Having my way with Ulysses

Fat folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, neck

Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind, In winged speed no motion shall I know12:00 pm

A big wind today, feel it through the doors.  They always put doors one opposite the other for the wind to.  Way in.  Way out.  Let the building breathe.  Choke otherwise.  No, air has to circulate, breeze around.  Door whispers.  Ee: cree.  Putting together an ad deal for Alexander Keyes and needed a bit of a cut and paste from Red Murray.  Think I know his nephew.  Have to ask another time. Stately Brayden came barreling statelily through before I could bump the words out of my head.  Simon Dedalus says he keeps all his brains in the nape of his neck.  Red thinks Neck looks like Jesus and he does, although hard to imagine Jesus at that size.  I think he looks a bit like the guy who sang co-ome thou lost one, co-ome thou dear one.  Jesuslooking with a beardframed face.  Nice to imagine.  Jesus talking in the dusk with Mary at his feet.  And Martha content, joyful, serving food.  The passive and the active, loving sisters.

The Active:   Loving, my ass!  News flash: I had to take the train from Bethany, then a bus, then a cab to the airport, change planes at JFK that stinking bunghole, then Seatac, train, bus just to tell you personally:  Mary the cheapest whore in the world will suck your balls for ten bucks in any alley or back seat you like.  In any alley or back seat you like for ten bucks Mary the cheapest whore in the world will suck your balls.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Almost Human

And I have never seen a stableboy whose master waits for him, or one who stays awake reluctantly, so ply a horse with currycomb, as they assailed themselves with clawing nails -- their itching had such force and fury, and there was no other help. And so their nails kept scraping off the scabs, just as a knife scrapes off the scales of carp or of another fish with scales more large. 12:03 pm

It’s the ads and side features that sell a newspaper, not the stale news people have already read online.  Syndicated stuff, classifieds, opinions in my opinion.  Pressure builds for civilian drone flights at home.  Rising gas prices just another chance to milk the masses.  Respiratory Care Practitioner Pulmonary Function Technologist – Per Diem – Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.  Vacant Land 25 Dexter Ave N Seattle, WA 98109  East side of Queen Anne, breathtaking views of Lake Union.  Pop music/Nightlife: Seattle Wind Symphony Concert.  Picture: World’s Biggest Balloon.  Dear Mr. Editor, what is a good cure for flatulence?  Spoke to Nannetti today, Hynes got there first with his unfeigned regret we announce the dissolution of a most respected throwaway nobody will miss.  Except once they are done the rats working away, tearing away, gnawing away, munching away.  Yum.  Thank you.  I should have said something about old hats, or that it looks good as new now.  No.  I reminded Hynes it is payday.  Payroll about to go to lunch.  Didn’t take the third hint.  Lent him $14 three weeks ago, three times what he needed at the time.  Maybe he understood what I.  The Keyes ad I showed Nannan.  And silence, scratching armpit.  Ribs.  Two crossed keys in a circle and asked for a paragraph calling attention and yes he said yes but with three months renewal.  Will ask Keyes.  Door creaking.  Cree, calling, crying, craving attention.  Doing its level best to breathe out words.  Everything speaks in its own way.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Just to see

And so too may you, like the very wind of destruction, rid by fire all the wickedness from the land.12:06 am

The silly Penis.  Once I heard sweet old Monks said this to himself after Nannetti shouted for where’s what’s his name Monks.  And he sees Monks every day.  Nice old man.  Must have seen it all.  Obituary notices and found drowned and scandals and schism and all the rest.  Started out as a linotype operator back in the day.  Could type blind, see with his fingers.  Still in the shop but now it’s a MAN Roland.  I wonder if Monks had to type backwards into his linotype.  .epytonil sih otni sdrawkcab epyt ot dah sknoM fi rednow I   Skilled.  Art to it.  Papa could read backwards.  Read his Haggadahbook that way, pointing his finger to me.  Why should this night be so special?  L’shanah haba’a bi Yerushalayim.  It’s a long time to wait for a hungry kid.  Long business about that brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage.  Then the twelve brothers, Jacobs son’s.  Some of them were citron farmers.  Pocket smells of Citronlemon.  What kind of perfume does your wife?  Keep losing that soap in pockets.  And the part about the one little goat the one little goat, that slit the throat, the Holy One, blessed is he, who butchered the butcher, who slaughtered the ox that ate the staff, that beat up the cat, that scratched the dog, that drank up the water, that put out the fire, that burned up the Angel of Death.  Silly sounding but it all means justice when you look into it well.  That and it’s everybody eating everybody else.  That’s what life is after all.  I’m hungry what time is it?  I could bus home still.  Forgot something maybe.   Molly dressing, get there before.  No.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

