Having my way with Ulysses

Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the end of the world.

In the stories I have mentioned the ascetic and the king symbolize nothing and plentitude, zero and infinity. More extreme symbols of that contrast would be a god and a dead man, and their fusion would be more economical: a god that dies.

12:25 am

Are you a god too? You don’t say much do you. Wanna play dice? No? Do you know what i’m asking of you? Some other time, yes? Or maybe you don’t speak my language. How about this: 3.5 = A time, times and half a time. Yes? A little reaction. Now we’re sensing a little of the cosmic force. How about 77? 2+3+5+7+11+13+17+19? Oh did I offend you? Forgive my crudeness. I’ll rephrase that. My darling, I sort of believe strong in you. Would you join me in a little 4² + 5² + 6²? It’s up to you. You don’t have cold feet about the cosmos do you? Careful! Watch that infinite tightrope. It’s invisible, but that doesn’t mean it’s not sealed in here with us. That thing goes both ways, don’t you know, from zenith to vacuum, and we are damn close to vacuum now. Look at the clouds forming. My, it’s warm. It’s getting so hot in here; it must be the heat. We may be but a pair of squares, but seeings that we are all in a cauldron and everything, how about a 69 before we ? We can get all turned around and place our bets if we are coming or going.  Journey up looks the same as the journey down and the start and the end is the same point. Shall we put out heads between our knees and look around? Come on, before we evaporate to nothingness, let’s find out more about each other than we have forgotten.

You’ll have to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Amighty God.

It was all very well to say 'Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. 'No, I'll look first,' she said, 'and see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.11:07 pm

Oooooh I feel a fight coming on. I feel us a fight a coming on.  Lord there’s a something a coming on. You hear me jesus? Your hear me Jesus? Jesus Lord Christ anointed son of the fullness of God our Messiah anointed in the blood of the lamb I feel it a coming. It’s a coming. Call down Elijah for us O Jesus, bring us the holy ghost into our bodies there’s a gonna be a fight. You coming long Jesus? I see Brother Dick, I see Brother Davy and all you beautiful brothers and sisters in this here tabernacle.  You sir, the guy in black.  Have you sinned against the light Brother Black?  Are you ready to declare your sins and be washed in the bloo of the lamb, Brother Black? The day is at hand when he shall come to judge the word by fire.  Yes Jesus.  He will come to judge us that the scriptures might be fulfilled. Elijah is coming. Shout salvation in Jesus Christ! Come on brothers and sisters and follow my pitiful endeverance to explain to you good sinners that we are all of us living in the last day. All that’s done is all for the kingdom of God. Feel it now brothers and sisters. Feel the outpouring of the Holy Ghost. You will be made whole by the power of Jesus. Throwaway your sins and blaze on to Edenville for Elijah is coming! Come on now. Come on all you harddrinking gutpuking bloodspilling gasguzzling facebooking tweettwittering existences. Bring your afflictions for He’s got a cough mixture for you in His back pocket and we shall all drink the blood of the lamb!

Too poetical that about the sad. Music did that.

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak. I've read, that things inanimate have mov'd, And, as with living Souls, have been inform'd, By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound. What then am I? Am I more senseless grown Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe! 'Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs. Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night The silent Tomb receiv'd the good Old King; He and his Sorrows now are safely lodg'd Within its cold, but hospitable Bosom. Why am not I at Peace?

 

4:25 pm

Stretto

Dear sir Mady,

Got your note cute as a rat and flower where the hell did I put it some pocket or other it is utterly impossible to write today.  Bore this, my patience are exhausted.  I’m just reflecting on you know what I mean.  Don’t make half so free.  Accept my poor little present attached ’till we are better acquainted.  Might be what you like.  Elijah is coming really and truly.  Write me a long answer.  Do you despise me?  Have you the horn?  I’m so excited why do you call me naughty?  You naughty too?  O dirty Mairy lost the string of her drawers.  Bye for today.  Yes, yes, I will tell you what perfume.  Time makes the tune.  I want you to keep it up, call me that other world.  You must believe it is true.  I swear to Saint Cecilia, best references, it will excite me.  You know how.

In haste,
Henry what is he playing now.

ps.  Who will you pun punish me.  Whack.  Tell me I want to know, of course if I didn’t I wouldn’t ask, but why is the minor sad?  Feel lost.

pps.  la la la re I feel so sad today so lonely.

