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.]

Dead he wasn’t. Simply absconded somewhere.

Come back here and take what's coming to ya! I'll bite your legs off!
1:42 am

I thought you were dead you yellow bastard. Grrrr. You resurrected yourself, didn’t you? or killed yourself or was laying low or something. Left my person a bloody weeping mess and no clue how to get you back. Sit! Stay! And now you’re back like a murderer to the crime scene. You’re a lucky dog Lizzie didn’t set me at you directly you got back. I’m going to pee in your shoes. Maybe she will go back to the convent soon, you think of that AE?  We liked it there. But we’ll have to sound the lie of the land first, would be prudent: Sister Mary Peter hates us now. Too bad really. I liked the smell of him better than you, you stink like the dead. Woof! And not in a good way. And here you are like the bath nobody wanted, destroying everything warm and comfortable. Before you, Lizzie would take me running. And we’d play go get it! And, who’s a pretty puppy! Now I’m lucky to get out of her purse more than twice a day. Thanks AE. Just, thanks. Well kill my dog you better hide your cat. I’ll get you my pretty. Now go.

Nes. Yo.

Orca Bellona! Heavencry at earthcall, etnat athos?12:36 am

In the beginning was the world, in the end the word without end. Oh my heart, am I my mother? Fantasy. Just anima’s fantasy. Here’s how it goes; you’ve heard it I’m sure: there’s nothing naked under the clothing moon. But first, I’m all of a mucksweat. The day ins and outs of it born from a heart and nine months hard labor, but then coming forth of darkness and Orc’s away now! Nice, no? Every phenomenon has natural cause, even revolutions in the word. First, cause. Then I’ll be thy mouth given unto me! Fly as the hawk’s right eye! Free will! But watch out for the 32 feet per second per second. Oh that. What goes down must come. It goes the other way too. As below, so above. Rock becomes root becomes worm becomes serpent in the garden. Beryl was there, and the other rainbow girls. How’s that for gloomery glamory? Shall I be the toad on your shoulder? Come here, my Athos and warm me up.  I’ll whisper little somethings right where the camel went through the needle. I’ll obey your every. I’ll be slave to your chic, Dave to your dick, and we’ll root in the fat of the land. I’m willing, now force me. Good dog.

I am doing good to others.

Good boy11:47 pm

Come here.  Come here.  Come on now.  Here you go.  You want this? I bet you do. I’ll bet you do.  Come on now.  Come here. Oooh this looks good.  I know you want it.  I know you. Ew. No. No. Don’t do that. Roll back over boy.  Go on now.  Get. Ew. Here. Here. Take it. Take this one too. Whatever. Just take it.  Now go.

I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.

If you would operate by means of our bodies, take a fierce grey wolf, which, though on account of its name it be subject to the sway of warlike Mars, is by birth the offspring of ancient Saturn, and is found in the valleys and mountains of the world, where he roams about savage with hunger. Cast to him the body of the King, and when he has devoured it, burn him entirely to ashes in a great fire. By this process the King will be liberated; and when it has been performed thrice the Lion has overcome the wolf, and will find nothing more to devour in him. Thus our Body has been rendered fit for the first stage of our work.11:42 pm

Well would you look at that. You asked once if I ever heard or read or knew or came across a woman pissing like a man, yes? Yes. And look at him, three hats pinned on his head dancing drunk in the street.  Listen, I’ve got a real fashion emergency here, and you can’t tell anybody, not even Molly. I have my reasons. Don’t attract attention, I hate stupid crowds, just walk with me, yes? Do you remember that outfit you looked amazing with the thing, and the neckline? Yes? You looked much better than Molly, eating what’s her name Gallaher’s sandwich. You know, the one who was with the one dancing in the street with the one with the three hats, yes? Is that your dog? Cute, just don’t let him devour me.  Maybe you could put him in your purse or something. Is that a poodle or a terrier? All dogs look the same in here. Anyway I never liked her style, she was too. Oh God I’m fading. Am I soft? I wonder if he has any pills in that bag, yes?

Just to see

And so too may you, like the very wind of destruction, rid by fire all the wickedness from the land.12:06 am

The silly Penis.  Once I heard sweet old Monks said this to himself after Nannetti shouted for where’s what’s his name Monks.  And he sees Monks every day.  Nice old man.  Must have seen it all.  Obituary notices and found drowned and scandals and schism and all the rest.  Started out as a linotype operator back in the day.  Could type blind, see with his fingers.  Still in the shop but now it’s a MAN Roland.  I wonder if Monks had to type backwards into his linotype.  .epytonil sih otni sdrawkcab epyt ot dah sknoM fi rednow I   Skilled.  Art to it.  Papa could read backwards.  Read his Haggadahbook that way, pointing his finger to me.  Why should this night be so special?  L’shanah haba’a bi Yerushalayim.  It’s a long time to wait for a hungry kid.  Long business about that brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage.  Then the twelve brothers, Jacobs son’s.  Some of them were citron farmers.  Pocket smells of Citronlemon.  What kind of perfume does your wife?  Keep losing that soap in pockets.  And the part about the one little goat the one little goat, that slit the throat, the Holy One, blessed is he, who butchered the butcher, who slaughtered the ox that ate the staff, that beat up the cat, that scratched the dog, that drank up the water, that put out the fire, that burned up the Angel of Death.  Silly sounding but it all means justice when you look into it well.  That and it’s everybody eating everybody else.  That’s what life is after all.  I’m hungry what time is it?  I could bus home still.  Forgot something maybe.   Molly dressing, get there before.  No.

