Having my way with Ulysses

I couldnt rest easy till I bolted all the doors and windows to make sure

vern what the hell were you thinking daily for a year

i am sure I heard burglars in lestrygonians i know i did, even with sirens making as much noise as it possibly can and that crack forming in eumaeus maybe i can get a watch cat that can be useful later on too i wonder if they can see anything that we cant staring like that but i hate their claws im not going to rest easy until i lock this place down bolt all the doors and windows to make sure there isnt much to steal indeed the lord knows you put it all out there for free the past year and then some still its the feeling it would be all confusion if we moved when ill bring a bit of salt in uncross the knives i knew thered be a parting that bit stitched on the day after it happened when was that nausicaa one installment late out of how many and this one is number 453 O Vern what the hell were you thinking daily for a year id like to give you 2 damn fine cracks across the ear for yourself take that now for going ahead with all this temporal stretching to dig up whatever you might find down in the cracks you think nothing happens in a year everything happens in a year and you with two of them and each one too little to wipe his own ass too impatient with the waiting always waiting to send them down to some school to learn but o patience above it all had to come pouring out of you too soon what you dont want to hear that well you cant say i pretend things can you im too honest maybe i am the pan calling the kettle blackbottom but every day i get up theres some new thing on and im to get in front of the footlights again and let it out full sweet god sweet god well when im stretched out dead in my grave i suppose ill have some peace

In what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments and reflections, reduced to their simplest forms, converge?

Shhh.

3:25 am

[Scene: Two lovers in bed, AE with Lizzie Twigg: coiled head to toe they quietly discuss the fixity of their volatility and the volatilization of their fixation, until within his fixedness AE has become nothing and feeling everything, Lizzie becomes volitive. They communicate intermittently in increasingly more laconic narrations. Also a small angry dog is trying to take up as much space as possible between them. It’s so cute! Come here little puppy, come here. What a good doggie. Who’s a good doggie? Oh Jesus God! He’s all teeth! Get off me! Like petting a piranha with fur.]

AE: It’s just that we define ourselves contrarily to each other. I am me because I am not you, and you are you because you are not me. We are poles apart.

Lizzie: We are the same person, AE, don’t you feel it?  After all the mutual deaths we have died? Resurrection, translation, return, distillation, putrefaction, decay, still you don’t know you had it backwards the whole time. You were resurrecting in the wrong direction.

AE: I know. I know it. I just wanted to be the material representation of eternality, in linear time. Just once. Just for a little while. Only long enough to re-experience that feeling of linearity. Don’t you miss it? And feel what it could be, to be linear and eternal simultaneously.

Lizzie: But you can’t just translate yourself into linearity and say I’m back, everybody, I’ve  gained bodily entry into eternity and now look at me! Look at what happened to Lazarus. No. If you want to see how a human mortal finds a place within eternity, that’s not going to cut it. That gets you nothing.

AE: Nothing’s not nothing. Don’t knock nothing.

Lizzie: No, nothing’s not nothing.

AE: I was trying be the eternal temporalized. I wanted to be the all at onceness linearized. I wanted to square that circle, just once. Just the one time and be it and feel it, really feel what it is to be the coexistence of the infinite and the finite.

Lizzie: Be eternality living in linearity? Darling, you’ve done it. You’ve been there already. The infinite and the finite are the same things whichever side you’re on, if you really must take sides, can’t you tell? Just look at us, two beings contrarily defined yet coexisting as aspects of the same reality.

AE: I know. I get it. You don’t have to scratch me like that.

Lizzie: That wasn’t me, but here’s a flash of light for you AE: when we were mortals we didn’t have to go around worrying all the time about gaining bodily entry into eternity: eternity had already gained bodily entry into us. We have always already been since time immemorial and forevermore, the material representation of eternality.

AE: We are God.

Lizzie: Exactly. We are already a squared circle: we can take a finite form, but our infinite selves are in there too.

AE: We are a circle, containing everything.

Lizzie: Everything and nothing.

[At rest relatively to themselves and to each other, the lovers settle into silent contemplation. Small birds rise gently, sweetly, from Lizzie and from AE. Hundreds of them flitter up in swirling concentric patterns bringing with them, as if reflected from the sheen of their feathers, an increasing luminosity of ruby light. Thousands of little birds, aeons of them, softly forming clouds as soft as what do you call it gossamer, the clouds forming mist, the mist gently drifting downward covering the lovers, the lovers blurring about the edges. Together they coalesce and dissolve, their bodies languid, breathing, watching their spirits unrestrained, circling, birds rising into mist falling, like self knowing wheels revolving uniformly: self knowing and self known.]

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.

A solution of the secular problem of the quadrature of the circle.

Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others' death and dying the others' life.

