Having my way with Ulysses

He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks

I stood by the unvintageable sea till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray, The long red fires of the dying day burned in the west; the wind piped drearily; And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee: "Alas!" I cried, "my life is full of pain, And who can garner fruit or golden grain, from these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!" My nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw. Nathless I threw them as my final cast into the sea, and waited for the end. 11:50 am

Better get this job over quick.  Side by side with the serpent plants and milkoozing fruits.  Pain is far.  And no more turn aside and brood.  Brood on my boots.  His boots.  I am a Buck’s castoff.  Brother soul, Wilde’s love that dare not speak its name.  His arm, Cranley’s arm.  He will leave me.  אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה‎.  I will be what I will be.  All or not at all.  I shall wait.  No.  Chafing against the low rocks.  Swirling.  Passing.  Listen: vehement breath.  Wavespeech of waters.  Seesoo,  amid seasnakes.  Hrss rearing horses.  Rsseeiss rocks.  Ooos.  In cups of rocks it slops.  Flop slop slap.  Bounded in barrels.  Slopped and churned. The bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.

Whispering weeds:  Shhh. Lift your skirts, we are flooded.  Let fall.  Ahhh we are weary.  Lift.  Shhh.  Flooded.  We await fullness.  Day by day and night by night.  Shhh.  Pray to St Ambrose for us.  He loves virgins.  Shhh.  He knows how to hide.  Lift.  Shhh.  Let fall.  He will hide us.  Shhh.  Gather up forthflowing.  We are flooded.  Shhh.  Wending back.  We are weary.  Help us St. Ambrose.  Shhh.  Help us.

 

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

It devours itself and spits itself out, kills itself and generates itself again.9:00 am

Buck likes to dress in front of a poster of Oscar Wilde like it is a mirror.  Today he told off everything he put on for being stiff, rebellious, etc.  Wants puce gloves and green boots.  Not quite over Wilde and paradoxes no matter what he says.  And he thinks my hat is artsy.  Called himself Mercurial Malachi, that Mercurius that is made up of all conceivable opposites, a contradiction and I suppose it is one but not how he sees it.  He is vulgar mercury, hardly the anima mundi.  He is both creative and destructive, though, I give him that.  And he is solvent, despite what he pretends.

Am I repeating myself?

All art is quite useless.8:21 am

Buck pointed that cracked mirror of his at me today.  Says he stole it from the cleaning crew his Aunt hired.  Made me look.  I took a look but it took more from me.  Made me see myself as others see me.  Is that something crawling on my head?  Nobody saw that, right?  I feel a bit like Dorian Gray revealing that mirror of his soul to Basil.  Wilde was right about that one.  God isn’t the only one who can look at my soul, I can too and there are too many of me.  We.  So many possibilities buzzing past, and I can watch them go in the mirror and join the multitudes.  The twenty-first century dislike of web fiction is the rage of Calibans seeing multiplicities of his own face in the screen.  Get used to it.  Or maybe just help me up from this hall of mirrors.  I would ask for an infinite rock so I could do some smashing but cracks turn one mirror into several and I cannot bear more multiplication.  Enough.  Stop it.  Don’t look at me.  You look at yourself.