Having my way with Ulysses

To substitute other more acceptable phenomena in the place of the less acceptable phenomena to be removed.

• Ithaca

In order to cry, steer the imagination toward yourself, and if this proves impossible owing to having contracted the habit of believing in the exterior world, think of a duck covered with ants or of those gulfs in the Straits of Magellan into which no one sails ever.2:25 am

A father is a necessary evil, though it’s damn hard to feel necessity for something that might easily be nothing. How would I know anything? Coming into this mess: I’m a baby. I have no need of memory.  What do I want with a memory until I have some shot at using it for my own interests? I sure as hell knew who Momma was, but him? Was he even there? And me? I’m a newborn. I’m busy proceeding energetically from the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void. I’m dealing with the painful character of the ultimate functions of separate existence. Take any other baby born on the day of my birth, take them all: he could have been all their daddies. I can see why the immaculate conception sold so well. I’ll buy one of those and I’ll take a little apostolic succession on the side.  But these recurrent frustrations, just when I can see a critical turning point just there, just there, then down we tumble faster than 32 feet per second per second. It’s a battle against hopelessness carrying on like this. He’s my only begetter; I am his only begotten, but disarmed of fatherhood what is he? Who is he to me? All babies have fathers. Some fathers are not fathers. Therefore, some babies have not fathers. Take the imposition of natural law out of the picture and what, does that make life infinitely perfectible? Upward to some great goal. Suppose I am a father. Am I a father? If I were? A father is an unnecessary evil.

Different ways of bringing off a coup.

• Eumaeus

He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.1:41 am

  • Establish dominance, think alpha male. But less is more, remember Al Gore in 2000? Not that kind of alpha male. Carry your revolution as if it has a really big dick, but you don’t need to whip it out to prove it.  Be everybody’s daddy.
  • Don’t play musical chairs. Be ruthless whilst removing the former bastards in power. Why have a coup if you keep all the same people around?
  • Make friends with the army, but don’t make promises. You don’t want the people with the weaponry suddenly thinking they can throw a better revolution than yours.
  • The military likes to play with their guns, so let them handle any civil opposition that will undoubtedly crop up.  You can’t bake a cake without breaking a few eggs. You can, however, hire somebody to break the eggs and bake whatever you tell them to bake.
  • Come up with a proper pronunciamiento to justify your new world order to the masses.  Clarity trumps veracity.  Remember a real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation.
  • The first person to tell a story wins, so get out there with whatever truth you like, and fast.  Remember, a proper coup happens suddenly.
  • When delivering your first epistle, don’t try to be more fascinating than thou.  The proletariat hates a show off.
  • The proletariat also hates a smartypants. Don’t lead with your philosophy.  People need to be wined and dined a little, talk about them, then you can get down to ideology.  Promise things.
  • Once you are in, spread out. The initial revolution will be a public in-your-face event, but remember that the best coup carries on behind the scenes and under the table for years to come. Quietly take over whatever you like, but of course start small. Identify all the mechanisms of public discipline and link them together one by one, under your own power structure.
  • Keep track of everything and everybody, subject everybody to a field of visibility and let them all know it: in this way you ensure that if anybody steps one toe outside of your idea of what they ought to be doing, they will make themselves visible. Let visibility be their trap, if only to prevent a coup designed to depose you.
  • Get rid of the old regime’s intellectuals, particularly if they are smarter than your intellectuals. Endeavor to have the smartest intellectuals. Do this through assimilation if you can at all manage it. Otherwise, just toss the ones you don’t like to the military.  Now go.

Their two or four eyes conversing.

• Eumaeus

Others asked such questions as "Why should we care what happens after we are dead" or "If this Rebellion is to happen anyway, what difference does it make whether we work for it or not?"

1:33 am

Scene: [A rabbi and a priest walk into a bar. The rabbi says:]

Rabbi: Where is everybody, are we the first ones here?

Priest: Must be. Good, I wanted to talk with you alone. You and I need to take control of this thing before it bloats to an inmanagable size.

Rabbi: Yes. Our revolution must come on the due instalments plan, if we expect to pull this thing off at all.

Priest: [Turning away from the others who probably and speaks nearer to, so as the others in case they.]  Shush for Christ sake.

The Rabbi: Am I not right?

The Priest: Yes, but this place is all eyes. I don’t want to indulge in any, orthodox as you are.

Rabbi: Right. Of course. Listen. We want to homogenize all faiths yes, but some faiths are, you understand. I mean, all faiths are equal.

Priest: But some faiths are more equal than others.

Rabbi: Indeed. So your plan to raise money, I don’t see it.  How do your people do it? It seems you raise your money on false pretenses, fork it over and you’ll go to heaven. What heaven? Show me heaven.

