Finnegans Wake has a way of burrowing into the mind, and after readers have internalized enough of it, they can more easily connect it to their everyday experience. In this post, I briefly examine how the word “clipper” in everyday life can become a jumping off point for reflecting on Joyce’s literature and, ultimately, the human condition. It is as Buck Mulligan says in Ulysses: “Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.” Mulligan is, of course, being his usual, mocking self, but — as Joyce often reveals — a lot of Truth can be said in jest.