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.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

A scarlet beaked face, crested by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in

It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which delivered o'er to the voice, -- the tongue, -- which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. 12:13 am

What is it?  North Cork Militia.  The BLOODY TINTH!  Won every time.  EVERY TIME WHAT?  Drink!  No drinks served before mass.  Getonouthat.  Bloody old pedagogue.  North Cork and Spanish officers.  Won’t march in Ohio or anywhere for the bloody Prince of Ales.  He could be the prince of my ass.  WON’T MARCH!  What?  In OHIO!  MY OHIO!  Bing bang bing bang, drink?  That will be all right.  All right.  Never you fret.  Never fret.  All right now.  Hello.  That’s all right.  All right.  What’s in the wind?  What?  Canada swindle case.  $90 buys instant Canadian citizenship.  Hello!

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Hush, I hear feetstoops

12:16 am

Ok, stoop down here.  Don’t mind me, just picking up these racing forms. Figure this out on my own.  La la la. So what do we have.  Sceptre 5 to 4, Zinfandel 7 to 4, Maximum II 10 to 1.  Those are the most likely.  Will include least likely, Throwaway 20 to 1 for a control.  A throwaway.  So.  Ok.  Draw a circle, homogeneous non-differentiated space.  Divide into duality in order to create.  Division within unity.  Now.  Center is O and radius OA=1.  Diameters AA’ and BB’ at right angles and with centers on diameter BB’ draw two circles.  Ok,  each with a radius half that of original circle.  Yup. From point A swing an arc NM tangent to circumferences of the two inner circles.  Repeat from point A’.  Construct square ACB’O from the radius of the original circle.  That’s the racetrack.  Good.  Ok.  The arc of the semi-diagonal of the square and the radius AE of the arc NEM is Φ  and the arcs NEM and NDM divide the radii AO and A’O into the golden division of 1/Φ and 1/Φ2.  Hum. Paradox now. Divide a circle into a yin yang like that and the circumferences of the inner circles are equal to that of the larger circle but the area within them is only half that of the original circle. One has become two. So Zinfandel?  Not Maximum II.  That seems out.   A unity becomes a duality.   Homogeneity becomes polarized.  Separated.  Jockey falls off?  Which one?  Mutually repellent forms arise from a common source.  Well that’s life.  And that sounds like Zinfandel to me.  The pentahedron to the cube, the heptahedron to the cube, the decahedron to the unity.  The icosahedron to the unity.  Hm.  So now, construct a square equal in area to the original circle.  If only pi were 3.17, then it would be Maximum II and what a payoff!  But have to base this on reality.  So.  So.  Φ2= 1+r2 and r = √Φ-1 and r = √Φ and the circumference equals 2∏√Φ with √Φ=1.272. . . and ∏=three point one four one five nine do da do da, so, hm.  If the perimeter of the square is approximately 8.  But I don’t want approximates.  Then, well.  This isn’t very mathematically exact.  A bit like throwing money into a hurricane.  But it looks like Sceptre.  That’s just where it’s shaking out.  I can feel it in the numbers.  My money, all of it, on Scepter.  Respect.  A dead cert.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Begone! The world is before you.