You will see who

Thereupon the eagle changed into a piebald wolf and these two battled in the palace for a long time, when the cat, seeing himself overcome, changed into a worm and crept into a huge red pomegranate which lay beside the jetting fountain in the midst of the palace hall. Whereupon the pomegranate swelled to the size of a watermelon in air and, falling upon the marble pavement of the palace, broke to pieces, and all the grains fell out and were scattered about till they covered the whole floor. 11:36 am

My dream of the night before puzzles me.  Remember.  I am almosting it.  I was walking amongst my subjects in the street of harlots, disguised as a carpet merchant.  I found there amongst the tanyard smells a young man, quite lost, dressed in rancid rags illdyed black.  He looked near starvation so I offered him a melon, but he would not eat.  Instead, he delighted in its smell.  I led him to an open hallway and showed him the greatest treasure amongst my wares, a piece of tapestry that transports any who sit upon it in an instant to any person imaginable, without being stopped by any obstacle.  He asked who?  And I said you shall see.  But when we sat together on the red carpet it was as if in that instant of transformation I became not the dreamer but the dreamed.  I felt not myself.  I was not myself.  I had become my dark companion and what was left of me existed only as the name Haroun al Raschid within the memory of his dream, now my dream.  I sat on a beach watching an inrushing tide.  There were other people, but I could see only dimly, an Egyptian man and woman with hennaed faces, the woman’s hair trailing. There was a dog, dead with a creamfruit smell, and a live one too, lightly kicked by the Egyptian for a transgression I didn’t see.  I watched as well as I could, the dog sniffing a rock, then lifting a hind leg and pissing against it.  Then the dog repeated himself against an unsmelt rock.  I cannot be sure as something was terribly wrong with my vision, but I believe I saw the unhappy beast collapse into painful yelping and as his hind paws scattered the sand his forepaws stretched, altering itself into the paw of a leopard.  With a shake, screaming, the entire leopard sprung forth from the sand.  It was the offspring of a lion and a panther within whose womb, impatient with the delays of time, he had felt burdened by gestation.  He had torn and ripped until he was discharged forth into the world, his birth damaged and scarred his mother’s womb forevermore.  Horrible now, upon this beach, he roots and scrapes.  Scratching.  Stopping to listen.  Scratching.  His merciless bright eyes hungry, scraping the earth.  Salivating now, listening.  Scratching, then triumphant as a carrion vulture, revealing the carcass of his dead mother.

Looking for something lost in a past life

On a field tenny a buck, trippant, sable, unattired. 11:32 am

The dog on the beach was chasing a shadow and in my vision I saw in him wearing the tatters of a bear, a wolf, a calf, a buck.  He sniffed just like a dog the carcass of his dead brother before he moved to one great goal.  Here lies poor dogsbody’s body.  Me.  A yew on a field sable, couchant, fallen, blasted.

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

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.

These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here

Never has any thing produced by human reason been everlasting -- following the heavens, men seek the new, they shift their predilections. That man should speak at all is nature's act, but how you speak -- in this tongue or in that -- she leaves to you and to your preference.11:23 am

I am well out of it.  Wet but wet dries.  It was the wind of wild air of seeds of brightness that did it, I was thinking about those golden seeds windborne, impregnating mortals.  Harpies as fast as gusts.  Then I walked into the ocean.  Not for that reason, but why not?  My soul walks with me.  Take everything, keep it all.  I have my form of forms and whether I listen to Elsinore’s tempting flood and walk into the ocean (I turned back) or sit on a couch of sand makes little difference.  The flood is following me.  Lord will it attack me?  Enough.  Enough walking through memories.  I move and time and space conjoin.  Better to sit and kill time instead.  I’ve no loyalty there.  I’m not time’s bitch.  Think of that dead dog who sat with me, my loyal pointer Orthus.  There: decay.  Good dog.  Bloat and decay: evidence of time’s destruction.  It destroys us and we destroy it right back.  Kill it.  Blur it together with space, kill that too for all I care. Stone it to death and they collapse together. I no longer see distinctions. The running dog? Just a point. Hungry brother of Orthus. Peekaboo I see you. Not me. Or you. The dog.