Having my way with Ulysses

Like no voice of strings or reeds or whatdoyoucallthem

Let everie sound of a pitch keep still in resonance, jemcrow, jackdaw, prime and secund with their terce that whoe betwides them, now full theorbe, now dulcifair, and we press of pedal (sof!) pick out and vowelise your name.

4:17 pm

Appassionato

 

Dulcimers.  Very subtle, the strings can be.  Some instruments stand in the way you know.  Not in the way of the strings, you know that.  In the way of what’s the word?  Damn the ineffable.  It’s not about the music or the words, they mean nothing.  It’s what’s behind it.  Under it.  Turtles all the way down under it.  Get out of the way.  Stand aside sugarstick.  Not like Diogenes laying out next to his tub.  Getting a little tan.  You, Alexander, yeah you, Emperor of Everything and Nothing, you’re standing in my light.  Shoo!  Get lost wouldja.  O all sorts get in front, but laying down under the music: the bleeding and the breathingness.  Just as sure as you breathe on me now.  Fogging up the glass.  So sweet.  Keeping time, listening.  Anybody can play the music, say the words, listen to that.  Just as anybody can make love with anybody else.  You with me maybe?  Could be anybody, a knock on the door.  Maybe me.  Last check in the mirror before opening.  What perfume?  Then hands on her heaving, felt for opulent.  And so on and so when and so what.   An ordinary duet.  Laying down under that, resting itself is a whisper small. Co-ome, thou lost one.  There you are baby, welcome.  It’s me.  It’s us.  Come closer yes.  Take a little bite, let’s make a new language.  Then aching exhilarating poetry into the everything and the nothing. There’s a subtlety to the art of love, the approach for an embrace giving your beloved a gaze run liquid over over over the body with appreciation like a hymn to the allwhen.  The crashing waves like cymbals clash against the rocks and sands.  Small adjustments here and here to your lover’s  movements, oh your breath.  The tender embrace, like touching an infant.  Or with a forcefulness, a violent passion painful but just on this side of damage.  Just a touch away from harm endlessnessnessness.  The dilation of blood and of when.  That first night at Mat Dillon’s party.  Her name.  The music then, fate.  Luring.  Luring me!  Wouldn’t expect it in the least.  Her Spanishy eyes.  The smell of Peru.  That’s the life of it: that I’ll never know what to give her.  What to promise?  How to ask without words.

A lady’s grace, gave and withheld.

To take care of oneself one must only study what is really useful in and for existence. Diogenes Laertius quotes these remarks of Diogenes the Cynic. The latter “was surprised to see the grammarians devote so much study to the morals of Ulysses, and to neglect their own, to see musicians tune their lyre so well, and forget to tune their soul, to see mathematicians study the sun and moon, and forget what is beneath their feet, to see orators full of zeal for speaking well, but never pressed to act well.”4:12 pm

Anima

Oh Christ why did they mount me next to the piano.  I may be inanimate, but I can still smell that one’s breath.  Ick.  And what kind of priest wears a beard?  Why didn’t they mount me in the dining room.  That one with the kidney disease eating kidneys (sweets to the sweet) has very nice breath.  He doesn’t take care of himself either, though.  Orders expensive whiskey then sends his son sir I did sir begging for money.  Hm.  At least I get to watch those two alive ones at work.  they get to move around.  Be warm, be moist.  I have to charm from my wall.  Lidia faded a bit but she’s back.  Look at her.  Holding that new one’s hand.  Yes.  Entice him.  Let him think he is the player and we are their harps.  Leave me here to hang around over the stench.  No problem.  It’s not like I have a choice or anything.  Oh my aching back.  Please, somebody give the guy a mint, some gum, an Altoid.  Something.  He does know music, I suppose he does have that.  But look around at all this disappointment.  Makes me want to fall right off the wall and crush myself.  Or somebody else.  That could be amusing.  Piano sounds nice, that tuner will have to come back for his tuning fork.  I could have told him; I saw it right there.  But nobody can hear me.  Well, except for you.  I exist.  And I know what it takes for me to exist.  I have studied existence, I get it.  All these broken people singing here, wrecked upon the bar reef, eating in the dining room.  Waiting.  Focusing their attention on the music.  They don’t know their danger.  Would be better for them to focus on their own lives and households.  They each think all is lost.  That’s the song they hear, no matter what tune they play.  But will they be persuaded to save themselves?  As easy stop the sea.  You who read me, can you be persuaded to save yourself?  What do you hear?