Having my way with Ulysses

He gets the plums, and I the plumstones.

It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.

8:54 pm

But I suppose a plumstone is a seed, so it can return a plum.  History repeats itself.  The year returns.  Plumstone becomes tree becomes plum.  Don’t swallow the stone, it will tear your guts out.  But the new plum, is it the same plum?  Plum metempsychosis perhaps.  O sweet little, you don’t know how nice you tasted.  Yum yum.  See you next time around.  The new I want but: nothing new under the sun.  Self similar but not the same.  Only once it comes.  Returning: not the same.  Plum, plumstone, tree, plum.  Depends on where will it land.  Sand, nothing grows.  Fall at 32 feet per second per second, then rise little tree.  Resurrection.  Are you not happy in your ground plumstone?  Ba.

Seems a long way off.

The strain on the mind is formidable; the element of time drops out of one's consciousness altogether: the building hand gropes for a pawn in the box, holds it, while the mind still ponders the need for a foil or a stopgap, and when the fist opens, a whole hour, perhaps, has gone by, has burned to ashes in the incandescent cerebration of the schemer. The chessboard before him is a magnetic field, a system of stresses and abysses, a starry firmament.

No-one is anything.  I am a ghost.  Well, I haven’t died yet, no need to look at me as if my mind is off in some happy hunting ground somewhere.  I mean I have moved to an atemporal state without ever having died.  This is not resurrection, not metempsychosis.  I have translated.  You’ve done this too, occasionally.  You’ve lost track of time, before, yes?  That can happen when your world speeds up, when so much is happening that the whirlwind around you speeds time forward until you say you were so busy, had so much fun, were so distracted with it all, there was so much, so much, that time took flight.  This is not translation.  Translation comes from a deliberate slowness.  A stretching of the nothingness between full moments.  A pulling apart of discreet events until you inhabit the eventlessness between.  Time cannot reach you there.  Try it again, you’ve done it before.  You might make it happen for short spaces of time, short times of space with practice.  Like a muscle, the more you use it, the more supple, the more pliant.  Begin by cultivating your vision.  Practice seeing without seeing:  use your unseeing eye.  It helps to develop an idée fixe.  Find something with symbolic power.  For me it is chess.  Ah chess.  It contains the entire universe.  All of being and non-being, ever facet of the soul and the spaces between the facets beautifully composed onto 64 white and black squares.  I found chess in America.  I went after an American war to purchase land cheap, thinking I would grow cotton.  Instead I grew peaches.  Peach trees need little care.  Plant them, they blossom, then they grow.  Then peaches.  All they ask is we permit their becoming by staying clear of their being.  Then one harvest and endless solitude.  While my trees grew in Alabama I went to Atlanta and played chess.  The beauty, the harmony, of Zarathustra’s great invention!  In chess our adversaries move according to our moves, and we to them.  We form a helix coiling in a beautiful deadly dance, a rhythm of infinite possibilities.  64 squares, 8 X 8, infinity times infinity.  8 is the number of judgement.  And 64, 6+4=10, the perfect number.  The first triangular number to have a center, and the only one whose center is half of its total.  Balance.  GOD MEND THINE EVERY FLAW!  A onelegged sailor with an idée fixe crutched angrily, translating himself from the sidewalk into a jagged alley.  CONFIRM THY SOUL IN SELF CONTROL!  Symmetry.  The number of the soul.  10 represents the wheel of destiny and of retribution.  This is the number that governs returns, reincarnation, transmigration, metempsychosis, and most especially translation.  Judgement in delicious tango with destiny.  Ponder it, hang your gaze over a chessboard, and you can translate into a ghostbright existence where nothing is wanting, nothing is required, and the only fear is the hell of dreaded stalemate.  And the joy!  The joy of creation!  Each game a new universe.  Each chess problem (oh the composition of chess problems!) a microcosm of temporal harmony.  Each piece on the board a representative of stillness and force.  I left America, and the glorious atemporality I found there, to become a politician in support of my younger brother.  I was his pawn in a greater cause.  We are all pawns in a greater cause.  Just what is the cause, well that is not the pawn’s business.  Pawn’s have to earn their power, to kill, to rule as Queen; that is the glory of being a pawn.  Most remain powerless.  We serve our purpose quietly, in a waking sleep, then translate to the side to await our next use.  The halls of government contain chess rooms and in my political service to my brother I played chess.  I spoke on record 13 times in five years.  My brother hated and feared the number 13 although I found it immensely satisfying to open my mouth and make 13 utterances, speak questions I didn’t care to have answered, and then stop altogether.  I played chess.  I play chess.  I thought to master it and instead learned that my salvation, my translation to the infinite, comes when chess masters me.  Elijah is coming!  Elijah, a crumpled throwaway, sails closer to the three masters, bound to its translation.

