Having my way with Ulysses

The brave woman had manfully helped. She had.

Luster and odors, and blossoms and flowers, All that is richest in gardens and bowers, teach us morality, speak of mortality, whisper that life is a swift unreality.10:46 pm

Scene: [After a job quite happily and well done, those who have passed on, who have gone before are happy too as they gaze down and smile upon the touching scene.]

St. Anne: No matter how many times I see it, no matter how often I am summoned to the miracle that is birth, I can’t get past how disgusting it all is.

St. Margaret: Amen.  And this one was a bleeder.  Where’s the universal husband?

Father Cronion: I saw him just a bit ago.  Finishing up a meal of baby fingers it looked like.

St. Margaret:  Was he?  Lord I’m hungry.  We’ve been at this job for days.

St. Anne: Well isn’t it just like the Universal Husband to be absent just at the God! Oh God you’re here!

God: Did I miss it?

St. Anne: Not at all , not at all. Sir, to you my hand!  A fine job you did here, well done.

God: None of that, none of that.  It was down to the three of you the birth went off as well as it did.  Looks a mess though.

St. Anne:  We’ll send in a crew.  Clean it up.  Margaret?

St. Margaret: I’ll make a call. We’ve been a bit behind schedule

Father Cronion: Time did slip away from us. But we pulled it off in the end, didn’t we ladies.  With of course Your intervention.

God:  It was hard work all around, but my good and faithful servants, we soldiered it out and just look, we gave birth to a fine little mite!  But yes, send in a crew to clean her up.  And flowers.  Lets get her some flowers, give her something to think about.

The thousand vicissitudes of existence.

It was the protection of the vulture to the lamb, which covers while it devours its prey—which stretching its baleful pinions, and hovering in mid air, disperses the kites and lesser birds of prey, and saves the innocent and helpless victim from all talons but its own.10:31 pm

I really can’t take my eyes off of him.  That must be the mark of forceps on his head.    No.  Or was he punched too often or too well.  A boxer.  They do heal.  He must have been an accident of birth.   A doctor, like one of these, juvenile still. Drunk maybe. And his mother in labor for 88 hours.  Had to be.  A boy born with a pull and a tug.  The soft part of his head squeezed by instruments and inexperience, and that dent won’t bounce back.

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

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!

No-one is anything

He had eaten all the whilepaper, swallowed the lustres, devoured forty flights of styearcases, chewed up all the mensas and seccles, ronged the records, made mundballs of the ephemerids and vorasioused most glutinously with the very timeplace in the ternitary -- not too dusty a cicada of neurtiment for a chittinous chip so mitey. 1:30 pm

We die.  Mors Certa, Hora Incerta.  So how can we be anything?  No-one is anything.  From the void and to the void, and again and again.  Things go on the same.  One born every minute.  Well more like, let’s see, carry the one.  Stop a minute so I can calculate this.  Women all over in their life throws.  Sss. Dth, dth, dth!  They won’t stop so I can count.  There’s more born, washing the blood off.  All are washed in the blood of the lamb.  Not stillborn of course.  They are not even registered.  Trouble for nothing.  Well, I am almosting it.  So.  So.  So far this year there have been 30,275,000 births rounding up.  84 days so far this year.  360,417 births a day, rounding up. That’s 15,018 births an hour.  251 births a minute.  Wait a  second.  That’s, yes, 5 births a second.  No point rounding down.  How long did it take your eye to move from we die to 5 births a second?  Cities of people coming and coming.  Lives and lives.  Passing away too.  In your life were you the Gracehoper or the Ondt?  Doesn’t matter, back to the void with you!  How many?  How many.  Wish I had paper.  Um. 12,930,000 deaths this year, might as well round up.  People die and we don’t even know.  Months later somebody smells something.  A drip through the ceiling from the tenant above.  153,929 deaths a day.  That’s 6,414 people every hour.  107 a minute and every second 2 people die.  1.78 really.  One dies and one gets 78% of the way there.  Mostly dead.  There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.  Mostly dead is slightly alive.  Give it a second.  You can’t be mostly dead all day.  There you go.  Welcome to the void.  You have been unmade.  It will be the making of you.  You were a being.  You filled space.  Now you are a becoming.  Not changing, no, I mean fulfilling.  You took a form intended for you all along.  That is, your form is gone.  Your form is formlessness.  I know, death is new to you.  You’ll get there.  Destruction and creation are simultaneous.  Death and rebirth are the same thing spelled different ways.  You hungry?  Of course not, what am I saying.  Sorry.  It’s this time of day.  This is the very worst hour of the day.  Vitality.  Dull, gloomy: hate this hour.  Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.  Intended.  Caught that did you?  Well.  Well, well.

