I don't think I have ever really gotten Leopold Bloom's interior ramblings out of my head! I am sure that voice continues to inspire the walking consciousness in my work - that is, the way I carry on an interior monologue as I walk through this city.

When I was in graduate school, my thesis included both poetry and essays. Influenced by the personal essays of James Baldwin and Norman Mailer, I loved the form, but pretty much stopped.

I died in my boots like a pioneer With the whole wide sky above me.

You can take off your hats now, gentlemen, and I think perhaps you'd better.

Broad-streeted Richmond . . . The trees in the streets are old trees used to living with people, Family trees that remember your grandfather's name.

Ironically the blog has re-opened the essay as a good form for me. I like to look and make commentary! If I sense my essays are good, I try to resubmit to another place in pulp and several of them have been variously published in newspapers and magazines.

And Thames and all the rivers of the kings Ran into Mississippi and were drowned. They planted England with a stubborn trust But the cleft dust was never English dust.