James, Jamie, and James

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Soaking up a rather un-Irish sun on the rocks at the Forty Foot, I had completed a double pilgrimage (see, I told you!).

As I mentioned in the first Dublin entry, the reason I came to Ireland in the first place was to explore the city of Joyce's imagination. His novel Ulysses maps out the city like no other work, and it starts with Stephen Dedalus at a tower in Sandycove, overlooking the famous bathing spot, the Forty Foot. So coming to these unpretentious rocks (which once were solely for "gentleman" to brave the chilly waters, usually "textile-free" as a German woman once described the, um, attire of a thermal bath in Wiesbaden), was both the end of a day exploring the literary history of Dublin (the Writer's Museum, the James Joyce Centre, etc.) and the beginning of Joyce's most famous novel. It so happens the Forty Foot was also central to the plot of one of my other favorite Irish books - At Swim, Two Boys. So, it was a pilgrimage to a spot important to James Joyce and Jamie O'Neill. And thus to James Kessler.

I have come to realize how many of my trips tend to be pilgrimages, though of a secular nature. They usually have a historical or literary bent (more often both). When I went to Mongolia, I was seeking the monuments with the earliest known Turkic writing. When I followed the Viking path two summers ago, I sought out the places described in the Icelandic sagas. Now, I am looking for what is physically left of Joyce's world and more elusively the ghosts of his characters and their actions.

Perhaps I will cross paths with Leopold Bloom, just like Stephen Dedalus did. In Dublin, it's possible.

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