Grandmother’s Corpse

In 1906, James Joyce lived in Rome. He was inspired to write “The Dead” after his sojourn in Rome. But while in Rome, his creative flow was disrupted. He had a soul crushing bank job, copying letters in an isolated office, being a human Xerox. The landlady evicted him from a flat with his family, blaming the Irish drinking habit. The only creative outlet were the letters to his brother Stanislaus. That's what he wrote.

“Rome reminds me of a man who lives by exhibiting to travellers his grandmother’s corpse.”

Was Joyce speaking about the Roman Empire or about the Christian Rome? He was definitely speaking about the Empire. As he wrote, the area around the Colosseum was simply “like an old cemetery with broken columns of temples and slabs.” But subliminally, he must have also been thinking of the new Rome. He had a Jesuit education. So he internalizes the literal display of the Catholic crucifixion.

This I think is Leningrad from one of Berl Levy’s trips to the CCCP. c. 1979. This is maybe a hotel room. More likely someone’s living room. If you are from Russia, I don’t need to explain. If you're not, you will not understand anyway. The раскладушка bed. Chemodan, I think I have exactly like it in storage. TV, the statuette. Tall ceilings and windows in a formerly aristocratic apartment.

Why does it matter? The illusion of happiness is fleeting, suffering is constant and relentless. What use is there to being clever if there is no one to share it with? At least in the realm of understanding politics and human relations. I think most people (including the readers here) are just morons. Selfish worms who blame their primitive existence on the need for survival. What use is the truth, if history is forgotten faster than yesterday’s meal?

I am actually never depressed, God spared me one aspect of the reality. People do not believe me. But God was generous in other things. What a sadist.

To see the truth in real-time takes a torturous experience. I do not recommend it.

There is fear of retribution of fate. It might come in a thousand cuts, or it might shear off in one great and painful punch, but it comes for everybody.

“Please no pain” - he pleaded with advancing illnesses. Did he know of special pain that we don’t even imagine? He died and never told us. However, he cried while I read the poem he wrote for me when I was 25.