Having my way with Ulysses

Random crumbs

Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after-effects of influenza than anything else. It is as though all one's blood had been pumped out and luke-warm water substituted. Complete inertia is my chief memory of hunger.Burned myself.  Not bad though, I won’t say anything.  I don’t want to add to their troubles.  That’s if I could.  All they feel all they see all they are is hungry.  There’s nothing else.  Hunger is eating us and we are becoming hunger.  Katey and Boody will be here any second and they’ll want to eat.  It’s a mistake to want food when you are hungry.  Better not to think of it and feel blessed when it comes.  Thank God for Sister Mary Patrick.  Viperous temptations.  And fasting.  Don’t eat of the fruit.  Don’t eat of anything.  Nothing into the mouth.  We can feel human without curtains, but lack of food reduces us to rag dolls.  Barang!  Limp and weak.  It took all I had to walk to Sister Mary Peter.  If I could take a vow of poverty too, I’d be better off.  We all would be, I could save us eventually, but I worry about the start of it.  Are you saved?  Elijah is coming! All are washed in the blood of the lamb. The vow of chastity I’ve already taken.  I am mother and wife with no husband.  I sent Dilly to find father before he drinks everything we have.  She has her shoulders in her ears and Stephen in her eyes.  Wants to see Paris and write poetry.  She’s hungry for it: another mistake.  It breaks her heart when we sell the books, but McGuinness’s wouldn’t give anything for them today.  Try again somewhere else and stave off feeling our salvation sailing away.

Princes persecute me without cause, but my heart stands in awe of your words.

Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble. 2:55 pm

Sit to it.  A charming day to begin.  Sit down and take a walk.  Yes, my protagonist a listless lady, no more young.  Aged and virtuous and badtempered woman.  I must write it without nostalgia.  Throw in local color.  All I know.  The onelegged sailor on crutches just now?  Angry.  Growling.  Not right for my little book.  Post traumatic, you see, home from war, leg left behind.  O Lord, look upon Thy servant laboring under bodily weakness. Cherish and receive the soul which Thou hast created, so that, purified by his sufferings, he may soon find himself healed by Thy mercy.  Through Christ our Lord.  A charming woman with such a, what should I say?  Such a queenly mein.  Did she commit adultery fully with her husband’s brother?  Eiaculatio seminis inter vas naturale mulieris?  Only her confessor would know and we never tell.  Secrets.  God created the sexual drive for more than procreation but why?  The ways of God are not our ways.  I’ve heard much from our good people.  An aged and virtuous and badtempered woman wants to keep confessing.  Bless you my child now get on with you.  Bless you my child.  Off you go.  Amen.  Amen now.  I bear your secrets confessed.  Now the book.  A woman like Mrs. Sheehy, two boys.  Young, delightful boys.  Wonderful little schoolboys.  Asked after Father Vaughan, his sermon on Pilate impressed her.  Simple, respectable woman.  He has been transferred again to another parish.  He won’t be back.  The ways of God are not our ways.  But my little book.  A woman perhaps like Mrs. McGuinness, stately like Mary, Queen of Scots.  A pawnbroker, imagine that.  Doing quite well these days.  What time is it?  The ninth hour.  The death of Christ, his descent into hell.  People are more open to temptation at this hour.  More than any other time.  I must be guarded.  Protect my soul, God’s soul if one might say, created by God.  We die a bit in this hour; our souls descend to hell.  In this hour Adam and Eve, serpent plagued, were driven from the garden.  Viperous temptations.  And fasting.  Don’t eat of the fruit.  Don’t eat of anything.  Nothing into the mouth.  Respectful, grave, Mr. Denis J Maginni professor of dancing and much else surprises passersby with the contrasting effect of a serious disposition with tight lavender skinnyjeans.  This is the hour schoolboys leave their lessons and raise their young mouths in play, young cries in the quiet.  Schoolboys, good boys.  What was that boy’s name?  Dignam.  Yes.  Martin Cunningham’s request.  Yes.  Yes indeed.  Oblige him if possible.  Youthful bodies bounding in play.  Good boys at school.  Good little men.  Grow up.  Become like the young man and his young woman emerging from the shrubberies.  God’s ways are not our ways.  His face, flushed looking two ways toward terror and pity.  Rubbing his groin in his pockets.  Looks two ways toward desire and loathing.  Rubbing his groin.  A hooded reptilian face.  poignant eyes, reptile like.  Self-embittered: a shriveled soul.  That tyrannous incontinence necessary to maintain our race on earth.  Then death to so many, and so many unprepared.  Through this holy unction may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed then give them to Corny Kelleher to prepare for burial.  I feel it incumbent upon myself to say a few words before I descend into excessive solemnity.  I like cheerful decorum.  Perhaps I will join them together, bride and bridegroom.  Beautiful weather today.  A charming day.  Delightful indeed.  A peaceful day.