Having my way with Ulysses

The noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed.

• Oxen of the Sun

10:25 pm

Humour should always lye under the Check of Reason, and that it requires the Direction of the nicest Judgment, by so much the more as it indulges it self in the most boundless Freedoms. There is a kind of nature that is to be observed in this sort of Compositions, as well as in all other; and a certain Regularity of Thought

And all this while poured with rain.

• Oxen of the Sun

Sunday 3 July 1664: Then up and spent the evening walking with my wife talking and it thundering and lightning all the evening, and this yeare have had the most of thunder and lightning they say of any in man's memory, and so it is, it seems, in France and everywhere else. So to prayers and to bed.10:18 pm

Dear Diary,

I’m starting over. I’m going for the absolute purity of awareness, right, I want to have total awareness of all things I experience, all the minutiae of the detail of it all, while I’m living it. While I’m in it.  So tearing out the pages and this is day one.  Aleph Alpha nought nought one.  I think trying to write this thing in the third person made me sound like an asshole. Alec Bannon took a picture of Milly Bloom. Alec Bannon said so long to his cousins and will see them again shortly.  Come on. Nobody ever anywhere will read these written words, I know that, but I still don’t want to sound like a total douche. Ok. So. Writing down my experience of appearances in the world.  Sensations.  Flow of time. Haircut. Good. The mundane.  Perfect.  So. Itchy skin on my neck. Sharp little bits of hair. Sharp little bits of hair poking inward while I. Well this is lame. I don’t want to write about itchy haircut hair. Ok, try again. It is raining. Infinite rain. Wet. Wetness. Wettening. Wetly.  Wet wetness wettens wetly wet. Wet wet wet.  Word lost meaning. Damn. That was going somewhere too. Ok think. Think think think.  Perceive my subjective point of view. There was one big stroke of lightning just now and lots of thunder. A phenomenon.  Phenomena have temporal features so. Am I still writing about my subjective experience?  The appearance of phenomena and thinking about the appearance of phenomena enone themselves.  Then they spread out a unity through time. Through. Well, whatever it is. So I’m still good. My temporal features are different from those of any single phenomenon because I can enfuture myself. Goals, some of which I can change.  Some of which require the exercise of my free will.  Some of which involve a certain young for her age, large for her age,  beefy girl.  Skittish.  Will take some persuading but probably not much. Ok. Sticking with present phenomena which automatically continue being what they have been.  A phenomenon has its own temporality. Infinite rain. See? Just look at it. And just one big stroke of lightning and lots of thunder with it. Wait. That off a bit. Seems off. Or is time a structure of the knowing mind? Then lightning and thunder as phenomena appearing in the world has no temporality of their own.  That’s not right.  Ok stick with my subjective point of view. My pure experience of my own lived experience as I experience it. My experience of experiencing experiences I experience. That’s it exactly. That’s what this is about. Sensations. The flow of time, that’s what counts.  Look there’s Malachi Mulligan.  Wonder where he’s going.

Ruth red him, love led on with will to wander, loth to leave.

• Oxen of the Sun

But the Saracens ne till not no vines, ne they drink no wine: for their books of their law, that Mahomet betoke them, which they clepe their AL KORAN, and some clepe it MESAPH, and in another language it is clept HARME, and the same book forbiddeth them to drink wine. For in that book, Mahomet cursed all those that drink wine and all them that sell it: for some men say, that he slew once an hermit in his drunkenness, that he loved full well; and therefore he cursed wine and them that drink it.10:03 pm

Surah 1132:  السردين، والخبز، والبيرة.

In the name of Allah, Most Gracious,
                             Most Merciful.
 
1.  Proclaim! 
     Eat ye and drink ye
     To your heart’s content: 
     For that ye worked
     (Righteousness).
 
2.  And among His Signs
     He shows you the lighting,
     By way both of fear
     And of hope.
 
3.  Enter houses
     Through the proper doors.
     And fear Allah:
     That ye may prosper.
 
4.  And Dixon shall bestow
     On him, of bread and sardines, 
     Anything he shall desire.
 
5.  And thy Lord taught the Bee
     To sting in men’s habitations.
 
6.  O ye who believe!
     Sayeth she,
     Approach not prayers
     with a mind befogged.
     Listen in silence
     So that you might be graced
     With God’s mercy.
 