Slow in the hazy light I have been asking, Almost as a comfort, if the past Belonging to this now unhappy Adam Was nothing but a magic fantasy Of that God I dreamed. Now it is imprecise in memory, that lucid paradise, But I know it exists and will persist Though not for me. The unforgiving earth is my affliction, and the incestuous wars of Cains and Abels and their progeny. Nevertheless, it means much to have loved To have been happy, to have laid my hand on The living Garden, even for one day.12:20 am

In a hurry to get that ad.  Just need to run out to get that Keyes ad.  What’s that Lenehan is doing under the desk there?  Geometry?  Don’t want to trample him.  Bull in china.  I’m in a hurry.  Going now.  Better get going because I want to catch Keyes.  Got to go.  Let’s blow.  Breeze on out.  Ease on down the road.  Descend that staircase.  No time like the present.  Here I go.  I’ll take my coat and my leave.  Just run round to Dillons.  Mazurka round to Dillons.  Steal a march round to Dillons.  Ok?  Is that ok?  I’ll be right back.  Back in no time.  Fast as the wind.

One Response to Begone! The world is before you.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

We mustn’t be led away by words, by sounds of words

Pilate dismissed that thought, and it flew away as fast as it had flown in. The thought flew away, and the feeling of anguish remained unexplained, for it could not be explained by a second brief thought that flashed like lightning and immediately died out, "Immortality...immortality has come..." Whose immortality has come? The procurator did not understand this, but the thought of that mysterious immortality made him turn cold despite the broiling sun. "Very well then," said Pilate, "So be it."12:23 pm

[Scene: On a hill in the levant ages ago, two friends unaware they ought to be anything but, sit in a smoke filled tent contemplating the future.]

The Roman:  Ah we are far from Rome.  Imperial, imperious, imperative, imperium.

The Jew:  Imperil, imperish, impermissible, impermanent.  You Romans may think we are the fat in the fire but your civilization hasn’t got the chance of a snowball in hell.

The Roman:  You don’t believe in hell.  Here, throw some more of that on the fire, would you?  Thanks.

The Jew:  Vast, Vastative, Vatinian, Vile, Vility, Villian.

The Roman: Vassal, Vastate, Vaste, Vastity, Vasectomy.

The Jew:  Breathe deeply.  What do you see.  Look there.  Is it just the smoke or are you seeing it too?

The Roman:  I see something.  Wait, yes.

The Jew:  Yes, it is more clear.  I feel giddy, lightheaded, but yes I can see.  This is the place.  We have found it.  It is meet to be here.  This is the place to settle and build a future.  From here we shall multiply and prosper.  Let us build an altar to Jehovah.

The Roman:  Yes. Yes.  It is meet to be here.  Let us construct a toilet.  And let the plumbing of this great work signal to the world the grandeur that is eternal Rome.

The Jew:  Weren’t you going to take that job, that position in Judea, Pontius?  Prelate was it?

The Roman:  It would be such a bore; nothing interesting ever happens in Judea.  But they do have toilets.  Perhaps I will.  Let’s breathe some more of this smoke, I’m feeling peaceful.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

In the Star and Garter: reflect, ponder, excogitate, reply.

Kyrie eleison12:26 pm

Virgin Mary:  (On the God mic) Welcome everybody, thank you all so much for coming today to the Star and Garter ballroom here in the Empyrean building.  We’ll get started in a few moments and as you can see we don’t have an equal number of men and women, so if you find yourself waiting, please form an orderly cue here near the front and we will direct you where to go next.  Please write your names clearly on your name tags and make sure they are visible.  You will only have eight minutes for each date so please make your time count.  No time to be shy folks, really put yourselves out there.  So.  Right.  We’d like to ask the women to choose a table, whichever one you want, it doesn’t matter, and the men will rotate from table to table when you hear the bell.  Please do not linger as there will be time during the mixer for follow-up conversations and you will not want to take time away from your next date.  Are you ready?  (off mic) Joseph, did you prep Helen?

Joseph:  As well as I could boss, but she doesn’t seem cooperative.

Virgin Mary:  Stuck up bitch.  Nothing but problems since we took her on.  Well, we need to find her a man she won’t want to run away from, even if she didn’t actually run in the first place.  And that blind date with Adam Kadmon went nowhere.

Joseph:  Not each other’s type.

