Having my way with Ulysses

Mort aux vaches.

Cease cows! Life is short.10:22 pm

Article here about Foot and Mouth disease.  Countless cattle coming down with cow plague and multiplying. How many? Let’s see. Divide by color: white ones, black ones, yellow ones, and the ones with foot and mouth disease. The bulls, let’s separate them out too. The white bulls are equal to a half and a third of the black together with the whole of the yellow. The black are equal to one fourth of the ones with foot and mouth disease and a fifth, together with, the whole of the yellow. Have to take into account the proportions to get this right. Have to. So. The white are equal to the third part and a fourth of the whole herd of the black, while the black are equal to the fourth part of the ones with foot and mouth disease and with it a fifth part, when all, including the bulls are counted together. Keep in mind that the ones with foot and mouth disease are equal in number to a fifth part and a sixth of the yellow herd. And of course it goes without saying, I mean just look at them for Christs sake, the yellow are equal in number to a sixth part and a seventh of the white herd. That one is yellow, that one is white. Hard to tell in this light. And they all belong to Helios so they are a little washed out. Easy to mistake. So the number of the sun’s cattle with foot and mouth disease becomes quite clear at this point. Oh, will you separate out the number of the well-fed ones and the females according to color? Thanks. You look. Are you ok? Do you need a calculator? I’ll find one. Here, use my phone. I’ll make it easy for you to picture. Really there’s as good cattle in the field as ever came out of it.  Now. When the white ones line up together with the black they form a perfect square. It’s really quite marvelous to see. And the yellow ones mixed with the ones with foot and mouth disease (you really should separate them, you do know that don’t you) naturally group together into a perfect triangle. Oh those beautiful triangular numbers! Mooing and chewing their cud. Now who’s hungry for lunch? Sardines?

I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief.

God (I've begun to think) implants a promise in all that insubstantial architecture that makes light out of the impervious surface of glass, and makes the shadow out of dreams. God has created nights well-populated with dreams, crowded with mirror images, so that man may feel that he is nothing more than vain reflection. That's what frightens us. 2:52 pm

Eureka!  Come in my darling, the water’s fine.  The tub is small, but we’ll get comfortable.  Watch that displacement!  Oh well, what’s a little water on the floor.  Is that your foot?  Shove over baby, make some empty space.  We must have space independent of things.  Get that matter out of the void!  Can we do that?  Create from void?  Creatio ex nihilo?  The Greeks believed not.  Most of their creations come from water, although Heraclitus prefered creation from fire.  Imagine a tub of that!  No, this is much nicer. And cosy too, eh baby?  Come, let’s fingerponder the materia prima a little. Honey, you are filthy!  Look at that sheen forming on the water.  All those layers of belief you carry around.  Here, have some soap, nice citronlemon.  Get behind those ears.  Wash every nook and cranny.  Especially your cranny.  Want me to get that for you?  Not yet?  Now, where does everything begin?  Well of course, it begins with me.  I am God.  Yes.  Yes.  Wait, you don’t believe me?  Well you should.  And don’t worry, you can be God too.  You are God, ok?  God.  Oh I see.  You believe in a different God.  Well you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.  Go ahead.  He’s a he.  Ok.  White guy.  Yup.  Seated, gotcha.  A throne?  A king of some kind?  When was the last time you listened to a king?  Ok, ok, it is your belief.  Keep going, rinse it out of there.  Facial hair.  Old.  A light.  A heart.  An eye in the sky.  Well now, you’re just riffing.  Tell me, have you ever seen God?  Ok, I get it.  Faith needs no proof; you do not need to see to believe.  But what about unbelief?  That is so much harder to accomplish, you know.  What will it take for you to unbelieve?  What do I have to do to wipe away that God stain marring your vision?  You’re putting a sticky film on the surface of everything.  Ick.  Smells too.  Wait, what did you say?  What about my stains?  My sheen on the water?  Do I believe my own theory?  No, of course not.  I neither believe nor disbelieve.  I need help too, a nice push one way or the other.  Want to take care of it for me?  Tell me, do you push both ways?  Now relax a little baby, roll over and let me get to that cranny.

Careless air

(the gravitational pull perceived by certain fixed residents and the capture of uncertain comets chancedrifting through our system suggesting an authenticitatem of his aliquitudinis)10:03 am

I close my eyes.  Picture it.  I am floating on water.  Dead sea water, no effort.  I can float with a book if I want to and rest for hours.  Yes.  Easy.  Languid.  Peace.  A solid body immersed in a liquid.  There’s a law.  Who?  Archimedes maybe.  Archimedes floating in a bath tub.  Oh buoy, he said, and ran home naked to write it down.  Remember half listening to Vance in high school.  Science class late in the day, drowsy.  32 feet per second per second, falling bodies.  Just dropping in.  Accelerating per seconds through space.  Spacetime, a curved thing with geographical features.  Bumps, hollows, canyons, mountains.    Shaped by things in the way, some of them falling per second per second.  Energy too, shaping spacetime.  Not falling per second per second.  Gravity giving us that heavy feeling.  The Earth drags spacetime behind it and around.  Like the wake of a boat, losing satelites in the ripples.  Seattlites too.  Where are they?  More like when are they.  Earth’s wake moving slowly, languidly through the dead sea.  Ripples under my floating per second per second.  Floating.