Having my way with Ulysses

What caused him consolation in his sitting posture?

You only dwell within yourself, and only you know you; self-knowing, self-known, you love and smile upon yourself!

2:41 am

I’d rather die than sleep with you Echo, if you really want the truth. It’s not going to happen so please, come on, enough already.

But. Narcissus, you can’t hold out forever. I know what you’re doing. You have this image of yourself you are so in love with, but that’s not really you. Saying all the time you won’t have sex you won’t have sex, do you think that makes you so much more pure than everybody else? You have youth and you have beauty. And you’re a rock star. I’m just saying give it up already. You owe it if not to me, to yourself. You are missing out and here I am. Right here. Telling you and telling you. I could disappear tomorrow you know, and then who will you have to love you? I mean more than I love you.

I have myself. I have my integrity and I know my worth, and I am more valuable to me than I am to anybody else.

You are so transparent. You can love yourself all you want Narcissus, but yourself won’t love you back. God it’s like I’m empty air here, can’t you hear me? I’m telling you!

I’ve learned something, Echo, I can see myself as others see me. But more importantly I see my self as I see myself. I look into my own eyes looking into mine and there is nothing between us. No fears, no doubts. Nothing. The everythingness of nothing. Together we feel very simply, but strongly, the purity of a oneness made from the two of us. We feel it like radiance, projecting outwardly from our center in concentric circles. It feels like waves, Echo. When we connect together within that moment, we are the meaning and even the source of the two in the one and the one in the two. And we feel together, I and I, I feel that this truth has been and always will be true since time immemorial and forever more. Desde siempre y para siempre.

You’re killing me! Narcissus, I love you like you’ve never seen before. I beg you to listen to me.

I can’t even look at you.

Their two or four eyes conversing.

Others asked such questions as "Why should we care what happens after we are dead" or "If this Rebellion is to happen anyway, what difference does it make whether we work for it or not?"

1:33 am

Scene: [A rabbi and a priest walk into a bar. The rabbi says:]

Rabbi: Where is everybody, are we the first ones here?

Priest: Must be. Good, I wanted to talk with you alone. You and I need to take control of this thing before it bloats to an inmanagable size.

Rabbi: Yes. Our revolution must come on the due instalments plan, if we expect to pull this thing off at all.

Priest: [Turning away from the others who probably and speaks nearer to, so as the others in case they.]  Shush for Christ sake.

The Rabbi: Am I not right?

The Priest: Yes, but this place is all eyes. I don’t want to indulge in any, orthodox as you are.

Rabbi: Right. Of course. Listen. We want to homogenize all faiths yes, but some faiths are, you understand. I mean, all faiths are equal.

Priest: But some faiths are more equal than others.

Rabbi: Indeed. So your plan to raise money, I don’t see it.  How do your people do it? It seems you raise your money on false pretenses, fork it over and you’ll go to heaven. What heaven? Show me heaven.

Priest: The abstract future reward is always more powerful than immediate gain or punishment. Don’t you know that yourself? Heaven, its glories, its boundless bountiful plenitude, the sheer everythingness of the whole concept can take any size, it can stretch to any or no limit, it can fill every space, it can

Rabbi:  Save it for your congregation, father, you can be all their daddies but not mine. Try selling buy now receive later to people who concern themselves with life here and now. I walk in with future reward and say pay money for it, I might as well sell crosses. Mine won’t be the only ones, prepare yourself, and what about the Muslims?

Priest: That’s where self sacrifice for eternal reward will pay off.

Rabbi: Yes, but their temporality, so unpredictable. So branching and forking.  Touch it and it folds up on itself, how do we manage that? Call something a crusade and they feel it like it happened yesterday. And so it did happen yesterday. Bring up any event of any kind and bam, it’s now. We’re in it now. We’ll need a work around.  I’m assuming we’ll want everyone to go linear?

Priest: Makes sense to me. The Hindus are persuadable, but the Buddhists, the Taoists especially.  They’ll make trouble, and that’s not trouble we want.

Rabbi: No.

Priest: No.  To keep linear time we’ll have to speak of other things. Distract them with other issues. Look, we’ll have to say: it’s hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is. We pose to them that we all resent violence or intolerance.