Virgin Mary: No.  He wants more of a viper.  Ok here we go.  (On the God mic).  All right everybody, relax, have a good time, and remember with only eight minutes there is no reason to have anything but a fun conversation.  Stay on neutral subjects, in other words don’t talk about sex, and remember that our policy is no sex before monogamy.  Ok, Bell!

Bell: Heigho! Heigho!

Garrett Deasy:  Hello pretty lady.

Helen:  Hi.  So, what should we?

Garret Deasy:  I brought a writing sample in case you.

Helen:  You want me to read this?

Garret Deasy:  Maybe later.

Helen:  There’s a bit torn off.

Garret Deasy:  Metaphor for my life, I’ve been a bit short taken.

Helen:  So have you ever been married?

Garret Deasy:  Still am.  The bloodiest old tartar God ever made.  She once threw soup in a waiter’s face.

Helen:  Great.  What’s that on your face?

Garret Deasy:  Foot and mouth disease.

Bell:  Heigho! Heigho!

Helen:  Thank God.  Hi.

Vampire:  Hello.  You are a creature beautiful.  Want to put your mouth to my mouth?

Helen:  Not really.  Sheesh, age preceeds creepy.  Let’s not talk.

Vampire:  Yes, yes.  Your foot, allow me to put it in my mouth.  You look like the sort who could bring sin into the world, ships to the seas.  Um.  I don’t want to be rude or anything, but aren’t you going to say anything?

Helen:  Nope.

Bell:  Heigho! Heigho!

Helen:  This is already looking like a lost cause.  Hello, I’m Helen.

Napoleon:  Napoleon.

Helen:  Well, when you sit down you pretty much disappear, don’t you.  So what do you do?

Napoleon:  I am an Emperor, undefeated.  You?

Helen: Kyrios!  Lord!  That is impressive at least.  I think the last guy was a cloacamaker, woof he stank!

Napoleon:  Nature has endowed me with a virile and decisive character.

Helen:  And your other, endowments?  Judging from your stature I think it fair of me to wonder.

Napoleon:  Hasn’t it been eight minutes yet?

Bell:  Heigho! Heigho!

Helen:  Oh lord what now.  Hi I’m Helen.  What’s wrong with your head?

Pyrrhus:  (sniffing, wearing a bandage wrapped around his head with dried blood showing through the gauze) Got brained with a brick.  Saw it coming too.

Helen:  You ok?

Pyrrhus:  Yes.  No.  I’m sorry, I’m not very good at this.  I’m just feeling so, I don’t know, so overwhelmed.  I think it is some sort of existential crisis.

Helen:  Oh honey, please don’t worry about it.  You’ll be ok.

Pyrrhus:  You are so sweet.  I guess I was a bit misled in the past and now I feel like everything is a battle and I always fall.

Helen:  Oh poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!

Pyrrhus:  My analyst says I shouldn’t just dump this all out when I first meet somebody, I should highlight the radiance of my intellect, the language of my mind.  But I don’t know.  I think I’m a lost cause.

Helen:  Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus, I am loyal to lost causes!  I’ve never been loyal to the successful.  Success for me is the death of the intellect and the imagination.

Pyrrhus: You mean it?

Helen:  I do.

Pyrrhus:  You are a rose!  A rose of Castile!

Helen:  Of where?

Bell: Liliata rutilantium. Turma circumdet, Iubilantium te virginum.

Virgin Mary:  [On the God mic] Ok, nice speed dating people!  We’ll take a short break, have a brief mixer, then do another round.  That was great everybody! I feel so optimistic for all of you!

Joseph:  You do?

Virgin Mary:  Oh lord no.  This was supposed to help Helen’s image and who does she like?  Boohoo Pyrrhus.  Well, time is money.  Let’s get on with this travesty and have done with it.  These are disappointed people, but we mustn’t make a mockery of their disappointment.  And Joseph?

Joseph:  Yes Holy Mother?

Virgin Mary:  I am not your mother; I wish you wouldn’t call me that.  Joseph, find Jesus.  We’ll be needing lots more wine.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Sphinx face

There was once a young writer named Joyce whose diction was ribidly choice, And all his friends' woes were deduced from his prose which never filled anyone's purse. 12:30 am

To rise is to fall Sallust said,
Mother Rome is now beastily dead,
Beauty may be decorious
Intellect is quite glorious
But decline is where we are led
 
If you think I wrote that I’ll see red
Or blush ’till I’d rather be dead.
That will be fine
I’ll read in good time
When I’m sober his sheets will be read.
 
