Having my way with Ulysses

This was a quandary

Pray don't imagine it was my intent To live with her on bread and cheese and kisses. No! just upon the threshold of our blisses, Kind Heaven must snatch away the gift it lent.1:01 am

The Mad Nun: [Not yet perfectly sober]  Shh get down! Jesus! O Jesus! Jesus!

Achates: [Disgustingly sober] Did they see us?

The Mad Nun: Shh! Don’t speak! Good god what is that noise that one is making in the street?

Achates: I think he’s trying to whistle.

The Mad Nun: He should leave whistling to the professionals!

Achates: Shh! They’re coming this way.

The Mad Nun: If we get caught I’m prepared to swear a hole through a ten gallon pot that it was you who came on to me.

Achates: Judas! And I’ve been so faithful.

The Mad Nun: Freeze in hell.  I know people so don’t piss me off.

Achates:  Well there’s gratitude. And after I wined and dined you. Gave you fancy bread, that came from the heart!

The Mad Nun: It went to my head. I’ll say you put something in my drink.  Now get down, there’s not as much room in here as we had last night.

Achates: The hearse tomorrow night?

The Mad Nun: It’s up to my husband.

Jesus: [Who up to then had said nothing whatsoever of any kind]  I’m in, but the state of our last cab was not what you would call clean when we left it to the tender mercy of others the last time, or more properly, last night when not to put too fine a point on it, we left an enormous wet spot, as it is called, or, more properly, dry crumbs.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Whereas.

The first and last rittlerattle of the anniverse; when is a nam nought a nam whenas it is a. 1:06 am

We really need to replace E.  Y too, damn it, its so awkward now. I really have to stop hooking up with the good looking ones, it never goes anywhere.  I can’t just assume all the time, no matter how hot they are, that a run of bad luck is never temporary. They don’t just need something to hold them over until whenever. There is no whenever.  There is never whenever. Remember that H we had that one time said he was doing research for a character he was writing. What a load of crap. Good looking guys can be losers too. Got to remember that. No, it was E. The E before the E we have now who just looked a bit like that H not that one time but the time before. And then the one today. Asking me out but would I mind paying because he’s out of work. I told him we had a three week waiting list for human directionals which means I’ll probably be carrying a sign myself tomorrow and that’s fine, because E is way too creepy to keep around. This place is infested with losers, but Hugh doesn’t pay me enough to put up with creepy.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Everyone according to his needs or everyone according to his deeds.

"Alas," said the mouse, "the world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into." "You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.1:10 am

Eggshells and fish heads. These are good, yes, tastes good, but i’m just eating to be social. I’m really just keeping company; don’t want to be rude. I know how to behave, properly. At least I accept what’s offered to me unlike some people i could mention. Imagine. I still can’t get over it. Did you see? Were you here? I bring my person a perfectly good fat little bird. Nice smell. Fresh. And I could have eaten it myself but did I? No. I didn’t. I did not. Hssssss! It’s impolite to call a gift disgusting. I could say the eggshells are disgusting. Ah who am i kidding eggshells are tasty. I like the crunch, like bird heads. Good calcium too. I will eat my fish heads and my eggshells with dignity. I have manners. And then I will take a piss under the bed.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Sounds are impostures, like names.

This never changes.1:11 am

Well hello darling, what’s your name? What do they call you, honey? I’ve been called plenty, I can tell you. Here’s a list:

  1. Veronica. My first name. After some delay possibly whispered to me with kissing and disappointed relief. Perhaps sung to me by Mamáma or The Maids.
  2. Virginia. My older by two and a half years sister’s name. Mine too when my mother yelled it.
  3. Ronnie. My American grandfather’s name for me. His name for loving me. Don’t call me that. Only Grampa can say my sweetest name. His mouth saying his my name says I was something a bit different for him than anybody else was. So only him, yeah? Nobody gets to call me that call me Veronica. Don’t you come any closer. I never should have said. So now get out please. Go.
  4. Vicki. Great. My bully. My mortal enemy. The only other girl in my grade when we moved to Colorado and we both have V names which people found interchangable, even in an isolated mining town.
  5. Scrawny Ronnie. I was tiny. Don’t call me Ronnie.
  6. Vero — My mother would scream this at games in which if I had not been coerced into joining the team there would not have been enough of us to play. Go Vero!
  7. Bero — The way Vero sounds to American ears whose mouths called me that too.
  8. Bennie — Timed typing. Maybe six of us. Mr. Stroh behind his novel saying on the count of three one click two click click clack. Who’s cheating? It was Veronica. No it wasn’t it was James. Shut up Benedict! Benedict Arnold was a traitor not a cheater and to betray you I’d have to be aligned with you which I’m not. Veronica, load a new piece of paper. Hey let’s call her Bennie. It wasn’t me; it was James.
  9. Victoria — Nobody called me this in my home town. The town had one Vicki and one Veronica one Virginia and one Valerie. No Victoria and never any confusion.  In college the unsure of my name called me Victoria.
  10. Vern — College Friend: Hey Vern, know what I mean? I didn’t like it and then I did like it. This became my name.  Hi, my name is Vern.  Everybody calls me Vern.
  11. Vernie. Close friends, mostly in college, mostly females but for Tod where the hell is he? Who disappears in the information age? But Tod is only one of his what’s in a names and I can’t find him under any of them.
  12. Um. Coined by students finding Veronica too impersonal and Doctor or Professor Robertson or Browning or Tonkin too formal.
  13. Verne — Sounds the same as Vern. But the sound I hear from my inlaws’ mouths is spelled differently in South Africa. Verne is what they say when they say Vern.
  14. Maria — My middle name. Not my middle name.
  15. Robertson Gonzales Reyes — The names I was born with, a portion of which feels foreign and awkward next to my other names, depending on the speaker’s hemisphere of origin.
  16. Robertson — My first last name I used. Much more simple in America to think and not be required to speak the Gonzales Reyes part.
  17. Gonzales Reyes — My silent names.
  18. Browning — The name I never wanted. I stayed Robertson for over a year. Then I found the last thing my husband had been lying about. He was so relieved. I had stepped closer to the meanings behind the sounds of his names. The great burden of being known only partially had lifted from his shoulders and landed on mine like a toad on my shoulder. Whispering names in my ear. So I changed my name. It would help.
  19. Robertson — It did not help. I was Browning for maybe eight months. I was Browning when I finished my degree. Dissertation submission paperwork, should I write Robertson? I sent in Browning. And by the time I got Robertson back I didn’t want it anymore. The Robertsons had shown me their meanings behind their sounds too.
  20. Tonkin —  I love my Tonkins. I am an imposter Tonkin, so I am free to invent Tonkin history. Tonkins are good at hard things, I tell my children. And so they are.
  21. Bitch Cunt Whore Baby Babe Honey Sugar Sweetie Darlin Little Filly. Please feel free to add to this list. I know who I am to me. I want to know who I am to you. We all do.

