Having my way with Ulysses

5 5/11 minutes past each hour per hour in arithmetical progression.

The happy precision of gears and well-oiled thoughts; the concurrence of energies as they converge into a single victorious trajectory. 2 hours 10 minutes 54 6/11 seconds ante meridiem

Now watch the clock. Keep your eye on it. There. That was one. Did you blink? I can slow it back down for you if you like, I’ve done it before, but we’d be here forever.

Let’s try again. There’s another one coming and there! See it? The longer hand and the shorter hand were at exactly the same angle of inclination. That’s the moment, that’s the way in, you understand. When the longer is the momma and the shorter is the girl, the way to shorter leads through longer and the way to longer leads through shorter.

Now pay attention, here it comes again and now! You missed it. Listen. You think this is easy tinkering with time for you? Try to focus. You think it’s everyday a mother and daughter feel simultaneously inclined? Yes it is every day, twenty two times a day, but I’m making a point, you owl, so don’t give me your shit. I can go. You know that, don’t you, I’ll leave. And then when will you be? I thought so. And we just missed another one, so. Yeah. Are we doing this? You ready? You’re not ready. I’m going to have to stop time or I’ll be explaining this until I’m blue in the face.

Stop.

Now let’s do the math. The hands kiss every hour and five and five elevenths minutes. Get that? Keep up. The daughter moves twelve times as fast as her mother, but that doesn’t mean momma’s not moving too. Frankly I’ll take a woman who understands a good slow rotation any day. But you are young, you like it fast, that’s your deal. So. Just know that momma is moving too, thirty degrees to her girl’s three hundred and sixty, so little miss chica moves fast, but she always plays catch up. Oh so much for her to learn. Do the division, divide little missy’s speed by momma’s endurance. Feel that eleven rising? Right there in your face. And start. And we just missed another one. Right. Right. Kid. Enough mathematics, we need to get scientific now. And musical, let’s try a higher octave. Yes? We can philosophize until the owls come home but that doesn’t get either you or me any nearer either one of them. You ready? Really feel it this time. Now go!

Time all. There’s eleven of them.

Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius. O lust, our refuge and our strength. Through Yerd our Lord, Amen. And snares of the pox fiend. Thrust syphilis down to hell with him and those other licensed spirits who wander through the world. May Allah the excellent one your soul the night ever tremendously conserve.11:00 pm

Eleven.  Refresh.  Restart.  Resurrect.  I saw you at the place for the dead; I was walking Mackintosh of lonely graveyard. You saw me? What were you doing there, peeping? Looking for a fresh female to dig up you pervert? I’ve seen your type. You’ve been through hell you say? Well who hasn’t buddy. But it is eleven, time to rise. Time to walk these dusty roads and get the hell out of here.  Pull yourself up now.  It’s eleven and there’s a bit of rising to do before the next fall.  O felix culpa. The man in the brown mackintosh loves a lady who is dead.  Rise! Rise! Oh hell, I’ll see you round.

An omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect imperturbability.

And if any of the ecclesiastical persons to whom I have referred, object that they find it derogatory to the honour of the God whom they worship, to awaken the minds of the young to the infinite wonder and majesty of the works which they proclaim His, and to teach them those laws which must needs be His laws, and therefore of all things needful for man to know -- I can only recommend them to be let blood and put on low diet.10:45 pm

God: What’s for dinner, I’m starved!

Jesus:  The fire’s barely lit, you’ll have to wait for the coals to heat up.

God: Well hurry up before the meat goes bad.

Jesus: There’s plenty of time.  Let’s see.  Blood victims, blood victims. Let. Me. See. There’s a woman just gave birth.

God: Newly emaciated? I’ll pass.

Jesus: A corpulent professional gentleman.

God:  Too much cholesterol.  I’m supposed to be following a more Mediterranean diet.  Anybody from Sicily or thereabouts?

Jesus: A jaundiced politician and a chlorotic nun.  Oh wait, a nice baby about eleven days.

God: Veal?  Yummy, but isn’t that still a bit too controversial?

Jesus: No no, not at all. It’s much more humanely raised these days.  Besides, food is food.  It’s a beastly thing and nothing else. It simply doesn’t matter.

God: [With pluterperfect imperturbability] Well that sounds good then.  Have got to eat something to save my life.

Jesus: [In a moderate and measured tone]  At the risk of your life.

So dark is destiny.