7.  But they shall there exchange, 
     One poured into another,
     A (loving) cup
     Free of frivolity, 
     Free of all witness
     Of ill.
 
8.  And on the third day
     When the pains of childbirth
     Drove her to the trunk
     Of a palm tree: 
     She cried (in her anguish):
     Ah!  I expect each moment
     To be my next!
 
9.  And behold!
     Bloom’s hand, 
     Soft under a hen. 
 
10. But closer draws unto men
      Buck Mulligan: 
      And yet they remain
      Stubbornly heedless
      Of his approach.
     
11  And Stephen 
      With a mind
      The most befogged.

Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper.

• Scylla and Charybdis

Bloody certainly have we got to see to it ere smellful demise surprends us on this concrete that down the gullies of the eras we may catch ourselves looking forward to what will in no time be staring you larrikins on the postface in that multimirror megaron of returningties, whirled without end to end.2:13 pm

I recommend resurrection wholeheartedly to those who are whole of heart and whose hearts fill most wholly the whirling holes ringing roundabout us between the astral levels engulfing souls, hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls, she sells shesouls by the sheshole.  Trips off the tongue.  Yes. This will be how I will preface the collection of the most promising young poets.  I have them all.  The important ones.  Nobody overlooked.  I remember it now, my work I left when I died.  But I am back and it is through logos I shall become important.  My story, my return from death, embroidered with poetry, will become our missing national epic.  I’ll gather my followers.  Malachi Mulligan of course and he will bring in Haines, who else?  Who else?  I will overlook nobody.  My head is whirling, my thoughts are simply swirling! Oh yes and I mustn’t forget the letter the kid gave me to publish.  Foot and mouth?  Well if it is important it will go in.  Now, I must take care of my smell before I gather genius and talent to my service.  My astral body was much more  pleasant than my physical.  But I exist!  I exist!  Why do I feel so nauseous?

Sphinx face

• Aeolus

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.
 

He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks

• Proteus

I stood by the unvintageable sea till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray, The long red fires of the dying day burned in the west; the wind piped drearily; And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee: "Alas!" I cried, "my life is full of pain, And who can garner fruit or golden grain, from these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!" My nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw. Nathless I threw them as my final cast into the sea, and waited for the end. 11:50 am

Better get this job over quick.  Side by side with the serpent plants and milkoozing fruits.  Pain is far.  And no more turn aside and brood.  Brood on my boots.  His boots.  I am a Buck’s castoff.  Brother soul, Wilde’s love that dare not speak its name.  His arm, Cranley’s arm.  He will leave me.  אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה‎.  I will be what I will be.  All or not at all.  I shall wait.  No.  Chafing against the low rocks.  Swirling.  Passing.  Listen: vehement breath.  Wavespeech of waters.  Seesoo,  amid seasnakes.  Hrss rearing horses.  Rsseeiss rocks.  Ooos.  In cups of rocks it slops.  Flop slop slap.  Bounded in barrels.  Slopped and churned. The bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.

Whispering weeds:  Shhh. Lift your skirts, we are flooded.  Let fall.  Ahhh we are weary.  Lift.  Shhh.  Flooded.  We await fullness.  Day by day and night by night.  Shhh.  Pray to St Ambrose for us.  He loves virgins.  Shhh.  He knows how to hide.  Lift.  Shhh.  Let fall.  He will hide us.  Shhh.  Gather up forthflowing.  We are flooded.  Shhh.  Wending back.  We are weary.  Help us St. Ambrose.  Shhh.  Help us.

 

The dog’s bark ran toward him, stopped, ran back

• Proteus

Is not your time as irreversible as that same river where Heraclitus, mirrored, saw the symbol of fleeting life? A marble slab awaits you which you will not read -- on it, already written, the date, the city, and the epitaph. Other men too are only dreams of time, not indestructible bronze or burnished gold; the universe is, like you, a Proteus. Dark you will enter the darkness that awaits you, doomed to the limits of your traveled time. Know that in some sense you are already dead. 11:30 am

Haines, the dog of my enemy, and I just stood pale, silent, bayed about.  What do I want from these pretenders then or now.  Live their lives.  His life to be his and mine to be mine.  For this I am pining?  He is not fortune, he is fortune’s primrose knave.  Smiling at my fear.  Mocking me in their house of death.  Enough.  Nobody wants my medieval abstrusiosities.  Tell the truth.  He saves men from drowning and I shake at a dog’s bark.  Would I save somebody?  I’m not a strong swimmer.  The water is cold, soft.  But spit it out, yes, I would want to.  I would try.  It’s his eyes, though, a drowning man’s eyes scream the horror of his death.  I would drown with him.  Together.  I could not save her.  Lost.

