Quiet, contemplative days. Forced inactivity a welcome respite from the daily round. Not that the daily round was overly disagreeable. It wasn’t. On the contrary, it was filled with joy and meaning. Nonetheless, change is the very essence of life itself.

This cast is my ticket to the Magic Mountain. Being home alone with it propped, higher than my heart I am told, is tantamount to retreating into my own private cork-lined room. Oh the days I’ll spend crutching myself over to the Omphalos Cafe!

Once, long ago, the vast majority of time was completely my own. There were days when I’d wake up and head straight for my morning coffee at the Cafe. Towards supper I would stagger into the daylight, eyes throbbing with fatigue. It was a rich, wonder-filled time.

Then I met my Wife and was dragged only mildly kicking and screaming into the Maya of relationship, marriage, and family. Oh joyous, adventurous Maya!

Stephen Dedalus muses moodily through Dublin on the nature of the father-son relationship: Christ to God and he to his own errant sire, while Bloom broods the day through on his buried boy, Rudy.

The upshot? Who knows, but it’s 6:22 AM and I’d need a cork lined room to muffle the sounds of my seven year old son dancing and singing about in his boyish new-day exuberance upstairs.

Metempsychosis stoking Maya’s perpetual motion machine. Wow, wrap my foot in a cast and look what you get!

Molly Bloom, comfortably cocooned in their languishing bed of marriage, asks her husband Leopold the definition of a word she’s read. “Met him sick-hoses?,” she says, or something to that effect. Bloom gives it off the top of his head: Greek for reincarnation, the transmigration of souls.

For Bloom, equally wandering the streets of Dublin, is gravitating in a seemingly haphazard way towards his destined encounter with his poetic counterpart young Stephen.

But that is all ‘literary’ stuff. The subject of theses and counter-theses. Arcane. Cabalistic. The province of the Priests of Learning.

This blog then? Again, who knows?

Play in and out of the fields of Maya. A fructifying back and forth clown dance. A jester’s one fingered salute to the authorities on both sides of the shifting boundary.

Just tapped for the definition of ‘cast.’ Broadly poetic and highly apt. Here are just a few:

—”Throw (something) forcefully in a certain direction.”

—”To direct one’s eyes at something.”

—”Search in different directions for a lost scent.”

—”Cause to appear on a surface.”

—”Cause (a magic spell) to take effect.” I like that one.

—”Shed in the process of growth.” Another beauty!

—”Shape by pouring into a mold while molten.”

—”A pellet regurgitated by a hawk or owl.” Oh this is rich.

I could go on but I won’t.

Encased in a cast? Hobbled?

Far from it.