With typically Hibernian hyperbole, James Joyce once claimed that “if [Dublin] suddenly disappeared from the earth, it could be reconstructed from my book.” That book would of course be Ulysses (1922), Joyce’s masterpiece, seen by many as the most influential novel of the 20th century.
Ulysses takes place on a single day - June 16th, 1904 [1] - and focuses on the wanderings through Dublin of Stephen Dedalus, protagonist of Joyce's earlier novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and of Leopold Bloom, this novel’s protagonist, an early 20th-century Everyman. In the latter’s honour, June 16th is celebrated the world over as Bloomsday; in Dublin, fans mark it by retracing the itineraries and visiting the places described in the book.
Joyce’s book mirrors the structure of the Odyssey. Each of Ulysses’ 18 chapters corresponds with an episode of Homer’s classical epic, which recounts the decade-long, danger-fraught journey home from Troy of Odysseus [2]. The juxtaposition of that Greek hero’s mythical adventures with the mundane events of Bloomsday infuses the work with a grand irony - Ulysses has been summarised, not entirely unfairly, as: "Man goes for a walk around Dublin. Nothing happens."
This map is not much help in reconstructing that walk, but it does capture the elementary narrative structure of Ulysses. And it does so in that perennial favourite of schematic itineraries, Harry Beck’s London Underground map.
The map uses the convention of referring to the chapters, unnamed in Ulysses, by their episodic counterparts in the Odyssey. The colours used for the itineraries of Dedalus (green) and Bloom (yellow) mimic those of the District and Circle lines on the London Underground, which also substantially overlap. On the Ulysses Underground map, green may also symbolise Dedalus’ Irishness, while yellow might represent Bloom’s Jewishness [3].
The first three chapters (Telemachus, Nestor, Proteus), commonly referred to as the Telemachiad, concentrate on Dedalus. The next two (Calypso, Lotus Eaters) introduce Bloom. Bloom’s and Dedalus’ paths mirror each other for the next four chapters (Hades, Aeolus, Laestrygonians, Scylla and Charybdis), after which they separate - without actually having met. For the next four chapters (Wandering Rocks, Sirens, Cyclops, Nausicaa), the narrative focuses on Bloom, who finally meets up with Dedalus in the fourteenth chapter (Oxen of the Sun). They run together for the next three chapters (Circe, Eumaeus, Ithaca), until Dedalus declines Bloom’s offer of a place to stay the night at Bloom’s home. The last, and probably most famous chapter (Penelope) is the stream-of-consciousness soliloquy of Molly, Bloom’s wife.
So the underground map is a useful guide to the book’s internal structure. But what about a map of the actual itineraries and locations in Ulysses? Considering the cultural impact of the book, such a map is surprisingly difficult to come by, at least online.
Barring offline sources (or actually reading the book, Dublin street map at hand), one of the rare useful online sources to help prepare you for a Bloomsday pilgrimage is this one, produced by Dublin Tourism. While neater than Nabokov's scribbled map of Ulysses [4], it’s still rather low-res (See link in end note for a slightly more legible version), and lacks a certain literary je ne sais quoi. And while usefully listing a whole raft of locations and routes from the book, it refers to a few outlying locations that are indicated on a larger map of County Dublin, not findable online. Some of the places shown here are:
(4) No. 7, Eccles Street: Bloom’s home address (from Calypso, Ithaca and Penelope)
(6) Westland Row Post Office (from Lotus Eaters)
(10) Prince’s Street: Freeman’s Journal/Evening Telegraph Office (from Aeolus)
(12) Duke Street: Davy Byrne’s pub (from Laestrygonians)
(13) Kildare Street: National Library of Ireland (from Scylla and Charybdis)
(24) 33 Dame Street: DBC tearooms (from Wandering Rocks)
(28) Ormond Quay: the Ormond Hotel (from Sirens)
(30) 8-10 Little Britain Street: Barney Kiernan’s pub (from Cyclops)
Blooms day is still a few days off. So: Do you have a higher-res version of this map? How about other maps of Joyce's Dublin Odyssey? Best of all - are you enough of a fan/geek to have made one yourself? Please let me know; the best ones will be published here.
The Ulysses Underground map found here at the College of Humanities page at Ohio State University. It’s on view at Dublin's James Joyce Centre, which apparently does not show it on its website. Similarly, the second map of Bloomsday originated at Dublin Tourism, but was retrieved here, on a page created by Indian Joyce aficionado Malini Kaushik, describing in great detail Bloomsday in general, and its 100th occurrence in 2004 in particular.
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[1] The date on which Joyce took his future wife Nora Barnacle on their first outing, a walk from Dublin to the nearby village of Ringsend.
