Having my way with Ulysses

Apropos of coffin of stones.

And behind it came so long a file of people, that I should never have believed that death had undone so many. 1:53 am

Most of these are filled with them, you know. Stones. Our bodies rot away, or they do at first. We’re eaten by the rats too, go down like hot cakes. We have a grip on them by their stomachs, as Wetherup likes to say. Sometimes if we are young fresh and female we get dug up for a last wild hurrah before they leave us to rot and be eaten. Don’t tell the families. It’s not quite dust to dust, there’s a lot going on in between. Ultimately, though, our coffins fall apart: eaten too by the crawling things, and hastening our disappearance. This is not all; both our bodies and our caskets become penetrated by tree roots and crushed by settling earth until we fill with nothing. We become nothing. Being former occupants of bodies, we still like to walk with you sometimes: on the right side of you, it’s a habit of ours, do pardon us. We are that strange feeling next to you, sinewless and wobbly and all that. Why am I telling you? Well, this is it for you, didn’t you guess? The chairs are upside down on the tables and somebody will sweep up in the morning because it’s quitting time, you are done.

Relaxing to a certain extent under the magic influence of diamond cut diamond.

I dance because I know thirteen different ways of deceiving people by pretending confidence in them. I didn't know there were any more, and now here's a fourteenth! That's why I dance! 1:15 am

My dead husband came back. No, not a resurrection though when I saw his face in the window it was like seeing a ghost. He had gone overseas to make some money for us and told me a story before he left, though I didn’t get it until now. What am I a child? Am I kid to be told stories so I won’t lie (my nose will grow), won’t cry wolf (nobody will help when it really counts), and will endeavor to follow some minor rules of thumb such as always build with brick, don’t bite the apple, and leave a party on time though it is ok to lose a shoe if the shoe is made from glass but not ruby.  But I was young, and determined to be in love so I listened. A man had been moving one step forward and two steps back in his so-called career for long enough to tell him he was going nowhere fast. He was still within the age range in which a drastic change can be a good idea.  So the man kissed his wife, who loved him despite his tendancy for backward mobility, and he left her in the care of his best friend, his wing man, his loyal Achates, for a lengthy overseas gig which would earn the man dollars somewhere where dollars still mean something big.  And that means dollars to save and bring home to you my adoring loving loyal wife. So off he goes. And the woman gets depressed and cries a lot and hangs out at the bar with the best wing man, the friend Achates, and drinks, then cries some more. Achates loves them both. He sympathizes. He empathizes.  She revitalizes. He mesmerizes. She fantasizes. She energizes. She tantalizes. He improvises. She rationalizes. He mobilizes. He organizes. He fertilizes. She hospitalizes. And now she has a baby and two men. In the mean time, Mr. reverse arrived somewhere developing, hit the ground running, made straightforwardly unrefusable offers, and is currently headed homeward at an angle of fortyfive degrees like a shot off a shovel.  Well shit, now what.  I’ll tell you what. The man came back, sized up the situation and danced his way out the door laughing, I’m free, I’m free!  The wife, happy to be unwived danced too, I’m free, said she, and danced away too. The wing friend, the man Achates, stands with a baby on his hands, watching the twin disappearances dancing off in opposite directions. He feels himself betrayed, stuck, used, dumped, and alone. Then he shuts the door, tucks the baby into his arms and dances and dances and laughing dances.

Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.

And now, O Alcibiades, the divine thing having been performed, tell me, are the girls and the youths and the philosophers as fond of thee as ever?10:42 pm

Scene: [Around the ideal form of a table sit Glaucon, Alcibiades, Pistritus, and a mirror reflecting an even more ideal form of a table around which sit Glycera, Chloe, Phyllis and a mirror reflecting ooh look at that table, way more ideal, around which sit Anemone, Posie, Echo in a mirror, and a mirror reflecting ok now I like this one best, wait, can I see that first table again? reflecting Mars, Venus, and Juno and a mirror reflecting turtles all the way down.  On each ideal form of a table sits a container of plums. Some of the containers are coffins, some are eggs.]

Glaucon: [Brotherly, breathing on the mirror while the others stare hard at the plums] On behalf of Alcibiades, for the fulfillment of his one great goal, I call them to life across the waters of Lethe.

Juno: [Chewing a plum] You hear that?  Venus, get off of Mars, we have to troop to the call.

Anemone: Poor ghosts. I really anticipate disaster here.

Echo: Disaster here.

Posie: [Carving into the table with a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife reminiscent of Roman history]  e ar space ach e ar e period.

Alcibiades: Anything yet?

Anemone: He is so expectant!

Echo: expectant!

Posie: [Carving]   tea ay en tea exclamation point.

Glycera: [Wearing a frock of muslin and yellow shoes]  He wants me again.  Already.

Phyllis: Well don’t go.  That man would make his own mother an orphan.

Chloe: Isn’t his father the son of his own mother?

Anemone: He heard her say that.  Look his face is growing dark.

Echo: Growing dark.

Posie: eye en gee space dee ay ar kay period.

Pisistratus:  All is lost.  I’m leaving.

