Bloomsday is this Saturday, June 16th. Below is a post from our wedding blog, in 2007, that announced our engagement and explains our relationship to the day.
Tania
and I got engaged to be married this weekend on Saturday, June 16. It’s
our unofficial anniversary. I guess it’s official now that a ring is
involved? June 16 represents the day, six years ago, we started “hanging
out.” We don’t know the exact day, but it was right around June 16. We know
because June 16 is “Bloomsday,” a day I tend to celebrate much like
St Patrick’s Day, Part Two. Anyway, I gave her a ring, asked if she
would marry me, and she said, “Yes.”
That's the short version. Here's the long version:
“On
June 16, James Joyce aficionados the world over celebrated Bloomsday.
The day is named after advertising salesman Leopold Bloom, protagonist
of Joyce's novel Ulysses. The entirety of this 700+ page book recounts
one ordinary day, June 16, 1904, as various characters go about their
ways in Dublin.”
Joyce and Ulysses mean a lot to us.
Part of our month long Ireland vacation a few years ago was devoted to
Joyce nonsense. We had our own odyssey trying to find the Martello tower
that served as the opening scene in the book and which Joyce actually
lived for a brief time.
Tania at the top of the Martello tower stairs.
Me freezing my ass off while doing my best impersonation of "stately, plump Buck Mulligan."
We also visited the James Joyce museum where the actual door from Leopold Bloom’s house at 7 Eccles St. is preserved.
And of course we went to a couple of pubs that appear in the story. This
is not one of the pubs. This the pub in the Clarence hotel which is
owned by U2. I was trying to take a photo of my pint of Guinness but
this pretty little bird kept getting in my shot.
We’re very aware of our nerdiness.
We
were supposed to have our Gentleman’s Hockey party this coming Bloomsday weekend,
but Tania said, “No hockey on our anniversary.” So we decided that the weekend
would be spent in the woods camping. Not the most romantic place in the
world to propose, considering the fact that I hate nature, but it would
have to do.
I decided to employ the ole “Router a
Hole In a Copy of Ulysses and Place the Ring in the Hole” style of
proposing. It’s clichĂ©, I know, everyone does it, but I’m a
traditional kind of guy. I practiced on an old math book I had hiding
behind the stacks, and once I was satisfied the router actually worked
on a book, I took out a copy of Ulysses and began flipping through it to
find the page I wanted to propose on. I had originally intended to do
it at the beginning of Chapter Two (because, you know, this is the
second chapter in our relationship), but instead I went for page 55,
Chapter Four, the beginning of Book Two, which begins with a giant M. Besides standing for “Mr. Bloom…” and “Molly” (Bloom’s wife), it
also stands for “Marry Me.” Upside down it makes a nice W for “Will
you?”
To
read any Joyce, you kind of need one of the many annotations,
compendiums, or notes to completely appreciate his genius and what he’s
doing. Every chapter in Ulysses, for instance, besides paralleling a
chapter in Homer’s Odyssey, is also represented by a variety of symbols.
The “organ” for Chapter Four is the kidney, which Bloom is frying up at
the beginning of the chapter. In ancient Jewish rites, apparently, the
kidneys were regarded as “the special parts to be burned upon the altar
as a gift to Yahweh.” Neither of us are particularly fond of kidneys,
nor do we have a drop of Jewish blood in our veins (Tania, being German,
is completely the opposite, as is our dachshund who, unfortunately, is
decidedly anti-Semite), but if it’s good enough for a Yahweh ceremony,
it’s good enough for our wedding. I’m sure we’ll have an argument about
this, but I think we should serve kidneys at the reception. “Would you
like the pork kidney, or the chicken kidney?”
So
there’s that. I also like Chapter Four because right where I drilled the
hole for the ring, Bloom’s cat is winding its way around his legs while
he’s frying up the kidney. Gary! And I remember the first time I read
that passage, I thought, “That is the best phonetic rendering of what a
cat sounds like that I’ve ever seen on paper.”
—Mrkgnao! the cat cried.
They
call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we understand
them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Cruel. Her
nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I look
like to her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.
—Afraid of the chickens she is. He said mockingly. Afraid of the chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.
—Mrkrgnao! The cat said loudly.
Lastly,
Ulysses is about Yes. The deconstructive philosopher Jacques Derrida
even wrote an entire essay about it titled, “Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce.” I’ve read it, but I couldn’t tell you what the hell
he’s talking about. All I know is that the last line in the book, the
last word even, is very famous: “Yes.” Which is kind of what I was going
for.
Everyone in our expedition went on a hike except
Tania and I. Fuck hiking. We are anti hiking. I had originally intended
on popping the question at the waterfall at the campground we go
to—it’s a very idyllic location, even a nature hater such as myself has
to admire it—but to get there entails a short hike. And out of
principle, we had silently vowed not to do any hiking of any sort. Plus
we haven’t gotten any rain, so I don’t even think it would have been
worth it to even walk up there anyway. The point is, their hike provided
the perfect opportunity to steal away somewhere and pop the question.
