Having my way with Ulysses

the smoothest place is right there between this bit here

There was a story about this traveling salesman whose left wrist began to hurt him, just under his wrist watch. When he removed his watch, blood spurted out. The wound showed the imprints of very tiny teeth.

the way Vern plots and plans everything out gives me the fidgets particularly now at the end of the world and i suppose she thinks im finished out and laid on the shelf well im not no nor anything like it and the temporals can kiss my tessellated ass because this is my house delete it all im spread all over the internet on show well see well see now that were near the parting well Vern will leave me here at the end of a cycle and the start of a new one damn it damn it and go write her rune poem and the temporals story and the holy mother public relations employee handbook and squaring the circle and saints lives and instruction manuals and whatever other confusion she vomits out i hope she’ll get someone to dance attendance on her the way I did because she darent order me about the place O Vern im letting myself up out of this you have me that exasperated

That is not more to stand.

And death is there in the background, we must run to arrive beforehand and understand it's already unimportant.

3:05 am

Instructions on how to kill yourself:

First, you must find a reason not to live. There exists uncountable reasons but you must choose at least one and try to make it as ineffable as possible so the people you leave behind may feel suitably at a loss for words when they find you. An added benefit: it will be easier for the people who attend your wake, interment, scattering of the ashes, memorial service, or what have you, to speak in hushed and reverent tones if they find themselves capable of speaking at all. Amongst the reasons not to live you might choose: you are suffering from progressive melancholia; by ceasing to exist you will bring your existence to the attention of the person who barely knows you exist, though you maintain a unique awareness of said person’s existence; pondering the great nothingness of everythingness has inverted your thoughts into a perpetual retrospective arrangement.

Once you have found your reason not to live, you must reduce said reason by cross multiplication of reverses of fortune. Take it all down to one point: a singularity which contains everything.

Compose a note to be found suitably near your corpse, but not in a place where it might slip beyond a finder’s field of vision. Clutched in the hand makes for great cinema and literature, but rarely works in real death. Include in your epistle a précis of your reason not to live. Ask somebody to be kind to your surviving pets.

Leave something in a book, marking a particularly resonant passage or one which will send the finder harkening back in a retrospective arrangement upon discovery. Possibilities may include leaving something in a book at a symbolic page number. One might even leave something in a book which will send the finder to something left in another book which will send the finder to more books always to the last term of the preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, originating in and repeated to infinity. Possible items to leave in books: puzzle pieces, scraps of a shirt, pages of other books. Possible symbolic number: 1132.

Select the method of suicide according to your own levels of drama, squeamishness, accessible materials, pain tolerance, or desire to leave a nice looking corpse. There is no need to be elaborate, if you are already poisoning yourself slowly with something: increase the dose; if you tend toward recklessness perhaps walk closer to the cliff edge until 32 feet per second per second takes care of the matter for you; have the light at the end of your tunnel be an oncoming train, or if your perambulations bring you near an oncoming Jagannath: toss yourself into his path. You’ll receive an added bonus for that last one.

If you have items locked away, say in a drawer, leave a key handy or better still, unlock the drawer before your demise so the living won’t have to destroy the furniture to access its contents. It’s just common courtesy.  Now go.

Why solitary (ipsorelative)?

To dissect lions / You need lightning / For little owls you need / Forget- / fulness.
2:37 am

Instructions on how to organize the books in my office:

Not chronological, (not alphabetical!), definitely not autobiographical, no fucking way. Friends once bought me a book because they didn’t see it on my time shelf. I don’t have a time shelf. The whole damn thing is a time shelf. Let’s try ipsorelatively categorical. Limiting factors of library reorganization: largest bookcase is a set piece constructed at a scale of approximately 5:4 and designed to look imposing on stage, yet impractical for holding books designed at a ratio of 1:1; improbability of small office capacity being equal to desired portion of entire library, necessitating a library within and a library without; impossibility of knowing in the present which books will be required in the future. Also, library without must be allowed fluid motion, free transference, and ease of flux amongst volumes of library within as if library within were homothetic to library without. Position of two chairs (one: a squat stuffed easychair, no legs; the other: a retrofuture upholstered office chair) and solitary desk must remain unmoved. Now go.

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

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.

Queen’s Hotel, Queen’s Hotel, Queen’s Hotel. Queen’s Ho . . .