Messrs. Callan Coleman and Co., limited.

Coactus Volui

And they are met, face a facing. They are set, force to force. Well.  Here’s something.  Alexander Dowie, coming with Elijah to save my soul.  God’s curse on you, bitch’s bastard.  None are so blind as those who claim to see.  Dowie.  Are you a god or a doggone clod?  I don’t need you to sense the cosmic force for me.   I don’t have cold feet about the cosmos.  Come and get me!  Go ahead and try, I shun the light; lets see what you can make of that!  Come on Cosmos, use that force on me! Come get me God damn it.  Are you up for it?  Do you have cold feet?  I’m willing, now force me!

Seems a long way off.

The strain on the mind is formidable; the element of time drops out of one's consciousness altogether: the building hand gropes for a pawn in the box, holds it, while the mind still ponders the need for a foil or a stopgap, and when the fist opens, a whole hour, perhaps, has gone by, has burned to ashes in the incandescent cerebration of the schemer. The chessboard before him is a magnetic field, a system of stresses and abysses, a starry firmament.

No-one is anything.  I am a ghost.  Well, I haven’t died yet, no need to look at me as if my mind is off in some happy hunting ground somewhere.  I mean I have moved to an atemporal state without ever having died.  This is not resurrection, not metempsychosis.  I have translated.  You’ve done this too, occasionally.  You’ve lost track of time, before, yes?  That can happen when your world speeds up, when so much is happening that the whirlwind around you speeds time forward until you say you were so busy, had so much fun, were so distracted with it all, there was so much, so much, that time took flight.  This is not translation.  Translation comes from a deliberate slowness.  A stretching of the nothingness between full moments.  A pulling apart of discreet events until you inhabit the eventlessness between.  Time cannot reach you there.  Try it again, you’ve done it before.  You might make it happen for short spaces of time, short times of space with practice.  Like a muscle, the more you use it, the more supple, the more pliant.  Begin by cultivating your vision.  Practice seeing without seeing:  use your unseeing eye.  It helps to develop an idée fixe.  Find something with symbolic power.  For me it is chess.  Ah chess.  It contains the entire universe.  All of being and non-being, ever facet of the soul and the spaces between the facets beautifully composed onto 64 white and black squares.  I found chess in America.  I went after an American war to purchase land cheap, thinking I would grow cotton.  Instead I grew peaches.  Peach trees need little care.  Plant them, they blossom, then they grow.  Then peaches.  All they ask is we permit their becoming by staying clear of their being.  Then one harvest and endless solitude.  While my trees grew in Alabama I went to Atlanta and played chess.  The beauty, the harmony, of Zarathustra’s great invention!  In chess our adversaries move according to our moves, and we to them.  We form a helix coiling in a beautiful deadly dance, a rhythm of infinite possibilities.  64 squares, 8 X 8, infinity times infinity.  8 is the number of judgement.  And 64, 6+4=10, the perfect number.  The first triangular number to have a center, and the only one whose center is half of its total.  Balance.  GOD MEND THINE EVERY FLAW!  A onelegged sailor with an idée fixe crutched angrily, translating himself from the sidewalk into a jagged alley.  CONFIRM THY SOUL IN SELF CONTROL!  Symmetry.  The number of the soul.  10 represents the wheel of destiny and of retribution.  This is the number that governs returns, reincarnation, transmigration, metempsychosis, and most especially translation.  Judgement in delicious tango with destiny.  Ponder it, hang your gaze over a chessboard, and you can translate into a ghostbright existence where nothing is wanting, nothing is required, and the only fear is the hell of dreaded stalemate.  And the joy!  The joy of creation!  Each game a new universe.  Each chess problem (oh the composition of chess problems!) a microcosm of temporal harmony.  Each piece on the board a representative of stillness and force.  I left America, and the glorious atemporality I found there, to become a politician in support of my younger brother.  I was his pawn in a greater cause.  We are all pawns in a greater cause.  Just what is the cause, well that is not the pawn’s business.  Pawn’s have to earn their power, to kill, to rule as Queen; that is the glory of being a pawn.  Most remain powerless.  We serve our purpose quietly, in a waking sleep, then translate to the side to await our next use.  The halls of government contain chess rooms and in my political service to my brother I played chess.  I spoke on record 13 times in five years.  My brother hated and feared the number 13 although I found it immensely satisfying to open my mouth and make 13 utterances, speak questions I didn’t care to have answered, and then stop altogether.  I played chess.  I play chess.  I thought to master it and instead learned that my salvation, my translation to the infinite, comes when chess masters me.  Elijah is coming!  Elijah, a crumpled throwaway, sails closer to the three masters, bound to its translation.

