A message in the formless flow of things

In tonight's Joyce seminar, I read my students a passage from No Souvenirs, a twelve-year journal by religious historian Mircea Eliade. The passage describes well the day-long journey of Leopold Bloom in the novel Ulysses, but it also describes the well-lived life:

1 January 1960
    Every exile is a Ulysses traveling toward Ithaca. Every real existence reproduces the Odyssey. The path toward Ithaca, toward the center. I had known all that for a long time. What I have just discovered is that the chance to become a new Ulysses is given to any exile whatsoever (precisely because he has been condemned by the gods, that is, by the "powers" which decide historical, earthly destinies). But to realize this, the exile must be capable of penetrating the hidden meaning of his wanderings, and of understanding them as a long series of initiation trials (willed by the gods) and as so many obstacles on the path which brings him back to the hearth (toward the center). That means: seeing signs, hidden meanings, symbols, in the sufferings, the depressions, the dry periods of everyday life. Seeing them and reading them even if they aren't there; if one sees them, one can build a structure and read a message in the formless flow of things and the monotonous flux of historical facts (84-85).

In this life we are all exiles. Knowing that, and reading the signs, can help us find our way home.