How flat they look all of a sudden after. Peaceful eyes. Weight off their mind.

shhhhh1:23 pm

Time means nothing.  Nothing at all.  Eighty seven hours so far?  Is that what they said talking about me like I’m not here in this body.  It’s the body and the baby they focus on.  I’m in here if you want to know is she Latina ask me bitches I’m right here!  Talking behind my head here comes one.  Pain it comes from far away, a distance away.  From some other place then it is here now ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Remembered not to hold my breath that time.  Make the noise.  Helps, not sure how.  Sacred ohm sounding, but doula didn’t get it when I told her.  Minute and a half?  Means nothing.  Time stretches and contracts like me stretches contracts dilates, not like me.  Never felt it like this before.  Feel it undulating with me during, when.  Pushing through me like a wave in a tube.  How many centimeters.  Just a bit left they said.  Stuck. Watching me watching them sharpening the knives.  Give her one more hour then cut her open, get it done.  Walk more.  Rock.  Birth ball.  Dance shuffle side to side.  Again same hallway again.  Walk.  Come on.   Anesthesiologist checking in.   Standing by.  Wants to go to lunch probably.   Plotting.   Here comes one, distant traveler, coming closer, time unduuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuulaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatiooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.

Oh.  Never ends.  I live here now.  The after, it went more quickly than they say.  I am fine between.  Ready.  Should have ignored midwife.  Get in the bath she said, slow it down so you can rest.  Rest my ass.  Pretending to sleep so he could sleep.  I need him later.  Rest, you’ll never rest again.  Pain worse lying down.  Pacing in patterns.  I don’t remember the first day much.  Now.  All that is.  Everything and nothing.  Time shortened and lengthened together.  When the pain comes time comes with it, squeezing.  A peristaltic now.  They told me not to eat.   Don’t vomit when we slice into you.  Sneaking food.  Can’t do it for this long just on fumes.   Inhumane.   Do they remember my humanity.  I am a human body and no more.  I was in here too.  Before. Then there’s that one at her computer.  Recording angel obstetric nurse who never had a baby.  The miracle of life, the beauty of birth, shut the fuck up.  Coming now.  She’ll see it on her monitor.  Hasn’t looked at me in hours.  Like a visit from purity of and God and pain and pain.  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Oh Christ I am running out of time.  I need help.  help me.  help me.  Grandma come.  I need you.  Show up.  Everybody out grandma come.  Hello.  Hand on my face.  smile.  She looks.  And then she is with.  Mamama.  Mamama here.  Hello.  Hello.  Help me Mamama.  She stands aside and a veiled woman.  Older.  Mamama touches my hair, holding me calm.  The veiled woman her hands inside me swirling in patterns, pushing, moving, gentle.   What.  They look at each other.  Nod.  Mamama.  Oh she is holding me I’m in her arms so little and she loves me.   She loves me.   I was special to her.   I didn’t know.   I didn’t know her.   She loves me.   Look she says with her eyes.   Look and I’m holding him, my beauty love.   I’m holding him.   She’s gone so fast and he’ll be here now.   He’s coming now.   She has me, we’ll be ok.  Thank you.   Thank you.

uuugh          uuugh          uuugh          uuugh          uuugh          uuugh