Yes We Can! by Marc Gafni

One of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century is James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. Joyce spends reams of pages portraying the main character, Leopold Bloom’s ‘No’ reality in the streets of Dublin. Joyce maps masterfully the life of the archetypal human whose life is a series of unnecessary losses. The deaths of bloom’s son and father, his daughter’s leaving,  the passing of his youth, and finally the adultery of his wife. Yet in  the last scene of the book, Bloom returns home to his sleeping wife. Never mind it is a recently desecrated bed. Never mind he sleeps with his feet at her head, and his head at her feet. It is still home, the erotic haven of the insides. The book ends with a crescendo of Yes. As his wife feigns sleeping we float along in  her stream of consciousness… finally concluding with reminiscences of the early ecstatic hours of her and Leopold’s love. It is a definitive return to Yes. 

and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes

and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Of course, the Yes here is sexual. But more than that, the overwhelming perfume of this sexual Yessing signifies hope, promise and possibility in the most expanded erotic sense. This final Yes has magically transformed the seven hundred plus pages of modern existentialistic No’s. 

The high priest entering the Holy of Holies once a year says Yes with his every step. The cherubs murmur to each other, “Yes, yes.” The Temple of Jerusalem was built with Yes stones. The Presence of God is a great green light, that says Yes, Proceed. The universe an open Entryway, crowned by a neon “Yes” sign. It is as Wallace Stevens reminds us:

after the final No comes a Yes 

On that yes the future of the world depends.

posted by Marc Gafni assistant

marcgafni.com