Having my way with Ulysses

Never know whose thoughts you’re chewing.

But don't forget that as long as God gives us life we will still be mothers and no matter how revolutionary you may be, we have the right to pull down your pants and give you a whipping at the first sign of disrespect.1:43 pm

Why does no one starve in the desert? Because of all the sandwich is there. Had a gorgonzola sandwich with mustard. Easy on digestion. Cheese digests all but itself. Ate it trying not to see the drip from Nosey Flynn’s nose. Davy Byrne quiet, ingratiating. Puts up with Nosey Flynn talking horse racing, money to throw away. A regular is like the roommate you never wanted. Nosey curious about Molly’s concert tour, is Blazes Boylan involved. Well, a free ad is a free ad even if it does bite at the heart. Told him. Word of mouth. Word is he’s covered in fleas, or worse. Scratching in his pants pockets, talking about a fight at Lewis-McChord. That place breeds the worst of them all. Something about the Northwest maybe. The rain? More serial killers here too. Train them up here, make them into murderers. Teach them war is a live action video game. Get them to like it. Then off they go to sunny places, full of power, false authority, prescription drugs and hash. Make the mission vague and change it up so they won’t wonder about why. License them to kill farmers for fun, murder holy men and whole families. Villages. Toss the candy out the front of the convoy and drive over the little ones. Leave behind a Russian gun. Murder staged to look like combat. We were attacked, they’ll learn to say. Then bring them back to Lewis-McChord so they can implement their education. Watch them put their cigarettes out on their women’s skin and don’t forget to torture the children. Waterboard a little boy because he can’t say the alphabet. Another because he wet his bed. Killing each other and themselves and everybody else. War is the safest bet: heads all lose, tails all lose. Easy money. Dark thoughts to chew over. Scars on the anima mundi. A shock to the heart. Nosey’s ambush, unintentional presumably. Collateral damage. Think about something else. Something else. Nice quiet bar, Davy Byrne has. Nice counter wood; like the way it curves. Nicely planed. Look how the light touches it just there. Gentle.

Gone too from the world

A darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.10:20 am

Scene: [A narrow street in 12th century Cordoba, Spain.  Two men are huddled together, tussling over a cracked mirror.  They are fighting but palpably they are not angry.  These men are close in age and have known each other since childhood.]

Abulguailid Muhammad Ibn-Ahmad ibn-Muhammad ibn-Rushd (aka Benraist, Avenryz, Aben-Rassad, and regionally Averroes):  Give it back!

Moses Maimonides: No!

Averroes:  [letting go suddenly so the mirror strikes Moses Maimonides in the chest] Fine.  Go ahead and try.  But you know you can’t reach him without me.

Moses Maimonides:  (defeated, with a sigh) Together then.  But I speak first.

Averroes:  Agreed.  Now make room, I can’t see.

Moses Maimonides:  That better?

Averroes:  Yes.  Ok go.

Together:  We call upon the ani

Moses Maimonides:  Stop!  I’m speaking first.

Averroes:  Fine.  Agreed.  Let’s get on with it.

Together: We call upon the anima mundi, the great soul of the world, to show us in this mirror the face of the one we most believe, the seeker of pure truth.

[The face of Aristotle appears in the mirror.  He is irritated.]

Aristotle:  You two again.  Sheesh, can’t you leave a man in peace?  What do you want now?  I’m busy.  Aquinas and I were trying to prove some nonsense of his with algebra over lunch.  Well, he was having lunch, I was in the mirror.  So what now?

Averroes:  I have found two words in your Poetics that I do not understand.

Moses Maimonides:  No.  Stop.  Don’t listen to him.  We want to ask you about resurrection.  I think that once we are dead that’s it for the body.  In the world to come we will be souls but won’t need bodies.  I’m certain you believe this is true.

Averroes:  Incoherence!  That is the incoherence of incoherence!  There will be no personal immortality; we are all participating in the same intellect.  Now as for those words I cannot translate

Aristotle:  Have you read nothing I have written.  Read first before you bother me!  Look.  I’m going to give you a piece of advice.  Focus on the here and the now.  That should be enough for both of you.  Stick with the observable and above all, break that mirror and leave me alone!

Averroes:  But I must understand!  What is the meaning of comedy and tragedy?  What are these things?

(In a blaze of pyrotechnics Aristotle makes his exit.  Moses Maimonides obediently, and also in an attempt to reach the other side, smashes his face into the mirror.  It shatters and in the reflected multiplicities of the shards still falling, Moses Maimonides sees the reflection of Averroes and the bloody mess of his own face, perplexed, gently disappear.)

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

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

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