2 Responses to Sounds are impostures, like names.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Relaxing to a certain extent under the magic influence of diamond cut diamond.

I dance because I know thirteen different ways of deceiving people by pretending confidence in them. I didn't know there were any more, and now here's a fourteenth! That's why I dance! 1:15 am

My dead husband came back. No, not a resurrection though when I saw his face in the window it was like seeing a ghost. He had gone overseas to make some money for us and told me a story before he left, though I didn’t get it until now. What am I a child? Am I kid to be told stories so I won’t lie (my nose will grow), won’t cry wolf (nobody will help when it really counts), and will endeavor to follow some minor rules of thumb such as always build with brick, don’t bite the apple, and leave a party on time though it is ok to lose a shoe if the shoe is made from glass but not ruby.  But I was young, and determined to be in love so I listened. A man had been moving one step forward and two steps back in his so-called career for long enough to tell him he was going nowhere fast. He was still within the age range in which a drastic change can be a good idea.  So the man kissed his wife, who loved him despite his tendancy for backward mobility, and he left her in the care of his best friend, his wing man, his loyal Achates, for a lengthy overseas gig which would earn the man dollars somewhere where dollars still mean something big.  And that means dollars to save and bring home to you my adoring loving loyal wife. So off he goes. And the woman gets depressed and cries a lot and hangs out at the bar with the best wing man, the friend Achates, and drinks, then cries some more. Achates loves them both. He sympathizes. He empathizes.  She revitalizes. He mesmerizes. She fantasizes. She energizes. She tantalizes. He improvises. She rationalizes. He mobilizes. He organizes. He fertilizes. She hospitalizes. And now she has a baby and two men. In the mean time, Mr. reverse arrived somewhere developing, hit the ground running, made straightforwardly unrefusable offers, and is currently headed homeward at an angle of fortyfive degrees like a shot off a shovel.  Well shit, now what.  I’ll tell you what. The man came back, sized up the situation and danced his way out the door laughing, I’m free, I’m free!  The wife, happy to be unwived danced too, I’m free, said she, and danced away too. The wing friend, the man Achates, stands with a baby on his hands, watching the twin disappearances dancing off in opposite directions. He feels himself betrayed, stuck, used, dumped, and alone. Then he shuts the door, tucks the baby into his arms and dances and dances and laughing dances.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and the livers of horses.

I seemed to see their flanks torn by sharp fangs. 1:16 am

Mmm, look at you. You look good enough to eat! Come here darling, let me nibble on you just a bit, hey? Now now, don’t look worried. I won’t bite hard. Yet. You’d make excellent chicharrones, don’t you think? I know a chicharroneria in La Punta where we can take you and we can eat on the beach, little black rocks under our feet. It might be hard to render your fat first.  I don’t want to insult you, but you are now don’t take this the wrong way big. But once that’s done and we have the wood fire going you’ll be all meat. Nice with a good salsa criolla. I’m hungry now. Maybe something faster. Lomo Saltado? Too typical? I have the garlic, here peel that, will you? I have the aji, you, a nice onion. Shall I use a white or shall I use a red? Yes? Might not have enough tomatoes but that’s ok, I have the potatoes, cumin, soy sauce. I’m out of vinegar. Damnit I knew it would be something. Sweetie, be delicious and go to the store for me? Thank you honey.  And give me that. Who taught you how to peel garlic? What a mess. Now go.

3 Responses to And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and the livers of horses.

  1. Well, I have my ‘Everyman’s edition’ and a book of annotations and notes. I also have an unabridged recording of 40 disks pirated from the Library–for what good-just to have I guess. I’m off to see the wizard, or at least what’s behind the curtain. Does it really matter in the end? What did Colombus think the day before he sighted land-‘Oh boy am I in the shithouse’.’?

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

His inscrutable face which really was a work of art.