Shut your eyes and see

• Proteus

Creating space, Creating Time according to the wonders Divine Of Human Imagination, throughout all the Three Regions immense Of Childhood, Manhood & Old Age; & the all tremendous unfathomable Non Ens Of Death was seen in regenerations terrific or complacent varying According to the subject of discourse & every Word & Every Character Was Human according to the Expansion or Contraction, the Translucence or Opakeness of nervous fibres such was the variation of Time & Space 11:00 am

The world is real and eternal.  Don’t take my word for it, think through your eyes.  Look at the idealists, they knew how to use a good work around.  Take Berkeley for example.

Berkeley:  There is not existence without the mind.  Objects cannot exist without a mind perceiving them.

So to perceive is to be.  Oh yeah, then when I leave the room does it disappear?  Come on.

Berkeley:  Objects continue because God sees them.

And there you are.  A likely story.  Convenient to invent a universal perceiver so all things can be seen and thus be real.  Even Schopenhauer, who had a bit more sense than the other idealists, speaks this treason.

Schopenhauer:  The world is my idea.

Please, what about that sun up there behind those clouds?  And this beach, these shells I crunch under my feet and this sand washing through my fingers?

Schopenhauer:  It is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun and a hand that feels the earth.

But what about time?  Close your eyes.  Think of a very short space of time.  You aren’t closing your eyes.  You think I can’t see you?  I can’t see you and you are real.  Now close them.  Nothing will disappear.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait.  Ok, close your eyes later and think of very short times of space.  And listen.  Rhythms, the nearing tide, the crunch under your feet.  Close your eyes and look through the opacity of your eyelids.  Is it is all still there?   World without end?   All the time, and all time?  You did not need to see to believe.  All still here.  Me too.  Look, there are my feet.  Buck’s shoes.  I’m wearing his pants too.  And Jim’s hat.  But whether one thing comes after another or they stand nicely side by side, the world is not the idea of a creator.  There is no Los, that fallen earth owner creating material reality in his forge, or holding his diaphanous orb of fire as he walks into the crypt of eternity wearing Blake’s hat.  Nor are there ghosts within.  Listen.  That’s a ghost talking, Hamlet’s father.  Howsomever thou pursuest this act, taint not thy mind nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother.  Now look what you’ve done.  I should never have spoken to you.  Your fault!  My mother, ghost with ashes on her breath, is walking here.  No.  Jesus!  I will not fall over that cliff that beetle’s o’er his base.  Oh Christ look now, look with your thoughts.  There I go.

I just saw my own ghost

• Telemachus

Begin by breaking all the mirrors in the house, let your arms fall to your size, gaze vacantly at the wall, forget yourself. Sing one single note listen to it from inside. If you hear (but this will happen much later) something like a landscape overwhelmed with dread, bonfires between the rocks with squatting halfnaked silhouettes, I think you'll be well on your way, and the same if you hear a river, boats painted yellow and black are coming down it, if you hear the smell of fresh bread, the shadow of a horse.9:09 am

It was a moment, like a recollection of things to come, walking between Haines and Buck when Buck turned to look at me and said nothing.  In that silence I saw my own image, looking shabby in dusty black (insincere?) between the two of them looking hip and expensive.  Is this how others see me? 

55 reasons

• Telemachus

What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, or to the dreadful summit of the cliff that beetles o'er his base into the sea, and there assume some other horrible form which might deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness? Think of it. The very place puts toys of desperation, without more motive, into every brain that looks so many fathoms to the sea and hears it roar beneath. 9:06 am

Buck still leading Haines on about my Hamlet theory, although so far I am not tempted to break my silence.  I’ll tell it when I tell it, it can wait.  Whatever.  To him it won’t be worth more than the price of a pin.  He told Haines I prove by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.  Haines probably thinks I am my father’s ghost.  He also thinks Seattle is much like Elsinore (I don’t see it).  With the full weight of ownership of his rightful property that can only come from an Englishman who hasn’t read it, Haines called Hamlet a wonderful tale.  How delightful.  Isn’t that special.