Calypso: Prelude -- by Russell Block
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Hastily recorded entries in the ample margins of my tattered copy of Ulysses detail the commencement of my misguided venture. As did Odysseus embark on the Odyssey, so did Russell Block embark on the Ruse. My scrawl was imperceptibly shaken by the bump of road and jostle of train cars, that of transit lines and that of lines shared by freight, and although my notes could not look ahead to what was to be, my ambition would have led me to believe that the force of my pen shook the roads and railways in its turn. The matter of my life was meted out in union with the art, such that the trials of time discovered the essential substance that could endure, because only in this fashion could the Ruse continue on its predetermined course. It may be appropriate that Bloom, who himself could presage nothing, should meet me at the beginning and the end of my travels, as this proves Bloom’s mystery. How little sense I must make to those who did not enjoy the spiritual reason to be that is to be found in literature. This discovery would draw me, after no few preparatory travails, through the confounding walks of Manhattan, where Bloom was frequently discussed by those of us that found a superior capacity for recognition, perhaps in excess of what we were capable of interpreting about our own lives, in Ulysses. Allow me to make sense of this. Bloom, especially through his own travails in Night Town, looks past the conclusion of the Ruse, looks even to our present days, and likely, too, to days ahead in ways we would do well to better comprehend.