A Spider is an air worm, as it is provided with nourishment from the air, which a long thread catches down to its small body. Its web is always tight. It never stops working, cutting out all loss of time without interruption in its skill.1:20 am

I’m coming for you motherfucker. You just wait. I’m waiting. I am waiting. I’m a spider and I’ll stab you in the fly. I’m the king of infinite space, cultivating my time, and the instant you so much as twitch I’m on you. I’ll be there. On you like that. You hear me? Course you don’t but I hear you. I see you. I’m staring back. And I’m coming at you from all sides asshole. I’ll put pills in your water and a knife in your back and it will be so fast you wont even, you’ll think maybe. It won’t even register. Funny, very! I’m coming for you; it’s a matter of time. I can feel in my soul the time it takes to count the numbers between the nerve impulse at the start of my strike and your movement into ideal position. The numbers are small when calculating for the slimmest little knife blade of a kairotic moment. O but I’ve made a science of transecting knives; it’s become my religion. You keep to the spirit of where ignorance is bliss; I’ll get you in my own time.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

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

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?

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Fear not them that sell the body but have not power to buy the soul.

My guide said to me "Along this place you'll want to keep a tight break on your eyes, to let them wander would take no effort."1:23 am

Well look who’s here. Him that won’t see me. Look at me. I see you trying not to see me. Go ahead and look, it won’t cost me anything. Or you. Looking is free. Twenty dollars for a blow job and fifty for sex. Sixty with no condom. Listen, I’m no street prostitute but I got busted for solicitation and I have to pay off the fine. Damn bitch cop it was that did it. Came up behind me or I’d have run. If the cop’s a guy they usually want a freebie, get all big and serious talking about fines and jail but they get to their real business fast enough. I have a couple of regulars, but I can’t figure out how to deal with the female ones. Just see them coming and get the hell out of there. So what do you want? You got $20? Look. See? No front teeth. I should charge $25 for that, but I like the look of you. You ready? Come with me.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

The mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth.

Ready the bone wax. Metzenbaum scissors. Get that cat out of here. Ready to close.
1:25 am

Jesus: [With a smile of unbelief] Dad, not to sound too pompous but your soul implantation technique is unsurpassed and will probably make your name live beyond eternity.

God: Probably?

Jesus: Too wishy washy. Forget the probably. Are you ready to close?

God: Not until after the breath of life, this is no simple soul. Well it is, but you know what I mean.

Jesus: I shouldn’t think simple is the proper word.

God: No? Give me a little sweat on my upper lip. Ok remove sweat. No no, the soul is simple, it has no contrary, and corruption is found only where there is contrariety. And since it is the recipient of my life giving breath, well.

Jesus: Goes without saying.

God: Exactly.

Jesus: Still, no one can give what he hasn’t got. I believe you are supernatural!

God: None of that, now, everything aspires to being after its own manner. Come to think of it, we might want to revise that into holy writ. Sounds good, no? Get some monks on that. Here, help me stuff the soul into there.

Jesus: Like that?

God: No, put your back into it. Good.

Jesus: Maybe we should say a few words to the soul before we close?

God: Good idea. In Dillman’s Grove my love did die and now in ground shall ever lie. None could ere replace her visage, until your face brought thoughts of kissage. Right. Good? Ready to close. 10 blade scalpel. Sponge stick. Scat! Damn cats around here. Cranial screw top. Check for stripping. Now all we can do is wait.

5 Responses to The mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth.

  1. It has been many years since I have read Ulysses. And I don’t think I understood it at all then. I would like to read it again. Where should I start? Obviously at the beginning, but I mean to better help me understand the references and such?
    Secondly, why the reference to the poem at the end? I could only find it in reference to the movie “A Man with Two Brains.” Did you use it because both this piece and the movie humorously dealt with surgery? Or to help suggest that the soul is the second brain located in the same place?

    • When I taught it at the UW I assigned the Gifford annotations as an optional text. It’s good for cultural references, music, odds and ends. There’s also the Blamires book, students liked that one because it gives an account of the action of each chapter in as clear a way as possible. Ulysses in a quarter system is a race to get it done, so if I were to teach it again, I’d do it in two quarters if I could. If you are serious about it, and I think it would be good for you to study something again (And good for you to get your ass back into a poetry slam) read Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist first. Many people in Dubliners have parts to play in Ulysses, and it is important to know who Stephen is at the start. When you get to Ulysses you might also want to read chapters 1 and 4 together, 2 and 5, 3 and 6. They are mirrors of each other, almost beat by beat.

      Other than that, get out of your own way. Ulysses is not difficult if given a proper shot.

      I riff on The Man with two Brains throughout the post, and on Aquinas’ discussion of the soul in the Summa Theologica, as does Joyce. I wanted to point a little levity at the idea that the soul could have a location or even a distinction from other elements of personhood. It was an ancient and medieval obsession, one of the fun ones, and this idea still pops up wearing other clothes here and there. I also wanted to use this post to introduce an idea from Plotinus that temporality is an attribute of the soul and the soul is the site for unity between timelessness and temporality. Plotinus thought the body was too corrupt to have any connection with eternity, so where else are you going to put time? He would think that though, he had a nasty case of leprosy and was generally terrified of physical contact. I don’t have any idea why the Man with Two Brains popped out. It just fit.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

The point was the least conspicuous point about it.

Fate is partial to repetitions, variations, symmetries. Nineteen centuries later, in the southern part of the province of Buenos Aires, a gaucho is set upon by other gauchos, and as he falls he recognizes a godson of his, and says to him in gentle remonstrance and slow surprise (these words must be heard, not read): Pero, ¡ché! He dies, but he does not know that he has died so that a scene can be played out again.
1:26 am

Scene: [An endlessly large room once belonging to to all the infinite possibilities but now cavernously empty save for Caesar who is curled up on the floor patting his knife wounds with smooth caresses.]

