Having my way with Ulysses

Noble art of selfpretence.

A fox invites a stork to dinner. After some entertainment, the fox gives the stork broth in a wide marble bowl, which the hungry stork could not taste with his long beak. The stork invited the fox to dinner and provided broth in narrow flagons. The stork could insert his beak and be very satisfied, but his guest vainly licked the neck of the flask and went hungry. The bird spoke: our own examples we should contentedly suffer.
12:54 am

Now? What, now? You want to talk now? Ok fine then, but I’m in a hurry, you understand, unless you want to shelter me a bit? No? Then run with me. Come on, keep up. You want me to end up wrapped around somebody’s neck? A lucky foot maybe? Go on then, ask your question. What’s that?  I’m running from bloodhounds and whodoyoucallhim strangeface sawhimbefore and this is what you ask? Who are you again? Who invited you? I didn’t catch your? What is this exactly? Fine. Wash ashore. There’s your answer. I’ll bury my mother but don’t let me be caught dead in the water.

The sins of the past are rising against you. Many. Hundreds.

The thing pleased him andt, and andt, He larved ond he larved on he merd such a nauses The Gracehoper feared he would mixplace his fauces. I forgive you, gorndt Ondt, said the Gracehoper, weeping, For their sukes of the sakes you are safe in whose keeping. 12:39 am

Thousands. They are raindrops rolling across a window, and you can see allpast right through them. Lets get up close. Magnification of where, distortion of how, inversion of what time, and with how many fluxes in octaves between convex and concave. Polytemporality wouldn’t know anything about that, strictly speaking, from here it’s ants all the way down. I dreamed something different perhaps maybe once if rememory serves. I disguised myself and walked, a dark visaged man, trailing hair, creamfruit smell.  I was dreaming and the dream was me. Like you. But you appear to be drowning just a bit. Partially drowning, like you misplaced your what’s that? Well, that’s your opinion, I’m just saying what I see from nowhen. Men like to ondts.

Taunted them still, bending, suspending, with wilfull eyes.

But they -- lovelier than ever -- stretched their necks and turned, let their awesome hair flutter free in the wind, and freely stretched their claws on the rocks. They no longer had any desire to allure; all that they wanted was to hold as long as they could the radiance that fell from Ulysses' great eyes. If the Sirens had possessed consciousness they would have been annihilated at that moment. But they remained as they had been; all that had happened was that Ulysses had escaped them.4:04 pm

Dolore

I’m drowning again.  A slow cool green drop through the mirror.  A dim seagreen sliding shadow.  Depths.  Why did he leave just after?  I had him too.  I had him smackwarm against my smackable, no contest.  The odds were in my favor.  Then he left so fast.  He was boiling then gone just like that.  Maybe I was too silent.  Maybe.  Well.  I know it’s useless to wonder.  And useless to feel the drowning, but I feel it, the fluxing inwardness of dim seagreen filling my useless lungs.  I’m sinking again.  At the bottom of the dim seagreen I start my decline.  I’ve done this before.  Throw me a life ring will you?  I can hear that sob of breath, are you drowning too?  Do your disappointments sink you too?  You’re crying for nothing.  Ever heard that?  Anybody ever anywhere sing those words to you?  You’re crying for nothing.  It’s my chorus.  Everything and nothing.  Same thing.  If it is ineffable, is it nothing or everything?  Speak to me.  No.  Save your breath.  What words could you possibly say?  But I suppose you feel you must because silence is so brutally negating.  Such violence in silence.  I know you drown sometimes too.  But I see you.  I can see you.  I hear you too.  Come on now, pull yourself out.  You’re not as invisible as you think.  Hold on baby.  I’m standing right here.  Listen to me.  You gotta hold on.

Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their brows.

Flatterers and slanderers are of the same school. These are the two sirens that we find in books of kinds of beasts. For it is an apparition of the sea that we call sirens. They have bodies of women and tails of fish. And claws of eagles. And sing sweet songs that make sailors sleep, and afterward they devour them. That's the flatterer. It is a fair, beautiful, elegant song that makes the people sleep. And in fair sin. We.  The two roaring worlds without and within: beingless beings.  And I.  Shatter them and myself in one blow.  Am I bitterer against others or against myself?  Me, we.  They, two women no longer young carry home from the sea a midwife’s bag with trailing navel cord containing eleven cockles.  Dilly, wants to speak French and visit the Paris I created.  Is it any good?  The shadows of my mind.  I see her mirror me.  Who do others see when they see me?  Do they see me timedulled and dusty?  Dreaming worlds words.  Dilly, lying in bed with her imitation gold bracelet seeing herself as Dan Kelly sees her.  Se el yilo she can say, nebrakada masculinum! Amor me solo! Sanktus! Amen.  Nebrakada.  A mashup of words.  What does it mean?  Neb: because, brak: lack, braka: crashing, ne: not, rakad: shave, rak: linear, kada: when.  Da.  I see it now.  Yes.  Woo me with Stephano Dedalo, alumno optimo, palmam ferenti: words of my longing.  Father Conmee longing for the hours, murmurs vespers five hours early.   Dutch, Swedish, Czech, Portuguese, Polish, French, Croatian, Russian.  An American word.  What are you doing here?   Who has passed here before me?  You?  Are you we?  Tell me the secret of all secrets.  Amor me solo!  Your world behind the glass, and my world within the glass, and between them we swirl.  Smash your way into me, my misery.  We will be we.  Together we will drown our agenbite of inwit.  We will be the darkness shining in brightness.  We will coil our inwit in our seaweed hair and sing it to sleep.  Fair beautiful sleep.  Then we will bite!  We will chew!  We will drown it in a salt green death.  We shall be misery standing from everlasting to everlasting.