2:53 am

A circle is a circle because it is not a square. A square is a square because it is not a circle. Well now duh. So why do it? Why would anybody for any reason (with any reason) want to square the circle? Why take the one (let’s say the square: all pointed and anchored, so angular, and such fixity (a place for everything and everything in its place) such certainty) and try to make it anything but what it is? it’s good the way it is. Leave it alone. Who needs a turning of this into that when you already have both this and that. And look at that that: smooth and continuous. arcing around, no beginning no end: doesn’t know if it is coming or going, really, and frankly doesn’t care. You can’t pin that down: where to put the pin? Tell me precisely where. Go ahead. Like any coastline regardless of adjacent ocean, the closer you get, the more places for pinning. With circles its turtles all the way down. You would think the square would have no problem becoming a circle, it’s made of such nice round numbers, but sister circle is just so damn big, no matter how small she is. The maddening thing about her is that she flaunts her shape at us no matter how we want to see her. Looks like the perfect place for keeping things in. But how can such a perfect container, (with all the appearance of finite enclosure) harbor such infinities beyond reason? In becomes out. Where does she put it all? No wonder people behave like such lunatics trying to fit their square pegs into her round holes. This is now that, ta daaa! Imagine. And why? Once that’s done there’d be nothing left for them to do. Nothing left for anybody to do. What else could there possibly be? You’re done. You’ve just made the independent discovery of a goldseam of inexhaustible ore. You can go ahead now and buy your own island, no problem, and get down to watching the money riding in with the waves. Would be nice. It could be an art, even, cultivating the purest of possible devotions to one’s own pleasure. Could do anything. Arrange beehives according to humane principles, and the like. Join capital with opportunity and the thing required is done. Maybe even start my own religion. The Holy Church of the Sacred Squircle. No. Don’t like the holy church part. Squirclism. That’s better. I like that much better.

What caused him consolation in his sitting posture?

You only dwell within yourself, and only you know you; self-knowing, self-known, you love and smile upon yourself!

2:41 am

I’d rather die than sleep with you Echo, if you really want the truth. It’s not going to happen so please, come on, enough already.

But. Narcissus, you can’t hold out forever. I know what you’re doing. You have this image of yourself you are so in love with, but that’s not really you. Saying all the time you won’t have sex you won’t have sex, do you think that makes you so much more pure than everybody else? You have youth and you have beauty. And you’re a rock star. I’m just saying give it up already. You owe it if not to me, to yourself. You are missing out and here I am. Right here. Telling you and telling you. I could disappear tomorrow you know, and then who will you have to love you? I mean more than I love you.

I have myself. I have my integrity and I know my worth, and I am more valuable to me than I am to anybody else.

You are so transparent. You can love yourself all you want Narcissus, but yourself won’t love you back. God it’s like I’m empty air here, can’t you hear me? I’m telling you!

I’ve learned something, Echo, I can see myself as others see me. But more importantly I see my self as I see myself. I look into my own eyes looking into mine and there is nothing between us. No fears, no doubts. Nothing. The everythingness of nothing. Together we feel very simply, but strongly, the purity of a oneness made from the two of us. We feel it like radiance, projecting outwardly from our center in concentric circles. It feels like waves, Echo. When we connect together within that moment, we are the meaning and even the source of the two in the one and the one in the two. And we feel together, I and I, I feel that this truth has been and always will be true since time immemorial and forever more. Desde siempre y para siempre.

You’re killing me! Narcissus, I love you like you’ve never seen before. I beg you to listen to me.

I can’t even look at you.

Bellchime and handtouch and footstep and lonechill.

For abundance, even of things that are good, makes people esteem them less, and scarcity, even of bad things, lends a certain value.

2:33 am

Feel the reverb in your body
Where the sound of the bell just was:
Time dying, and
An infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later,
Time newborn.
Time dying, time birthing.
Simultaneous double vibrations and double reverberations
Bell, body, dead, newborn,
Patterning everything and nothing.

Feel the reverb on my lip
Where the touch of your thumb just was:
Love dying, and
An infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later,
Love newborn.
Love dying, love birthing.
Simultaneous double vibrations and double reverberations
Thumb, lip, dead, newborn,
Patterning everything and nothing.

Feel the reverb in the earth
Where the step of my foot just was:
Fear dying, and
An infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later,
Fear newborn.
Fear dying, fear birthing.
Simultaneous double vibrations and double reverberations;
Foot, fear, dead, newborn,
Patterning everything and nothing.

Feel the reverb in the air,
Where the chill of your breath just was:
Will dying, and
An infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later,
Will newborn.
Will dying, will birthing.
Simultaneous double vibrations and double reverberations;
Breath, will, dead, newborn,
Patterning everything and nothing.

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.

Three seekers of the pure truth.

They never listen to the voice of reason without being tied up by their prejudices, as Ulysses was by his fellow travelers, and giving them the order in advance: "Pull the rope tighter, the more I squirm and beg to be set free, until we will have lost sight of the Sirens."2:17 am

[Scene: Atop Mount Pisgah in Madaba, Jordan, Moses greets two more Moseses who have come to play a little chess, grill up some lamb, and argue, always argue. Always the same fight about the same damn thing.  Move on already.]