Time: [On the god mic, sotto voce] Are you ready to listen?

Caesar: What’s the point?

Time: You must stop looking at the point of everything. This particular version of you has no point. Or rather, you have many points. You are legion.

Caesar: Blah blah blah.

Time: You’re tired, you’re not taking it in. Maybe some solid food? I’m a stickler for solid food. Here. [A cup of coffee appears on the floor next to Caesar. It’s over-roasted, must be Starbucks.] Now Caesar, honey, you do know that history is a tale like any other too often heard. But darling, your history, your place in Roman history, is only one manifestation of infinite possibilities. You have ousted all the others and now here we are, at a standstill until you can accept it. You are at a crucial point.

Caesar: But if I have other selves, some which did not die, then they are not to be thought away.

Time: They are, but not by you. You occupy a non-dimensional point, the stilled eternity. Move to become a line, then a plane, then a tetrahedron and you’ll gain some perspective. Trust me on this one. Your other selves did.

Caesar: I refuse to accept other selves.

Time: They are the possibilities you have ousted. You did that. Get used to it. You think you can square the circle lying there in a puddle of yourself? Stand up, man, form a line. Until then you are both center and circumference. Unless you straighten up beyond this particular singularity, that thing you call “self” to which you stubbornly cling, sweetie love, you will understand nothing, and only nothing.

Caesar: Leave me alone

Time: The point is always alone.

3 Responses to The point was the least conspicuous point about it.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless necessary animal of the feline persuasion

Oh kittens, in our house of ease, uncertain toys and full of fleas. When pain and anguish hang o'er men, we turn you into sausage then. 1:28 am

Now I’d like to turn our discussion of the white meats to cat, which just so happens to be my own favorite for a good old succulent tuckin with garlic de rigueur.  Culled from the wild or farmed at home, these widely available roof rabbits are crowd pleasers regardless of season. Now cats caught wild are best eaten between three months to a year old, as they do get more sinewy after that time.  I’d go as far as two years if the cat in question lives nearby and you can acquire it on the quiet and, I should add, on the cheap.  You will find the more sedentary farmed cat, though somewhat inferior in flavor, can be butchered at an older age with no significant loss of tenderness. Both the cat farmed at home and its wild cousin tend to be on the gamey side, so it is always best to leave it in a stream or under running cold water for three days; what comes out is a delicacy! If running water is in short supply, the tried and true vinegar method works nearly as well. In this case soak the cat in a mixture of 6 1/4 cups water and 3/4 cups white wine vinegar for 30 minutes before you cook. Cat works marveously in many recipes, but when purchasing be sure to ask the butcher to show you the head. Shocking as it might seem, rabbits are a common substitute, though they come nowhere near cat meat for tenderness.  Cat in a thick sauce is better than chicken, rabbit, or pigeon.

2 Responses to Except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless necessary animal of the feline persuasion

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Always snapping at the bone for the shadow.

Friday: She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of that tree, and says the result will be a great and fine and noble education. I told her there would be another result, too -- it would introduce death into the world. That was a mistake -- it had been better to keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea. 1:31 am

I’ll tell you what baby. You tell me, yeh? You got something to say? Well then say because I’ve got something to do. Ready go? Not ready? Come on, no? Ok. well, here’s this, how about this. And that’s when I’ll stab her. But where should I put the knife? She’ll see it. And fuck I don’t need to make any damn big speech. I’ll just find the bitch in her red bra with her tits all sticking out over the top and I’ll grab her and bite her throat and she’ll scratch the back of my neck down my back and dig in a little and she’ll be right next to my ear making those little reaction noises I like, shit. Fucking bitch I love her. She is so dead to me.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Their two or four eyes conversing.

Others asked such questions as "Why should we care what happens after we are dead" or "If this Rebellion is to happen anyway, what difference does it make whether we work for it or not?"

1:33 am

Scene: [A rabbi and a priest walk into a bar. The rabbi says:]

Rabbi: Where is everybody, are we the first ones here?

Priest: Must be. Good, I wanted to talk with you alone. You and I need to take control of this thing before it bloats to an inmanagable size.

Rabbi: Yes. Our revolution must come on the due instalments plan, if we expect to pull this thing off at all.

Priest: [Turning away from the others who probably and speaks nearer to, so as the others in case they.]  Shush for Christ sake.

The Rabbi: Am I not right?

The Priest: Yes, but this place is all eyes. I don’t want to indulge in any, orthodox as you are.

Rabbi: Right. Of course. Listen. We want to homogenize all faiths yes, but some faiths are, you understand. I mean, all faiths are equal.

Priest: But some faiths are more equal than others.

Rabbi: Indeed. So your plan to raise money, I don’t see it.  How do your people do it? It seems you raise your money on false pretenses, fork it over and you’ll go to heaven. What heaven? Show me heaven.

Priest: The abstract future reward is always more powerful than immediate gain or punishment. Don’t you know that yourself? Heaven, its glories, its boundless bountiful plenitude, the sheer everythingness of the whole concept can take any size, it can stretch to any or no limit, it can fill every space, it can

Rabbi:  Save it for your congregation, father, you can be all their daddies but not mine. Try selling buy now receive later to people who concern themselves with life here and now. I walk in with future reward and say pay money for it, I might as well sell crosses. Mine won’t be the only ones, prepare yourself, and what about the Muslims?

Priest: That’s where self sacrifice for eternal reward will pay off.