Priest: The abstract future reward is always more powerful than immediate gain or punishment. Don’t you know that yourself? Heaven, its glories, its boundless bountiful plenitude, the sheer everythingness of the whole concept can take any size, it can stretch to any or no limit, it can fill every space, it can

Rabbi:  Save it for your congregation, father, you can be all their daddies but not mine. Try selling buy now receive later to people who concern themselves with life here and now. I walk in with future reward and say pay money for it, I might as well sell crosses. Mine won’t be the only ones, prepare yourself, and what about the Muslims?

Priest: That’s where self sacrifice for eternal reward will pay off.

Rabbi: Yes, but their temporality, so unpredictable. So branching and forking.  Touch it and it folds up on itself, how do we manage that? Call something a crusade and they feel it like it happened yesterday. And so it did happen yesterday. Bring up any event of any kind and bam, it’s now. We’re in it now. We’ll need a work around.  I’m assuming we’ll want everyone to go linear?

Priest: Makes sense to me. The Hindus are persuadable, but the Buddhists, the Taoists especially.  They’ll make trouble, and that’s not trouble we want.

Rabbi: No.

Priest: No.  To keep linear time we’ll have to speak of other things. Distract them with other issues. Look, we’ll have to say: it’s hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is. We pose to them that we all resent violence or intolerance.

Rabbi: Yes. It never reaches anything; It never stops anything.

Priest: Never. It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular.  No. We must be practical.  We must imbue ourselves with the proper spirit.  It will be the only way to create our New Bloomusalem.  By the way, do you like the symbol I came up with?

Rabbi: It’s a little busy. The Hindus might like it. It’s a good job you didn’t add a bleeding saint to it, or we’d never convince the Muslims to get on board.

Thou art all their daddies.

• Oxen of the Sun

Thus, were it not miraculous, could I stretch forth my hand and clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretch forth my hand at all; that I have free Force to clutch aught therewith?10:49 pm

Congratulations, Theodore, job well done my man. You’ve shown them all, getting on in age and there’s no stopping your popping. Not with you, no way. How did old Zarathustra say it? I can’t remember.  What did he?  I can see him saying it too, like he’s looking right at us right now. It was like. I know. With you it’s its not like with many that would want to and would wait and never do but you did it, baby, you are all their daddies! And off that old woman of yours too. She might be a little calloused around the nipples, what with all the work they’ve done over the years am I right? Oh but you both have outflows in abundance and drink up now little baby, now is the time for drinking!  It’s good milk and sweet and fattening. So here’s to the goddesses of baby popping, and of cherry popping. Now daddy, let’s get ourselves to the bar, what?  As new life reaches for a warm bellyful, let us reach out hands for a cold one.

From what region of remoteness the whatness of our whoness hath fetched his whenceness

• Oxen of the Sun

These in thir dark Nativitie the Deep Shall yield us pregnant with infernal flame, Which into hallow Engins long and round Thick-rammd, at th' other bore with touch of fire Dilated and infuriate shall send forth From far with thundring noise among our foes Such implements of mischief as shall dash To pieces, and orewhelm whatever stands Adverse, that they shall fear we have disarmd The Thunderer of his only dreaded bolt.10:15 pm

O Nobodaddy come and get me I am God!  And basta, I am done.  You’re not my daddy. You’re nobody’s daddy.  Enough!  Bring a stranger into our tower and now mine is the second best bed.  Strangers at my gates!  Sinning against my light.  I starve and he waxes fat.  Try and make me the slave of servants I am done, you hear me God!  I am God!  The son of a jalap merchant reeking of the land of milk and money.   I know that assurfaction minorates atrocities but I won’t let myself get comfortable.  I’m out!  The kiss of ashes on my breath and that’s that.  You hear me God?  You are dead!  You are beastly dead!  I am God!  I am tired of this shit.  Everything is hidden and not where it should be.  Life is a waxing and a waning and I am always and forever in the middle of the path of life no matter how fast or how slow or which direction or why.  Where else is there or when?  Birth me, bury me, the middle of the path is just as obsure as where we came from and whence we go.  And when and where.  God is running a short con and I’m the mark baby.  It’s a shell game and you want to know what’s what, I am God!  I’ll be making the meaning around here.  Misdirect me if you think you can God, I’ll be the one who decides.  I’m the daddy now baby I’m everybody’s daddy!

Ullhodturdenweirmudgaardgringnirurdrmolnirfenrirlukkilokkibaugimandodrrerinsurtkrinmgernrackinarockar!

Good Jesus Christ Mother of Fuck!  What did he say?  What did he say?  What did he say about me?

What the hell are you driving at? I know. Shut up. Blast you. I have reasons.

