In
my head I have led many different lives and had many romantic
adventures, just as marvellous or as incredible as those in books or
on the big screen. I have brooded often upon these dreams and let a
strange unrest creep into my soul. I have yearned to meet these
images in some way in the real world – but how to seek them? Or
have them seek (and find) me? I have each time come to believe that
without any act of my own they would encounter me: we would meet as
if meant to be, and any doubts I might have held would in that moment
fall away. Day after day, silent, watchful … until the madness
passes and the heart calms.
I
have mirrored, I am still
mirroring (at forty-one!) Stephen Dedalus' anguished youth.
Picture credit: James Joyce in 1915 by Alex Ehrenzweig (source: Wikipedia).
See A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by
James Joyce.
From journal and a larger body of thought on Stephen
Dedalus, September 2022.