Glaucon: Stay, we have all the mirrors aligned in perfect harmonic proportions.  This will work.

Pisistratus: It will work if we bribe somebody.

Alcibiades: Glycera’s soul is far away.  What if she won’t assume her etheric double?

Juno: Ok, place your bets. Will she assume her etheric double?  I say yes.  A whore like that? Come on.

Mars: I say yes too. Last time she had her leg up over our left shoulder.  I could watch that again 16 times in a row.

Venus: Alcibiades’ left shoulder. She won’t.  He’ll beg until he’s black in the face but I’ll have to incarnate for her.  Where’s my ruby dress?

Phyllis: Huzzah! I think Venus will go for you. I wonder if she has a ride?  She can take Aristotle, he’s parked out back.

Juno: Venus your bet’s a throwaway.  Just listen to her heart beating! Can hear it two mirrors over.

Glycera: I guess I can go, but I won’t use a condom. I hate condoms. Well at least I had my period last week so there’s that.  He bites, though.  It’s off putting.

Chloe: You’re fertile!  Oh you’ll have a nice ripe egg for him.

Glycera: Oh fabulous, I’ll get pregnant.  Great.

Anemone: Will she?

Echo: She?

Posie:  capital ess ach e question mark.

Glycera: What do you think, ladies?

Phyllis: It’s a holocaust; you’ll get burned.

Chloe:  Yes she’ll burn. The young green shoots of new plumtrees require putrefaction first. End it now and go to him, it will be the beginning of something.  And the Gods are involved, so there will be mirror effects all over the place.  Lose yourself in it.  I mean, look at these plums.  They’re dying. They won’t be fully empowered until putrefied. The tomb of death is the womb of new life.

Glycera: Ok, here I go.

Juno: You hear that? Let’s get started.

Juno, Venus, and Mars: [Breathing on the mirror] We call them to life across the waters of Lethe.

One who has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners.

What is love? 'tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure: In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure. 2:10 pm

I married a ghost.  And I died before I was born.  Liliata rutilantium.  Well, I died sixty-seven years after I was born, but what is it to you how we lived or died?  Forget me.  He did.  He left me and he gained a world of pretty theatre boys in the cast off armor of court ladies.  The world believes William made a mistake marrying me.  And got out of it as best he could and quickly too.  Stephen thinks a man of genius makes no mistakes, that his errors are volitional, to be used as portals of discovery.  Well William’s genius discovered my portal sure enough.  Made use of me.  And don’t think that because I was twenty-six and he a full eight years younger than me that I drew him in, trapped him into bed and then ruthlessly wed.  Listen to greenroom gossip if you like, but consider:  what would I want with a boy pauper for a husband?  Call me a whore before and a shrew after, what do I care, but the truth is he came after me.  The mistake was mine and he knew it.  He made it Ophelia’s mistake too.  But instead of drowning myself in the Avon, I told my family and they fixed it.  Took care of business.  Five months after our wedding I gave birth to our daughter, my sweet light-of-love.  But did he care?  No.  Gone he was to London and no agenbite of inwit to it.  And for me what was he, a ghost by his absence to haunt me.  And my status?  Not widow.  Hardly a wife.  A stationary target for his debt collectors.  As he rose I became conspicuous.  Like a bad smell in the room, worse than that stench hovering around Æ.  The smell of him!  I may not have a nose left to my face but wow!  That reek will raise the dead.  But the point odoriferous Æ makes is valid.  What use is it to pry into my husband’s life, the bastard.  Good for nothing.  Lousy father.  It was no use to me, that I can assure you, I wept alone.  Leaving us to starve on our own in Stratford.  His drinking, his debts.  Stephen owes AE almost $100, did you know that?  But did he catch AE’s hint?  Bringing up my worthless husband’s financial incontinence.  He caught it.  Then he rationalized his way out of it.  Stephen five months ago was a different set of molecules went his logic.  It wasn’t me.  It was those molecules of Stephen that borrowed the money, the Stephen now is composed of entirely new stuff and cannot be blamed for what any prior Stephen has done.  Free and clear.  No agenbite of inwit, eh Stephen?  Nice try kid.  Good use of physics.  That handy second law of thermodynamics, those molecules from five months ago will decay as plainly as did the nose on my face.  But don’t you forget that first law.  There are still constants to deal with and your memory persists.  It changes things, does a little rearranging here and there, always a bit of phenomenal fluxing within grey matter, but memory persists.  And don’t forget your form of forms.  That soul rattling around within those nice new molecules of yours persists too.  Just look at me if you need a bit of proof.  Or get a whiff of AE  if you prefer your proof to be more on the measurable side of things.  You owe what you owe.  Pay your own damn way.

