Interstellar Trail: Short Piece

Interstellar Trail

By Armando Ortiz

Buddhist teaching,

word and symbol,

Vajra standing

on paper still.

Diamond sutra

hemp on plaster,

hand moving faster

laying a path of ink.

Holy priest floating

riding on tiger clouds,

dismembering ego

promising redemption.

Horse of the Great Plateau

rumbling into war

chariot of fire

demolishing walls.

Flying creature

found in white clouds

on frozen blue sky

protects the spirit trail.

Ancient pilgrim

walking through desert

passing through gorges

finding knowledge in the sacred.

Old Tibetan libraries

under constant repair

after years of cultural warfare

on silent mountain valleys.

Ring the bell

of present chant,

the setting sun

washed in corral dye.

Sketched masterpieces

capture the moment

the violet sky turns onyx

revealing the source of clamor.

Palace of refuge

with dining hall

where longing gets quenched

in a banquet under Guanyin’s eye.

Master’s imagination

sketched on paper

for blind men to follow

the pattern of the shining

interstellar ember.

Sutras kept alive

on blueprint scrolls,

four sided walls repeating

the divine cycle that’s law.

Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely: Book Review

Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely: Review and Reflection

By Armando Ortiz

Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely is a quick reading novel that takes place in the late-1930's, and begins along Central Avenue in Los Angeles. There the private detective Philip Marlowe finds himself in front Florian’s, a hotel that’s lost its glitter and now is mostly a seedy gambling den. For one reason or another, he is in search of a missing person when he is swept up by a chance encounter with a man who is also looking for someone. This part of Los Angeles is now considered the historical Jazz corridor of the city, which back in the day, between the 1930’s through the 1950’s, was a place where African Americans were allowed to own businesses. Marlowe becomes a quasi-accomplice to a murder that happens in the building. The crime is eventually solved though to get through to the end one goes through a roller coaster ride of intrigue, action, racism, mystery and emotions. Chandler manages to capture Marlowe’s ebb and flow as a heavy drinker, and also gives the reader a glimpse into a city that was less populated, where its streets and traffic were barely beginning to have congestion. More important to the landscape, Marlowe swims in the midnight waters of the deep underground where gigolos, con-artists, gamblers, gangsters, former convicts and corrupt officials mingle in hidden dens, within canyon mansions or boats that are anchored a few miles from the coast.

Marlowe’s office is located in Hollywood, but he is constantly zipping to the beach, police stations around downtown L.A., and driving up desolate canyons that today are riddled with multi-million dollar mansions.  He describes places, like Central Ave where the majority are Hispanic, but that back then was a place where African-Americans made up the majority, but this was mainly due to laws that segregated them to a specific area of this urban oasis. Through his literary lens, Chandler gives the reader a context to the different waves of residents that the city has encountered throughout the years since its establishment, while at the same time showing us a glimpse of how crime was treated back in those days. According to the novel, if a white man killed a black man it would only be considered a misdemeanor, which in a very interesting way sheds light into the manner the media sees crime in Los Angeles.

Some of his descriptions are flawless. The beach which is at the edge of Bay City (Santa Monica, CA) is described in a very beautiful manner, making it at once the delicate bracelet of a Hollywood starlet, as seen from a boat that floats in the ocean from a mile away, but also as a place where the smells of tar intertwine with the coastal breeze. He makes you stand at the top of a hill, maybe somewhere along a ridge in Temescal Canyon allowing you to see what he saw. The once desolate canyons are now secluded enclaves for the rich with foreign people that continue to serve the residents there and make the daily commute from the forgotten pockets of L.A. that never make the evening news. In recent times it has been in the canyons of Los Angeles where dismembered body parts have been found, most recently in 2012.

Central Ave today.