That which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be.

Within my memory is fixed -- and now moves me -- your dear, you kind paternal image when, in the world above, from time to time you taught me how man makes himself eternal; and while I live, my gratitude for that must always be apparent in my words. 2:16 pm

Scene: [Around the ideal form of a table sit Cassandra, Caesar, Thoth, Lizzie Twigg, Brunetto Latini, Mother Dana, and Little John.  The theatre is darkened and an appropriate number of candles are burning with an inward light alongside several vestals’ lamps.  Peatsmoke rises from the trapdoor along with wafts of incense made from opoponax and violets.  Rest suddenly possesses the discrete vaulted cell, rest of warm and brooding air.]

Lizzie Twigg:  Right.  Thank you all for coming.

Little John:  [Drunk, a little dumb] When are we getting paid?

Cassandra:  Why is he here?  His breath is harming the vibrations.  And are those birthday candles?

Lizzie Twigg:  Yes, they seemed appropriate.  Don’t mind Little John, I found him vomiting in the greenroom and we needed one more body.  Seven is the perfect number for a séance and I am determined to get it right this time.  So let’s get started.  Æ is loose among the living, he’s only just managed to go undetected, though just barely.  So far he has appeared in Scylla and Charybdis, but there is no telling where he’ll turn up next so we have to get him back.  Thoth, am I speaking too quickly?

Thoth:  No, I’m recording it all perfectly, thanks.  Learned from Chitragupta.

Cassandra:  We won’t get him back.

Lizzie Twigg:  He’s coming back.  Now, be prepared for paradoxes.  He is alive but he is also dead.  His body has regenerated and though he appears normal, he is greatly decayed.  But from looking he is what he was; his moles still appear in their usual places, but he is a bit soft.  Also, his molecules are shuttling to and fro much too rapidly.  Mother Dana, we will need your help to repair him when we get him back.

Cassandra:  We won’t get him back.

Caesar:  You said that already.

Mother Dana: I can weave and unweave bodies and reconcile him to himself, but I’m not sure what to do about sharpening him up.

Lizzie Twigg:  Well, we’ll cross that Rubicon when we come to it.  First, there can be no reconciliation if there has not been a sundering.  Should be simple after that.

Caesar:  [Simply] You think it’s so easy.

Cassandra: [Easily]  Down, boy.  Life was hard for us all.  No need to get worked up about it now you’re dead.

Caesar: [Deadly] Vixen.  Whore.  Who listens to you?  Your kind sickens me.

Little John: [vomits under the table] Shagart! Shagart!

Lizzie Twigg:  Bear with me people.  When Æ resurrected he took my heart with him.

Thoth:  What did it weigh?

Lizzie Twigg: And I want him back.  Besides, I may see myself as I sit here now, but by reflection from that which then I shall be.  And that future which casts its shadow before includes Æ.

Cassandra:  But this is eternity, honey, there is no future.  The future is the conjoined twin sister of the past.  That which was, is.  That which may come to be, is.  It’s an all-at-onceness, sweet girl, nothing more.

