The Dead

Interlinked nonsense: Sometime this year I decided that "The Dubliners" by James Joyce was the greatest book ever written (albeit it's short stories but interlinked stories nonetheless) and that the "The Dead" is probably the greatest short story etc. etc. I still think that (and that). So despite the fact that we're damp and snowless those final paragraphs in "The Dead" still seem to resonate and reverberate nicely at this time of year. Nicely isn't a work you'd use to describe the effect of or the writings of Joyce, no not at all, but it works for me. Toffee and writing spring to mind. The cold and soulless moments emit a strange warmth and comfort and sense of common feeling and a sense of meaning for life and for literature. The other dead are properly dead too (despite what their website may say), the Grateful Dead; strange also to get back to liking their sometimes bland and insipid music, their irritating cultural position in some smoke filled American version of the world and their incompetency. Perfectly imperfect, that's what I must be pursing these days. Not even pursuing, more like falling into a black hole having been pushed or tripped up by some clumsy cat whilst searching for, there it in the dark. 

So there is no such thing as a dark night of the soul. It's just another trivial point on that continuous procession of stuff that you sometimes ride on, sometimes get trampled by and sometimes avoid in life's great (dark but with occasional flashlight moments) experience.