& there they layed his corps in the body of the quere & sange & redde many saulters & prayes ouer hym and aboute hym 10:06 pm

There was no stopping her.  He died on his eleventh day, dead of winter, and he was getting cold.  So tiny.  So small.  A week and a half old, just changed enough from his first moments to start to look like her and to start to look like me.  It was a start.  Eleventh day. Eleven.  Elf.  Elfin boy he’d have been now.  Sweet eleven.  She measured him and got out her best wool she had been saving.  Measured him around.  Circled his little body.  Cannot make a circle without eleven.  Measure a circle seven across and it will measure eleven halfway around.  Seven and eleven, a thread between square and circle.  Square the circle and maybe.  Maybe eternity.  Find him there.  She orbited around him as he cooled.  She is the moon and while she knit he was her whole world.  She orbited and he cooled in 3:11 ratios.  Moon:Earth, he took on enormous proportions but she would knit for him.  She had wool and time had stopped.  Oh the ground.  The Earth is cold in winter and his sweet little body was cooling.  Pull the moon to the earth.  Pull her close, the three to the eleven.  Now circle them.  I circled them. I circled them in radii of seven.  Our circumference was 44, the same as the perimeter of a square around Rudy, named for my self-murdered father, my whole world.  She knit, I circled for the length of his body cooling. She measured. She chose her needles and her best wool she had been saving.  Soft, no itch, 4 ply dk merino. And she swatched. She measured. She cast on 32 stitches and knit two rows.  Then she knit 2 * yfd k2tog, to end k1. Next row K.  The next row she k2 * and she made 1 in the next of each stitch to the last k3.  Next row K. Next row K3, P to last 3 then K.  He cooled, she knit in patterns:  K4 *k1B k1 to last 3 sts k3, next row k, k5 k1B *k1 k1b to last 5 sts k5, next row k and she continued for five inches.  Then she k6 k2 tog k1 to the last 5 sts k5.  I circled.  I squared.  She k3 P to last 3 K3.  I circled.  She K3 yfd K2 tog to last 2 sts K2.  I squared.  K3 P to last 3 K3.  He cooled. The perfect square lacks corners. She K2 tog, knit in pattern to the last 4 sts and she k 2tog twice.  Then a row of K she knit.  She knit for two more inches.  The wrong side facing, all wrong, k to the middle, k 2 tog twice, k to the end.  The next wrong row she did it again.  And the next wrong row she did it again.  One last row in pattern.  Last time.  Then our sweet, our little, our baby love.  We placed him inside.  We put in our kisses, warm to cold.  Weeny hands.  Smallest love.  Our sweet circle.  Our whole world.  Then the seam.  She grafted 32 stitches and snipped the yarn with her teeth.  Basta.  Enough.

Eeleven

10:05 am

McCoy on phone from Conways.  Bob Doran is on one of his benders.  Starting early.  I’m watching a woman outside packing up her car.  Skirt.  Windy.  Tpying too.  Multitasking.  Had to pick up phone.  Can’t keep blowing him off.  Still, hhate to be interrupted when.  Ggust!  Nice.  Sheesh the guy can talk.  Doesn’t need much of an answer besides yes.  yes.  um hhum.  He’s a nice guy, McCoy.  Ttries too hard though.  Insufferable for that.  Borrows stuff and doesn’t return.  Will be asking for a suitcase for his wife’s imaginary out of town gig.   Bantam Lyons there too.  At Conways.  Doran used to be a serious guy.  Qquiet.  Changed once he saddled himself to his mother-in-law.  Nno blame there.  Hold on.  Standing in car door to reach luggage rack.  Stretch.  Yyes.  I see pretty clearly today.  Rich: expensive.  They’re all the same once you touch the right sspot.  McCoy heard about Paddy Dignam.  Tterrible death.   Sees me looking.  Always an eye out.  Good to have backup.  Hello.  Dropped something.  Watch!  Watch!  Sshit!  Truck went by.  Right at that moment.  Another gone.  Ddamn McCo

The Gods themselves are simply agents of a great high mystery, the secret of which is found in mathematics.

Before a thousand years have passed -- a span that, for eternity, is less space than an eyeblink for the slowest sphere in heaven -- would you find greater glory if you left your flesh when it was old than if your death had come before your infant words were spent? 9:24 am

Milly is fifteen but I remember like yesterday calling the midwife when she was born.  She was the same one.  She knew instantly Rudy wouldn’t live.  God is good she said and she knew better.  He lived eleven days.  He’d be eleven now.  If I could overreach, into this now or out of this now.  Oh it is a difference of all enormity.  I was so proud.  I’d give my every eyeblink.  She knew at once.  She knew.  From the first.