Flushed Flung Fluttered

A Text Derived from James Joyce’s Ulysses, 1922

A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulligan's cheek. He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of tune with a Cockney accent:

O, WON'T WE HAVE A MERRY TIME,
DRINKING WHISKY, BEER AND WINE!
ON CORONATION,
CORONATION DAY!
O, WON'T WE HAVE A MERRY TIME
ON CORONATION DAY!

He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted:

GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE! WRITE DOWN ALL I SAID AND TELL TOM, DIEK AND HARRY I ROSE FROM THE DEAD. WHAT’S BRED IN THE BON CANNOT FAIL ME TO FLYAND OLIVET'S BREEZY ... GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE!

He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries. He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his clothes lay. On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. THE MONSTER MAFFEI DESISTED AND FLUNG HIS VICTIM FROM HIM WITH AN OATH. He shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. The shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter, then all sank. The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in on the coffin. Parked in North Prince's street His Majesty's vermilion mailcars, bearing on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly flung sacks of letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured and paid, for local, provincial, British and overseas delivery. That hectic flush spells finis for a man. Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door was flung open. He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point. He flung the pages down. A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scattering in all directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. She did get flushed in the wind. The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. On that mystery and not on the Madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro and microcosm, upon the void. A flushed young man came from a gap of a hedge and after him came a young woman with wild nodding daisies in her hand. Corny Kelleher sped a silent jet of hayjuice arching from his mouth while a generous white arm from a window in Eccles street flung forth a coin. A woman's hand flung forth a coin over the area railings. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their brows. And gold flushed more.  All flushed (O!), panting, sweating (O!), all breathless. And flushed yet more (you horrid!), more goldenly. Flushed less, still less, goldenly paled. Goulding, a flush struggling in his pale, told Mr Bloom, face of the night, Si in Ned Lambert's, Dedalus house, sang 'TWAS RANK AND FAME. Great voice Richie Goulding said, a flush struggling in his pale, to Bloom soon old. And by that way wend the herds innumerable of bellwethers and flushed ewes and shearling rams and lambs and stubble geese and medium steers and roaring mares and polled calves and longwoods and storesheep and Cuffe's prime springers and culls and sowpigs and baconhogs and the various different varieties of highly distinguished swine and Angus heifers and polly bulllocks of immaculate pedigree together with prime premiated milchcows and beeves: and there is ever heard a trampling, cackling, roaring, lowing, bleating, bellowing, rumbling, grunting, champing, chewing, of sheep and pigs and heavyhooved kine from pasturelands of Lusk and Rush and Carrickmines and from the streamy vales of Thomond, from the M'Gillicuddy's reeks the inaccessible and lordly Shannon the unfathomable, and from the gentle declivities of the place of the race of Kiar, their udders distended with superabundance of milk and butts of butter and rennets of cheese and farmer's firkins and targets of lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs in great hundreds, various in size, the agate with this dun. In the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and when prayer by tantras had been directed to the proper quarter a faint but increasing luminosity of ruby light became gradually visible, the apparition of the etheric double being particularly lifelike owing to the discharge of jivic rays from the crown of the head and face. The NEC and NON PLUS ULTRA of emotion were reached when the blushing bride elect burst her way through the serried ranks of the bystanders and flung herself upon the muscular bosom of him who was about to be launched into eternity for her sake. The soldier got to business, leading off with a powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of Bennett's jaw. And just now at Edy's words as a telltale flush, delicate as the faintest rosebloom, crept into her cheeks she looked so lovely in her sweet girlish shyness that of a surety God's fair land of Ireland did not hold her equal. As for undies they were Gerty's chief care and who that knows the fluttering hopes and fears of sweet seventeen (though Gerty would never see seventeen again) can find it in his heart to blame her? Gerty MacDowell bent down her head and crimsoned at the idea of Cissy saying an unladylike thing like that out loud she'd be ashamed of her life to say, flushing a deep rosy red, and Edy Boardman said she was sure the gentleman opposite heard what she said. She felt the warm flush, a danger signal always with Gerty MacDowell, surging and flaming into her cheeks. He flung his wooden pen away. Come on, you doggone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! THE NAVVY, STAGGERING FORWARD, CLEAVES THE CROWD AND LURCHES TOWARDS THE TRAMSIDING ON THE FARTHER SIDE UNDER THE RAILWAY BRIDGE BLOOM APPEARS, FLUSHED, PANTING, CRAMMING BREAD AND CHOCOLATE INTO A SIDEPOCKET. (THEY RUSTLE, FLUTTER UPON HIS GARMENTS, ALIGHT, BRIGHT GIDDY FLECKS, SILVERY SEQUINS.) A DOOR ON THE RETURN LANDING IS FLUNG OPEN. (HATLESS, FLUSHED, COVERED WITH BURRS OF THISTLEDOWN AND GORSESPINE.) MRS DIGNAM, WIDOW WOMAN, HER SNUBNOSE AND CHEEKS FLUSHED WITH DEATHTALK, TEARS AND TUNNEY'S TAWNY SHERRY, HURRIES BY IN HER WEEDS, HER BONNET AWRY, ROUGING AND POWDERING HER CHEEKS, LIPS AND NOSE, A PEN CHIVVYING HER BROOD OF CYGNETS. PROFESSOR GOODWIN, IN A BOWKNOTTED PERIWIG, IN COURT DRESS, WEARING A STAINED INVERNESS CAPE, BENT IN TWO FROM INCREDIBLE AGE, TOTTERS ACROSS THE ROOM, HIS HANDS FLUTTERING. HE SITS TINILY ON THE PIANOSTOOL AND LIFTS AND BEATS HANDLESS STICKS OF ARMS ON THE KEYBOARD, NODDING WITH DAMSEL'S GRACE, HIS BOWKNOT BOBBING. THEY ARE IN GREY GAUZE WITH DARK BAT SLEEVES THAT FLUTTER IN THE LAND BREEZE. He personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed and didn't make the smallest bones about saying so either that man or men in the plural were always hanging around on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the best wife in the world and they got on fairly well together for the sake of argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of wedded life and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to press their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being that her affections centred on another, the cause of many LIAISONS between still attractive married women getting on for fair and forty and younger men, no doubt as several famous cases of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt. It was in fact only a matter of months and he could easily foresee him participating in their musical and artistic CONVERSAZIONES during the festivities of the Christmas season, for choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the fair sex and being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which, as he happened to know, were on record in fact, without giving the show away, he himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have…I hate people who come at all hours answer the door you think its the vegetables then its somebody and you all undressed or the door of the filthy sloppy kitchen blows open the day old frostyface Goodwin called about the concert in Lombard street and I just after dinner all flushed and tossed with boiling old stew dont look at me professor I had to say Im a fright yes but he was a real old gent in his way it was impossible to be more respectful…I like letting myself down after in the hole as far as I can squeeze and pull the chain then to flush it nice cool pins and needles…