As the scribes will persist, the few readers there are in the world are going to have to change their roles and become scribes themselves.2:14 am

He took me to the most beautiful hotel in the city. Historic. Stunning suite. Honeymoon suite: one king sized bed. I had put him off for a long time, knowing he was wife hunting. He was twice my age: I was no wife. I will be no wife. I can’t even call myself anybody’s girlfriend.  I’m focusing on something else, I’d say. You can sleep with me but that’s it kind of thing. I know what I want (I don’t know) and I know who I want (yes, I know). Who I want hasn’t happened and doesn’t look likely. What I want (the want I know I want in addition to the who I want) is experience. I want an interesting life. That’s what I want above all else so yes I said yes I will, yes. I’ll fly there. Fly me there. I’ll fly there and spend the weekend with you I said, but I’m not having sex with you. We’re not having sex. I told him straight up. I want my own room. I know I am easy but I am no whore. Of course, he said. He said of course. What of course? Of course. I let it slide. Get the ticket and I’m not missing any work. We’ll have fun, he said. I’ll take you here, I’ll show you this, we’ll do that. It will be like a normal first date and no sex. Who says a normal first date means no sex? With the one I want we would have sex and no date, so don’t give me normal first date. Don’t give me normal I don’t say. I go. I’m spotted in the airport by a co-worker. I lie. Going to see a friend in that direction. But this airline only goes this direction, he says. Why would I lie. I get there. Flowers and a limousine at the airport. We dine out awkward with flowers, my backpack in the limo. He says his mother will love me. He says he can’t wait to introduce me to his mother. His mother is the best woman imaginable and I am just like her. Is she trapped too? I’m trapped. I understand now I am trapped. What a stupid idea. How in the fuck am I getting out of this. I’ve always wanted a wedding barefoot on a beach he says. I am not shitting you this is what he says. Holy fuck. I don’t know what kind of wedding I want. I don’t want a wedding. I don’t know this guy. The guy I know works for the company. I talk to him on the phone every day. At work I talk to him on the phone. Half a minute have a good one nice day. He is thought generally to be a great guy. He is a great guy. Who the hell knew he’d be this too. I eat. I think. He hangs out with twenty year old guys when he comes to town. He surfs he says. He bikes. He’s training for something. His friends his age have kids he says. I have a negative bank account. He has my return ticket. We eat. We go to the hotel. Beautiful hotel. We go to the hotel. My backpack gets taken up. We get taken up. I’m wearing work clothes: casual business casual, plane stained. The elevator people are smartly dressed, looking at the man and the half his age whore heading for the honeymoon suite with a backpack. There’s a whore in the elevator with us they think. And here we are. One bed. No other room. No mention. Isn’t this suite sweet he says. Suite. He has tickets to this tonight and also that just in case I’d rather that. Do I have something I want to change into? Yeah I say. Give me a minute will you? Alone will you? Just give me a minute alone. He retreats to the balcony, but he’s still all over me. I don’t have any fucking idea what to do. I am alone. Solitary. I’m thinking. There’s a desk in an alcove. Behind the bed in an alcove. I need to think. Paper. Nice pen. Keep the pen. I’m writing. I’m thinking and writing. I can do this all night.

The difficulties of interpretation.

A small cronopio was looking for the key to the street door on the night table, the night table in the bedroom, the bedroom in the house, the house in the street. Here the cronopio paused, for to go into the street, he needed the key to the door.2:06 am

First it happens, then it means something. Rarely, the bolt of lightning will hit one directly (perhaps from a forty five degree angle like a shot off a shovel) and there within the simultaneity of the electrical discharge and the acoustic report you know as it’s going down that this now this is it is this moment (this very instant) that means already in advance and simultaneously what it will come to mean. But really what are the odds of an event and its significance occurring simultaneously? We can’t know all the conditions so there must be some sort of calculable probability. Twenty to one? And this is assuming of course that there is indeed such a thing as simultaneity, but this is no time for parlor games. There is no simultaneity, event and meaning intersect only with lovers, and there is no free will. Oh yes, also: do not risk, do not expect, do not be disappointed, be satisfied, sustain no positive loss, bring positive gain to others. Now, finish carving that on the tablet, make a duplicate to use as light to the gentiles, and bear it down the mountains in your arms, the secret of the race, graven in the language of prediction.

I just saw my own ghost

Begin by breaking all the mirrors in the house, let your arms fall to your size, gaze vacantly at the wall, forget yourself. Sing one single note listen to it from inside. If you hear (but this will happen much later) something like a landscape overwhelmed with dread, bonfires between the rocks with squatting halfnaked silhouettes, I think you'll be well on your way, and the same if you hear a river, boats painted yellow and black are coming down it, if you hear the smell of fresh bread, the shadow of a horse.9:09 am

It was a moment, like a recollection of things to come, walking between Haines and Buck when Buck turned to look at me and said nothing.  In that silence I saw my own image, looking shabby in dusty black (insincere?) between the two of them looking hip and expensive.  Is this how others see me?