Listen to me I appeal,
This riddle is funny I feel!
What Opera smacks
of straight railway tracks?
The wheeze?  It’s the Rose of Castile!
 
Your joke is unusually clean.
Gee, you poked merely my spleen.
With umbrella I sigh,
play along for a guy.
I feel a strong weakness obscene.
 
You look like both past and present,
Yet you hold only a segment.
Take it from me,
Your will is not free.
I’ll show you, but it won’t be pleasant.
 

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

I can see it in your eye. I can see it in the corner of your eye.

12:33 pm

Write for me, you lazy idle little schemer.  Write something with balls.  Put us all into it and damn its soul.  Write it all out and damn it, we won’t but admire you for it.  Write something for me, something to bite me.  Slice us up with it.  Can you make us nervous?  You can do it.  I can see it in you, lazy idle loafer, I see it in your face.  Blow a gale through us, use all the talents, literature, the press, the law, the classics.  Advertise it and make it sing.  Give it a fresh of breath air.  Leave the gate open and let us in, let us all inside you.  We will be bold and unheeding and we will stare.  We want you.  It will be the smartest piece of inspiration of genius.  Give it to us on a hot plate.  Bulldoze us with it.  you are an idler of course, a born idler, a lazy idle little schemer.  I see schemer in your face.  But I want you to write something with bite, with balls.  I want you to make us like the immortals, and may you never die till we shoot you.  And I want you to tell anybody who calls to go to hell.  Lazy eyed schemer.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

On to the star! Now! On. . . rats. Eh, tot? No.

The first and last rittlerattle of the anniverse; when is a nam nought a nam whenas it is a. 12:21 pm

 

Damnit I’m mad.  Arrrra!  Don’t nod.  No, it is opposition.  Aha.  In words, alas drown I.  Borrow or rob?  Do, God, no evil deed!  Live on, do good.  Never odd or even. n+(n+1)^2.  I prefer pi. Is it I?  It is I.  Live not on evil.  Drawn I sit, serene: rest is inward.  Are we not drawn onward to new era?  God’s dog, won’t it now?  Do geese see God? History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.  I wake straightaway. Hey, Mr. Transmogrification.  Hi.  Ohm.

To give you peace, to hear you speak, now while the wind is silent in this place.

I reached a place where every light is muted, which bellows like the sea beneath a tempest, when it is battered by opposing winds. The hellish hurricane, which never rests, drives on the spirits with its violence; wheeling and pounding, it harasses them. I learned that those who undergo this torment are damned because they sinned within the flesh, subjecting reason to the rule of will. 12:36 pm

I saw it.  I was present.  I saw with eyes that were no less amazed than his.  I was good but he was all their daddies.  Psha! you say.  Psha!  Well, it has been centuries and he is still the one who makes our gaze more ardent.  I see your mouth twitching, unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.  Who would wish that mouth for any kiss?  How do I know?  Well, why did I write it then?  Oh but what he does with words.  He writes about eternity using a temporal art and how?  By twisting it, entwining it, tossing in numbers and ratios and divine proportions.  He uses circles to move time into eternity and more impossible to move eternity into time.  He speaks the ineffable.  And then he serves it to us on a peaceful golden flame and we eat and drink and slurp it yum into our souls.  Oh we are all in the middle of the path of life, locked into a moving now between past and future and elsewhen.  Now is real, all else is a feature of imagination.  No matter our age, we are all in the middle of the path of life.  He knew this.  And he mimics this in his rhymes.  Here are some line endings:

