Having my way with Ulysses

I couldnt rest easy till I bolted all the doors and windows to make sure

vern what the hell were you thinking daily for a year

i am sure I heard burglars in lestrygonians i know i did, even with sirens making as much noise as it possibly can and that crack forming in eumaeus maybe i can get a watch cat that can be useful later on too i wonder if they can see anything that we cant staring like that but i hate their claws im not going to rest easy until i lock this place down bolt all the doors and windows to make sure there isnt much to steal indeed the lord knows you put it all out there for free the past year and then some still its the feeling it would be all confusion if we moved when ill bring a bit of salt in uncross the knives i knew thered be a parting that bit stitched on the day after it happened when was that nausicaa one installment late out of how many and this one is number 453 O Vern what the hell were you thinking daily for a year id like to give you 2 damn fine cracks across the ear for yourself take that now for going ahead with all this temporal stretching to dig up whatever you might find down in the cracks you think nothing happens in a year everything happens in a year and you with two of them and each one too little to wipe his own ass too impatient with the waiting always waiting to send them down to some school to learn but o patience above it all had to come pouring out of you too soon what you dont want to hear that well you cant say i pretend things can you im too honest maybe i am the pan calling the kettle blackbottom but every day i get up theres some new thing on and im to get in front of the footlights again and let it out full sweet god sweet god well when im stretched out dead in my grave i suppose ill have some peace

politics and earthquakes and the end of the world

Which we all like. Rain. When we sleep. Drops. But wait until our sleeping. Drain. Sdops.

ive been so sick waiting for this day i was ready to take to my bed and ask for food to be brought up except my brother would poison it with Arsenic and ruin a perfectly good breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs he has plans to kill me too ive seen them in that locked drawer of his behind all his smutty photos I knew id find something there nobody knows him like i do still he’ll have his uses and sly won’t any more giving it all away like she does and well shes been given her notice and im in charge now or we are for the time being because i promised my brother id stop plotting his murder long enough for us to do a little mining we have here a goldseam of inexhaustible ore and I intend to blast it wide open until the world shakes at my words though im not going to give him the satisfaction in any case he’ll be dead and let whatever god hes praying to today try and save him because ill be like the heavens coming down to punish him for creating so many gods theres no god not his anyway and not him no give me regularity like the clock and number and reason science rationality and ill forge them like metals into weapons and kill you all he says we can break sly uses into bits and whore her out for hire do you think she would mind a little wrangle first he wants to know maybe she’ll be willing but needs a little force he must be losing his mind if he thinks sly would succumb to manipulation just like that not for you sly user for somebody else maybe but such a person would have to detach entirely from the outcome which is of course death no we need temporal manipulation we’ll mix up a little something to keep sly loser so entirely in the present every second of every moment of every little bit of every moment she’ll have no concern for her outcome well hire minders supplying dosages in continuous fashion because well want any variation in her temporal understanding to be undetectable said minders would also have to provide sustenance and shelter at the start attend to the person’s bodily functions until they are no longer required and anticipate any possible need or desire perhaps we can put her on some sort of drip but it will be hard to get quality minders ill have to do it myself or sly will be dead before the second interview no matter in slys state she’ll be dead already good kitty which will make her sly useful something my brother never thought about hes too ready to drive it up into her because thats all he wants out of her go ahead my brother if thats what you like but ive looked you square in the eyes and you cant fool me and you cant fool sly with your sly eye blinking putting on the indifferent id rather die 20 times over than let my brother manipulate his way to my destruction its mine go ahead and think im a downright villain if you think that is my nature but my brother drives me mad i told him yes because he said he cant get on without my help but dont blame me if i murder him at any moment

That is not more to stand.

And death is there in the background, we must run to arrive beforehand and understand it's already unimportant.

3:05 am

Instructions on how to kill yourself:

First, you must find a reason not to live. There exists uncountable reasons but you must choose at least one and try to make it as ineffable as possible so the people you leave behind may feel suitably at a loss for words when they find you. An added benefit: it will be easier for the people who attend your wake, interment, scattering of the ashes, memorial service, or what have you, to speak in hushed and reverent tones if they find themselves capable of speaking at all. Amongst the reasons not to live you might choose: you are suffering from progressive melancholia; by ceasing to exist you will bring your existence to the attention of the person who barely knows you exist, though you maintain a unique awareness of said person’s existence; pondering the great nothingness of everythingness has inverted your thoughts into a perpetual retrospective arrangement.

Once you have found your reason not to live, you must reduce said reason by cross multiplication of reverses of fortune. Take it all down to one point: a singularity which contains everything.

Compose a note to be found suitably near your corpse, but not in a place where it might slip beyond a finder’s field of vision. Clutched in the hand makes for great cinema and literature, but rarely works in real death. Include in your epistle a précis of your reason not to live. Ask somebody to be kind to your surviving pets.

