Having my way with Ulysses

People usually contrived to load that sort of onus on to the other fellow.

• Eumaeus

The question is, have I learned anything about life? Only that human beings are divided into mind and body. The mind embraces all the nobler aspirations, like poetry and philosophy, but the body has all the fun. The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. I think the worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever. After all, you know, there are worse things in life than death. If you've ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, you know exactly what I mean. The key here, I think, is to not think of death as an end, but think of it more as a very effective way of cutting down on your expenses.1:21 am

Hello, yes, thank you for waiting. Sit down, sit down please. Coffee? No? So. Great to see you, great to see you, how’s your day, good? Follow any sports teams? Listen. You are real smart to come in today, truly, it is a fucking genius move and I’m not kidding, between you and me the time is precisely now if you are looking for good premiums on cash value whole resurrection insurance.  Here, take a look at this chart, where the hell is it? here.  You see here this is what you save by buying young, younger I should say, before you sin too much. What religion? None? I suggest you get one, you could lower your premium by another three quarters of a percent.  But I’m going too fast here.  Coffee? No? Water? Listen. If you die and go to hell tomorrow what would happen? Suffering? Pain? How do you feel about that? And tell me, how many years do plan on living?  The longer your life the more opportunity you have to sin, you realize.  And you will do it.  Listen, The chances are 20 to nil that you’ll get married, have a couple of children, get drunk at a party and fuck somebody in a closet, destroy your marriage, damage your kids’ psyches, get nasty in the divorce, then drip venom on all around you in your ongoing seething bitterness.  That’s a fact.  How do you feel about that?  Now I’m not asking you to be sentimental about your decision, remember, the sentimentalist is he who would incur too immense a debtorship for a thing done.  I’m saying take sentiment out of it.  Let hell be for the other guy.  Am I right? Why take chances. Do you want to take risks with your afterlife? You might as well buy lottery tickets to heaven and cross your fingers.  Do you believe in letting your hereafter depend on luck?  How do you feel about that?  Friend, think of whole resurrection insurance as a work around you can’t afford not to buy.  Don’t think of it as $1132 annually, think of it as 13 cents an hour. Thirteen cents! Thirteen cents an hour for peace of mind that the only hell you’ll experience is the one in this stream of life and no other.  Now, are you ready to purchase?  Let me rephrase that.  Will you be paying with cash or credit?

A hesitating soul taking arms against a sea of troubles, torn by conflicting doubts, as one sees in real life.

• Scylla and Charybdis

And it so happened that it fell to the soul of Odysseus to choose last of all. The memory of his former sufferings had cured him of all ambition and he looked round for a long time to find the uneventful life of an ordinary man; at last he found it lying neglected by the others, and when he saw it he chose it with joy and said that had his lot fallen first he would have made the same choice.2:00 pm

Quick.  My heart quops softly and my breath, breath! the flutter of my breath is coming forth in short sighs.  Just act real.  Stay in the shadows.  Keep back from the lamp.  Pretend to be writing something.  My heart!  Be still my beating eyes!  I smell as if I’ve made a trumpet of my ass.  Stay back.  Try not to waft close.  Maybe they won’t notice.  Get my bearings.  Listen to the kid.  Listen.  Seven is dear indeed to the mystic mind.  Threw that one out for me to catch.  Ho ho!  Good.  That sounded like a real laugh.  I can make sound!  Indulge the kid; wait to speak.  Let my particles and molecules complete their formation around me.  Wait.  Oh no.  Look at me.  Look at me!  Look at my typing hands!  I don’t know how to say this but I think I’m soft.  I’m soft.  I’m out of focus.  I don’t know why.  Is there anything I can do?  I can’t adjust for this.  I need to sharpen up.  Well, I expect the world will adjust to the distortion I’ve become.  Now focus on the kid.  Hamlet.  Ok, talking Hamlet.  Lyster speaks the obvious, Hamlet unfit for the job.  Eglinton:  today’s youth not up to creating another Hamlet.  My turn.  O I have much to say!  The mysteries I can reveal.  But how, how?  Must be careful.

Whether Hamlet is Shakespeare, or James I, or Essex, or the historical Jesus or any other mortal shade softens in focus when we think of the true purpose of art, which is to reveal to us spiritual realities, formless spiritual essences which are the truth of eternal existence.  Art is art when it comes from a soul who Knows eternal wisdom, who has visited eternality and has returned filled with truth, who has eaten from ideal forms of tables, and has communed with Plato’s world of ideas.  Mortal, I mean to say, academic speculation is the pastime of schoolboys.

There, that should hold them.  Pretty good I’d say for my first appearance after reincarnating.  Plant a seed.  Now, if I could just sharpen up.