Ulysses was distracted

Thor's February 2nd mailbox was thawing out sufficient to receive a good word of advice this morning from Chӧgyam Trungpa:

“Don't mistake the mask and the suit of armor that we’re wearing for the real body, the real birthday suit.” Yeah, it makes swimming the Watercourse much more difficult than needs be.

Speaking of deep waters reflected in the morning mail: Today marks the 141st anniversary of James Joyce's birth, in 1882 Dublin. And, a reminder: Bloomsday this year will fall on Friday, June 16.

Literature and media are increasingly considered distractions at the same time we seem to want more of both. Marshall McLuhan argued that electronic media would rewire our brains.

Frustrated by contemporary distractions? This longing to return to a past age of properly managed attention and memory is hardly new. Our age of distraction and forgetting joins the many others on historical record: the Roman empire of Seneca, Plato, the Song Dynasty of Zhu, the Reformation of Calvin. – Aeon essay 2/2/23.

Here is another arguably worthy distraction emerging from today's mail: A decent summary of Joyce's Ulysses, its legacy, and a note re: Sylvia Beach, Joyce's publisher and owner of Shakespeare and Co. in Paris at the time.