[2] Latin name: Ulysses, hence Joyce’s title. Another, less canonical imitation of the Odyssey's narrative is the Coen brothers movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?
[3] Is there such a thing as reading too much into all matters Ulysses? Joyce himself said that he “had put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant.” But then again, he didn’t design this map.
[4] Nabokov wasn't quite practicing his own advice: "Instead of perpetuating the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings, instructors should prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom's and Stephen's intertwining itineraries clearly traced."
Ash deposits of some of North America's largest volcanic eruptions.
The end of the world as we know it
Panoramic view of Yellowstone National Park
Image: Heinrich Berann for the National Park Service – public domain
Of the many freak ways to shuffle off this mortal coil – lightning strikes, shark bites, falling pianos – here's one you can safely scratch off your worry list: an outbreak of the Yellowstone supervolcano.
As the map below shows, previous eruptions at Yellowstone were so massive that the ash fall covered most of what is now the western United States. A similar event today would not only claim countless lives directly, but also create enough subsidiary disruption to kill off global civilisation as we know it. A relatively recent eruption of the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia may have come close to killing off the human species (see further below).
However, just because a scenario is grim does not mean that it is likely (insert topical political joke here). In this case, the doom mongers claiming an eruption is 'overdue' are wrong. Yellowstone is not a library book or an oil change. Just because the previous mega-eruption happened long ago doesn't mean the next one is imminent.
Ash beds of North America
Ash beds deposited by major volcanic eruptions in North America.
Image: USGS – public domain
This map shows the location of the Yellowstone plateau and the ash beds deposited by its three most recent major outbreaks, plus two other eruptions – one similarly massive, the other the most recent one in North America.
Huckleberry Ridge
The Huckleberry Ridge eruption occurred 2.1 million years ago. It ejected 2,450 km3 (588 cubic miles) of material, making it the largest known eruption in Yellowstone's history and in fact the largest eruption in North America in the past few million years.
This is the oldest of the three most recent caldera-forming eruptions of the Yellowstone hotspot. It created the Island Park Caldera, which lies partially in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming and westward into Idaho. Ash from this eruption covered an area from southern California to North Dakota, and southern Idaho to northern Texas.
Mesa Falls
About 1.3 million years ago, the Mesa Falls eruption ejected 280 km3 (67 cubic miles) of material and created the Henry's Fork Caldera, located in Idaho, west of Yellowstone.
It was the smallest of the three major Yellowstone eruptions, both in terms of material ejected and area covered: 'only' most of present-day Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska, and about half of South Dakota.
Lava Creek
The Lava Creek eruption was the most recent major eruption of Yellowstone: about 640,000 years ago. It was the second-largest eruption in North America in the past few million years, creating the Yellowstone Caldera.
It ejected only about 1,000 km3 (240 cubic miles) of material, i.e. less than half of the Huckleberry Ridge eruption. However, its debris is spread out over a significantly wider area: basically, Huckleberry Ridge plus larger slices of both Canada and Mexico, plus most of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri.
Long Valley
This eruption occurred about 760,000 years ago. It was centered on southern California, where it created the Long Valley Caldera, and spewed out 580 km3 (139 cubic miles) of material. This makes it North America's third-largest eruption of the past few million years.
The material ejected by this eruption is known as the Bishop ash bed, and covers the central and western parts of the Lava Creek ash bed.
Mount St Helens
The eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980 was the deadliest and most destructive volcanic event in U.S. history: it created a mile-wide crater, killed 57 people and created economic damage in the neighborhood of $1 billion.
Yet by Yellowstone standards, it was tiny: Mount St Helens only ejected 0.25 km3 (0.06 cubic miles) of material, most of the ash settling in a relatively narrow band across Washington State and Idaho. By comparison, the Lava Creek eruption left a large swathe of North America in up to two metres of debris.
The difference between quakes and faults
The volume of dense rock equivalent (DRE) ejected by the Huckleberry Ridge event dwarfs all other North American eruptions. It is itself overshadowed by the DRE ejected at the most recent eruption at Toba (present-day Indonesia). This was one of the largest known eruptions ever and a relatively recent one: only 75,000 years ago. It is thought to have caused a global volcanic winter which lasted up to a decade and may be responsible for the bottleneck in human evolution: around that time, the total human population suddenly and drastically plummeted to between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs.
Image: USGS – public domain
So, what are the chances of something that massive happening anytime soon? The aforementioned mongers of doom often claim that major eruptions occur at intervals of 600,000 years and point out that the last one was 640,000 years ago. Except that (a) the first interval was about 200,000 years longer, (b) two intervals is not a lot to base a prediction on, and (c) those intervals don't really mean anything anyway. Not in the case of volcanic eruptions, at least.