Lizzie Twigg:  Exactly.  And he’s not here.  My is, is missing an aeon.

Cassandra:  I warn you, Lizzie, bring him back and he will crave the world of the living.  But you won’t bring him back.

Brunetto Latini:  Dear Twigg, when he returns you must reassure him that he will live on in his work.  Glory gives the wise man a second life; that is to say, after his death the reputation which remains of his good work makes it seem as if he were still alive.

Cassandra:  It won’t be enough.

Lizzie Twigg:  [Tossing off a glass of brandy neat] Please, let’s get started.  Where there is reconciliation, there must have been first a sundering.

Caesar:  You said that already.

Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper.

Bloody certainly have we got to see to it ere smellful demise surprends us on this concrete that down the gullies of the eras we may catch ourselves looking forward to what will in no time be staring you larrikins on the postface in that multimirror megaron of returningties, whirled without end to end.2:13 pm

I recommend resurrection wholeheartedly to those who are whole of heart and whose hearts fill most wholly the whirling holes ringing roundabout us between the astral levels engulfing souls, hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls, she sells shesouls by the sheshole.  Trips off the tongue.  Yes. This will be how I will preface the collection of the most promising young poets.  I have them all.  The important ones.  Nobody overlooked.  I remember it now, my work I left when I died.  But I am back and it is through logos I shall become important.  My story, my return from death, embroidered with poetry, will become our missing national epic.  I’ll gather my followers.  Malachi Mulligan of course and he will bring in Haines, who else?  Who else?  I will overlook nobody.  My head is whirling, my thoughts are simply swirling! Oh yes and I mustn’t forget the letter the kid gave me to publish.  Foot and mouth?  Well if it is important it will go in.  Now, I must take care of my smell before I gather genius and talent to my service.  My astral body was much more  pleasant than my physical.  But I exist!  I exist!  Why do I feel so nauseous?

Those literary ethereal people.

Lizzie Twigg is fundementially theosophagusted over the whorse proceedings.1:33 pm

[Scene:  Around the ideal form of a table sit Æ., Lizzie Twigg, the Reverend Dr. Salmon, Cassandra, and a Wizard.  The stage is darkly lit and the theatre is neither over heated nor chilly but at a comfortable temperature as typically a séance releases an unusual amount of magnetism, thus the room generally becomes warmer than ordinary.  The shades of the living like good ventilation too, so keep that in mind.  On a side table a buffet brunch waits congealing for any hungry living soul which may come. Today’s menu includes nut steak, weggebobbles cooked in soda, fruit, two headed octopus, eyes of cow, and poached eyes on ghost.]

Æ: Those cow eyes are following me everywhere I go. Right.  Let’s get started, shall we.  Five of us today, not an ideal number.  I would have prefered seven or something occult like 13, more symbolic.

Rev. Dr. Salmon:  Take yourself in hand, Æ, you can’t have everything.  Am I right Miss Twigg?

Lizzie Twigg:  Not saying a word.  Just taking it all in.

Cassandra:  It is easier with one medium but we appear to have two.  Well, as long as he remembers who is running the show, we can’t have the energies dividing.  Now, the purpose of today’s séance is to attract a living spirit Æ might possess long enough for his astral body to re-enter the physical world.

Wizard:  Metempsychosis?

Æ: No, resurrection.  I’ll be needing my body which I understand will regenerate around me.

Rev. Dr. Salmon:  Hold on a minute.  That body was tinned long ago, you’ll smell like a bad egg, you can’t put an egg back into the shell, the genie is not going to fit back into the bottle, once you get it out it’s hard to get it back in.

Cassandra: Please, too many images scrambled.  Let’s keep clear, yes?

Æ: My vegetative body will be attracted by my active astral body and through the vibration of molecules the phenomena of density and apparent weight will collect particles together along with an unseen mass of electrical and magnetic matter, and from that my physical body will form within the living world.  Easy.  Scientific.

