Marginalia: Odysseys & Oddities - Brooding, Bathing, and Philosophical Chaos

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This started as a Buddy Read of Ulysses with friends, and devolved into mania. Here are the notes and ramblings...

Ulysses: Episode 3 Musings...
because if Broody McBroodington can space out, so can I...

🧠 "He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock, carefully. For the rest let look who will."

😯

Stephen, who just spent pages slogging through ancient philosophy, metaphysical pondering, poetic musing, and memories of loss, carefully placing a booger on a rock is sending me.

I mean, sure. I was just dragged through a metaphysical brain-melt, why not end with something revolting.... "For the rest let look who will." Am I right?

I'll be honest, I really don't know what happened. But, whatever, I guess?"


The Odyssey, Book 4: The Soap Opera Continues
(aka “Dinner’s not over until someone drugs the wine”)

Um, we’re just casually doing drugs after dinner now? Way to not feel your feelings, Helen.
Wait… did they even drink it?

Stephen vs. Telemachus: A Broody-Off: (two boys, one inheritance, endless internal monologues) So far my money is on Telemachus. He at least has growth potential. Stephen is just mentally pacing inside metaphors.

Also...
The bros (suitors....) are VICIOUS. Plotting murder for a chance at Tele’s mom?? Nasty.
Like sirs, calm down. She’s still married. The body isn’t even cold because the body isn’t even dead.

And Penelope? Girl, you folded fast. One oracle dream and you’re already spiraling? Maybe wait 48 hours before giving up on your only child? It's giving... "Am I the drama?"


Ulysses Episode 4
(aka: Meat Juice, Bathroom Breaks, and the World’s Saddest Breakfast)

(New) Characters to Remember:
✨ Leopold Bloom – gentle? odd? sad? horny? Our second protagonist. Ad salesman, husband, thinker of strange thoughts. Makes breakfast, buys kidneys, poops thoughtfully. Possibly more emotionally repressed than Stephen, and that's saying something.
✨ Molly Bloom – wife, singer, bed-dweller. She’s not moving much, but her presence looms. Possibly planning an affair later today. Seems unconcerned.
✨ The Cat – honestly? A vibe. Judges Bloom silently.
✨ The Kidney – yes, this gets its own entry. It is cooked. It is eaten. It is described in detail.
✨ Random women in the street – filtered through Bloom’s internal monologue, which is... a lot. A mix of curiosity, attraction, melancholy, and marketing copy.

What’s Going On:
We’ve clearly shifted gears. Broody's brooding has been replaced by Bloom’s body: the food, the flesh, the heat, the smells. I’ve never read so many sensory details that made me actively regret having a body.

Bloom goes about his morning routine and I think I’m supposed to admire how normal he is. But mostly I feel uncomfortable and unsure if I like him.

Final Thought:
If Stephen is all lofty metaphysics and guilt-riddled symbolism, Lonely Leo is earthy, physical, and painfully human.

This one made me feel like I accidentally opened someone’s diary and their trash can. And that, apparently, is literature.


Odyssey Book 5
(aka “I Miss My Wife So Bad... While Sleeping With a Goddess”)

Odysseus is stuck on an island having hot immortal sex daily and still manages to be miserable. He cries on the beach. Every. Single. Day. For seven years.

Why? Because he misses Penelope.
...Despite actively sleeping with Calypso.
🤔 Sir. Be serious.

🧠 The Link to Ulysses, Episode 4 (am I wildly off point? who knows....)
Both Odysseus and Bloom are:
💥 Trapped in repetitive domestic limbo
💥 Full of grief, passivity, and spiraling internal monologues
💥 Lowkey dissociating while claiming to be devoted husbands

Odysseus builds a raft to escape.
Bloom eats a kidney, thinks about ads, and goes to the bathroom.
✨ Modernism, baby ✨

✋ Also:
Let’s talk about how Calypso literally calls out the mythological double standard that immortal women get slut-shamed while men just… do whatever?
Iconic behavior from her, tbh.
Odysseus is a hypocrite and the text doesn't even pretend otherwise.

Men will literally cry on a beach for 7 years instead of going to therapy.
Also, Bloom might be more emotionally intelligent than Odysseus, but the bar is on the ocean floor."

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