(essay, v. to test the nature or quality of (a thing); to try out. Funk & Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968. Print.)
Go sit down. Take off one shoe and the sock under it, if any. Scrape some schmutz from under your big toenail. Use some kind of implement if your fingernails are too short to get under there.
Look up Joyce’s Ulysses in the Gutenberg Project and paste the entire book into a Microsoft Word document so you can search out the paragraph where Bloom scrapes some schmutz from under his big toenail and sniffs it. Now sniff the schmutz from under your own big toenail. Flick away the schmutz.
Go to your work and do the same tasks you did yesterday. Reread the last sentence.
Go sit down. Realize with sudden and total certainty that everything that matters so much doesn’t matter so much. Worry about it. Go back to the second sentence in this paragraph and take out the comma. Go do the dishes.
Hunt for something in your life that you think has unassailable meaning or significance. Don’t find anything. Stop worrying about it. Now hunt for something in your life that you think has unassailable value or significance. Locate a likely suspect.
Determine whether you think it’s significant, or merely valuable. Figure it out that it’s valuable. Stare at nothing for a while. Go watch TV.
Return to your object of value. Crop it so that you remove yourself as yourself from its background. View your displaced object of value against what you imagine to be the rest of the world. Examine. Go make yourself some dinner and eat it while watching TV. Get up and do the dishes.
Go to your work and do the same tasks you did yesterday. Read that last sentence again. Skip to the paragraph after next. Come back.
Go sit down and look at your object of value. Ask:
Does it belong to you? Does it belong to someone else? Does it belong to anybody? Is it valuable held up against what you think of as the rest of the world? If it’s valuable only to you, do you still think it’s valuable?
Go read a silly detective novel. Smoke a cigarette. Go to bed.
Go to your work and do the same tasks you did yesterday. Get very angry about something and don’t show it. Hate everybody you see and don’t show it. Fantasize about throwing a tantrum and breaking things and don’t do it. Curse your upbringing for making you so goddamn polite. Then remember that your learned repression has a functional purpose. Feel lonely.
Go to your work and do the same tasks you did yesterday. Reread the last sentence. Repeat. Feel lonely. Reread the previous three sentences. Then remember that your function serves a functional purpose. Go home. Clean the birdcage.
Look over the bills. Do homework. When your boyfriend visits have sex. Stop worrying. Worry again. Take out the trash. Take out a comma.
Hunt for something. Make yourself a cup of really strong coffee and drink it while sitting next to the birdcage. Smell the bird-smell. Try to have a conversation with the bird. Feel content.
Go sit down and look at your function or purpose. Ask:
Does it belong to you? Does it belong to someone else?
Go to your work and do the same tasks you did yesterday. Smell your mom’s hair.
Go tidy up the kitchen. Make yourself some dinner. Make a jar of tea. Go sit down. Pick your nose. Delete an item from this paragraph. Think about why Bloom’s toenail always makes you happy. Ask:
Does it belong to you? Does it belong to someone else? Does it belong to anybody? Is it valuable up against what you think of as the rest of the world? Does it matter? Is it valuable only to you? If it’s valuable to you, does anything happen?
Reread the previous paragraph. Write this: go blank and do blank. Ask:
Is it blank to you? Is it blank to someone else? Is it blank to anybody? Is it blank held up against what you imagine to be blank? Is it matter? Is it only blank to you? If it's blank, does it ever?