Rabbi: Yes, but their temporality, so unpredictable. So branching and forking.  Touch it and it folds up on itself, how do we manage that? Call something a crusade and they feel it like it happened yesterday. And so it did happen yesterday. Bring up any event of any kind and bam, it’s now. We’re in it now. We’ll need a work around.  I’m assuming we’ll want everyone to go linear?

Priest: Makes sense to me. The Hindus are persuadable, but the Buddhists, the Taoists especially.  They’ll make trouble, and that’s not trouble we want.

Rabbi: No.

Priest: No.  To keep linear time we’ll have to speak of other things. Distract them with other issues. Look, we’ll have to say: it’s hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is. We pose to them that we all resent violence or intolerance.

Rabbi: Yes. It never reaches anything; It never stops anything.

Priest: Never. It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular.  No. We must be practical.  We must imbue ourselves with the proper spirit.  It will be the only way to create our New Bloomusalem.  By the way, do you like the symbol I came up with?

Rabbi: It’s a little busy. The Hindus might like it. It’s a good job you didn’t add a bleeding saint to it, or we’d never convince the Muslims to get on board.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or didn’t say the words the voice he heard said, if you work.

(Ah, crabeyes, I have you, showing off to the world with that gape in your stocking!)1:35 am

Stare at nothing in particular, but do swim your eyes closer. Work with me here, and I mean that in the widest possible sense. I work, though it seems my work is taken as a word of a different color being so translucently pro bono. Why work? Someone asked me this. What difference if you miss a day or don’t do it at all, are they paying you? Are you making any money? Think of all the money expended on your education, you are entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. We all have a price. Ah well, look here, look there. No price here. No space sold to others: I pay for that privilege. I have every bit as much right to live by my pen as any other but come on now. What the hell are you doing I’ve heard coming from eyes I didn’t expect. Stop. Who said anything about stop? It would take the hand of God, clawlike, crabby shaped, green with malignant red eyes sticking deep its grinning claws into my heart to make me stop.  Beware God’s hand.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to.

While we sleep here, we are awake elsewhere and that in this way every man is two men.1:36 am

Look. Don’t you know that if you fuck a whore, you together become one body? It’s old, this idea, thousands of years written by people who were no better than they should be. They say in their most sacred “The two shall be one flesh.” The beast with two backs and the molecules entwining.  And more than that, it’s turtles all the way down baby; you’ve just thrown yourself into the den of lions. So far be it for me to put two and two together, but we are each other, you and I. You think we are cultured fellows, promising so brilliantly and indeed we are and them too, though they don’t know it. And we’ve all fucked around: we’ve had sex with everybody. You sleep with him, he sleeps with him and her, and she sleeps with she and she with he and all of us all together form one body of no uncommon calibre.  Whatever shall we wear?

2 Responses to Six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to.

  1. Don’t take this the wrong way, but as I was reading this I thought how delightful it would be to be in bed with you (nothing would have happened) and have a cigarette–just that moment. (I love what you do. I domn’t always recognize until later but liker I said its rare that you don’t put a smile on my face.>KB PS: Still haven’t gotten off pg. 1–shit keeps happening.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Different ways of bringing off a coup.

He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.1:41 am

  • Establish dominance, think alpha male. But less is more, remember Al Gore in 2000? Not that kind of alpha male. Carry your revolution as if it has a really big dick, but you don’t need to whip it out to prove it.  Be everybody’s daddy.
  • Don’t play musical chairs. Be ruthless whilst removing the former bastards in power. Why have a coup if you keep all the same people around?
  • Make friends with the army, but don’t make promises. You don’t want the people with the weaponry suddenly thinking they can throw a better revolution than yours.
  • The military likes to play with their guns, so let them handle any civil opposition that will undoubtedly crop up.  You can’t bake a cake without breaking a few eggs. You can, however, hire somebody to break the eggs and bake whatever you tell them to bake.
  • Come up with a proper pronunciamiento to justify your new world order to the masses.  Clarity trumps veracity.  Remember a real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation.
  • The first person to tell a story wins, so get out there with whatever truth you like, and fast.  Remember, a proper coup happens suddenly.
  • When delivering your first epistle, don’t try to be more fascinating than thou.  The proletariat hates a show off.
  • The proletariat also hates a smartypants. Don’t lead with your philosophy.  People need to be wined and dined a little, talk about them, then you can get down to ideology.  Promise things.
  • Once you are in, spread out. The initial revolution will be a public in-your-face event, but remember that the best coup carries on behind the scenes and under the table for years to come. Quietly take over whatever you like, but of course start small. Identify all the mechanisms of public discipline and link them together one by one, under your own power structure.
  • Keep track of everything and everybody, subject everybody to a field of visibility and let them all know it: in this way you ensure that if anybody steps one toe outside of your idea of what they ought to be doing, they will make themselves visible. Let visibility be their trap, if only to prevent a coup designed to depose you.
  • Get rid of the old regime’s intellectuals, particularly if they are smarter than your intellectuals. Endeavor to have the smartest intellectuals. Do this through assimilation if you can at all manage it. Otherwise, just toss the ones you don’t like to the military.  Now go.

One Response to Different ways of bringing off a coup.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Dead he wasn’t. Simply absconded somewhere.