The apartment buildings and its front gardens are similar to the ones I saw while growing up in Los Angeles and continue to see in some of the older areas that have yet to be touched by the bulldozers or replaced by mega-luxury apartments that are completely enclosed and exclusive. Art-deco structures built with walls that could hide a bed with a slight lift from one end, and iceboxes that were built into the wall of a kitchen, though no longer functioning makes one wonder what could be found in the more modern structures of today. Places like Central Ave that were slowly going through a transformation is where you now find people that are mostly of Hispanic heritage, walking along its much more rundown side streets and who drive up and down the avenue that’s lined with small ranch markets, discount stores, church congregations, shamans, tattoo parlors, seedy beauty salons and mechanic shops. African Americans, now are an old remnant of the past, having spread out to different parts of the city, just like the white folk that peppered those areas when Chandler was alive.  

Santa Monica.

Sage is a natural feature that is prominent in the story as it engulfs Marlowe when he visits the surrounding hillsides of the city. You know you are entering or have arrived at a more solitary place because the artificial lights and neon signs disappear, the sky becomes particularly darker, and again, the smell of sage hovers and blankets the uninhabited areas of future suburbs. The sounds and smells of the ocean also become accentuated by the more desolate areas of Bay City, making the reader appreciate what once was but that which continues to endure though maybe now you have to drive a bit father to encounter what he saw, like the city’s long arid coastline, and canyons that in spring give birth to many types of wildflowers, though more sparsely now than before.

Chandler left behind a literary gem that future travelers, residents and readers of Los Angeles will one day find themselves experiencing as he too explored the city and retold those meanderings through Marlowe’s narration. Reading his novel is like reading a series of vignettes that keep getting your attention, hooking you with his entrancing character descriptions and unique blend of metaphors and word play. His paragraphs seem to be complete scenes that say everything that must be told, but leave enough to have you reading more.  It lets you uncover facets of LA that you might not have been aware of by peeling away at some of the things that sometimes we ignore, like the fine mud pellets that are created by late-summer morning drizzle or like the humming birds that feed off of ruby bottlebrushes. It’s a good read and well worth the time for anyone wanting to read some good literature, but also for anyone that wants to be transported back to a time when the city was just beginning to become a major urban center.

Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities: Book Review

Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities: Review

By Armando Ortiz

In Italo Calvino’s novel Invincible Cities we find Marco Polo sharing with Kublai Khan, former king of China and of the Mongols, his recollections of the cities he came across within the realms of the Khan’s kingdom and those on its margins. Marco engages the supreme leader of the steppe peoples in conversation over games of chess, while strolling through private gardens, and discusses ideas and theories over lavish dinners. In many ways Calvino takes us through cities that could not only exist in the realm of the material but also within the minds of our collective unconscious. The conversations are brief and what we are mostly treated to are descriptions of magical places that seem to just be suspended in a universe of imagination and possibilities. His cities have shadows, and those shadows also make a symphonic cacophony of life that exists there, be it a simple howling wind, the hustle and bustle of nameless bazaars, the smell of burning oil lamps, and the crashing of water onto the rocky coast of a city. Animate and inanimate mirages combine to become places where you find crystal palaces, cities that function as desert oasis to wanderers and travelers alike. The sewer systems of a city, its catacombs and chandeliers also become places where beings gather to create and imagine, and those people in many ways become reflections of other realities.

At one point Marco Polo reflects on the cities that he has encountered and comes to realize that quite possibly he’s been describing different facets of his own hometown, Venice. We might very well be from a place that we think we know well, but when we dissect its different realities we come to realize that maybe what we thought was our city is actually a collection of invisible experiences known to no one else but ourselves. Our backyard isn’t everyone’s block and neighborhood, but in fact just a spec of amazing orbits that make up a larger whole. At one point Polo describes a city that exists suspended in midair and in another recollection, the images that reflect off the water make up the independent realities that those reflections have independent of its originators. It is a world of unlimited possibilities, and through his novel we come to discover we might very well be living in an imaginary city ourselves.

