• Tide and Current Taxi: 2021

On June 16th, people all over the world observe Bloomsday by reading Ulysses and (if you happen to be in Dublin) retracing Leopold Bloom’s walk through the city.

Robert Sullivan and I wanted a New York version, so we decided instead to observe the anniversary of the General Slocum steamboat tragedy.

That happened on June 15th, 1904, the day BEFORE Bloom’s walk, and it shows up throughout Ulysses as front-page news, people talking in bars, and Bloom thinking about it throughout the day.

Unlike Leopold Blooms fictional walk though, the General Slocum really did sink. Over a thousand people died, mostly women and children, and it’s about the saddest, scariest thing you can imagine (etching by Angelo Agostini, O Malho, 1904).

At first, we tried NOT to imagine it, as we navigated through Hell’s Gate,

but then we synced up with the map (from the newspaper in 1904),

read from the book, and thought about Joyce thinking about Bloom thinking about here. What could it have meant?

“He must have chosen that day for that reason, right?” I asked Robert, “to show Bloom’s empathy?”

Robert Sullivan pointed out that Bloom’s character is also about imagining things around the world, wondering how systems function and connect,

an antihero in literature, but then of course the ultimate hero for a writer, or an artist.

At North Brother Island, the General Slocum ran aground. They say the captain could have stopped earlier and saved more lives, but for some reason he chose North Brother.

Workers from the hospitals on the island came down to the shore to help.

The interior was cool and silent. I found myself whispering, even though there couldn’t be anyone here.

We walked down overgrown streets, talking about proprioception, the afterlife, and the difference between film and digital cameras.

I knew we were supposed to be thinking about Leopold Bloom and James Joyce, but I started thinking about another book, Ursula Le Guin’s “Vaster than Empires and More Slow.”

In that book, a spaceship from our solar system explores a distant planet in search of life.

One of the crew members has an unusual empathic ability. He was brought on the mission to see if he can sense another life form on the planet.

His role on the ships is called the Sensor.

We stopped at the most giant building on the island, an old hospital, so overgrown with trees we barely noticed it until we were standing right next to it.

“Look at that,” said Robert, “a hundred colors of green. The digital camera would never capture this, you would need real film or maybe it could be captured in painting.”

“or words.” I thought.