Catching up

I have a lot of never-posted posts in this thing, including this one I started in early 2007:

“He was tired of knocking about, of pulling the devil by the tail, of shifts and intrigues. He would be thirty-one in November. Would he never get a good job? Would he never have a home of his own? . . . He might yet be able to settle down in some snug corner and live happily if he could only come across some good simple-minded girl with a little of the ready.”

Ah, if only – the “things would be better if/will be better when” attitude. That is the death of me.

I had this unusually introspective moment when I discovered the above passage in The Dubliners during that James Joyce class I took at the JC, and at the time I was going to be thirty-one in November. And now I am going to be thirty-two in November and it is still a little creepy to read Joyce's description of my life written over 70 years before I was born. How did he know?