Having my way with Ulysses

Could hear them all at it

Irise, Osirises! Be thy mouth given unto thee! For why do you lack a link of luck to poise a pont of perfect peace? On the vignetto is a ragingoos. The overseer of the house of the oversire of the seas, Nu-Men, triumphant, sayeth: Fly as the hawk, cry as the corncake, Ani Latch of the postern is thy name; shout! 8:56 pm

 

Wait, what?

 

Shush.  Hear that?  Oh sorry, did I startle you?  Didn’t mean to make you jump; you must be more frightened by noise than light.  Or is it you thought you were alone on this beach?  Oh my darling, no no.  I’m right here.  Here in the tree.  Haven’t you ever listened to a tree?  I’m waiting for them to turn me into a pillar so Isis can find me.  You know her?  She knows you.  We’ve been listening to you, haven’t you heard us?  Listen around you.  All the world is listening.  Shh.  Better sit still. Use your eyes if you must but it’s only getting darker so you might as well listen up.  There.  You hear me?  That’s my Ba flying about. Listen.

 

My Ba.  My face, my bat body.  Like a little man in a cloak I am with tiny hands.  Teeth instead of a beak.  Bells have scared my Ba out of me, well that and my death played a part.  Don’t look so startled, my Ba will come back once Isis tears me out of this tree.  I’ll live again, metempsychosis you understand, repetition.  You hear that repetition?  Patterns it is,  numbers too if you care to hear them.  Self similarity of sound, clustering like bats in a belfry.  You hear that?  Repetitions are forming relationships.  There.  Proportion.  Now we have something.  Consonance and dissonance and assonance and resonance.  All in fluxing proportions.  Bells, and Ba, and waves, and what is that?  Oh that’s you!  Breathing, yes I miss that already.  And that other sound?  What is that? Can’t hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho! Are you not gone a home? Can’t hear with bawk of bats.

Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself?

12:46 pm

[Scene:  Atop Mount Pisgah in Madaba, Jordan, two men gaze to the west and the southwest and reminisce.]

Manetho:  This view transfigures the soul.  Do you have a light?

Moses:  Use the bush.  Yes, soultransfiguring.   I never lived there you know.  I came this close.

Manetho:  Frustrating.

Moses:  Yup.

Manetho:  [bends over the flames, his unglazed linen collar appears behind his bent head soiled by his withering hair.  He rises and the men smoke together, their smokes ascending in frail stalks that flower with their speech]  Handy, that.  Yes, so close.  And for what dear Moses?  Why did you Jews not accept our culture, our religion, our language.  We were the greatest, the biggest, the baddest of them all.  What were you?  Not much.  No wealth, no country, no nothing.  Primitives.  Babies.  We had ages of history, polity, priesthoods, literature.  It boggles, your choice, it boggles the mind.

Moses:  I died here.  No I didn’t enter the land I was promised.  I died instead, a sudden-at-the-moment-though-from-lingering-illness-often-previously-expectorated-demise.

Manetho:  And with a great future behind you.  You must feel such regret.  All this way, intoxicated by an obscure idol.  And just one, imagine!  We had Isis!  We had Ammon Ra!  Not to mention Osiris, Horus, Anubis, Seth, Nut, Thoth.  I could go on.  As above so below.  How can you Jews create a civilization with just one deity?  And we had more.  We were strong with armies and with ships.  We had trade.  You were weak, plagued with daylabourers.  The world trembled at our name; they heard your name and said who?

Moses:  And then what?  As much as you rose you were destroyed, over and again.  You rose and you decayed.  We could have stayed and bowed our will and our spirit, and we could have prayed to your armies and deities.  Yes we might have stayed by the fleshpots tasting the salt bread.  And then?  And then?

Manetho: [belches] Then assimilation into Egyptian life.  You realize that even those things which are subject to decay are good.  Nothing can be corrupted if it were not in some way good.  And yet that which is corrupt is still good, for if a thing were deprived of all good, it would not exist at all.

Moses:  Ah, curse you!  That’s Saint Augustine.  And he is talking about the creations of the obscure idol we chose instead of your life, your will.  And that God of obscurity, that soultransfiguring God led us in a pillar of smoke, like these we create together, but singular and beautiful, swirling and undulating shapeless shapes.  We followed that pillar of cloud by day and left our house of bondage.  I spoke with the ineffable.  Have you any idea of that?  The eternal spoke to me on mountaintops.  On this one, here.  This very place.

Manetho:  You Jews became outlaws.

Moses:  We were  given the law, and we shine even now with the light of inspiration.  Had we stayed we would have been enslaved.  You did us evil, you Egyptians, and you tortured us, saddling us with punishing work.  Our God, the Pure One who dwells on high, raised up a community, a people beyond counting.  And let me ask you this, Manetho, whose name is more remembered: mine, or any in your lists of kings?

Manetho:  Ok.  Ok.  Next year in Jerusalem.

Moses:  You’d better believe it.

Manetho:  I do take exception to your last point.  What has ever been greater than Egyptian civilization or lasted so long?  And what people today are so kind, so beautiful.  But Moses, remember please, all things that rise must fall and then must rise and then must fall and then rise again and fall again.  The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today.  We all have our day.

Moses:  We all have our day.