The possibilities presented in Calvino’s book are the limits to our imagination and to our capabilities. Though we might be invisible to others, we still dream and if you imagine it may come to be, and if you desire to explore you might very well realize that this whole earth has been your realm of exploration, like an endless excursion of what has been and what is becoming. We not only are the traveler but also the lord of the things that transpire. Though not the Khan, Marco has managed to captivate the lord’s imagination whose only desire is to bring peace to its inhabitants and become familiar with his kingdom. All kinds of characters make their appearance in the novel and the mythical lives of spirits and gods are discussed, and yet at the end of the novel all we have are two characters one who recounts and tells of his travels, and the other who listens entranced by the tales entering and conquering his mind. Calvino takes us on a journey of dreams that become real and so to our dream can become invisible cities where anything is possible.

Stansport Tent: Denali II Two Person Backpacking Tent

Stansport Backpacking Tent: Reflection and Review

By Armando Ortiz

Spring 2009, first camping trip with tent.

I bought my first camping tent back in 2009 at a surplus store in Moss Landing, California. It was in the back of a huge military storage container tucked in between other larger items, ammunition boxes and wool blankets, where I found the portable tent. It was blue and gray Stansport Denali II two person backpacking tent that I bought that day and since then this living space has given comfort and protected me from different weather conditions that have arisen in my travels. I’ve used the tent mostly to camp in California, along the coast, inside the redwood forest, up in the mountains, and have also used it at local music festivals.

Valley of the Rouge State Park

The tent has held up well, keeping its integrity despite a nick on the floor from grounds that have been covered in rocks, sticks and pine-cones. Nonetheless a good tarp or footprint has provided an extra layer of protection, but as any camper I’ve made sure to clear up areas I choose to hunker down on. The two aluminum poles continue to work fine along with the zippered doors. You can set up the tent in a couple of minutes and move it to a better spot if need be, before the stakes are hammered into the ground to give it better stability. Because it is so light, and can be moved around after the tent is pitched, as you break up camp it’s easy remove sand or debris that makes its way inside by simply picking it up and giving it a couple of good shakes.

I also discovered how versatile this tent can be, with the rainfly helping to keep my shoes and backpack water and dust free, while keeping things separate from inside and yet easily accessible, at arm’s length. The vestibule also has allowed me to redirect air flow into the tent more freely by letting me roll up different parts of the rainfly. The doors of the domed tent can also be rolled up, allowing for more air flow from any direction and yet a high level of privacy is maintained. It conveniently lets me roll my tent doors so that the mesh doors protect me from bugs, giving me a chance to nap in the day time.

Roasting corn.

During my camping trip to Southern Oregon and Northern California this past summer my seven year old tent withstood late spring rains at Valley of the Rouge State Park, kept me warm and cozy at Harris Beach State Park and MacKerricher State Park where the cold coastal winds bring in the summer fog to the camping areas and the temperature drops to the chilly upper 40s. It protected me from the clouds of mosquitoes that hovered over Standish-Hickey State Park and Hendy Woods State Park, turning a nuisance into an opportunity to relax and read a book while resting inside comfortably. Because it is backpacking tent, it is very light weight and is kept in the trunk of my car. Its portability makes it ready for any well planned trip or one that has been made at the spur of the moment. It continues to do its job, to protect me from the elements, and is still enduring the test of time. I continue to look forward to returning to the wilderness or of simply finding an excuse to go car camping. I know that this Stansport tent will hold up and continue to give me shelter.

Humboldt Redwoods State Park

Roberto Bolano's Amulet: Book Review

Roberto Bolano’s Amulet: Book Review

By Armando Ortiz

Migration of birds come and go every season. In the summer months, they fly north to the plains and plateaus of North America. As winter approaches, they return south to the Caribbean and southern parts of Mexico. At one time these movements of birds might have created visuals in the sky of ever moving dancers, and clouds could have been metamorphosing into splatters. Imagine farmers and hunters, just four generations ago, shooting shotguns into the air. In one afternoon seeing hundreds of birds just fall to the ground. Mix with those years of polluting fumes and oil spills. Now, all we see are glimpses of things that were, the sounds that we hear are just an acoustic tune to the symphonic sounds that the wildlife of America once breathed. We wake up, and might not pay much care to the sounds that emanate from outside of the window. Its background noise that disturbs our waking life, like a squeaky wheel that demands attention, whether you like it or not, it’s there, like the small birds that make tiny dust bowls on the ground of local parks, that is what remains, a forgotten memory mixed with the present.

