Returning from New

James Joyce in Ulysses:
Her antiquity in preceding and surviving succeeding tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence:the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible.

The incredible language Joyce uses to describe the moon! Many of the words, though gorgeous in the richness of their meaning, are not used in everyday speech. Yet I love the wonder and thoroughness of his description.

The current phase of the moon is waxing toward full ~~ or barely past new ~~ whichever best describes your point of view. I see Her as returning from New ~ as though the sliver of silver that is the moon enchants and captures the imagination, the dream, the heart. I love the moon in every phase ~ "her constancy under all phases" ~ no matter how bright or bold or quiet she is, she is always available for us, always in our night sky, whether we see her or not.

What does the Moon signify to you? What words of James Joyce strike you as the best descriptors? Is there another element of nature to which you are more attracted? What do you find special about it?

I cannot rest from travel

From Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson:

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees.
All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea.
I am become a name....

Much of the poem Ulysses relates directly to the warring, searching nature of his travels. These few lines ring with a sense of truth for me and a sense of description of the lives and love of several friends.

I cannot rest from travel ~ I have always been a traveler of some sort; a gypsy in the midst of the city. I marvel at so much in the world, even in places familiar.

I will drink life to the lees ~ My goal, though not always realized, is to be fully alive. I want to be awake and aware of all that is around me. There is so much that I miss on a daily basis, yet I feel full and enriched by all that's around me.

I am become a name ~ What power there is to that phrase! For me, it means that through all this, I have earned my title, my name. I have passed through whatever elemental there may be and come out the other side, recognized, acknowledged, named.

What do the lines of this poem mean to you? Do you have a poem that speaks powerfully to you?