Probably not a bit like it really

His voice eddying with the vowels of all rivers
came back to me . . .
—Seamus Heaney, "Station Island: XII"

When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood to ascend to heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of that brightness, having raiment as of the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they durst not look upon him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And He answered with a main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over Donohoe's in Little Green street like a shot off a shovel.
—James Joyce, Ulysses

ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα . . . Happy Bloomsday!

Sing for the kid with the phone who refuses to sing

This has been a day full of riches and surprises. I blame James Joyce. And the platypus.

Caitlín R. Kiernan has posted her reactions to Singing Innocence and Experience both at her livejournal and amazon.com, and I have no useful words:

This book is brilliant. It shines with the darkness and light of wonder and awe which I have spent the last fourteen years trying to put down on paper. Indeed, I have no trouble saying that these stories are one of the rare bits of fiction to wow me in the last decade. They hit me like Bradbury hits me, or Angela Carter, or Kathe Koja, Thomas Ligotti or Shirley Jackson. They revel in the power of myth, but in no unseemly way. They strain to contain the sheer force of their telling. In these pages, the reader will find a woman made of stars (or stars in the shape of a woman), a cynical unicorn and a reluctant virgin, an ophiomorphic plague, the place where lost ships go, a glimpse of Lot's nameless wife and an encounter with Adam's nameless and untouchable second wife, an accidental golem, a perfectly ordinary teenage boy perplexed at the coming loss of his nereid sister, drowned ghosts and terrible sacrifice, the singing head of Orpheus, and a hundred marvels more. If you still have a heart and have not forsaken wonder for the mythless drought which so many seem to mistake for adulthood, these stories will leave you breathless, as will Sonya Taaffe's astounding way with words. And all this from an author who is surely at least ten years my junior. I'd give my left hand for such language and the mind in back of it all. And I say none of these things lightly. If my writing or my opinion means anything at all to you, please, please buy this collection and devour it and be amazed . . . If it contained only "Constellations, Conjunctions" and "Kouros," it would be worth twice the price.

"Constellations, Conjunctions" is one of my oldest stories and still one of my favorites. It will be reprinted in the next issue of Sirenia Digest, with an illustration by Vince Locke.

This has one hundred percent and with sparklers on top made my day. I think the word is: drad. Cait, thank you.

As for the rest, a box of books from oldcharliebrown (and routed through The Mumpsimus) arrived earlier this afternoon: Simon Logan's incredible industrial and fetishcore collections Nothing Is Inflammable and Rohypnol Brides, Sarah Singleton's Heretic, and John Betancourt and Sean Wallace's Horror: The Best of the Year 2006. I'm looking forward to all of these, especially the collections. And for an early Father's Day, we're taking my father to the Wellesley Summer Theatre's production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband tonight. Look, he was Irish, it counts for Bloomsday, all right? All right.

Her ear too is a shell, the peeping lobe there. Been to the seaside. Lovely seaside girls. Skin tanned raw. Should have put on coldcream first make it brown. Buttered toast. O and that lotion musn't forget. Fever near your mouth. Your head it simply. Hair braided over: shell with seaweed. Why do they hide their ears with seaweed hair? . . . Too late. She longed to go. That's why a woman. An easy stop the sea. Yes. All is lost.

All right.