and then (of course) they return. Winter warmers and then freeze.

6. In 1975, two lovers met and they wrapped themselves together. They then covered themselves in cling-film and then gently cut off the cling film with surgical scissors. Two empty figures made of shiny plastic.

7. Now that she is with child and you are back on the mobile sending text messages to your new found friend, will it follow a similar passage? You sleep nose to tail and then you feel her belly - trying for a baby was not so hard and then she plumped up nicely like a piece of gammon. Not like the corned beef skin she used to have with that flaccid hair. Better care for her now, eh?

8. She put on her hat and looked for a pen that Bloom had left. He wrote down his life and then his memory was lost. He did care for her after all, old 'Poldy. How strange to think that after all...