Sweet Lemony Wax

 

It was a nice walk around Dublin City today. 

 

Surprisingly mild for the end of January

A very interesting place to visit is Sweny’s (pharmacy) in 1 Lincoln Place Dublin 2

It is mentioned in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

 

 Photo: Peter Chrisp

-Standing outside the church in Lotus Eaters, Bloom checks his watch and figures that he still has plenty of time before the funeral:

"How goes the time?

Quarter past. Time enough yet.

Better get that lotion made up. Where is this?

Ah yes, the last time. Sweny's in Lincoln place.

Walking southward along Westland row to its end, and crossing the perpendicular Lincoln Place, he enters Sweny's pharmacy under a façade that says "Chemist" and "Druggist-

This business closed in 2009, but the physical shop has been lovingly preserved and repurposed by Joycean volunteers.

 

Surprised to have found it so easily, we opened the two half doors and I put my head over the threshold and into the shop.

 

 

Half in, I heard someone reading some pages from Ulysses. 

 

The reader stopped. 

All present looked in our direction and beckoned us in.

We entered. 

Stood awkwardly in the crowded space.

Thought about leaving. 

Someone gestured and proffered cushioned seats behind one counter.

So nice. 

We were glad of them.

 

Deus nobis hæc otia fecit 

(Latin) a god has made these comforts for us.

And they handed us two copies of Ulysses and told us the page number they were reading aloud. 

We joined in and Noreen and myself read an excerpt too.

 

 

 

Bloomsday boaters in abundance.

The character of the shop has not changed since Leopold Bloom bought a bar of lemon soap there while on an errand for his wife Molly.

The errand: to buy his wife her favourite face cream.

 

 

"On Thursday, June 16, 1904, (Bloom) calls into Sweny Chemist Druggist, on Lincoln Place, to buy his wife Molly her favourite face cream. Drawn to the sweet wax smell, he buys a cake of Sweny's lemon soap:

"… and I'll take one of those soaps. How much are they?

"Fourpence, sir."

Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax…

He strolled out of the shop… the coolwrappered soap in his left hand."

 

 

Noreen's Lemon Soap

 

There are some prescriptions left unfilled in some of the many dark drawers behind you I was told.

I nodded. 

The place reminded me of my trinket cabinet in the studio back home.

Like Leopold Bloom, Noreen, bought a bar of lemon soap.

To take back to Chicago on Tuesday.

 

I brought home to my wife Mary too,

 

A small jar of her favourite face cream.

 

A sweet (but not lemony) floral fragrance. 

 

Nora Barnacle, James Joyce on their way to be married and Fred Monro, 1931

 

 

 

                               

                   Half Moon Bay, Hazelwood, Sligo                      

                    

     I was driving along the winding road to the framer. 

It was at the turning of the year, not quite evening but getting atmospheric as the darkness was starting to settle over Armagh fields.

Quiet.

There was flooding and some tractor tracks in nearby fields were filled with water and reflected the sky. 

I am tuned in to trees, their black lines, trunks and branches in inky black. In the folder beside me is my completed pen drawing, in the style of Fumio Yamaguchi or some other Japanese print-maker. 

Its imperfections are what make it perfect to me.

I am happy.

A field of stubble reminds me of my visits to the off-shore islands of Ireland that I have visited.

On that fine first day on Rathlin Island I walked among long dappled grasses. 

I may even pluck the silver apples of the Moon and perhaps the golden apples of the Sun some time.

I, am not too old from wandering through hollow lands and the stony gray hills of Monaghan.

I pull into the framer's drive and the West Highland White Terrier walks towards me, as always.

I have been to Hazelwood many times and I have walked the sculpture trail near Half Moon Bay.

 

Half Moon Bay.

 

Sun days stealing golden red apples from the twisted trees at Lissadell in Autumn. 

Laughter and pride as my mother looks up at us,

Eternally.

William Butler Yeats had a fleeting mystical experience there near Half Moon Bay on the shore of Lough Gill.

A vision of a glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair who called out his name. "William". 

And disappeared.

It is that type of place. 

The Song of Wandering Aengus

by

W.B.Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

 

My own experience by the shore there was far less descriptive but still clearly memorable to this day.

All around me everything glowed with an intense bright light.

Something like the lighting in an El Greco religious oil painting.

Shielding my eyes with my hands, I felt elation, maybe even rapture.

It was ethereal and passed in an instant.

The brief counter-emotion, of two weeks filled with ugly grief.

A turning point in that year.

A sign of a brighter future.

 

Maybe.

 

Mary just booked a trip for us to Washington DC in March.

 

Just now, as I finished writing that last  piece she said her brother Danny had just messaged her to say

that The Cherry Blossom Festival will take place the week we are there.

 

My glimmering girl..... with cherry blossom in her hair. 

 

Washington DC 2024