When the original domestic homesteads around here fell into ruin, their rosebushes survived and went feral. You find them here and there among the redwoods, continuing their unlikely domestic existence in their wild surroundings. In the sixties, Karma Issacson must have harvested a cutting of one of these original rosebushes and planted it next to her hippie cabin - the one I live in now, and the one that Karma built by hand from the ground up with salvaged redwood.
James Joyce gives Molly Bloom a song to sing about a lost lover from her youth:
Shall I wear a white rose, shall I wear a red?
Will he look for garlands? What shall wreathe my head?
Will a riband charm him fair upon my breast?
Scarce I can remember how he loves me best.
Shall I wear a white rose, shall I wear a red?
Will he look for garlands? What shall wreathe my head?
Karma's rose bush was in severe decline when I moved in. According to my landlord, it hadn't bloomed for many, many years.
Molly Bloom sings:
I must look my fairest when tomorrow's here;
He will come to claim me! Shall I still be dear?
I must look my brightest on that happy day,
As his fancy drew me when so far away,
When so far away.
I don't know why this rosebush decided to bloom this summer after all of these years, but I'm glad it did. Today I live in the place where Karma spent her youth, and here I spend what remains of my own.
Molly Bloom sings:
I shall need no roses if his heart be true
Not a single wreathlet, red or white or blue.
In tomorrow's twilight, when my soul's at rest,
Then I need not ask him how he loves me best.
Shall I wear a white rose, shall I wear a red?
Will he look for garlands? What shall wreathe my head?
From "Shall I Wear A White Rose?"
James Joyce closes Ulysses with one of the most famous soliloquies of all time. He gives this profound moment to Molly Bloom:
"...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. "
May Karma's rosebush keep blooming. Happy Bloomsday.
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