“Wanna
take the dog up to the end of the campsite for a short WALK?” I said.
Strolling, walking, even scampering is allowed, but no hiking.
“Sure,” she said.
I
had my little bike messenger bag with my new camera and the drilled out
copy of Ulysses, laden with ring, inside. The ring fit snugly in the
hole, but I had a rubber band around the book just in case. Carrying the
full bag on a short walk was a little peculiar, but Tania didn’t say
anything. We walked through the campsite commenting on all the sites we
passed.
“Oh there’s the loud Asian family we almost had as neighbors,” Tania said pointing at a group of Asians unpacking. “It’s
hard to tell if someone is really a boy scout these days,” she said as
we passed a teenager in a boy scout uniform, “or if they just got it at a
thrift store.”
I don't know how she does it, but
Tania, even after a night of drinking in the dirt next to a fire
somehow manages to look beautiful. She is simply awesome. Unlike Beckett
who panted at the end of his leash and barked at imaginary devil rats. I
love that girl. I tried to put my arm around her, but failed because I
had dislocated my shoulder the day before in a croquet related accident.
Yes, I dislocated my shoulder playing croquet. When we go camping we
play “Rugged Mountain Terrain Croquet.” I don’t play golf, but Jason
likens it to the Master’s Tournament that just went down at whatever
that “gnarly” course is. Anyway, we’re totally gnarly. Extreme even. We
had set up a couple of wickets on one side of a felled log. I went to climb over the log, but the bark gave way and I fell. I threw my arm up in the air and, POP! out
of the socket. I don’t think I squealed, but I fell to the ground and
instantly thought, “Arm out of socket! Very far from hospital! Shit!”
But just as Tania arrived at my side, POP! it slid back into place all
by itself. I don’t thank God for anything, but if I did, that would have
been a perfect opportunity.
“Shit,” I said while walking beside her, “I want to put my arm around you, but I can’t lift it that high.”
“Aww,” she said.
My
second choice, after the waterfall, for a place to pop the question was
this little stone plateau above a creek and in the shadow of a
miniature Yosemite-ish rock. I remembered it looking fairly majestic,
but as we approached it was anything but. Just a bunch of dirt in the
hot sun, not a tree in sight, and a small pool of still water below.
“Shit,” I thought. I was already getting really nervous. I wasn’t really
worried about her answer, we’ve talked about marriage a lot, but I just
didn’t want to fuck it up. I wanted it to be romantic. I wanted it to
be something we’d remember. But here we were in what might as well have
been the parking lot at the county fair.
“Oh well,” I said, "it’s now or never.”
I
got out my camera and took a few pictures to stall for time and kind of
figure out how I was going to do this. She posed with Beckett for a
couple. Once I got myself together, I said, “Well it is Bloomsday,
after all. And I brought a copy of Ulysses.” Which I hoped still
contained a very expensive ring.
“Oh god,” she said laughing.
“But this is a really special copy,” I said kind of shaking.
“What?”
she said. She was suddenly paying attention because I think she sensed
how nervous I was. It was about this point that everything gets kind of
blurry.
“Yeah,” I stammered trying to take the rubber
bands off. Once I opened it and found the page (the ring was there), I
dropped to one knee and proffered her the text and the ring. “Because
Book Two begins with the sentence, ‘Will you marry me?’”
The words felt weird. Not bad weird, good weird, but really heavy. “Our lives have just changed,” I thought. "Cool."
Tania was stunned. It took her a second to realize what was going on, but eventually she was able to choke out a, “Yes.”
Above
us, on the trail we had just left, a boy scout troop was passing. I had
always envisioned asking for her hand in a semi-private
environment. I’m not one to do it in a crowd, or at a restaurant, but
unfortunately that’s just what I did. “WOOOO!” the boy scouts screamed.
“YEAAAAAH!” “WAY TO GO!” I didn’t even look up. I was too busy kissing
my fiancée who had tears streaming down her face.
When
we were done, she turned to the last page of the book and read the last
words, “’…yes,’” she said, “’I said yes I will Yes.’”
Yes.
This is tania before the ring. see how she's all bummed? lost? unwed?
Then you give her a ring and she pipes right up!
"Love you Tania!"
"Love you David!"
"We love each other!"
1 comment:
Awwwwwwww! I got a bit misty with that lovley tale! But I have to admit my favorite part of this post is Beckett's face in the pic with the ring in place! He doesn't give a damn that some touching moment just went down! He is prolly looking for somewhere to pinch a loaf out, or some tree to piss on. He don't give a shit! Ahahhaha!
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