Having my way with Ulysses

In what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments and reflections, reduced to their simplest forms, converge?

Shhh.

3:25 am

[Scene: Two lovers in bed, AE with Lizzie Twigg: coiled head to toe they quietly discuss the fixity of their volatility and the volatilization of their fixation, until within his fixedness AE has become nothing and feeling everything, Lizzie becomes volitive. They communicate intermittently in increasingly more laconic narrations. Also a small angry dog is trying to take up as much space as possible between them. It’s so cute! Come here little puppy, come here. What a good doggie. Who’s a good doggie? Oh Jesus God! He’s all teeth! Get off me! Like petting a piranha with fur.]

AE: It’s just that we define ourselves contrarily to each other. I am me because I am not you, and you are you because you are not me. We are poles apart.

Lizzie: We are the same person, AE, don’t you feel it?  After all the mutual deaths we have died? Resurrection, translation, return, distillation, putrefaction, decay, still you don’t know you had it backwards the whole time. You were resurrecting in the wrong direction.

AE: I know. I know it. I just wanted to be the material representation of eternality, in linear time. Just once. Just for a little while. Only long enough to re-experience that feeling of linearity. Don’t you miss it? And feel what it could be, to be linear and eternal simultaneously.

Lizzie: But you can’t just translate yourself into linearity and say I’m back, everybody, I’ve  gained bodily entry into eternity and now look at me! Look at what happened to Lazarus. No. If you want to see how a human mortal finds a place within eternity, that’s not going to cut it. That gets you nothing.

AE: Nothing’s not nothing. Don’t knock nothing.

Lizzie: No, nothing’s not nothing.

AE: I was trying be the eternal temporalized. I wanted to be the all at onceness linearized. I wanted to square that circle, just once. Just the one time and be it and feel it, really feel what it is to be the coexistence of the infinite and the finite.

Lizzie: Be eternality living in linearity? Darling, you’ve done it. You’ve been there already. The infinite and the finite are the same things whichever side you’re on, if you really must take sides, can’t you tell? Just look at us, two beings contrarily defined yet coexisting as aspects of the same reality.

AE: I know. I get it. You don’t have to scratch me like that.

Lizzie: That wasn’t me, but here’s a flash of light for you AE: when we were mortals we didn’t have to go around worrying all the time about gaining bodily entry into eternity: eternity had already gained bodily entry into us. We have always already been since time immemorial and forevermore, the material representation of eternality.

AE: We are God.

Lizzie: Exactly. We are already a squared circle: we can take a finite form, but our infinite selves are in there too.

AE: We are a circle, containing everything.

Lizzie: Everything and nothing.

[At rest relatively to themselves and to each other, the lovers settle into silent contemplation. Small birds rise gently, sweetly, from Lizzie and from AE. Hundreds of them flitter up in swirling concentric patterns bringing with them, as if reflected from the sheen of their feathers, an increasing luminosity of ruby light. Thousands of little birds, aeons of them, softly forming clouds as soft as what do you call it gossamer, the clouds forming mist, the mist gently drifting downward covering the lovers, the lovers blurring about the edges. Together they coalesce and dissolve, their bodies languid, breathing, watching their spirits unrestrained, circling, birds rising into mist falling, like self knowing wheels revolving uniformly: self knowing and self known.]

What caused him consolation in his sitting posture?

You only dwell within yourself, and only you know you; self-knowing, self-known, you love and smile upon yourself!

2:41 am

I’d rather die than sleep with you Echo, if you really want the truth. It’s not going to happen so please, come on, enough already.

But. Narcissus, you can’t hold out forever. I know what you’re doing. You have this image of yourself you are so in love with, but that’s not really you. Saying all the time you won’t have sex you won’t have sex, do you think that makes you so much more pure than everybody else? You have youth and you have beauty. And you’re a rock star. I’m just saying give it up already. You owe it if not to me, to yourself. You are missing out and here I am. Right here. Telling you and telling you. I could disappear tomorrow you know, and then who will you have to love you? I mean more than I love you.

I have myself. I have my integrity and I know my worth, and I am more valuable to me than I am to anybody else.

You are so transparent. You can love yourself all you want Narcissus, but yourself won’t love you back. God it’s like I’m empty air here, can’t you hear me? I’m telling you!

I’ve learned something, Echo, I can see myself as others see me. But more importantly I see my self as I see myself. I look into my own eyes looking into mine and there is nothing between us. No fears, no doubts. Nothing. The everythingness of nothing. Together we feel very simply, but strongly, the purity of a oneness made from the two of us. We feel it like radiance, projecting outwardly from our center in concentric circles. It feels like waves, Echo. When we connect together within that moment, we are the meaning and even the source of the two in the one and the one in the two. And we feel together, I and I, I feel that this truth has been and always will be true since time immemorial and forever more. Desde siempre y para siempre.

You’re killing me! Narcissus, I love you like you’ve never seen before. I beg you to listen to me.

I can’t even look at you.

What celestial sign was by both simultaneously observed?

