Anthony Rodriguez atop the Tower.
Cautiously, Anthony approached the building with a sense of dread. He was about to enter a building much bigger than itself, he was at the doorstep of the beginning of one of the most beautiful books ever written in the English language. The place reeked of history, of death, of inspiration. The tower seemed impenetrable, much like the book it inspired. The guardian began to tell the story of the tower, full of twist and turns, a story seeped in pride, jealously, humanity. As the story rolled off the guardian’s tongue Anthony could feel the ransacked nature of the tower, it, after all never belonged to the great artificer; he snatched it up in a fit of artistic passion. There on the wall, the story of a life, all laid out from end to end, sorrows, joys, triumphs, all marching forward culminating in a metal death mask encased in glass.
They took to the stairs.
Narrow. Capillaries made of stone. The climb took them to a small, gloomy domed living room, light coming in from two controlled places, the door on the right, and a small sliver in the wall on the left. The room felt vacuous, neither here nor there, an implosion of inspiration, an assault on sensibility. There the panther, there the breakfast, there the door. Deceptively straightforward.
Up and Up and Up and Up and Up and Up.
The ragtag group of Berkeley students exploded onto the top of the tower.
Eternal. Otherworldly. It was a place with no sense of place, a place where every single barrier could be forgotten. We could forget that this was Ireland, that we were Americans, that we were alive, that Joyce was dead. It was there that the true value of Ulysses slowly dawned on me. Ulysses like all human works, had a beginning (I was, after all, standing on top of it), but that didn’t mean it had to have an end. It does not have an end. Every time we ‘finish’ the book, someone else picks it up and continues where we simply left off. I wanted to start again. The book was opened and Damon began to read: “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed…” Time stopped. I could feel Joyce behind me, peering over my shoulder; I could see Stephen and Buck Mulligan there on the edge of the parapet, overlooking the Irish Sea, about to start the day of their lives…As the words ended, I could feel the magic slowly numbing away. As we shuffled down the stairs I felt myself traveling back to earth, back to Ireland, back to my century. As I walked out of the tower, I instantly longed for the magic, the spark of divine fire found at the top, a great feeling of sadness began to creep over me, a fear that I would never feel that magic again, but then I looked down to the book I was holding in my hand, the book that is the interpretation of that sacred fire and I smiled, for I know that Joyce, the magic, and the fire can always be found there.
Listening to the timeless words in the place of their inspiration.
But not taking it so seriously to not make time for silly posing...
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