In Roberto Bolano’s Amulet he brings that experience into focus through Auxilio Lacouture, the main character and narrator of the novel, who also represents the past and present of the Americas. She is an imaginary figure that survives the military takeover of the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1968. A few months before the Olympics were hosted in Mexico City there were major protests. Many of these movements were against the corruption that people saw within the government, and its suppression of organizations trying to improve social conditions for everyone in the country. She finds herself in the women’s bathroom, on the 4th floor of the philosophy building, and these she hides. She claims to be the mother of Mexican poetry, while others in the book contend that she is the mother of all American poetry. Hiding in the restroom for several days marks her and those memories become intertwined with her legendary status throughout the novel.

We can feel her breath, the passing of time, the withering of her body, but also the hopes that emanate from her spirit. We learn more about her by what she reads as a way for Bolano to introduce us to more authors, different artists and music that we might not be familiar with. Spanish poets that appear at the start of the story, have different political views, but similar talents. Artists like Remedios Varo, a surrealist painter, and music from Spain.

Auxilio lives a harsh life, spending time at bars and cafes with fellow writers and artists. She is a free spirit, born in Uruguay, living illegally in Mexico City and always doing odd jobs for professors and writers alike. Living a poet’s life, one that Roberto Bolano probably lived. In Mexico City Bolano spent time with artists and poets, and was a member of the poetic movement, Infrarealism. Though she has not had “success” she is a definite presence amongst the literary crowds of the city. It is through her encounters with other writers and artists that we also learn and gain insight into the richness of the Spanish language and its legacy in the Americas.

Spending most of the time roaming the streets with fellow artists she is known by the underground and is a close friend to recently returned Chilean poet Arturo Belano, the author’s alter ego. She finds affinity for the young writer because he too has experienced hardships. He has traveled and walked through the different valleys of Spanish speaking Americas and he too has aspirations. Bolano shows us how even without her papers being in order, Auxilio is able to navigate and intermingle with Mexico City’s creative currents that interact with the seedier sections of Mexican society. She sees the different facets of an artist’s life and the hacks that exist amongst the crowds; she lives a few months in a room and moves on. Her life is a continual ebb and flow of experiences, as if she is reflecting on all that she has experienced. Within that life you see that poetry and the culture give her sustenance. In many ways it is a metaphor to Bolano’s life as a writer and testament to his travels throughout the Spanish speaking world. As she reflects on her life experiences and the moments spent in the restroom of the 4th floor it all becomes clear that the only reason to live is to hope for another day. Another day of life is a day of ecstasy where she lives through the night again and welcomes the rising of the sun and sees the inhabitants of the city wake up to a hustle and bustle.

Towards the later part of the novel Auxilio has a vision or dream where she is walking a tall mountain and she sees a sea of humanity converging into one. Within that human caravan emerges a migrating sparrow and the elusive quetzal. One new this land, while the other indigenous to the Americas. There are defeats and victories, and within that a new hope, a new tomorrow, and a new rise. It represents the forging of a new culture and the dream of having the art of writing nurtured by those who roam the night and write down their thoughts. Auxilio has made Mexico her home, and although she is illegal, that is where she flourishes. In a similar vein, people from Latin America migrate to the US, and their presence enriches and alters its culture and language. Another way of looking at Roberto’s vision is by examining a map of the world and seeing that the Spanish language continues to exist and the influences that each valley, nation, and region have over other Spanish speaking communities is still significant, and relevant, which creates a literary culture that is varied, flourishing and vibrant.

Autumn Leaves in Beijing

Autumn Leaves in Beijing

by Armando Ortiz

Two shadows were following me last night, giving the body a shivering fright. I turned around to see who was behind, but it was the street lights casting two shadows in the night. Walking home, and hearing noises scattering from the sides, the breeze sweeping the autumn leaves on the floor, but out of sight.

At a distance a black cat ran, crossing my path looking for cover, becoming a discarded newspaper twisting, scattering, and making my thoughts stutter. Discarded rubbish blown along, like dark ocean waves, became black tarantulas that crawled on the ground.

