"...and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another 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."

James Joyce - Ulysses

This excerpt is taken from the end of the final episode in James Joyce's Ulysses, sometimes referred to the Penelope episode. In this episode (which contains only eight paragraphs across fourtysome pages) Molly Bloom discovers she is in love with Leopold Bloom. This is what I consider one of the most beautifully written passages in the English language.

I suppose this is nothing more than a mee too note but I have only just noticed this node thanks to chrystofs additional note in regard to the passage it was taken from. I'm writing this note just to say me too, I was dumb-struck when I first read this, awed, changed.

Not only is it a beautiful, swaying piece of writing but it was so very liberating in the sense that I then knew it was possible to break all boundaries in my self-expression, that meaning was truly secondary to beauty in respect of art and that there was a world of truth embedded in the very pulses of life we hear, the ebb and flow of the conscious minds of others that surrounds us.

As you read this passage you can only marvel at what Joyce did, it flows like the sea, sometimes receding, sometimes crashing over you in waves of thought. Read it, please.