Come back here and take what's coming to ya! I'll bite your legs off!
1:42 am

I thought you were dead you yellow bastard. Grrrr. You resurrected yourself, didn’t you? or killed yourself or was laying low or something. Left my person a bloody weeping mess and no clue how to get you back. Sit! Stay! And now you’re back like a murderer to the crime scene. You’re a lucky dog Lizzie didn’t set me at you directly you got back. I’m going to pee in your shoes. Maybe she will go back to the convent soon, you think of that AE?  We liked it there. But we’ll have to sound the lie of the land first, would be prudent: Sister Mary Peter hates us now. Too bad really. I liked the smell of him better than you, you stink like the dead. Woof! And not in a good way. And here you are like the bath nobody wanted, destroying everything warm and comfortable. Before you, Lizzie would take me running. And we’d play go get it! And, who’s a pretty puppy! Now I’m lucky to get out of her purse more than twice a day. Thanks AE. Just, thanks. Well kill my dog you better hide your cat. I’ll get you my pretty. Now go.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Looking back now in a retrospective kind of arrangement all seemed a kind of dream.

I danced over the water, I danced o'er the sea, and all the birds in the air couldn't catch me.1:43 am

It’s all lit up now, but try explaining to people more invested in my marriage than I was, and there were plenty of them, surprisingly. It was the oddest thing. Don’t get me wrong, he was a nice enough guy, just not up to scratch. A diamond in the rough somebody nice said. Yeah, I could see that. Going to be a diamond.

Looking forward in a prospective kind of arrangement I saw sparkling things, an illuminated life filled with art and philosophy. He was a talented musician despite having never heard of mathematics. Well he had three chords and the truth, so that’s all you need baby, that’s all you need. And if you have more than three chords and fewer truths than the truth? Then you still have >=< so that’s ok: it evens out. Well, to be fair, he did often speak the truth, he’d just leave out the jucy parts. And consider. Just think what he could be, given the proper pressure. But without the only effective kind of pressure (of the self inflicted variety) coal lumps don’t turn into diamonds. Natural forces, not artificial, or you end up with a drunk ass cubic zirconia. A drunk ass cubic zirconia is not as good as a lump of coal. And a fine lump of a coal all the same. I liked the lump of coal.

Now let me tell you about being Peruvian, or half so. I can’t tell you much because I don’t know that much about it, but as a half Peruvian and a half Canadian and half Swedish, via half German, who was caught mingling in there with the half Scottish who was half Ulster, and as it turns out not half French (the half German half Swede, not the half Scottish half Ulster) but half Jewish in disguise. Oh yeah and half Dutch in there somewhere. I thought the Swedes and the Germans would be neck in neck, but for the Dutch to pop up was a twenty to one shot at least. So that’s being half American. But only half, the other half’s Peruvian. And types like us: the passionate abandon of the south, casting every shred of decency to the winds, wouldn’t do things by halves. What is the half life of real love existing between married folk supposing another man? Now, I had loosened many a man’s thighs but never when I was in a relationship. Then I was loyal and loving and after the first I’d say two months of sex it settles into lots of god knows what and no sex. In these situations other men, no matter who, take on a what do you call it gossamer quality. See right through them. But. And it’s a big but. No wait, that was the lump of coal. Ha! Sorry. The hemispheres on him! Haha! Just had to. You know. A big butt! Whooo. Let me catch my breath! Oooh. That felt good. When were we? Oh yeah. Butt. I am so trying not to laugh. Butt. Butt butt butt. Ok. Ok. So funny. Butt.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

With her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion.

In differential calculus the function is given and the differential is obtained (and this frenzy to be lifelike can only be our mythic denial of an apprehension of death).1:45 am

Don’t look bored. Don’t look bored he says. Easy for you to say you’re doing something. I’m doing something he says. What am I doing that’s so? Estupido. Have me sitting here. I have pride. I don’t have to sit here for him or no anybody. And for what? For him to sell me in the streets? that’s what I mean to you hey? Just sit here. Wear this. Be the circus girl. Come on now baby, you’re the circus girl he says you’re the contortionist and you can bend and twist all around me  yes and rub yes ruby your body yes and twist round me and I’ll twist all around you. We’ll criss cross, you do me I do you. Snaky helixing. Caedeusalicious.  All to see. You want to sell me in the streets? You want i should walk the streets? I will too and I’ll get good money and men I’ll have men I take all of the men. Doubles: the only kind of doubles I play. How you stand there and paint. Don’t look bored. Hours and don’t look bored. I could be doing anything from A to G, but you got me sitting here all fucking whatever time it is while you try and prove that painting can somehow be closer to theatre than a photograph or 32 photographs per second per second.  You ever think you might be the only one who sees it that way? Come on. Please. I sit here with my back and you look at me like I could be the tent. Don’t look bored. I’m keeping the outfit.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

History repeating itself with a difference.

(5b) To change reality for everyone -- the one I told you goes on -- is to accept the fact that everyone is (ought to be) what I am, and, in some way, to meld the real with mankind. That means admitting history, that is, the human race on a false course, a reality accepted until now as real, and away we go. 1:46 am