Later, I woke up in a cold sweat to the clanging of the metal door- late October, when winds shake pots and pans past the midnight hour. Traffic lights and flag poles shaking and resonating like a lone drumstick that lands on a snare drum.

On that crisp and starry night, I was afraid that death would soon take hold, and blind me with nightmare dreams while locked inside an endless dawn. Even if living on an island I would not be at peace, because something was haunting, but the mind remained clueless to what that could be.

In Beijing, amongst retired folk that woke up early to do their morning taichi is where I lived, frosty breaths blending with dawn’s flowing air. They seemed unfazed with nature’s change that was in the air, and moved their arms as if spinning and mixing clay-wares.

It was like being in a Bergman film, where I was supposed to see my body stiff, but then the next day the heater came on, and the warmth of my home, became a shelter of safety from the cold crawling into every corner of the city.

The last days of autumn, when the warm colors that trees wear fall to the ground, and brown dead leaves 

announce the blistering winter’s arrival, who with sweeping broom sounds, rakes away all that has passed, 

bringing a stiffening cold season that will refuse to move fast.

One Day You Will Remember: Short Piece

One day you will remember

By Armando Ortiz

One day you will remember my love and kindness. Seasonal winds will begin to shift south, heading toward distant reserves, and a misty drizzle will be heard from the window, but outside a sun brighter than light will breathe a baking wind on to you. Then a mountain of butterflies will appear on the date when you should recall my words.

On that day, pine trees will become bouquets of orange poppies that hang from every branch, and the hands of our giving mother will unfold as monarchs that rest on green needles sharing memories of us with every flap of their wings.

It will be a clear autumn day, where delicate yellow like leaves will remain suspended in midair, never to touch ground, under a noon sun. Despite this broken heart, harvester butterflies will pass you bye, and then, when I’m no longer here, they will whisper these words, “My love for you was an endangered phenomenon.”

Tao Lin's Taipei: Book Review

"Mandala 15" by Tao Lin

Tao Lin’s Taipei: Review

By Armando Ortiz

If novelists were to be rappers then the one writer that stands out above all rappers today is Tao Lin. There have been some people in the internet that have compared his current novel, Taipei to Drake’s Nothing Was Same, but I won’t be doing that here. Nope, Tao Lin is the equivalent to an underground rapper like Pimp C, Curren$y or Danny Brown. Lin is a great storyteller like many that tell their stories of drug infused orgies and adventures. In Taipei, the main character, Paul, is a young up and coming writer who embarks on various trips to promote his book, taking road trips to other nearby cities or traveling to visit family in other states and outside the country. Paul’s drugs of choice are pills of the prescription kind that are used today, but tend to be highly addictive. He takes excessive amounts of Adderall, Xanax or other anxiety and depression type prescription drugs. He also infuses these drug trips with mushrooms, LSD, and excessive marijuana smoking, activities which most rappers talk about these days.

Tao Lin

I had come across Tao Lin while reading an article in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago, it must have been the book review section of the newspaper. I was impressed by what I read, prompting me to look his name up using Wikipedia, discovering his blog, which I briefly read, and leading me to purchase a copy of Taipei. Paul is trying to make a name for himself and is enjoying relative fame amongst the literary and art crowd of New York. In addition to being a writer, Paul is going through a bad breakup that has kept him in the pits for the last few months. Despite that he goes to various gatherings that his friends organize where he mingles with other up and comers. Swimming through the house parties that he’s invited to, Paul ends up meeting a new chick at one of these events, and suddenly his wit and conversational prowess are revived. In many ways she becomes his new, yet elusive, muse. The tension that sprouts between this new and emerging relationship is what truly drives the story, since this new and relative unknown is what gives Lin’s novel another level of interest, engaging the reader not only through his creative and long descriptions of dinners and city life, but giving the reader a glimpse into the tensions in dating and relationships in our contemporary world.