Mouth / Womb / South

Tomb/ Time / Bloom

Rhyme / Now / Sublime

Rhyme now sublime.  Catch that movement?  Oh feel it move you.  Forward and backward.  The middle word of the first becomes the outer words of the next.  Forward and backward and forward and backward.  Whenever we are in our temporal trajectory, we are always in the middle.  Three by three, his words are female forms entwining.  His words are like a boat that, starting from its moorings, moves backward, backforeward, so he may move us forward.  Ah my friend, take no more from me, my eyes are all amazement.  Look at us now, old men.  Penitent.  Dressed the same, looking the same.  Await no further word or sign from me: your will is free, erect, and whole — to act against that will would be to err:  therefore I crown and miter you over yourself.  And when I said this he looked at me, his sight becoming pure, and he let me know that will is free, to a point.  And what’s the point?  The point in which all times are present.  The point that sent forth so acute a light that anyone who faced the force with which it blazed would have to shut his eyes.  The point on which depends the heavens and the whole of nature.  The point that has no extension in space or time.  The point indivisible.  The point that is the start of all geometric possibilities.  The one point all whens and wheres end.  The point that seems enclosed by that which it encloses.  The point that is both circumference and circle.  The point which says that separate things can be the same thing.  The point that says our own existence in the middle of the path of successive time necessitates these distinctions.  Oh my God, the point. 

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

His blood wooed by grace of language and gesture

For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress. Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace. And all must love the human form, In heathen, turk or jew; Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell There God is dwelling too. 12:40 pm

[Scene: A courtroom in Denmark ornately furnished and decorated with four stone effigies in frozen music, the human forms of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love. Mercy has a heart carved on her sleeve, Pity a human face, Love the human form divine, and Peace is wearing a strapless black velvet Atelier Versace gown worthy of the red carpet with Neil Lane jewels and a Jaime Mascaro clutch. We approve of the two diamond clips arranged on a draped section but Peace looks like the dress of unfortunate fabric choice is wearing her, and that leg jutting out unnaturally gives the effect of one trying too hard.]

Judge Seymour Bushe: Will council for the prosecution please approach the bench.

Moses: Your Honor?

Judge Seymour Bushe:  I’ve had enough of you dropping the ball.  I must repeat, that we do not wish to hear about anything soultransfigured or soultransfiguring or any other bloody thing that might become of the soul.  Stick with the law, the lex talionis if you must, but be aware that the defense is using the law of evidence.  And he has balls of stone.  Call the damn witness and let’s get on with it.

Moses: Your honor, I believe the ball dropped five minutes ago.  I call King Hamlet of Denmark.

Demosthenes: Objection.  King Hamlet of Denmark is dead.

Moses: He is a ghost, your honor, and though he comes in a questionable shape, he has full use of his voice and it is imperative to the proof of King Claudius’ guilt that we lend a serious hearing to what he shall unfold.

Judge Seymour Bushe: Proceed.

Moses: Your Majesty, you deserve to live, deserve to live.  Please tell the court how King Claudius achieved your murder.

Demosthenes: Objection, your Honor, the question assumes facts not in evidence.

Judge Seymour Bushe:  Sustained.  Moses, you must prove King Claudius’ guilt, not assume it.

Moses:  Your Majesty, please explain to the court your experience of the night you died.

The Ghost of King Hamlet of Denmark:  List, list, O List! Murder! Murder most foul, strange and unnatural. That incestuous, that adulterate beast, with Witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts that have the power so to seduce! — won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.

Demosthenes:  Objection, your Honor.   There is no evidence before this court that the witness knew of any adultery on the part of King Claudius or the Queen during his lifetime.  As there is no evidence that the witness had no personal knowledge of what he testifies to know, I move to have his words stricken.

Judge Seymour Bushe:  Sustained.  Mr. Ghost, please keep to the facts as you experienced them.

The Ghost of King Hamlet of Denmark:  Brief let me be.  Sleeping within my orchard, my custom always of the afternoon, upon my secure hour Claudius stole with juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, and in the porches of mine ear did pour the leprous distilment.

Demosthenes:  Objection, your Honor, that’s hearsay, which I move be stricken from the record.  If the witness was asleep, he could have no personal knowledge of anything occurring in his orchard.

Moses:  Your Honor, as a ghost His Highness is in a unique position to act as witness to his own murder.  He exists in eternity now and thus partakes of all eternity.  He has access to the holy book into which all things are inscribed!  I pray thee, do not blot his words out of thy book now being written.