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.

Stone hopes

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. 11:53 am

Oh sweet God I’m bored.  Bored bored bored.  Thank you, come again.  Nice of them to leave a few flowers.  I like daisies.   Nice smell.  Well, they could smell like shit for all I’d know.  Or care.  Jesus I’m bored.  Nice to feel warm beings near you though.  All that warm fullblooded life.  That creepy one will be back and with a shovel.  Scrape up the earth to get at the fresh buried female.  Never mind the corpse rot.  Pustules.  Bored bored bored bored bored bored bored doo daa doo daa.  Wish I could drape myself over some casket like what’s her name over there.  What is her christian name?  I’m not sure.  Next to Emily Sinico, crushed by a slow moving train.  Lying there with a bird on her head.  Rooks in here a bit ago.  And an owl.  Looked stuffed.  Wish we had one of those what are they called silent towers.  Dakhma.  Want to see a tower of silence, just stop by here any time you like.  Won’t hear us say a damn thing.  Wouldn’t mind seeing a Dakhma in action.  The buzzards tearing the flesh off.  Rotting carcasses touching neither fire nor earth but vulture lunch, no problem.   Bon Appetite.  Good food good meat good God let’s eat.  Bet you I’d smell that.  Woof!  Well, that’s one way to handle it.  Cremation would be interesting too but nobody gets to watch that.  Priests against it too.  Nothing to raise up at the second coming.  Nothing to raise up regardless. Rats. There’s one right under me right now.  See it?  There.  Tail gone now.  Corpse is ordinary meat to them.  Meat gone bad.  Like cheese is milk gone bad.  Cheese is the corpse of milk.  Wouldn’t mind smelling a nice stinky cheese.  Or anything.  Rats get that crumbling mush of corpse smell.  Would be something.  Bored.  Flowers.  Better to spend the money on the living.  More sensible.  Are those flowers fake?  They are starting to look fake.  Great.  Never wilting.  Expresses nothing.  Immortelles.  Won’t get to watch them die.  Wouldn’t mind seeing a drowned corpse.  I hear that is a nice gentle decomposition.  Would enjoy watching.  Not like here.  Plant him and have done with him.  Those plague years with open pits and quicklime melting everything away.  Now there’s something to see.  I would have liked that.  Wasn’t a bad sermon just then.  We’re here to celebrate the life of.  Didn’t look much like a party to me.  Let us pray for the repose of the soul of but does anybody really?  People looking at their hands.  Check the nails.  Just looking at them: well pared.  He who departed this life, as if he did it on his own.  Then leave us with another rock that says beloved father, son and no longer beloved ex-husband of.   Well, they always leave that part out.   An acre of lies.  Here lies an enormous bastard we all hated.  Good riddance to the crank who finally kicked the bucket.  Irritating bitch beloved by nobody special.  And people don’t visit anymore.  Dump them in and take off.  Well, as you are now so once were we.  Ever think of that?   Watch out or your dead will come back to the world.  I will appear to you after death.  You will see my ghost after death.  My ghost will haunt you after death.  There is another world after death.  And thank God for it.  Do I want to be brought back to life?  Hell no.  I do not like that other world.  I’ll stay here haunting my statue, thank you, I love it here.

Bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landword

The first children who saw the dark and slinky bulge approaching through the sea let themselves think it was an enemy ship. Then they saw it had no flags or masts and they thought it was a whale. But when it washed up on the beach, they removed the clumps of seaweed, the jellyfish tentacles, and the remains of fish and flotsam, and only then did they see that it was a drowned man.  11:53 am

I once was lost I’ll soon be found I’m blind I’ll never see.  They will find me at one.  Floating in on the tide.  Bobbing.  Spongy foul flesh salt whitened.  I am a bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine.  Minnows flash throught the slits of my button fly.  They like me this way.  I am becoming them.  Easy death soft as this hand of mist.  I held my breath.  It was a brief holding.  I knew.  I let go and the water came burning in horrible.  Panic. Oh God. Then I heard the music.  I’ve heard it before.  I recognized it.  Can’t describe.  And then the water voices.  I saw lights.  And people talking close to me, shades.  Then faces; the faces that come in the dark.  It’s ok now.  Let it go.  All done now.  Seadeath the mildest of all deaths.  My head is face up on the bottom.  Nose hole home to billions.  Mouth grinning in my green grave.  And the rest bobbing in with the tide.  There it is, see it?  Hook it quick.  Got all of it?  Pull.  We have him.  Easy now, don’t break him up.  Haul him over the gunwale.  No head.  Well, can’t have everything.

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.

Of his bones are coral made

Here, said she, is your card, the Drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)9:33 am

Somebody drowned in the Sound nine days ago.  Got dealt a bad hand.  The death card.  Wait, that’s a good card.  The happy squirrel card.  I overheard a businessman and a boatman talking about it.  They were guessing when the body will surface.  The water is about 45 degrees so the boatman said that means it will be 14 days, shave off a day or two for salt water.   The businessman knew that the man was overweight and went in alive.  That’s worth a couple of days easy.  He was drunk and beer means gas, so that will float him another day.  They think he will come up today during the high tide.  His fate.  Bloated.  Rolling, face to the clouds.  Here I am.