Tag: Finnegans Wake

Well of all the

February 23rd • Hades

Yes, the viability of vicinals if invisible is invincible. 11:50 am

McIntosh in the Macintosh. I saw him. But I didn’t hear him leave. Where did he disappear to? Not a sign. I don’t know who he is. Is that his name? Has anybody seen? Good lord, what became of him? Suppose he was invisible? If we were all suddenly somebody else. I could be the invisible man, could go anywhere. I could walk the earth until I find a rent in its flesh. And then. Then. What if we are an imitation of an invisible universe? Is time reversible in that then? What if the unseen can be seen? Are they here with me now? Now all the time? Suppose I were to reach and touch there, just there. Can I feel them? Can I hear them? If I were invisible would I be inaudible too? Would I be able to hear inaudible sound? Wait. What was that? And is there already an invisible me in the invisible world? Can I hear them speak to me now? Shhh. Listen. Music I think. Wait. Breathing. Is that you? I think that is you. Is that you? Hlo?

Every Friday buries a Thursday

February 22nd • Hades

11:45 am

_{Shhhh. Whisper. Keep your voice down. Don’t let them hear us. Here, lend an ear. See them? The living? They are dying but they don’t seem to know it themselves. Shhhh. Not long now. Look at them burying each other, like ants}_{but with coffins. What a waste of wood. Ought to just build one and give it a sliding panel. Thank you come again. Next. Shhhh. Whisper when you laugh or they’ll hear you. How many are they? 12, no, 13. Nice round number. Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the macintosh? No need to wonder. We’ll know soon enough. Keep an ear to the ground. We’ll remember him when he gets here. We will, anyway. None of the living remember each other for long. Hope you are well, see you in hell. Out of sight out of mind. Shhhh. One of them heard us whispering around them. Pretend to be air blowing in a whisper. Shhhhhh. Whisper. They just don’t look natural, do they? Sure they are alive? Maybe we can smash pillows into their faces, see if they breathe. Pierce a heart or something. Just to be sure. Shhhh. Who wears purple to a funeral? Shhhh. Illdyed. Quiet. Wind. Shhhhh. Be the wind. Wonder when the new guy will show up. It’s nearly closing time.}

Which end is his head?

February 17th • Hades

And they poured em behoiled on the fire. Scaald! 11:30 am

I asked if Paddy was insured and he was, but his policy was heavily mortgaged. Martin Cunningham is getting up a collection for the boy, Ned Lambert trying to do something too. Great blow to his wife. She has the laugh now. No more of his bullshit, his parenting, his secrets, his drugs, his crack whores, his attacks on her peace, her mind, her normalcy, her justice, her safety, her money, her forward, her backward. She got burned. She got so burned. It was a damn bad hand she got dealt and what’s worse, in her universe time cleaves here. Everything will be about before it happened and after it all went down. And her boy. God only knows what. There’s no. I just. Oh god that sweet boy. Not yet. I can’t say it yet. But she might marry again. Me? No. Him? And Molly marry again? No. Him? Yet who knows. And then. And then. Somebody has to go first, underground. Lie no more in her warm bed. Here’s a cold one for you. I hope you’ll soon follow. Well, he is more dead for her than for me. Condole with her. Your terrible loss. Nobody to haggle with over the boy. My day, your day, you are late, he needs this, drop him off when. And then ineffably worse, what will this do? Oh that sweet boy. What does he understand? How much of this is he taking on? When we look at this kid down the road, what will be naked for all to see and then incomprehensible, what will he show only when he trusts, when he is most naked? He was there with his father dead. Three days alone. Both unconscious. Then wake up Daddy. Wake up. Nothing. Nothing for three days. But not nothing. I can’t. For three days bodies don’t do nothing, they do plenty. And the boy too little to know what to do. Please wake up Daddy. Here, I’ll open your eyes for you. Daddy? Did Paddy know? Did he lighten at the last moment? Did he recognize all he might have done? Could he see? And all for a shadow of nothing. Stop.

Their blood is in me, their lusts my waves

February 16th • Proteus

1132 A.D. Men like to ants or emmets wondern upon a groot hwide Whallfisk which lay in a Runnel. Blubby wares upat Ublaniurn. 11:26 am

Hwæt, in geardagum Malachi; wæs breme — blæd wide sprang — him on bearme læg sweora-beah gyldenne; bescyrað scyldnga thæt Hring-Dene, cyninga cynost; ðæt wæs god cyning! God, monegum mægÞum, wuldres Wealdend, forð onsendan ofer yðe ðyrelhides. Se micla hwæl biþ unwillum oft geméted frécne and ferðgrim fareðlácendum. Fisc flódu áhóf on fergenberig; warþ gásríc grorn þǽr hé on greút giswom. Soregung Ic acwiðe to nænige: nan to me.

The tangle of wined breaths

February 13th • Proteus

Ah, he's very thoughtful and sympatrico that way is Brother Intelligentius, when he's not absintheminded, with his Paris addresse! He is, really. 11:13 am

Pimander is coming and how sweetly delicious he will be. I see you, you man shepherd, I have my eye on you. We will be yokefellows in arms. We shall go to Paris and from the bed of your lover’s wife we will make a meal of it, our mouths yellowed with the pus and the taste of acetic acid so sweet and I shall thrust my fang between your lips. Oh Pimander, I see a Vision limitless, all things turned into Light, sweet, joyous Light. Transport me, appear in visions with me, I see you. And you will show me the darkness coiling in my sinuous folds and the darkness will change into moist nature ineffable. Drink and belch smoke and wail with the voice of fire. Hang with me in the air, rise up and hang on the fire and mingle together. Drink me. I will wash you lacivious Pimander and bathe you in my most private green liquids. I will rub your malefemale nakedness in the bath and like horseleeches oh to suck to suck the very blood to suck.