All right ladies, hold the mirror just so, can everybody see me? Just like this. Adjust your positioning so you can get a good angle yet still feel perfectly comfortable and supported. If anybody needs an extra rolled up blanket go ahead and get one. I’m sorry, I forgot your name, purple mat? Yes, you. Try switching hands. There you go. Good? Everybody ready? Now take a deep breath in through the nose, and feel your breath flowing through every part of your body, moving warmly down your spine, and exiting your body toward the mirror as you breathe out. Good. And breathe in through the nose like an inward voice two, three, four purple mat, you are sitting too tight. If you have a possible need to satisfy by moving a motion, no? Then you’ll need to get into position from standing again. Ok, feet shoulder width apart, there you go, mirror in the other hand, yup, breathe in through the nose and on the exhale bend down as if you let something drop, nice, then let your body fell down, 32 feet, per second, per second. There you go and breathe in, two, three, down the spine, and out toward the mirror. Good. Everybody still breathing? Keep breathing and follow my voice. As you look into your mirror I want you to focus your awareness on the opening just a short distance under where the back changes name. This is your when point; think of it as an omphalos if it helps you. Focus your breath towards your when point and allow this to be your breath’s one great goal. Now I want you to keep feeling the rhythm of your breathing and on your next inhale allow your breath to encircle all the calcifications of history within your body. Now imagine your breath melting history away. Breathe history down your spine and push it out toward the mirror. Good. And inhale, really feeling those mineral accretions of history melting into tailings. Keep breathing. Down the spine. And out. Now breathe in and feel the tailings shifting, melting, like ice into water two, three, four and out,  and on the next cycle we’ll push the last of history toward our one great goal. Ready and in, two, three, four, good, really focus, down your spine, and out, two, three, purple mat, there are buckets and rags in the utility closet. That’s ok. There’s one in every class.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Destruction of the fittest.

The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be master -- that's all. 1:48 am

Well let’s Humpty Dumpty ourselves through this one shall we? You’ve got him over here and that one over there, and here and there they’ve been until now they are adjacent spheres. How much of vesica piscis between? Well, we shall see if we reach the proper parabolic penetration. But what to fill it with? There’s the rub. This one subsists on oxygen and damage. That one has had some sort of bird gimbling at him, but pick and pick away little birdy, you’re making it easier for him to crack open and get real, though he does have plenty of it and doesn’t need to acquire much more.  Come to think, they’re both riding that particular train; no wonder they’re a little scrambled. You’d be too if your kings and horses and men put you together out of order. Now. Remembering it is already tomorrow we must act fast, like yesterday fast or the day before yesterday fast. And let’s fast: this is no time for eating. We are going to take what’s best of each of them and combine, forgetting the attributes we leave unchosen: we can’t make an omlette without cracking a few eggs. Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. They don’t know they are eggs. Right. Did they notice? No? Good. Ok. This one can see singing; that one dreams of gentlemanly farming a nice wabe under a shaded sundial, or did at one time.  He does dream of turning music into money, so there’s that.  Are you writing this down? We must work against impenetrability. Let’s manifesto that one. WE WORK AGAINST IMPENETRABILITY!!! That’s better. Though we mustn’t put all our eggs into the one basket, now mustn’t we. Let’s find the best crack and gimble away there first. So. This one thinks that one would be better off vesica piscandi (or piscia vesicandi as the case may be) with some sort of woman though a decent man would do in a pinch. Perhaps this one’s own daughter (being not a man but newly a woman)? Or wife for that matter.  She is, the wife rather, not the daughter being only fifteen, a still attractive married woman getting on for fair and forty, and might be partial to younger men given their malleability and willingness to learn (and to do what they are told if you don’t mind my saying) though they do have a tendency to get to their own 32 feet per second per second faster than one might prefer and nothing turns one off at a greater velocity than a man (or a boy rather) holding back.  Why ever do they think this is a good idea? Ever. Better to get on with things and bring in the wingman after to finish the job.  Keep the balls rolling as it were. How are we getting on? Filling that vesica piscis a bit out? Oh fuck me on the cross. Go ahead. No really, go ahead. Listen. Listen. Don’t wait for me kid, just let’s get on with it so I can finish the job with that one over there. He’s getting impatient.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riles them was a bite from a sheep.

There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.1:50 am

Some believe that the bite from a sheep makes people angry whilst the wolf bite is a mere cost of doing business.  Perhaps this is true because the wolf bites everybody and now here we have somebody who happened to land on the bad side of a sheep on top of everything else. Would piss anybody off. That is, the wolf bitten person, has been wolf bitten since time immemorial and will be forever more, and now here’s a sheep come along to finish the job. The last straw, as it were.

Even so, I disagree that the sheep bite would stand as something greater than the wolf bite, even if it is two bites to the one. The effect is equal on either side, a bite from a wolf equals a bite from a wolf plus a bite from a sheep no matter what rumpus is kicked up on the sheep end of things. Here, I’ll prove it:

Let wb = wolf bite and let sb = sheep bite.

My theorem: wb = wb + sb

Proof:

(wb + sb)² = wb² + 2wb + sb

Bring 2wb + sb to the left:

(wb + sb)² – (2wb + sb) = wb²

Subtract wb(2wb + sb) from both sides and factoring:

(wb + sb)² – (wb + sb)(2wb + sb) = wb² – wb(2wb + sb)

Add ¼(2wb + sb)² to both sides:

(wb + sb)² – (wb + sb)(2wb + sb) + ¼(2wb + sb)² = wb² – wb(2wb + sb) + ¼(2wb + sb)²

or:

[(wb + sb) – ½ (2wb + sb)]² = [wb – ½(2wb + sb)]²

And taking the square roots of both sides as one would quite naturally:

(wb + sb) – ½(2wb + sb) = wb – ½(2wb + sb)

Add ½(2wb + sb) to both sides and find wolf bite plus sheep bite equals wolf bite alone, or wb + sb = wb.  A bite is a bite and no more quad erat demonstrandum. With apologies to the sheep, for who can blame the sheep for wanting a bite?

One Response to People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riles them was a bite from a sheep.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

The exploits of King Willow

Your temple is reared on the sands, and the first tempest will wash away its foundation.1:52 am

Auspicious King Willow would cry in his pillow
And cry in his pillow would he
He called for his love, and he called for his soul
And he called for the sands in the sea.

