A Bloomsday Note: I visit James Joyce's grave with Craig Arnold (by Jill Alexander Essbaum)

Statue of James Joyce at his grave in Zurich

A favorite memory from Switzerland. Craig and Robin come to visit me. We share a picnic of cheese and cherries and bread in the park behind the Landesmuseum near the Zurich Hauptbahnhof.  We sit on the concrete-floored gazebo, and there are ants. Later, it is a trek to James Joyce's gravesite. We are appropriately reverent and also appropriately irreverent. We may or may not quote passages from Joycean works (alas, I do not recall). I may or may not mention that my prefered Joyce is 'Carol Oates.'  Robin, I think, is bored. The sun is high and hot in the sky. It is summer. I had broken a tooth on a frozen bar of chocolate the night before and am wearing an odd prosthetic. My Swiss dentist also has a son named Robin. Later, Craig cooks a supper for all of us. It is pasta, if I remember rightly, and it is exquisite.  As Craig's meals always were.