He tapped his chest sadly

February 12th • Hades

He had flickered up and flinnered down into a drug and drunkery addict, growing megalomane of a loose past. 11:13 am

Yeah well, forgive me for saying. Not to speak ill of, you know. You understand I’m sure. But come on. It was no heart attack and why tiptoe around it. Ok, yes. Funeral and all. Must not upset. Still. It was an o.d. and we all know it. Where do you think his money went? Check his arm. Accidental, possibly. And you may be shocked but at least he didn’t suffer. A moment and it is done. Like dying in his sleep. The best death. But enough talk of bad hearts and don’t look at me like that. Let’s call a plumb a plumb.

And and and and tell us,

February 10th • Proteus

And into the river that had been a stream (for a thousand of tears had gone eon her and come on her and she was stout and struck on dancing and her muddied name was Missisliffi) there fell a tear, a singult tear, the loveliest of all tears (I mean for those crylove fables fans who are 'keen' on the pretty-pretty commonface sort of thing you meet by hopeharrods) for it was a leaptear. 11:06 am

Oh weeping God, the things I married into. Drunken accountant and his brother. Stephen the artist visiting them, couldn’t he fly a bit higher than that? Nuncle Richie and Crissie, papa’s little bedpal, his lump of love. And how does that visit go? I’ll tell you, by Christ, same every time. Stephen rings the bell and that cross-eyed Walter with his sir yes sir no sir sir checks for bill collectors, repo depot, summons servers then lets Stephen in to sit in the only chair. Offer up the back ache pills, that’s all there is. And then what? Drunk in the morning Ritchie holding forth in his house of decay. And and and and how is Uncle Si? Stephen says his uncle is a Judge, his uncle is a general. You’re awfully holy Stephen, aren’t you. But you will never be a saint. You prayed to the Blessed Virgin to spare you from drink and to the Devil to spare women from clothes. You’d sell your soul for that, shouting Naked Women! Naked Women! from the top of a city bus. Cry it to the rain kid. And what about that. What about what? You’d read two pages each of seven books every night then bow to yourself in the mirror. Stars in your eyes. Applause! You think no one saw. House not that big kid. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! And where are those books you were going to write with letters for titles? Have your read his P? Yes but I prefer U! FW is wonderful but don’t read SU. You were going to write on everything that can be known and the critics would say when one reads the words of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once won. And once one has won the hearts of the one who reads the one that one has won, then one may write one more one like that one but not like the other one, you know the one. Jesus wept, and no wonder by Christ.

Thy will be done

February 9th • Hades

Dogs' vespers are anending. 11:03 am

We passed the pet shelter on the way to the funeral. Poor Athos! Didn’t have much will to live after Papa went. Be good to Athos. And we were. Obey them in their graves. Quiet brute. Old men’s dogs usually are.

Thanking her stars she was passed over

February 8th • Hades

In the ignorance that implies impression that knits knowledge that finds the nameform that whets the wits that convey contacts that sweeten sensation that drives desire that adheres to attachment that dogs death that bitches birth that entails the ensuance of existentiality. 11:00 am

We should all thank our stars, death is a horrible thing. Dying, there are good ways to go. But death? No connection, no contact with those who are now. In it, you see. Make room, I’ll ride with you. Here. I’ll get that door. Again. Got it that time. Now what was I saying? What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the woman watching us out her window, grateful to the stars for the mark on her door. So death. No bridging from what will be to what is. Will be always turns to is, and I’ll tell you what the meaning of is is. Look around you. Feel it quickly. Motion, stillness. Stillness, motion. It’s a protean thing. Smell, breathe in. Is that smell you? Yes, and catch that? Listen. You heard a click. Finger on plastic. Tap. Click. All that is part of is. And that’s all there is for the likes of you and me. And that woman there watching us out. Glad to see us go we give them such trouble coming. And once we leave the is? We’re dead, we won’t even know who will undress us and how. Wash us. What do they wash? Cut a new omphalos and pour the fluids in and out. Too much? Fine. Cut our fingernails and hair? Okay I’ll stop. Sheesh. Keeps growing after we die, I wonder how much? Waiting. Sitting on something. That soap in my pocket. Will wait. Move it later. Blinds down. Keep the house dark, hushed. Whispering. There’s a young guy in black. Have seen that hat before. Hey Dedalus, there’s somebody you know. It’s your kid. By himself. Nosy. Full of his son. Crissie is how old? Richie Goulding that Sunday morning. Had two hats on his head dancing around in the street. Shitfaced drunk. Bad back. No insurance, lots of pain meds. If Rudy had lived. He’d have me in his eyes, hold our hands. Somebody to pass things on to. Teach him something from me. Was an accident, really. Happened by chance. Molly at the window watching two dogs going at it. She was dying for it. How life begins. Got big. I could have helped him. Sent him to college. Milly, same thing as Molly watered down. Fifteen now. D Papli, Thrs a yg Im crushin on. Grown up now too. There we go. Nice they rented limos, crushed in here though. What is that on the seat, crumbs? Unless I’m mistaken, that’s not food crumbs. Well, that’s natural.

Toothless terrors

February 7th • Nestor

10:56 am

Deasy sends me today to what is left of the print news with his letter on foot and mouth disease. He has no chance but I did not say no. He sees I was not born to be a teacher. I said I am a learner, rather. But what is it to be born to something? I was born, yes, but I will die. I was born to that. And I don’t mind. I don’t. I look forward to it. Dying, no. That can only be horrible. But death. Yes. I will take death. Think of the languid peace of it. The freedom from the worlds and worlds of choices I will never have to make or not make. Do or not do. To be and not to be, that’s what you get every time. No. I’ll take death as my fate. I was born to it.