I saw that each, amazingly, appeared contorted between the chin and where the chest begins; they had their faces twisted toward their haunches and found it necessary to walk backward, because they could not see ahead of them.Right. 2:30 am, Universal Time 2:55, Sidereal time 20:09:45. Conception location: 6w15, 52n20. Is this date right? You are how old? Wow. You look great. Really amazingly great. Did you get much work done? Botox? Doesn’t matter. Gemini sun, Gemini rising, Leo moon. Anyway, the shooting star witnessed at the precise moment your mother centripetally united with your centrifugally oriented father originated from Vega you say? The falling vulture. That would generally suggest a rapid decline of some sort: 32 feet per second per second. And headed right toward Leo’s ass with great apparent velocity. Here, take a look. See? Direct hit. So. Today, Leo’s ass is in direct opposition with Uranus, which at the time of your conception was in the 28th degree of Sagittarius, eighth house, house of death. Let’s look at the progression, Vega, vulture, and holy christ would you look at that. Uh, hum. Just thinking aloud here. I’m not. I want. I want to be very careful I don’t get it wrong here but I see. Huh. It’s just so clear. I’ve never seen. And Uranus in the twelfth house trine moon, which was in Leo at the time of your birth too. Well, for just this moment now at least, we can. Or. Huh. Why don’t we look at Moon trine Saturn first, then we can address the, ah, other thing. Moon trine Saturn says you might want to be alone for a while. Stay away from, um, people. And Saturn trine Neptune, yes. Go on a retreat alone maybe, take a long hike into the woods and stay there by yourself for a while. Meditate maybe. Do you want some tea? Here let me light some incense, your aura is looking, well, let’s clear the air a little. How are you feeling? I’ll be honest, from what your chart is telling me you really ought to be in bed. I can’t in good conscience keep you here. My agenbite of inwit: I’ll need to check my own chart about this. I feel all turned around, so yeah. I need to get my head on straight and you need. Well. Go now, go home and get in bed. If you ah, when you wake up call me and we’ll go over the rest of your chart. But you’d really better, ah, here’s your coat. Oh, and let’s settle the bill now.

Nought Nowhere was Never Reached

But time between one and the other when was brief -- I mean the whens of waiting and of seeing heaven grow more radiant.2:26 am

Look at the stars if you can see them. I see clouds and darkness but I know the stars are there. No. I don’t know that. I know that they were there. The little lights which I do not see in the sky but possibly you do, come from a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a present before its probable spectators (excluding myself) had entered actual present existence. That which I do not see might not be there now, most certainly is not there now, as by now they will have red-shifted position. All those stars running off, taking their planets with them. Ours too. Such a fearsome isolation, all this expanding outwardly from each other, temporality stretching between us. So lonely, having no contact with each other. Yet if we did, our loneliness would compound. We could look up at the stars (I at starless clouds) into distances numbering nine to the ninth power to the ninth power and find our double, as if in a mirror shining back to us: we are here too. The joy of recognition; the first sighting of a lover! And then, and then. And then we will understand in advance the impostvidibility of the past. We will know as if we have already harkened back in a kind of retrospective arrangement that we are already and always have been ever alone. There is our lover, shimmering through lakes of dreams, seas of rains, gulfs of dews, oceans of fecundity, simultaneously loving us back yet already gone. Infinity rendered finite. We would be as the new moon with the old moon in our arms, but our state of solitude is one where there can be no entry. They are gone. The world is gone.

Releasing the potential energy contained in the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements to enter into free union with the oxygen of the air.

Then it seemed to me it rotated a little, then terrible as lightning she descended and snatched me upward into the fire. Therein it seemed that she and I were burning; and this imagined burning so scorched me that my sleep was broken. 2:03 am

Give me four minutes, and you’ll have your fire.  There is an art in lighting a fire, and attention to how you make ready the place of sacrifice should be the true object of any creator: that is one of the secrets. The beauty of any holocaust, no matter how slight your agenbite of inwit, must always be within the purification of your own intent. That’s where we will find beauty. I said we. There’s creation. There’s union. So what is it we are burning today? What did you bring?

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.

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.

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.

Stars all around suns turn roundabout. Bright midges dance on walls.

Not because more than one unmingled semblance was in the living light on which I looked, for it is always what it was before; But through the sight, that fortified itself in me by looking, one appearance only to me was ever changing as I changed. Within the deep and luminous subsistence of the high light appeared to me three circles, of threefold colour and of one dimension, and by the second seemed the first reflected as Iris is by Iris, and the third seemed fire that equally from both is breathed. 12:50 am

Come on you nasty little devils, I know you’re dripping for a couple of rounds of it, yes? No? Oh yes so here we go. And one two three two two three three two three spin. Yes, now that’s the spirits. Let’s keep it going round round, square dance in circles, the best square lacks corners, and three two three four. Anybody here for there? Wheel whirl twirl simply swirl. And the room wants to cut in. Please, twirl right round baby. Room wind this way we’ll twine that. We’ll do a May pole dance right down the middles three four and turn and one two three. come on in snakes, your turn, and spin your partners right up that pole and fandango. Go for baroque babies, may I touch you? You may touch my, O but lightly! And three two three four and one two three two two two by two three four.