Lizzie Twigg:  I answered the wrong ad.  I could have picked the other gentleman who wanted aid in literary work.  Or even the riding companion one.  That sounds pretty good now.  I could use a good belt of booze.

Æ:  Shall we venture now into the untrodden woods to carve the future ways?

Wizard:  Æ, Æ beware of the day!  For dark and despairing, my sight I may seal, but man cannot cover what God would reveal:  ‘Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, and coming events cast their shadow before.

Lizzie Twigg:  [Agitated, her stockings loose over her ankles.  I detest that.  Tasteless.] Yes!  Remember, time put by a myriad fates that her day might dawn in glory; death made wide a million gates so to close her tragic story.  I took it all in.  Didn’t you pay attention to your own words?  Why go back?  Here, there, eternity, temporality.  What difference does it make to us?  We have left the day to day.

Rev. Dr. Salmon:  I say, it is feeling quite close in here.

Æ:  We are doing this.  I want to do this.  I’ll get a different séance circle, but I am going back.

Lizzie Twigg:  This isn’t what you thought it would be, is it Æ?  There is nothing dreamy here, or cloudy, or symbolistic.  You wanted the light of lights.  You still do.  You miss wanting what you didn’t get.  So you retreat back into wanting.  You want to be the head upon which the ends of the world have forgotten to come.

Cassandra:  Please, you are disturbing the vibrations.  Let us join hands and begin.

Lizzie Twigg:  Fine.  But why anybody would want to entrap themselves into the present moment amongst the unenlightened.  This will never work.

Cassandra:  Believe me, we will channel the living and Æ will go back.

Wizard:  Down, soothless insulter!  I trust not the tale.

Cassandra:   Please.  You don’t believe me?  Tell me something I haven’t heard before.  Ok.  Moving on.  We call on the living spirit of the one who has been hovering near.  I feel you.  I know you are here.  Make a sign to us.  One click for yes and two clicks for no.

Æ:  Anything?

Cassandra:  I heard something but it was more a mouse than a click.

Wizard:  The war drum is muffled.

Cassandra:  I call upon you, you know who you are, to draw near.  Lean in honey, we can hear you breathing.

Lizzie Twigg:  Look at Æ!

Wizard:  Oh!  mercy dispel yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell!  Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs, and his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.

Cassandra:  Oh holy Zeus I didn’t believe myself this time but look!  Æ?  Can you hear us Æ?

Æ:  Click.

Lizzie Twigg:  Where did he go?  Oh Jesus Fucking Christ, I swear to stage manager, nothing good can come from this.

God: [from the booth on the god mic]  Ok hold.  Jesus, what in my name is going on down there?  Where is Æ?

Jesus: I’m not sure.  He’s gone.  I think they resurrected him.

God:  He can’t be resurrected.  This is supposed to be a dress rehearsal, and people please stay on script and stick to the blocking.  The light cues were a mess toward the end of that.  Jesus, get Æ back and let’s go again from the top.

Jesus:  I can’t get him back, he’s been resurrected.  Like Lazarus, remember?

God:  [On the god mic]  How can I forget that debacle?  Can still smell his stench.

Rev. Dr. Salmon:  How was I?  I felt a little off.

Cassandra:  You were very convincing, believe me.

Rev. Dr. Salmon:  I didn’t get to say my speech.  The dreamy cloudy gull, waves o’er the waters dull.

Jesus:  Um, God?  Now that Æ is loose in the world, well, that’s going to throw a wrench into Scylla and Charybdis.

God:  [on the god mic]  Not our problem.  Jesus Christ where’s the holy spirit?  Why we are going with a director we can’t keep track of, only I know.  Well, we don’t have time for this.  Let’s recast Æ and move on.  Is Arius busy?  Did he get over his, well, issue?  Maybe call his agent.  Let it be done.  Don’t forget we have casting for Circe coming up and tech for that will be a nightmare.