Moses: Welcome gentlemen, Moses, your face.  Not this again.

Moses Maimonides: [His badly scarred face sports wounds in varying stages of freshness. Some of them weep a yellow pus. Stinks. Moses, put a bandage on or something. A mask. Nobody wants to see that.]  Nothing.  A mirror.  Nothing.

Moses Mendelssohn: [Back bent double but nicely dressed]  Oh I’ve done that. Hurts.

Moses: You have to stop. This ridiculous pursuit. It must end. Let it go.

Moses Maimonides: I just wonder, if I could just, if I could just hear it from him once and for all.

Moses Mendelssohn: He was not Jewish. Aristotle was not a Jew. Don’t waste his time asking him that, please, man, have some dignity.  Remember who you are. From Moses to me there was none like you.  You talked Aristotle into the void! Why does his faith mean so much to you?  My closest friend is a, well, not a Christian per se, certainly not a Spinozist or some sort of athiest, more of a pantheist. He’s not Jewish anyway and you don’t see me trying to make him into a Jew.

Moses: It is Plato who is Jewish, not Aristotle. Or Socrates rather.

Moses Mendelssohn: Nonsense. Must anyone be anything? Aristotle. He dealt in reason: his philosophy conjures the purity of truth found only in mathematics. If this equals that then that equals this. Mathematics, not superstition. Most of humanity embark on the journey of life with delusion of superstitions and with the firm resolve to complete that journey with them.  You think a man who rejected the infinite and the void with an even greater resolve was a Jew?

Moses: Stop. Superstitions! I did not lead my people, God’s chosen people, all the way to the holy land for superstitions! With kids too! Are we there yet? Are we there yet? And feeding everybody, and everybody all cooped up together bickering and sick to death of each other already, and can we stop here, and can we stop there every five minutes.  I can’t tell you how many times I threatened to pull the whole thing over and turn around.

Moses Maimonides: And you did it for what? You died here!

Moses Mendelssohn: But the view, Moses, it’s soultransfiguring.  The light in the morning hours must be magnificent.

Moses: It’s a nice place to end up, I’ve got to say.

Moses Maimonides: Your barbeque pit is phenomenal, you could roast just about anything in there. How do you keep such a good smolder going?

Moses: Eternal fire. Really, it comes down to how you shape your burning bush. I like a nice pyramid with a pan of water next to it.

Moses Maimonides: Get that from the Egyptians?

Moses: Yup. You know, Moses, I’m going to ask Plato if he was Jewish. I just have to ask.

Moses Maimonides: I know, right?

Moses Mendelssohn: I can’t listen to these words.

Moses: It’s too late Moses, we are deep into the quicksand now. Our world without end is a different kind of world without end, so don’t give us your mathematical rationality. Parallel lines meet at infinity now.A = A + B.  Mathematics has been entangled in strings of its own making for infinities beyond infinities now.

Moses Maimonides: And all that bound into a finite space too.

Moses: Exactly. Everything is made from infinity and void as you well know. And was Aristotle a Jew? It was Socrates I’m sure of it, or Plato rather.  Was Aristotle Jewish? Let Moses ask him.  See what he can do.

Moses Mendelssohn: Fine. Go ahead Moses, it’s your face.

Moses: Good. Now how do you like your lamb?

Fluxuating incertitude.

Nothing can be created from nothing.2:12 am

Two monoideal lovers (unrequited): the scientific, the artistic, reduced to their simple reciprocal form. Neither openly alludes to their idea for fear of not hearing that triliteral end-all-doubt word. Neither openly alludes to their idea for fear of hearing that triliteral end-all doubt word. Not to mention the biliteral word is worse, so nobody wants to hear that. Two temperaments: the scientific, the artistic, each believing themselves unable to arrest involuntary attention, unable to interest, unable to convince. They have both decided of the infinite possibilities available to them, their choice is to wait. Wait it out. A Mexican standoff. Can I say that? A scientific artistic Mexicanistic standoff. Yeah I said it. They stand close. They can see the whites of their eyes. One of them whistles (to appear casual). This casual appearance dismays the other one who also appears casual which dismays the first one. The scientific makes the first move plenty, but this time the potentiality of not hearing that triliteral end-all-doubt word would mean, let’s just say: it’s not nothing. A move falls beyond the scientific’s courage. The artistic has a different reason for holding back. Something about being noble. Who the hell knows. What are the scientific’s thoughts about the artistic’s thoughts about the scientific and about the artistic’s thoughts about the scientific’s thoughts about the artistic? The scientific thinks that the artistic thinks that the scientific loves whereas the artistic knows that the scientific knows that the artistic knows that the scientific does not love.