Earthquakes can be 'overdue' because the stress on fault lines is built up consistently over long periods, which means quakes can be predicted with a relative degree of accuracy. But this is not how volcanoes behave. They do not accumulate magma at constant rates. And the subterranean pressure that causes the magma to erupt does not follow a schedule.
What's more, previous super-eruptions do not necessarily imply future ones. Scientists are not convinced that there ever will be another big eruption at Yellowstone. Smaller eruptions, however, are much likelier. Since the Lava Creek eruption, there have been about 30 smaller outbreaks at Yellowstone, the last lava flow being about 70,000 years ago.
As for the immediate future (give or take a century): the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone is only 5 percent to 15 percent molten. Most scientists agree that is as un-alarming as it sounds. And that its statistically more relevant to worry about death by lightning, shark, or piano.
Strange Maps #1041
Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.
Stoicism can help overcome anxiety
Are you a worrier? Do you imagine nightmare scenarios and then get worked up and anxious about them? Does your mind get caught in a horrible spiral of catastrophizing over even the smallest of things? Worrying, particularly imagining the worst case scenario, seems to be a natural part of being human and comes easily to a lot of us. It's awful, perhaps even dangerous, when we do it.
But, there might just be an ancient wisdom that can help. It involves reframing this attitude for the better, and it comes from Stoicism. It's called "premeditation," and it could be the most useful trick we can learn.
Practical Stoicism
Broadly speaking, Stoicism is the philosophy of choosing your judgments. Stoics believe that there is nothing about the universe that can be called good or bad, valuable or valueless, in itself. It's we who add these values to things. As Shakespeare's Hamlet says, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Our minds color the things we encounter as being "good" or "bad," and given that we control our minds, we therefore have control over all of our negative feelings.
Put another way, Stoicism maintains that there's a gap between our experience of an event and our judgment of it. For instance, if someone calls you a smelly goat, you have an opportunity, however small and hard it might be, to pause and ask yourself, "How will I judge this?" What's more, you can even ask, "How will I respond?" We have power over which thoughts we entertain and the final say on our actions. Today, Stoicism has influenced and finds modern expression in the hugely effective "cognitive behavioral therapy."
One of the principal fathers of ancient Stoicism was the Roman statesmen, Seneca, who argued that the unexpected and unforeseen blows of life are the hardest to take control over. The shock of a misfortune can strip away the power we have to choose our reaction. For instance, being burglarized feels so horrible because we had felt so safe at home. A stomach ache, out of the blue, is harder than a stitch thirty minutes into a run. A sudden bang makes us jump, but a firework makes us smile. Fell swoops hurt more than known hardships.
What could possibly go wrong?
So, how can we resolve this? Seneca suggests a Stoic technique called "premeditatio malorum" or "premeditation." At the start of every day, we ought to take time to indulge our anxious and catastrophizing mind. We should "rehearse in the mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck." We should meditate on the worst things that could happen: your partner will leave you, your boss will fire you, your house will burn down. Maybe, even, you'll die.
This might sound depressing, but the important thing is that we do not stop there.
Stoicism has influenced and finds modern expression in the hugely effective "cognitive behavioral therapy."
The Stoic also rehearses how they will react to these things as they come up. For instance, another Stoic (and Roman Emperor) Marcus Aurelius asks us to imagine all the mean, rude, selfish, and boorish people we'll come across today. Then, in our heads, we script how we'll respond when we meet them. We can shrug off their meanness, smile at their rudeness, and refuse to be "implicated in what is degrading." Thus prepared, we take control again of our reactions and behavior.
The Stoics cast themselves into the darkest and most desperate of conditions but then realize that they can and will endure. With premeditation, the Stoic is prepared and has the mental vigor necessary to take the blow on the chin and say, "Yep, l can deal with this."
Catastrophizing as a method of mental inoculation
Seneca wrote: "In times of peace, the soldier carries out maneuvers." This is also true of premeditation, which acts as the war room or training ground. The agonizing cut of the unexpected is blunted by preparedness. We can prepare the mind for whatever trials may come, in just the same way we can prepare the body for some endurance activity. The world can throw nothing as bad as that which our minds have already imagined.
Stoicism teaches us to embrace our worrying mind but to embrace it as a kind of inoculation. With a frown over breakfast, try to spend five minutes of your day deliberately catastrophizing. Get your anti-anxiety battle plan ready and then face the world.
Jonny Thomson teaches philosophy in Oxford. He runs a popular Instagram account called Mini Philosophy (@philosophyminis). His first book is Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas.