Stone hopes

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. 11:53 am

Oh sweet God I’m bored.  Bored bored bored.  Thank you, come again.  Nice of them to leave a few flowers.  I like daisies.   Nice smell.  Well, they could smell like shit for all I’d know.  Or care.  Jesus I’m bored.  Nice to feel warm beings near you though.  All that warm fullblooded life.  That creepy one will be back and with a shovel.  Scrape up the earth to get at the fresh buried female.  Never mind the corpse rot.  Pustules.  Bored bored bored bored bored bored bored doo daa doo daa.  Wish I could drape myself over some casket like what’s her name over there.  What is her christian name?  I’m not sure.  Next to Emily Sinico, crushed by a slow moving train.  Lying there with a bird on her head.  Rooks in here a bit ago.  And an owl.  Looked stuffed.  Wish we had one of those what are they called silent towers.  Dakhma.  Want to see a tower of silence, just stop by here any time you like.  Won’t hear us say a damn thing.  Wouldn’t mind seeing a Dakhma in action.  The buzzards tearing the flesh off.  Rotting carcasses touching neither fire nor earth but vulture lunch, no problem.   Bon Appetite.  Good food good meat good God let’s eat.  Bet you I’d smell that.  Woof!  Well, that’s one way to handle it.  Cremation would be interesting too but nobody gets to watch that.  Priests against it too.  Nothing to raise up at the second coming.  Nothing to raise up regardless. Rats. There’s one right under me right now.  See it?  There.  Tail gone now.  Corpse is ordinary meat to them.  Meat gone bad.  Like cheese is milk gone bad.  Cheese is the corpse of milk.  Wouldn’t mind smelling a nice stinky cheese.  Or anything.  Rats get that crumbling mush of corpse smell.  Would be something.  Bored.  Flowers.  Better to spend the money on the living.  More sensible.  Are those flowers fake?  They are starting to look fake.  Great.  Never wilting.  Expresses nothing.  Immortelles.  Won’t get to watch them die.  Wouldn’t mind seeing a drowned corpse.  I hear that is a nice gentle decomposition.  Would enjoy watching.  Not like here.  Plant him and have done with him.  Those plague years with open pits and quicklime melting everything away.  Now there’s something to see.  I would have liked that.  Wasn’t a bad sermon just then.  We’re here to celebrate the life of.  Didn’t look much like a party to me.  Let us pray for the repose of the soul of but does anybody really?  People looking at their hands.  Check the nails.  Just looking at them: well pared.  He who departed this life, as if he did it on his own.  Then leave us with another rock that says beloved father, son and no longer beloved ex-husband of.   Well, they always leave that part out.   An acre of lies.  Here lies an enormous bastard we all hated.  Good riddance to the crank who finally kicked the bucket.  Irritating bitch beloved by nobody special.  And people don’t visit anymore.  Dump them in and take off.  Well, as you are now so once were we.  Ever think of that?   Watch out or your dead will come back to the world.  I will appear to you after death.  You will see my ghost after death.  My ghost will haunt you after death.  There is another world after death.  And thank God for it.  Do I want to be brought back to life?  Hell no.  I do not like that other world.  I’ll stay here haunting my statue, thank you, I love it here.

55 reasons

What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, or to the dreadful summit of the cliff that beetles o'er his base into the sea, and there assume some other horrible form which might deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness? Think of it. The very place puts toys of desperation, without more motive, into every brain that looks so many fathoms to the sea and hears it roar beneath. 9:06 am

Buck still leading Haines on about my Hamlet theory, although so far I am not tempted to break my silence.  I’ll tell it when I tell it, it can wait.  Whatever.  To him it won’t be worth more than the price of a pin.  He told Haines I prove by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.  Haines probably thinks I am my father’s ghost.  He also thinks Seattle is much like Elsinore (I don’t see it).  With the full weight of ownership of his rightful property that can only come from an Englishman who hasn’t read it, Haines called Hamlet a wonderful tale.  How delightful.  Isn’t that special.

Mute secret words

No, mother! Let me be and let me live. 8:39 am

While she died everybody prayed and the priest came with his recommendation for her departing soul.  We all (but one) kneeled, bowed our heads, and listened with pious reverence to her loud rattling breath.  Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet:  iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.  That breath makes the dream not a dream.  I can smell wet ashes still and it tangles into my soul.  She comes staring at me, striking me down with her eyes.  Speaking and help me I hear nothing.  Her agony on me alone.  We were all (save me) chewers of corpses.

Toys of Desperation

This is not a bowl of vomit.8:12 am

I can’t sweat for speaking no speak for sweating.  It was my mother I dreamed dead in her body.  I thought I was sleeping but I had to be dreaming, it was bits of both and there she was bent over me.  I could smell her breath wet ashes and formaldehyde.  She had a tube, there in the hospital, that went down into her body and out from it came green and yellow and sometimes bloody mucus.  Neverstopping.  It was all I could see while pretending not to look.  How are you you look good today.  Other bags of waste too.  Unbearable to sleep on the floor watching those bags fill and waiting.  She bloated toward the end.  Her skin puffed and filled with fluid until the geography of her hands stretched smooth.   Maps of wrinkles none of us needed consult until they were unrecognizable.  She couldn’t breathe out very well, but they were filling her with oxygen to keep her alive and poison her slowly.  She was bent over me where the wall should be.  There she was.  Silent.  Repoachful.  Vomiting into her white china bowl.