Oh good King Willow, don’t cry to your pillow,
Why not dream your blue dreams with me?
I’ll show you a heart, and I’ll steal you a soul,
And I’ll shape all the sand into she.

But look close King Willow, you’ve made a mess of that pillow,
And your tender Achilles is she.
Get up, grow a pair, search your soul, don’t you care?
There’s more lovers than sands in the sea.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Apropos of coffin of stones.

And behind it came so long a file of people, that I should never have believed that death had undone so many. 1:53 am

Most of these are filled with them, you know. Stones. Our bodies rot away, or they do at first. We’re eaten by the rats too, go down like hot cakes. We have a grip on them by their stomachs, as Wetherup likes to say. Sometimes if we are young fresh and female we get dug up for a last wild hurrah before they leave us to rot and be eaten. Don’t tell the families. It’s not quite dust to dust, there’s a lot going on in between. Ultimately, though, our coffins fall apart: eaten too by the crawling things, and hastening our disappearance. This is not all; both our bodies and our caskets become penetrated by tree roots and crushed by settling earth until we fill with nothing. We become nothing. Being former occupants of bodies, we still like to walk with you sometimes: on the right side of you, it’s a habit of ours, do pardon us. We are that strange feeling next to you, sinewless and wobbly and all that. Why am I telling you? Well, this is it for you, didn’t you guess? The chairs are upside down on the tables and somebody will sweep up in the morning because it’s quitting time, you are done.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Simply abounding in immortal numbers.

After that holy soul had, with his silence, showed he was freed from putting in the woof acrose the web whose warp I set for him, I like a man who, doubting, craves for counsel from the one who sees and rightly wills and loves, replied to him: I clearly see, my father, how time is hurrying toward me in order to deal me such a blow as would be most grievous for him who is not set for it.1:55 am

Let’s look at music. No, I said look. Can’t you see music? No? I’ll help you. Good grief who can’t see music? Music finds its reality in time, so how blind must you be never to consider its spatial component? Never mind. I do apologize and I take that back. Some people can’t help being, ah, different. We are all equally special and so on. Perhaps you are only looking in the one place. Sound waves expand in space: you must adjust for that. So, let’s look at music. Here, take my arm and I’ll guide you. You’ll feel like a different person after, trust me. Let’s take a peek at Mozart, or is that too predictable? How about Wagner maybe? or if prefer something a scoach less antisemitic we might spy a little at the Gloria from the Twelfth Mass. I find Catholic music the most geometrically pleasing, don’t you? Much better than what comes out of the opposite shop. Doesn’t really matter, they are all the children of mother matrix and papa pattern, but one does have one’s favorites. Now then. See for yourself the musical notes numbered and grouped into symmetry and written into proportion, now watch when they, yes! No? You didn’t see? They sound aloud together in tessellating patterns. See them? Numbers in proportional bunches running this way, now transposed, now running that way. The woof and the warp: weave weaver of the wind. Peek at the numbers and you’ll see inversions, rotations, reflections flipped vertically or horizontally, even reflections that glide and slide along sideways. Sure there are deviations here and there in the numbers, just to wake us up a little, see if we’re still looking, but look close and you’ll see numbers arranged into self-similarity across scale. Forget your ears. Listen with your eyes! And your body. Wait, what did you say? I can’t allow myself to hear that. Don’t say it. Just don’t. You can’t feel music? Oh honey, you really are special.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Beware of the steamroller.

The door to suicide is open, but theologians assert that, in the subsequent shadows of the other kingdom, there will I be, waiting for myself. 1:56 am

Our lives are in peril tonight. I know this because look, up close everything is shifting sifting just slightly into newness. Look at yourself, closer, there. Look yourself in the eyes and see that. You are your own deliverance from sin, see it? A different grouping of bones and flesh. Throw your used up old self under the wheels and absolve yourself for lifetimes. Let him crush you like a spider and you’ll walk with the kings of infinite space. Be a body present absent mindedness and chuck yourself under Jagannath’s wheels. Kill yourself: it will do you good.

One Response to Beware of the steamroller.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Having reached the end of his tether.

I turned aside Ulysses, although he had longed to journey; who grows used to me seldom departs -- I satisfy him so.1:57 am

Oh I’ve had the bit between my teeth like a knife in the mouth, but now my tongue is severed and I’m free as a god. Yes, yes, another gone. Not that there is anything so free about gods, and certainly not the one Dante chased, those three globes fluxing together, usurping each other. Like smoke. What’s wrong with the three-in-one, you say? It’s dead I say. And they’re full of itself. No, this is a different kind of free, I don’t mean I think I have free will. I’ve not lost all reason, what do you take me for? I’ve changed sirens and this one sings more sweetly. When I listen to her I can see the past and the future and feel atonement with all. I can hear her now. She’ll say show me the edge of the cliff she’ll say. She’ll say you might have to force me a little. I’ll say I might not have a choice. She’ll say i’m willing, but leave me wanting. She’ll say I’m willing, now force me. I’ll say delicious. She’ll say make me wait for mine. She’ll say I’m wearing something you can rip right off of me. I’ll say you’re killing me. She’ll say I’ll be so grateful. She’ll say I’ll beg you on my knees. I’ll say where are you? She’ll say where do you want me? I’ll say oh god where are you? She’ll say follow my voice. She’ll say can you hear me? I’ll say where, here? She’ll say can you feel me? I’ll say where are you? She’ll say follow my voice.

One Response to Having reached the end of his tether.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.