Rabbi: Yes. It never reaches anything; It never stops anything.

Priest: Never. It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular.  No. We must be practical.  We must imbue ourselves with the proper spirit.  It will be the only way to create our New Bloomusalem.  By the way, do you like the symbol I came up with?

Rabbi: It’s a little busy. The Hindus might like it. It’s a good job you didn’t add a bleeding saint to it, or we’d never convince the Muslims to get on board.

Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress.

It seems that you can see, if I hear rightly, beforehand that which time brings with it, but in the present you have another view. "We see, like those who have bad vision, those things," he said, "which are far remote; the Highest Lord shines on us just so much. When they draw near, or are, all our intellect is in vain; if no one brings it to us, we would know nothing of your human state."12:46 am

Let me see your hand. Come on then, hand it over. You worried I’ll see something you don’t want me to know? Oh sweetheart, we all wear our interiors on our surfaces. Honey it’s the same damn thing. Just look at what you show with your eyes.  I see your fate there. You’ll meet with a, well, I’d better not say.  Would do more harm than good perhaps.  But I see it in your eye; I see it in the corner of your eye.  Go look in the mirror honey, you’ll see it too. Don’t you want to? Go look.  Look at your eyes like you are seeing somebody else.  Stare hard.  Look until all you see is eyes and the rest slips away. You’ll see what you are.  You’ll see what I see, baby, you worried? You should be. Now go.

This is the appearance is on me.

 To heap shame on my own head is all the satisfaction I have left to offer to offended heaven. My story has drawn down these judgments: Let my confession atone—but, ah! what can atone for usurpation and a murdered child? a child murdered in a consecrated place? List, sirs, and may this bloody record be a warning to future tyrants!10:37 pm

I’m soft.  I’ve gone soft. Look, can you see me? It is so hard to see myself as others see me. Look closer, look at my head. Below I’m a mess, but my eyes are still here, ayin tachat ayin.  Oh I am punished. This must be hell. Now I know what hell is. Yes I expected some obliteration, but must I pay such a high price for it?  Is it such a crime resurrection?  Is translation so horrible?  So loathsome? It’s not like I murdered a child or something; I should think the living would have some fun with it. Surprise, I’m back! There’s so much potential, and for the benefit of all, properly executed.  Except it’s hard to see me. That’s a problem. And I understand I smell like something murdered, but I’ve never smelt it myself. I’m here, though, you can see me. I’m like looking at some sort of dark animal at night. Or at a spider: all head, web body.  It’s not so bad.  My hell is in this life but it’s not so bad.  And I don’t have it in me to cause my own re-death so here we are. I’ll have to make do. Besides Lizzie will have my head if I dare show my face amongst the dead. Think of the vendetta. Well, history is to blame for that, I refuse to feel guilty.  Or what’s that other world?  She’ll make dope her hope, but perhaps I’m being rather a sentimentalist there.  But really, I’ve incurred too immense a debtorship for my enjoyment.  Well, a thing done is a thing done.  I’ll camp out here. Distractions. Burn something. It is rather nice to be back in some of my old haunts. Eternity is fine but I admit feeling a bit nostalgic for the present.

Where are our missing twenty millions of Irish should be here today instead of four, our lost tribes?

(Ah, crabeyes, I have you, showing off to the world with that gape in your stocking!) Wold Forrester Farley who, in deesperation of deispiration at the diasporation of his diesparation, was found of the round of the sound of the lound of the.5:42 pm

Where?  Right here.  What are you, blind to the world?  Open your eyes.  Look me square in the eye and I’ll tell you we are here.  We are right here.  All over the place.  But do we know it?  No.  Not really.  No.  We are dilluting.  Watering down.  Merging, really, with others.  Come St. Patrick’s day we’re back in an eye blink.  Kiss me I’m Irish and here’s mud in your eye!  Then the next day, in the twinkling of an eye, memory fails before it can remember.  We have some Irish in us, but we don’t remember what that means.  Some of us think we have no heritage at all, the blind leading the blind to the world.  No-one so blind as those that will not see.  Now get the hell out of my sight.

Blimey it makes me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it does.