Paul seems apprehensive about the relationship, displaying his fear that what is happening might turn into a disappointment and lead to a breakup. Nonetheless there is a glimmer of hope that emerges within the story and we see instances of general happiness, and satisfaction with his new partner. On the other hand, both characters like to engage in some heavy recreational drug use which results in hours of sleeping in his tiny room or simply spending hours together but on each other’s computers and communicating via text, email or instant messaging. Their excesses signals that their relationship might end up being toxic, but Paul and his girl still don’t know what will happen with them even after returning from a trip abroad.

Taipei by Tao Lin

In many ways Lin describes not only contemporary life in an American city, but also shows the realities that come with being connected to the internet, having portable electronic devices, which in many ways depersonalize people. On the other hand, Paul has a broad selection of drugs at his disposal- instantly. Some of these drugs, because they are prescription drugs, manage to leave the country with him becoming an intricate channel. At some point in the story Paul and his girlfriend spend a few days in Taipei, Taiwan wandering the malls and spending a memorable drug infused trip inside and outside a McDonald’s all of which is captured in their digital camera.

The reason why Lin could be considered an underground rapper is because throughout the story his character keeps true to himself, albeit a bit depressive and more than half of the time on some pill. Yet what he describes is no different than what rappers, like Danny Brown talk about in most of their songs. Brown, like Lin, tells stories about his life in Detroit and his surroundings in the many mixtapes, Detroit State of Mind 3, Detroit State of Mind 4,It’s A Art, Hot Soup and albums XXX, and Old that have been released via the internet. His body of work describes life in such detail that it's undeniable that he has lived those tales or else why would he be sharing them to the public. This same logic follows other better known rappers like A$AP Rocky who describe life in New York, though a slightly different version of it but with the same amount of drugs and though they might not frequent the bars and hangouts of highbrow writers their experiences are very similar.

Rapper Danny Brown

One immediately might wonder how it is that a person being a writer can in any way have similar experiences as rappers that claim to come from the hood. Well, aside from the idea that with a demand there is a supply or vice versa it creates a fringe where all worlds meet. Either way, both seem to make a dynamic that is both experienced by those walking in the realms of high or low culture. At the end of the day a lot of what Danny Brown talks about is very similar to what Tao Lin manages to paint in his novel. The individual living in the city surrounded by all kinds of different realities, and yet despite their drug infused bodies at times being numbed by the drugs, have a persistent desire to write and to publish, putting in the ground work required of any emerging writer or rapper.

The crowds that Lin brings, are the same size of many of the underground rappers, so why is it that these people, these writers manage to bring crowds that maybe in their everyday life pass each other as they walk down a sidewalk, each going their own way, maybe shopping at corner stores for snacks like Cheetos and sodas or patronizing places like Wholefoods or Lawsons. These underground artists like Danny Brown along with Tao Lin talk about things that affect everyone on a daily basis, from the teenager that attends secondary school to the published author walking his dog, they experience love and heartbreak which is intimately connected to an individual through aloneness and loneliness, and is either suppressed or intensified by heavy drug use. 

James Joyce's Dubliners: Essay

James Jocye’s Dubliners: Essay

By Armando Ortiz

I learned about James Joyce through a classmate. We were taking the same Biology course at Los Angele City College back in the late 90’s. Just mentioning that seems a bit frightening, since it was almost twenty years ago. We were inside a Salvadoran restaurant, eating pupusas, sharing stories. He’d traveled through Russia and Eastern Europe, enjoyed drawing what he saw, instead of writing. He’d been born in South Korea, and was planning to transfer to UCLA.  Somehow he began to talk about James Joyce’s Ulysses and how it was the best novel he had ever read. Since then I kept coming across Joyce’s name, and more importantly I became somewhat familiar with the book, so while reading Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey I knew that there was some link between those epic stories and Joyce. It took several books and years, tackling several of Pynchon’s novels and reading several of Roberto Bolano’s novels before arriving at Joyce. I’d been challenged by Bolano’s writings, and the interviews that you can see on YouTube, so I made it a point to finally read Joyce. Ever since then I’ve read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and more recently Dubliners. This essay will mainly be on Dubliners, and will focus on a few themes presented in Joyce’s collection of short stories.