Demosthenes:  [after a pause, a false lull, quite ordinary really]  If I may, your Honor, it is painful for children to be orphaned of a father.  Yes, but it is a beautiful thing to be the heir of a father’s fame.  And of this pain we shall find the deity to be the cause, to whom mortal creatures must yield.  As such I move the court to dismiss the complaint in this action for the reason that the complaint fails to allege sufficient facts which, if true, establish probable cause to believe that King Claudius committed any offense alleged by the prosecution.

Judge Seymour Bushe:  [takes out his matchbook thoughtfully and lights a cigar]  As I must determine the whole aftercourse of the defendant’s life, the court will recess to consider the motion.  Good Christ who do I have to fuck to get a better gig?  I could have left this job long ago, only for . . . but no matter.  Ah well, do not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will bring worries of its own.  Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

What did he say? What did he say? What did he say about me?

Supposing we grant that all things known as substances are homogeneous as possessing something denied to the other genera, what precisely is this something, this individuality, this subject which is never a predicate, this thing not present in any thing as in a subject, this thing which does not owe its essential character to any other thing, as a quality takes character from a body and a quantity from a substance, as time is related to motion and motion to the moved? 12:43 pm

But it wasn’t planes of consciousness I was asking about.  I could give two shits about planes of consciousness.  No.  And there is AE, thinking me a timid boy, declaring absolute knowledge involves understanding the totality of life.  To explain something means to show its connection to everything else.  But tell me something, AE, show me the everything else.  Where exactly will we stand?  How do we sufficiently remove our temporal selves so we can enter into this eternal totality?  Where will we in our opalescent hush experience this absolute?  Shall we lay on our backs in the grass and looking up into the blue try to think ourselves into the absolute?  But our backs, and the grass and the blue, won’t these temporal things get in our way?  It is an utter blotting out of self you quote Plotinus (who like you covets out of body experiences, but he is a hydrophobic leper so no wonder), a rapture of peace which will present to us, the more lucid souls amongst the rabblement, the experience of the absolute, the totality of life.  Please.  Tell me.  How do we sufficiently remove ourselves from the totality in order to experience it?  We are in it.  Where else is there?  When else?   And we see features of this totality through our individual conceptual and relative frameworks.  Emphasis on relative.  Absolute, in your mystic envelope my dear AE, it is the merging of the soul with the all the absolute.  But for you this must be done independent of relative content.  Put yourself in and simultaneously take yourself out.  Give me the relative.  Well, you don’t have to give it me.  I’m filled with it.  Infected by it.  And so are you.  The perception of the observer creates the reality of the observed.  I see you.  Not you, you.  There is no higher absolute, more Godly than the relative, clear to the sensitives.  Look at relativity.  Do you see it?  According to relativity, we can perceive events in time, but not time itself,  All time perception is relative to position and velocity, thus there is no absolute time, no absolute.  Tell that to AE messiah to the mastermystics.  He never packed relativity into his case of tricks.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

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.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Akasic records of all that ever anywhere wherever was.

The methodical task of writing distracts me from the present state of men. The certitude that everything has been written negates us or turns us into phantoms. Akasic Records Office
Ad hoc Committee Meeting Minutes
The meeting was called to order at 12:50 pm
Secretary: Lord Chitragupta
 
Present:  O’Madden Burke, Myles Crawford, Stephen Dedalus, Matt Lenehan, Professor MacHugh, J.J. O’Molloy
 

The minutes of the previous meeting stand approved as corrected.

Professor MacHugh moved to consider the motion that the troop of bare feet heard rushing along the hallway and pattering up the staircase be dubbed oratory.  The motion carried.  Aye: Burke, Crawford, Dedalus, Lenehan, MacHugh, O’Molloy.

Stephen Dedalus moved to adjourn.

O’Madden Burke raised a point of information: Is it not perchance a French compliment?

O’Madden Burke moved to amend the motion to indicate an immediate change of venue and that said change include the adoption of a wine jug in Ye ancient hostelry metaphorically speaking.