Then they all got blind dhrunk - which complated their bliss, And we keep up the practice from that day to this.Seventeen o’clock

On the first day of June it was some people say,
That old Bloom got a check for some work it was pay.
He bought for dear Molly garters violet and fair
But that fat heap he married hrumphed “why just one pair?!”
Well now Bloom he does try, and mistakes will be made,
But do we blame poor old Poldy for plans poorly laid?
My dear Mrs. Marion, ’tis only too true
Your man is in peril, mocked, scorned, and he’s blue!
 
 
You don’t grasp my point, what I’m meaning is thus:
While Molly’s post-coital, Bloom’s making a fuss.
He’s stirring up trouble, poking giants in eyes
Will it end well for Poldy? There’ll be no surprise.
While he longs for his Molly (though soon visits another)
Foes want to harm him, beat, hang, maim, and smother!
They’ll string him from tree limbs! They’ll maul him I swear!
They’ll brain him with biscuit tins flying through air!
 
 
Now please don’t be fightin’ for this or for thine,
Don’t be so dividin’, come on let’s combine!
Molly, he gave you lone garters ’tis true,
But he brought you face lotion and four handkerchiefs too
He’ll bring you more lotion if he remembers besides
But poor Poldy’s hit bottom and downward he slides.
Treat him gently, with kindness, bring him breakfast and treats.
And for Christ’s sake, Madam Molly, at least wash the sheets!
 

We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.

God (I've begun to think) implants a promise in all that insubstantial architecture that makes light out of the impervious surface of glass, and makes the shadow out of dreams. God has created nights well-populated with dreams, crowded with mirror images, so that man may feel that he is nothing more than vain reflection. That's what frightens us. 2:50 pm

Look in the mirror.  See that person there?  You think that is just one person looking back?  Look into those eyes looking into your eyes.  Stare hard.  Wait for the melting away of edges, loss of borders, wait for all to fade but eyes then BAM! that’s you.  That’s who you are.  And that feeling?  Felt it, did you?  You found another you in there.  A you you don’t often see.  More than one.  Multiple, really, you are simultaneously you and you and also you sharing one body that is itself an illusion of singularity.  You co-exist with yourself, and without full integration.  I don’t mean public and private parts of yourself.  Look in the mirror again.  Or look into other eyes; use them as mirrors.  Every one you see (I say one, but they are all multiplicities too) reflects back a version of yourself.  All those strangers are familiar parts of yourself.  And look at your beloved.  Go ahead, look into those eyes until all else is gone.  See that?  That’s you, looking back.  You are surrounded by yourself, isolated into a temporality of your own experience.  And who are you?  Go ahead tell me.  Tell us all.  We’ll only hear versions of you which reflect versions of ourselves.  What does this mean?  Well, you tell me.  It is the self alone who can make meaning, and only for the self.  And what might be insensible to me might be meaningful to you.  Who are you?  You are me.  Who am I?  I am you.  Who am I?  I am God. Who are you?  Well.  Well, well.  You go look in your mirror honey.

I can see it in your eye. I can see it in the corner of your eye.

12:33 pm

Write for me, you lazy idle little schemer.  Write something with balls.  Put us all into it and damn its soul.  Write it all out and damn it, we won’t but admire you for it.  Write something for me, something to bite me.  Slice us up with it.  Can you make us nervous?  You can do it.  I can see it in you, lazy idle loafer, I see it in your face.  Blow a gale through us, use all the talents, literature, the press, the law, the classics.  Advertise it and make it sing.  Give it a fresh of breath air.  Leave the gate open and let us in, let us all inside you.  We will be bold and unheeding and we will stare.  We want you.  It will be the smartest piece of inspiration of genius.  Give it to us on a hot plate.  Bulldoze us with it.  you are an idler of course, a born idler, a lazy idle little schemer.  I see schemer in your face.  But I want you to write something with bite, with balls.  I want you to make us like the immortals, and may you never die till we shoot you.  And I want you to tell anybody who calls to go to hell.  Lazy eyed schemer.

Backward eye

I see nothing8:42 am

Email from Milly and she sent a text to Molly.  I took her her phone just now when a text came through and there was another on the screen.  She stuck the phone under her pillow when I handed it to her, but I still saw through halfclosed eyes.