portrait kindness Ulysses

In case anyone missed it I have reposted yesterday's post where the layout went sadly wrong.

Portrait of a lady. In a tea shop with reflections of the building opposite.

What we need in the world is kindness as opposed to preaching. I often think with pleasure of Wordsworth's "little nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love". And I am reminded of his words to day by the speech delivered by Ang Sun Kui in Oslo 21 years after she was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize. "Of the sweets of adversity - and let me say that they are  not numerous - the sweetest, the most precious of all is the lesson I learnt on the value of kindness. Every kindness I received small or big, convinced me that there could never be enough of it in our world. To be kind is to respond with sensitivity and human warmth to the hopes and needs of others. Even the briefest touch of kindness can lighten a heavy heart. Kindness can change the lives of others."

Yesterday was Bloomsday, when the novel, Ulysses, which records a day (June 16 as it happens) in the life of Leopold Bloom, James Joyce's unlikely hero as makes his way across Dublin mixing business with pleasure as he goes. This year the BBC broadcast a shortened version throughout the day concluding at midnight. I go to sleep with with Molly Bloom's  unpunctuated, stream-of consciousness monologue with which the book ends in my ears.  "...and first I put my arms round 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."