Matt Lenehan moved to amend the motion to indicate the meeting venue be changed to Mooney’s.

Matt Lenehan raised a point of information: Will we sternly refuse to partake of strong waters?

Matt Lenehan moved to amend the motion to indicate that the committee will not drink any more.

Matt Lenehan moved to amend the motion to indicate that the committee will not drink any less.

Miles Crawford moved to amend the motion to indicate that Stephen Dedalus is a chip off the old block.

Miles Crawford raised a point of information:  Where are his blasted keys?

Professor MacHugh moved to close debate and vote immediately on the pending question.  Motion carried.  Aye: Burke, Dedalus, Lenehan, MacHugh.  Nay: Crawford, O’Molloy.

Unfinished Business:  The publication of crushed typesheets, location: Crawford’s pocket, regarding Deasy letter, topic: foot and mouth disease.  The pending meeting of a committee formed by  O’Molloy to include Crawford concerning a point of information (financial).

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Any time he likes, tell him.

12:53 pm

I raced the wind to get to Myles after having to kiss Keyes’ ass over the ad renewal and he blew me off.  He was on the street talking with J. J. O’Molloy, they came up together you know, started off together back in the day.  I don’t know, maybe I interrupted something.  O’Molloy had a long face.  Seemed a bit defeated.  More than usual that is.  Sad.  Tried to get to Myles fast before he’d be too far gone but I pretty much missed that window.  Ever brief.  And he was on the way to the bar behind a few of them, arm in arm, off for a drink.  Lenehan in front but I suspect Stephen Dedalus was the prime mover.  Wearing better boots today; last time he had holes in his heels.  And I saw him on the way to funeral, wonder what he does down there?  Weighing a bit on me.  Wanted to breeze it by Myles and I was so out of breath he didn’t get much more than Keyes would give the ad, but only for two months and if we put in a puff peace.  I can get the image at the library, House of Keys.  Keyes, get it?  Two crossed keys.  I must have interrupted something.  Myles turned his eye on me as best he could considering and said I should tell Keyes to kiss his ass.  Ths loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock’s wattles.  Kiss my hairy white ass.  He can kiss my ass he said, got that.  Kiss my ass, ok, Póg mo thóin.  Got it?   And for me kish mein touchess and more formally shakli b’tahat.  With heart.  Tell him any way you like.  Then no break red faced riffing gaand chaat mara besa me culo tel’has teezee kyss meg i raeva isskay ymay assay qabula izinga honi ko’u ‘elemu fila mou to kolo.   Ama kwana mwach ka boro too koonam cui mi gaza.  Soen my boudt.  Cusano fy asen.  And that’s straight from the horses mouth.  Tell him.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Quicker, darlint! On now. Dare it. Let there be life.

12:56 pm

He didn’t see it.   He suggested I name it It is a God who Gave us this Peace.  People always quote the first page.  Doesn’t anybody read on?  Tityrus worships Rome with his speech to his exiled friend; that’s the god he means.  Early Virgil, still a masterpiece, but it doesn’t work for the story as I told it.  I named it A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The Parable of the Plums.  You get it.  The elements compound and compound and that’s where to find the story.  Accretion.  What do you want to read?  Over and again it is: once upon a time and every day until one day and because of this and because of this until finally and ever since that day.  Excretion!  If that’s the story you want to consume then open wide, we’ll spoon it right in.  Here’s the airplane coming in for a landing.  I talked about two vestals aged 50 and 53 out for the day.  You could see them.  Midwives.  I filled it and filled it.  You could even smell them.  Childless and condemned to be so forevermore.  Carrying with them a misbirth with a trailing navelcord.  Planting their plum stones per second per second onto concrete.  Too tired to see the view.  Too tired to look up or down or speak and spent their savings to get there.  See them?  They’ll be sore tomorrow.  And for their aches they use Lourdes water.  What more than what I? What else could I?  And I think it’s funny.  Even if it did remind me of that time with the alley girl.  Crawford didn’t realize I was done either.  And Professor MacHugh didn’t see it.  I don’t know.  Maybe I’ll include it in a short story collection.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.