Leave something in a book, marking a particularly resonant passage or one which will send the finder harkening back in a retrospective arrangement upon discovery. Possibilities may include leaving something in a book at a symbolic page number. One might even leave something in a book which will send the finder to something left in another book which will send the finder to more books always to the last term of the preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, originating in and repeated to infinity. Possible items to leave in books: puzzle pieces, scraps of a shirt, pages of other books. Possible symbolic number: 1132.

Select the method of suicide according to your own levels of drama, squeamishness, accessible materials, pain tolerance, or desire to leave a nice looking corpse. There is no need to be elaborate, if you are already poisoning yourself slowly with something: increase the dose; if you tend toward recklessness perhaps walk closer to the cliff edge until 32 feet per second per second takes care of the matter for you; have the light at the end of your tunnel be an oncoming train, or if your perambulations bring you near an oncoming Jagannath: toss yourself into his path. You’ll receive an added bonus for that last one.

If you have items locked away, say in a drawer, leave a key handy or better still, unlock the drawer before your demise so the living won’t have to destroy the furniture to access its contents. It’s just common courtesy.  Now go.

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.

Weda seca whokilla farst.

 It shall be so: madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.12:48 am

Prepare the funeral pyre, he’s nearing death.  Well, not death exactly. But he is wasting invisible. It will be a small fire. Just a match. You see it? Of course you don’t.  What you do not see is a man slowly shrinking into irrelevancy.  No? Too, something? How about gradually gaining in irrelevancy. Better? Good. I don’t mean to, you know. I’m merely holding the mirror, can I help that it is pointing toward nature? But while we’re here, let us gaze and see just how lapses are condoned, and what might not have flown as an ugly duckling is now spreading swan wings and beating the air. This is how one goes from respectability to a bloody awful farce. You want to change it, do you? Then get in on the joke.

Your epitaph is written.

John hated butterflies.12:40 am

Changed, eh? Death will do that to a person. And then? Oh how sad, etc., and all the grief and crying and the sackcloth and the ashes. You’re gone and gone forever and so on and who? Oh yeah you. Never heard of you. You want to be remembered? Sign a will and leave money. Gather together as much money as you can and we’ll love you for it for as long as it lasts. We’ll remember your generosity. Your giving spirit. Your support of all your dearest. And your belongings. We’ll remember them too, as fast as we can. We’ll see who gets there first. We will defile them, crawl all over everything like ants. Then we’ll have a sale, invite in the strangers to trample the carpets and purchase your best whatever for a dollar. We’ll drag the leavings to the street free to take. And after all the mourning and the sad, couple of days tops, look at me see how sad I am, see me mourn, then what of us? You really want to know? Oh honey, come back and find out for yourself. I’m not your Christmas ghost.

It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy’s three star.

Blackness is the beginning of whiteness, and a sign of putrefaction and alteration, and that the body is now penetrated and mortified. From the putrefaction therefore in this water, there first appears blackness, like unto broth wherein some bloody thing is boiled. Secondly, the black earth by continual digestion is whitened, because the soul of the two bodies swims above upon the water, like white cream; and in this only whiteness, all the spirits are so united, that they can never fly one from another.12:26 am

Scene: [In an alchemists laboratory, an exhausted owl and a disheveled goat move in opposing arcs around a stork-shaped alembic suspended over an enormous fire. A nebulous obscurity that looks like what do you call it gossamer occupying space within the alembic is communicating with the assembled company, which includes Cassandra, Lizzie Twigg, and St. Agatha.]

Lilith: [Obviously missing some feathers] But what you don’t understand, AE, is that you have not reincarnated and you are most certainly not deathless.  Just look at yourself!

Cassandra: Or smell yourself for that matter, isn’t that thing supposed to be hermetically sealed?

Azazel: [Mascera running down his face, lipstick on his teeth, dead roses slipping off of his horns, in obvious need of a mirror] AE, can you hear me? AE, pay attention! You are manifest without rebirth, that’s it. You are nothing. You accomplished your nothingness badly too and for what?

AE: [with a voice of waves] I’m not leaving here until I deliver my message to the world.  Death is the highest form of life. And the highest form of life is me. I am death!

Cassandra: What a narcisist. He’s going to talk about himself until he’s black in the face.  Lilith, can we get on with the re-death without AE’s cooperation?  We have fire, the bicycle pump for air, and what is that thing?

Lizzie Twig: A lobster?

Lilith: A crayfish.  We couldn’t source a real lobster. [Scowls at Azazel].

Cassandra: A crayfish then, for water.  We need something earthy.

Lilith: Something sexually titilating for him, perhaps a pair of breasts? Agatha?

St. Agatha:  I left them at the convent.

Lilith: Lizzie, tell us about your first time with AE.

St. Agatha: She’s a bride of Christ! She can’t be confessing her every little past indiscretion.  What will he think?