• Scylla and Charybdis

Life, he himself said once, (his biografiend, in fact, kills him verysoon, if yet not, after) is a wake, livit or krikit, and on the bunk of our breadwinning lies the cropse of our seedfather, a phrase which the establisher of the world by law might pretinately write across the chestfront of all manorwombanborn.2:36 pm

A father is a necessary evil.  Listen to me, I know.  Who’s your daddy?  Do you really know?  You have a woman’s word for it.  Ok yes, she is your mother and amor matris from whichever direction you approach it may be the only true thing in life.  So why then, come on tell me, do the Roman Catholics and their spin offs base everything upon fatherhood’s rock hardness, when we are all born from the eye of the whirlpool?  Why?  Listen to me, I see you.  Straying in your thoughts.  Get back here.  Come back to my theolologicophilological (I ought to be stopped) theory. Now. Where were we. Father religion. This god is all their daddies. Yes. I’m fine. The church like the world (both micro and macro cosmos) is founded upon the void, the uncertainty of which (even the unlikelihood of which) fatherhood represents.  Or perhaps it happens the other way around.  Yes. Pay attention. The fear of daddy we feel as children while simultaneously feeling secure in his protection from danger we ascribe by apostolic succession to God the father.  Yes.  Feel it.  Furthermore, heretofore, once again, hereafter (are you condemned to do this?) old Nobodaddy will tell you himself that his role was a brief spurt of inspiration (expiration more like) and off he goes.  And agenbite of inwit?  What’s that?  Oh shake it off Nobodaddy.  Mingo minxi micxtum mingler. World without end amen. Oh I will be condemned. (Am I a father?  If I were?)  Look, this enthroned one, this everybody’s daddy, says Sabellius, was son of his own son.  The man felt himself with child foetus that was himself.  How’s that?  Come again?  One coming is sufficient;  Here.  Have an example.  An example.  Well, look at Shakespeare.  Or whatever his name was. Breathe. Breathing. Rutlandbaconsouthhamptonshakespearemarlowe wrote Hamlet.  He was not the father of his own son,  he was the father of all his race.  He was everybody’s daddy.  Am I battling against hopelessness?  Fight with me.  Our worst enemies are in our own house and family.  Stand!  Fight!  Kid, your growth is my decline.  Your youth is my envy.  Your friend is my enemy!  You brought me pain.  Her too and you ruined her body.  You divided her from me.  Get down from there!  Be careful!  You increase my cares.  I worry sick about you.  Slow down!  Look both ways!  Don’t talk to that perve with the candy.  Don’t impregnate before you can pay.  Dont do anything stupid.  Good Christ, listen to me!

I tried hard to have a father but instead I had a dad

• Telemachus

For in the beginning of literature is the myth, and in the end as well.9:12 am

My dad says he doesn’t believe in being a stern father and he makes a point of talking to me as a friend and an even bigger point of telling everybody he talks to me as a friend.  Wants to be my brother, but my big brother who can still eclipse me and be the better man for it.  Or fade me out like he is the sun and I’m a shadow that doesn’t stand a chance.  He’s like that. Likes to think he’s so badass he’s everybody’s daddy.  Lazy bitch.  He called me that once.  We’re as old as we feel he says and he is feeling my age.  Buck called me Japhet in search of a father, looking for atonement.  Iapetos more like.  The Greek version of Japhet fits the bill a bit better I’d say.  Iapetos the god of the mortal life span, who with his brothers the other Time gods turned their father into a bitch.  Their mother Gaia, the earth, started it.  She wanted a divorce.  An old school divorce.  Their father Uranus was an asshole of mythic proportions.  He would hide the brothers in the earth once they were born just to keep them down.  You can be a man, sure, but not as good a one as me.  Mama Gaia got sick of this, as you can imagine, and made a plan.  Then she gave Kronos a sickle.  Now Kronos is the god of all-devouring Time so Mama’s plan fed right into his destructive side and he hopped on board fast as lightning.  The rest of us needed little persuasion.  Krios, my brother who runs the measurement of the year felt ripe for it, and Hyperion with his days and months always wanted to be a part of whatever Krios did, so he came along too.  It took just a little longer for Koios to come around.  He is the god of the axis of heaven and even though he said he saw it coming he couldn’t decide what was in it for him.  Sheesh, you’d think the world revolves around him.  He’s the one married to Omphalos, that blowhard, you know her?  She’s full of hot air.  Anyway, the only one of us who didn’t want to get one up on the old man was Okeanos, but he’s just in charge of moving of the planets and he does a piss poor job of it too apparently, with them going backwards whenever they want.  What does he know about Time?  So here’s what we did.  We knew Uranus was on his way to sleep with our mother (the less I describe about that the better, don’t want this thing to start sounding like a Greek tragedy) and just as he was spreading himself all over the top of her, Krios, Koios, and Hyperion each grabbed a corner of daddy dearest and I grabbed the fourth. Then Kronos, who had hidden himself somewhere near the omphalos, jumped up fast and cut his dick right off.  Just like that.  One slice.  Balls too.  He howled so much you can still hear it now.  Listen, hear that?  Blood splashed all over the place like Carrie at the prom and a whole lot of shit happened after that, but that’s another story.  The upshot is there was no atonement; it was an ambush plain and simple and now dad sings soprano.  And Kronos still likes carrying that sickle around.  He’s working as a travel agent these days.  Wait.  Hold on.  Who is telling this story?