Dubliners

We live in a time where everything seems to have a quick solution despite the fact that many things require time and energy to maintain, the main one being our bodies which over time deteriorates. If you turn your computer or television on, in less than thirty minutes you will come across advertisements that promote renewed and prolonged virility, natural hair regrowth, more testosterone, Botox, plastic surgery, skin whitening creams and so many other things related to aging and our bodies. For a few years now some have looked into what steroids to take before beginning a bodybuilding workout program so that in a few months they can bulk up and be a completely different person. Different fad diets also claim to have unimaginable results that guarantee healthy but drastic weight loss in just a few weeks. In light of all these promises James Joyce’s Dubliners becomes ever more relevant today than when it was written back one hundred years ago.

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories that contains characters who vary from elderly men to children, and of people who fall in love or are tricked into relationships. These stories all contain their own plots and internal allegories, so it is difficult to explain each one, and doing so would wipe away any chance for future readers discovering for themselves the magic of Joyce’s story telling power. After reading his stories there is a greater awareness of the overall cycle that life offers to every person on this earth. While reading his stories one cannot help to see that what he shares with the readers is relevant and that the themes have much more to do with human nature than anything else. Although some claim that these stories have a nationalist bent he reveals an intimate and human side to these stories. Joyce captures the general social atmosphere of Ireland during the early years of the twentieth century, but it generally serves as a backdrop to the stories that he has to tell about people’s lives and the feelings, thoughts and emotions that they experience.

James Joyce

The first story has a scene where an old man sits relaxing, reflecting on life when he sees some children that most likely cut school. He engages them in conversation, and the generation gap is obvious, but that is the general trend in every society, yet it gives a glimpse into something that rarely happens, except maybe in schools or hospitals. You have an elderly person questioning and talking to youth in a manner that seems almost day to day. Another story has several memorable instances, but only one will be discussed here. There is a party that takes place in a house, and the ladies, all well past their youth, are busy serving people and trying to help out with the dinner party. They are described in such an elegant and lively manner that makes getting older an experience of further maturity, but also of a meaningful expression and engagement with people of all ages. Though the story ends on a different note that will not be discussed here there is a sense within Joyce’s writing that there is a wrestling of ideas and manners of expression with every passing generation. This might be one of his overall themes in all his writings, since most of the novels deal with memory, aging, youth and the generation gap between those that have lived life and those starting their lives. Everyone is trying to claim their right to existence, but it is done in a manner that allows the reader to appreciate the society that they live in. Yet, when you look around today, most of the messages that we get is that aging is bad, and that there are ways to remedy that instead of a message that states that with age comes wisdom, but also further engagement with society.

Dubliners is more relevant today than in the past because it seems that in today’s world there seems to be this desire to sweep the idea of growing, especially in Los Angeles, under the floor and ignore the fact that it is one of the longer and more memory filled times for all people. Aside from the passing of time that everyone has to come to grips, Joyce also focuses on love, and all its different manifestations, from a person using love as a way to get the other person’s money, or making the relationship between mother and father, where love has been slowly vanishing, but commitment to the relationship remains strong it to make a covenant in staying away from deviant behaviors, yet again we have the idea of love and what the other person who is currently committed had experienced previously, things like love and happiness.

Joyce certainly had a knack is capturing these moments in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where Stephen Dedalus has an amusing conversation with one of the main teachers of the school he attends, and there one sees the struggle between letting the will of youth dictate decisions and the wisdom of will experienced to guide the youth. Along those same lines, in Ulysses Stephen reappears, spending a day in discussion with various people throughout Dublin, ending up in Leopold Bloom’s living room in conversation. Later Mr. and Mrs. Bloom are in bed and the story quickly turns the tables on the reader to take on a different perspective of reality. Finally, Dubliners bring into focus the reality that ultimately our lives are lived individually and our experiences remain only within us, be it a memory of a past moment in time that we cherish and never share with anyone else, even our intimate lovers. However, it is through our interactions with people around us that we end up having our most treasured and cherished memories.

Illustration by Chip Zdarsky