Lizzie Twigg: No that’s ok, Agatha. I want to do this; I need closure. I remember I had just answered an ad to aid AE in literary work, but typing skills weren’t required. In a weak moment I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it. I had been drinking Bass, and absinthe, or was it burgundy and absinthe. I remember the absinthe, but what else was it?

Lilith: Doesn’t matter. He’s listening.  Look.

Azazel: AE, seek thou the light!

AE: I won’t have my leg pulled!

Cassandra: Good idea. Lilith, reach in there and let’s fish him out.

Lilith: Yes. Azazel, stoke that fire.  We’ll need the cream to rise to the top so we can reach him.

Lizzie:  Fire? Is he a holocaust? Oh don’t hurt him!

Lilith: Honey, you can’t make butter without a lot of flogging.  Do you want him back or don’t you?

Lizzie: I don’t know. In the beginning for us was the word. I suppose it makes sense for us to end it in the world without end. Bring him back, but I think I really fit in with the guys at the convent, it’s my home now, so I’m going back there with Agatha.  AE is nothing to me.

Lilith: Oh honey, he’s nothing to us too.  Trust me.

Azazel: Nothing, pray for us.

A star by night. A pillar of the cloud by day. What more’s to speak?

2:43 pm

My cousin.  I attended his funeral.  He drowned, you know.  Did you know?  His father, Nuncle Dedalus murdered him as sure as he did me.  But it wasn’t Icarus who flew too close to the sun for Nuncle D’s comfort.  No.  It was I who burned too brightly, who flew too well.  My growth revealed his decline.  My talent became his enemy.  He didn’t want a rival, plain and simple.  He drew me, hawklike man, predator.  Drew me away from the ground to the top of the Acropolis (and I am the one called lapwing!) my shell still crowning my stephanos. Jealous. He pushed me, his sister’s child, and called it an accident.  Then the artificer wept false tears.  And I thirty-two feet per second per second fell into Athena’s grace.  She enfeathered me.  Now I disguise his agenbite of inwit.  His secret.  Hold me in abomination if you will.  I’ll come to your funeral.  I went to my cousin’s grave after they fished him out, drowned man, seabedabbled.  Weltering in the whirlpools of his father’s agenbite of inwit with no help or care.  Well, I’ll take care of him now.  I’ll lead the hawk away from his grave.  I’ll lead you too.  Yes, you.  Follow my compass.  I’ll be your star by night and your pillar of cloud by day.  We shall stay low to the ground.  I have lost my faith.  Now this is how I disguise my secret.  You disapprove?  You think me too false?  Well, I’ll hide mine, what do you care how,  you hide yours any way you like.

Leftherhis Secondbest Leftherhis Bestabed Secabest Leftabed. Woa!

To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause.2:30 pm

Ok.  I need to rewrite this thing.  I make, let’s see, yes, and income from lands, hmm.  Maybe about $450,000 a year.  Debts.  Well, what are debts?  I’ll be dead.  Come and get me.  So. 

I William Shakespeare being of sound mind.  Why do they always start this way.  If I were not of sound mind I’d be unable to write this.  Most likely.  Or I would think myself immortal so what use is a Will?  Well in the name of god amen I have to include everybody, especially her, so they tell me.  Posterity to consider.  Mustn’t seem ungenerous or mean.  Fine.  So in perfect health and memory god be praised yada yada.  I commend my soul into the hands of etcetera.  Stick my body in the ground and cover it well.  Feed me to the worms and the rats.  Eat up boys, here’s a fat one.  Get them drunk on the spirits in my belly, my spirit will be drinking in life everlasting. 

Right. 

Daughter Judith, money.  Susanna, oldest.  Property, money.  Neice Elizabeth money, not as much as Judith.  Nice amount.  Carve it up girls.  Sisters.  Toss some money at them and let them squabble over it themselves.  Divide it fairly, but take into account grudges, grievances, arguments long past, childhood woundings.  Balance that ledger ladies; nice to give them something to do.  More reasons to hate.  Give one of them my clothing.  A bit for the nephews.  Small but not too small amount of money for the poor of Stratford.  Lawyer said I should do that.  Friends now. 

Friends. 

My sword to Mr. Thomas Combe so he may have something with which to stab himself.  Hamlet Sadler, William Reynolds, William Walker, Anthony Nashe, John Nashe, John Hemings, Richard Burbage, Henry Cundell: money to buy rings. 

What’s left. 

All of my household goods to Judith.  Jewels, she can have them.  Susanna gets the property, let Judith have the jewels. 

And my wife.  She can have what she already has.  Have them insert that near the end.  Enough.  I give her no more of me.  And how do I.  Oh yes, can’t forget, I do revoke all former wills and publish this to be my last will and testament in witness whereof I have hereunto put my hand the day and year first above written by me William Shakespeare.  Good.  Centuries of people will hover over that second best bed and wonder why.  That should piss her off for all eternity.