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The motif from the previous page continues, but with different artistic choices. Now Bloom is caught between the girl and the woman, “girl’s sweet light lips” and “full gluey woman’s lips.” The thought balloons tumble down, moving, spreading like the “flowing qualm” even as Bloom himself can’t move.
Yet then he thinks of moving: traveling down to Mullingar, possibly to effect some paternal influence, maybe just to check in and keep an eye out, maybe to get away from Molly. Bloom spends the day in motion, but this is not the only time we will see him paralyzed by his own sense of regret, loss, and ambivalence.