Never the same

On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow.1:10 pm

Saw a good idea today, a rowboat with a sandwich board ad on it, anchored in the ship canal.  Kino’s selling pants for $49.99.  Not bad.  Can spend that much just getting a pair altered.  A good idea is a good idea.  Better than hiring human directionals to carry the signs around like Hely pays for. Pays Boylan?  Must be McGlade’s work. Those bring in nothing. Still, people will look at anything, even nothing.  Stand and stare; other people will too.  Or be like Maginni dancing around.  He is his own ad.  Can put ads for std doctors in urinals.  Feel the burn?  Somebody standing there can relate and oh Christ.  What if he?  Oh God no.  No.  He wouldn’t, would he?  I don’t believe it.  No.  I can’t.  I can’t think about that.  What’s the time?  The diameter of the sun as seen from.  Oh God.  Focus.  As seen from earth is one half of a degree.  24 hours in the day divided by 360 degrees times 60 minutes to one hour times the radius of the sun or 1/4 of a degree.  It moves by its own radius every minute.  That’s the time.  As seen from wherever on earth.  No?  What about parallax views?  Never quite got parallax.  Greek word.  Should look it up.  Parallel parallax.  I feel like Molly with her met him pike hoses until I explained about the transmigration of souls and the stream of life.  Life is a stream.  Flowing and flowing.  Not like time.  Time doesn’t flow.  What is it flowing through if it is flowing?  Not flowing.  Fluxing.  Time a phenomenal flux.  Fluxing along in the flux of life.  Changes and changes.  Like water.  Who was it said that?  We can’t walk into the same ocean twice.  The ocean is different every time and we are different every time.  Yet we stay the same.  Stay the same by changing, dissipative structures.  Like the Argo, not a toothpick on that ship the same as when it began, yet always the Argo.  Look in the mirror, not the same hair, not the same skin, not the same cells as when we were born.  We flux like the Ocean.  Walk in to our death and come out of other waters in a new body.  Not resurrected.  Transmigrated.  Only the soul is the same.  Somebody asked Plato if the soul gets tired.  Does it wear out like old pants?  Can get new ones for $49.99.  See?  A good idea is a good idea.

Shite and Onions, Life is Short

12:10 pm

I, Hedges Eyre Chatterton, being of sound mind and body despite the indifferent care given me by the inflated windbags and weathercocks amongst my nearest and most dear relations hereby declare this document to be my last will and testament thus nullifying all previous versions. The Angel of Death nears and on this the occasion of my ninetieth birthday I note the meanderings of some purling rill as it babbles on its way, tho’ quarreling with the stony obstacles, to the tumbling waters of Neptune’s blue domain, and my thoughts, fanned by the gentlest zephyrs, drift towards a meditation upon this our mortal coil and as I meekly resign my soul to its Creator in the humble hope (thro’ the merits of Jesus Christ) of its future happiness as in the disposal of a Being infinitely good. My body I direct to be decently buried with no damn cross or any other bloody instrument of torture at my tomb but instead at the discretion of my Executor hereinafter named as to such temporal estate wherewith it hath pleased God to bless me, to provide from said estate a suitably sized angelic statue in pensive posture which shall be placed at my final bed of rest to remind those sad mourners particularly amongst my dearest family that although they might subscribe to the charming principle that all blows over and this too shall pass they ought rather dwell on the far more apt verse from our most holy book being as follows: they who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind. As I have left no issue from my certainly most capable loins, and am unlikely to do so as the vernal green of my youth turns toward the the transcendent translucent glow of mysterious twilight, I hereby bequeath the following mortal possessions from this my earthly life to my most dearest ones, and once they get wind of my passing may they trample each other to death with pulling hair and biting to get their filthy hands on it thus consigning their wretched souls to burn forever in the fiery gales of miserable hell in their lust for a windfall the bastards. To the relations of my departed first wife Mary Halloran, because I promised the dear pitiful creature on her dying bed as she lay ‘neath the shadows cast o’er her pensive bosom by the overarching leafage of the giants of the forest to remember her family upon my own sad demise, I hereby remember you. Agonizing Christ! how could I forget such a miserable batch of high falutin bladderbags, and in addition to a reminiscence of your kindness (as most certainly I love you as you love me) to each and every one of you I bequeath a pustulating heartburn on your arse. To my niece Jane Chatterton Steer I leave one dollar for the kindness and love she never showed me. To my nephew the Reverend Eyre Chatterdon I leave ten dollars to buy a book on manners. Make that twenty. To the Mr. Bell who married my niece Rebecca Chatterton Bell I leave my collection of antiques for the service he has done the family in taking a woman no man of taste would have taken. To Mr. Garcia the husband of my niece Susan Chatterton Garcia I leave my collection of aged scotch and other spirits and my crystal collection so he may drink therefrom to comfort him under the affliction of a slatternly wife. I leave my silver tankard to my grand-nephew Abraham Eyre Chatterton, son of my nephew Abraham Chatterton. As the representative of the family I ought to have left it to Abraham himself, but he would melt it down to make temperance medals, and that would be sacrilege — however, I leave my big horn snuff-box to him: he can only make temperance horn spoons of that. I leave all my landed property and furnishings therein to my nieces Mary Chatterton Berry and Martha Chatterton, the former because she is married to a man whom (God help him) she henpecks. The latter because she is married to nobody, nor is she like to be, for she is an old maid, and not market-rife. I wish peace and affluence to all my friends and a piece of effluence to all my enemies. And last and most certainly least I leave the entirety of my monetary fortune to my great-nephew Edward (Ned) Lambert under the condition that he touch none of it, not so much as a penny, but instead hold it safefully for the personal use of Jesus Christ, when He returns.

