"But is was all so long ago."

(262.3-264.14)  And so, I've returned.  Good to see you again.  And happy birthday, James Joyce -- in honor of the occasion, I'm diving back in to your work.

It's weird getting back into the Wake after almost three months of being away, but maybe it's appropriate to have my project of reading the Wake be reborn in this new(ish) year, picking right off where I left off as if it's just a matter of course.

And where do I begin?  At a beginning.  Our hero crosses a bridge, knocks at the castle door (echoing and inverting the story of the Prankquean), and gains entrance with the password, "pearse" (recalling Persse O'Reilly).  But as soon as our hero gains entrance to the castle, he falls victim to the thunder:

Hoo cavedin earthwight
At furscht kracht of thunder.

With the hero fallen, it's time to "wake em!"  And so, the mourners are called in to the wake with the words, "Sow byg eat," both lamenting "so be it" and imploring the wakers to eat.  "Burials be ballyhouraised!" the narrator proclaims.  "So let Bacchus e'en call!  Inn inn!  Inn inn!"

The world is now in order.  "The babbers ply the pen." (The babies/children are doing their schoolwork.)  "The bibbers drang the den."  (The imbibers/drinkers are draining their glasses in the den of the pub.)  And "[t]he papplicom, the pubblicam he's turning tin for ten."  (The pubkeeper's making a tidy profit.)  The four wise old men are here:  Ignotus Loquor, Egyptus, Major A. Shaw, and Whiteman.

At this point, the narrator of the children's textbook takes a step back and notes that this world is but one iteration of the eternal cycle:  "But is was all so long ago."  Expanding on this, the narrator adds, "Pastimes are past times.  Now let bygones be bei Gunne's."  We can see slight variations on the themes as they repeat throughout history, but ultimately they amount to the same thing.  And not only are things the same forward and backward, but the same scenarios reappear both above and below (i.e., in heaven and hell):

The tasks above are ask the flasks below, saith the emerald canticle of Hermes and all's loth and pleasestir, are we told, on excellent inkbottle authority, solarsystemised, seriolcosmically, in a more and more almightily expanding universe under one, there is rhymeless reason to believe, orignal sun.

This meditation ends with a comical swipe at the Father who is responsible for everything we are and know:  "O felicitous culpability, sweet bad cess to you for an archetypt!"

Back at the wake, the mourners honor the father (or HCE, "Honour commercio's energy") and offer assistance to the mother (or ALP, "aid the linkless proud").  They note it's "roaring month with its two lunar eclipses and its three saturnine settings" (once again recalling the two young women -- for whom the lunar reference is appropriate, given the fact that HCE sees them with their pants down, meaning that they're mooning him -- and the three soliders), and they look forward to HCE's return:  "We seek the Blessed One, the Harbourer-cum-Enheritance."  He's "[e]ver a-going, ever a-coming," and he's both rotting history and sprouting future:  "Fossilisation, all branches."  Today's passage ends with the all-seeing and ever-present stone and the tree -- Petra and Ulma -- swearing, "[b]y the mortals' frost!" and "[o]n my veiny life!"