Now in a kind of retrospective arrangement.

Caution! Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.Ow at ush a good gim, ah I ooked gook rinkig ig oo.  Resh uh parg ah en shome ah awayg agept uhgever hey offer: appearansh an pawmp weshponshivish ish uh key oo gook shawesh.  Nice to spend a little time with John Henry Menton in the pub just now.  Haw awking pawicish. Amewica, give ush your poor, your ire, your huhwew mashesh, jush ot roo our shoushern bowerer ash we’ew buiwing a waugh.  Elijah is coming to save us all!  Aw awe equaw hewe bu immigwantsh fwom shome cowtwiesh awe mow equaw tham oshersh.  Caw kew a shawe.  Denis Breen, impatient, gives up waiting for John Henry Menton to emerge from his inner office and, with his wife following close, carries dangerous stacks of papers and books toward the offices of Collis and Ward.  Angewoush woute oo go dowe.  Covershatiow ca gew ow of cogtrow an hen you oosh a shawe.  Am goo giw at wash.  Oooks goo.  Shame oshe cawsh mishe sheeing ush.  Uh pweshieng!  Shame.

Random crumbs

Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after-effects of influenza than anything else. It is as though all one's blood had been pumped out and luke-warm water substituted. Complete inertia is my chief memory of hunger.Burned myself.  Not bad though, I won’t say anything.  I don’t want to add to their troubles.  That’s if I could.  All they feel all they see all they are is hungry.  There’s nothing else.  Hunger is eating us and we are becoming hunger.  Katey and Boody will be here any second and they’ll want to eat.  It’s a mistake to want food when you are hungry.  Better not to think of it and feel blessed when it comes.  Thank God for Sister Mary Patrick.  Viperous temptations.  And fasting.  Don’t eat of the fruit.  Don’t eat of anything.  Nothing into the mouth.  We can feel human without curtains, but lack of food reduces us to rag dolls.  Barang!  Limp and weak.  It took all I had to walk to Sister Mary Peter.  If I could take a vow of poverty too, I’d be better off.  We all would be, I could save us eventually, but I worry about the start of it.  Are you saved?  Elijah is coming! All are washed in the blood of the lamb. The vow of chastity I’ve already taken.  I am mother and wife with no husband.  I sent Dilly to find father before he drinks everything we have.  She has her shoulders in her ears and Stephen in her eyes.  Wants to see Paris and write poetry.  She’s hungry for it: another mistake.  It breaks her heart when we sell the books, but McGuinness’s wouldn’t give anything for them today.  Try again somewhere else and stave off feeling our salvation sailing away.

Every Friday eats a Thursday

I asked a man what the Law was. He answered that it was the guarantee of the exercise of possibility. That man was named Galli Mathias. I ate him.1:06 pm

Fed gulls today, like that time out with Milly.  Food tastes like what it eats.  Feed pigs lots of stout and they come out tasting of it.  Robinson Crusoe ate swan meat, what do swans eat?  What would I taste like?  Well, no accounting for it.  And no need to know what’s in it, just eat it.  Every morsel.   I tried to fool the gulls with the throwaway given me.  Look out below, Elijah is coming!  What goes up must come down, at 32 feet per second per second bombs away!  That’s the law.  Did he get lifted up in a tornado?  He left his clothes behind so he’ll be coming back down naked.  If I threw myself down?  Likely to swallow lots of water like Reuben J.’s son.  Elijah will be hungry after his splashdown but plenty are well prepared to feed him.  Birds wouldn’t touch the paper I threw away for them.  Not a bit of it.  They know what’s good for them.  Spread foot and mouth disease though.  Mouth and foot, foot and mouth.  Mouth south.  That’s how writers write.  The flow of language.  The stream of it.  Write it and send it into the stream of life, doomed like Hamlet’s father to walk the earth.