I do hereby constitute and appoint J.J. O’Molloy to be the executor of this my last Will and Testament. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal the twenty-ninth day of February in the year of our Lord two thousand and twelve.

Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job.

Soft and safe be the earthly bed of our brother; bright and glorious be his rising from it. Fragrant be the acacia sprig which shall flourish there. May the earliest buds of spring unfold their beauties over his resting place, and in the bright morning of the world's resurrection, may his soul spring into newness of life and expand into immortal beauty in realms beyond the skys.11:36 am

After the funeral Tom Kernan hovered near me.  Both converts.  In the same boat in other ways too.  Treacherous to be the only ones.  Our ill-kept secret.  Is he a mason?  They have better funerals.  I wanted him to speak to me and he said: I ah uh weoowection ah uh wife — youcheg a man imok heaw.  Well damn that to hell.  Once you are dead you are dead.  The resurrection and the life; the last day idea.  There’s a rabbit hole for you, hard to come forth from that one.  Get up!  Last day!  Rise and shine.  Then all of the dearly returned digging around for livers and kidneys and inmost hearts.  Find damn all of yourself in the morning.  Left my heart behind.  No hearts in there these days.  Removed first.  Broken out, then sewn up.  How many broken hearts buried with Paddy Dignam?  None.  Inmost heart.  Kernan’s maybe, but Paddy’s?  No touching that.  Touched Simon’s, he broke down when we were near Mary’s grave.  Simon said she’s in heaven if there is a heaven.  But she’s better where she is.

קדיש

This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory so that the son of Bloom may be glorified through it.

9:12 am

Have been looking at The Bath of the Nymph print we got from a magazine last Easter, can’t remember which one.  DDI?  I paid about $190 to frame it in oak.  Looks like Molly.  Slimmer.  Easter, now that’s a concept.  Resurrection is nothing like metempsychosis where you don’t know where your soul will end up, no.  A tree, a cat.  No.  Get resurrected and the body you died in comes back too.  And not like Lazarus either, all fucked up and reeking of grave rot.  Come out Lazarus, but woof, you stink! Go back in Lazarus.  No.  I want him back, but the way he’d be if not.  If he hadn’t.  You know.  Rudy eleven years ago today.  My boy my boy.

(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.