New will be Old, Old will be New

“Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ, it’s up to you to sense that cosmic force…. Be on the side of angels. Be a prism. You have that something within, the higher self. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll.”—drunken epiphany of Stephen, from the brothel scene of James Joyce’s Ulysses

  But I was talking (in the video) and writing (in the blog) about the birth of the New Age, and more specifically Henry Miller’s seminal ejaculation Tropic of Cancer.

Alongside Miller stands Joyce, harder to put a finger on, mostly because he’s been co-opted by the literary crowd. Pity. However, as my not-yet-sainted mother would say: “he’s got no one to blame but himself.”

Anyway, carrying on,  Stephen’s—a.k.a. a younger Joyce’s—drunken inner voice preaches: “You once nobble that, congregation, and a buck joy ride to heaven becomes a back number. You got me? It’s a lifebrightener, sure.”

However, the New Age is destined to be thwarted by the Old for some time yet. Literature and Academia serving in general as foot soldiers and all-around peacekeepers for the Old Guard. Custodial Guardians of the past, ever vigilant against the New, the Vital, the Living and Becoming.

As I write this a young mother pushes a smiling faced baby in a pram past. It’s the Golden Age, you child of innocence! Soon your education will begin, and the wordless Oneness you are now will be sundered.

You will learn your Name and then spend half your adult years trying to unlearn it.

You are the New, soon to be initiated into the Old.

Godspeed, as they used to say, in your life’s journey.

“You have that something within…. “