Having my way with Ulysses

I do not like that other world.

• The Lotus-Eaters

There would he lay till they would him descry, spancelled down upon a blossomy bed, at one foule stretch, amongst the daffydowndillies, the flowers of narcosis fourfettering his footlights, a halohedge of wild spuds hovering over him, epicures waltzing with gardenfillers, puritan shoots advancing to Aran chiefs. 10:10 am

Email from Martha.  Attachment: a yellow flower.  Aconite?  Not what I thought.  What is she saying?  No waiting?  I didn’t go too far then.  She’s angry with me.  Naughty boy.  Wants me to wrote back before her patience are exhausted.  And wants the real meaning of.  Afraid of words.  I can be brutal, why not?  Says will punish me, naughty boy.  Go further next time.  And give her Molly’s perfume, what perfume does your wife?

Careless air

• The Lotus-Eaters

(the gravitational pull perceived by certain fixed residents and the capture of uncertain comets chancedrifting through our system suggesting an authenticitatem of his aliquitudinis)10:03 am

I close my eyes.  Picture it.  I am floating on water.  Dead sea water, no effort.  I can float with a book if I want to and rest for hours.  Yes.  Easy.  Languid.  Peace.  A solid body immersed in a liquid.  There’s a law.  Who?  Archimedes maybe.  Archimedes floating in a bath tub.  Oh buoy, he said, and ran home naked to write it down.  Remember half listening to Vance in high school.  Science class late in the day, drowsy.  32 feet per second per second, falling bodies.  Just dropping in.  Accelerating per seconds through space.  Spacetime, a curved thing with geographical features.  Bumps, hollows, canyons, mountains.    Shaped by things in the way, some of them falling per second per second.  Energy too, shaping spacetime.  Not falling per second per second.  Gravity giving us that heavy feeling.  The Earth drags spacetime behind it and around.  Like the wake of a boat, losing satelites in the ripples.  Seattlites too.  Where are they?  More like when are they.  Earth’s wake moving slowly, languidly through the dead sea.  Ripples under my floating per second per second.  Floating.

Petals too tired to

• The Lotus-Eaters

Dream. Ona nonday I sleep. I dreamt of a somday. Of a wonday I shall wake. 10:00 am

Saw a kid smoking outside a bar today.  Wanted to tell him to stop but let him.  His life isn’t a bed of roses, waiting outside to bring dad home.  Slipped out to check email undisturbed.  Did it while looking at a tea shop window.  Nobody saw.  Ceylon tea, the far east.  Lovely there I imagine, floating on a lotus.  Drifting.  Those snaky lianas of the satyr man.  Vishnu dreaming just before he.  I wonder if it is like that, dolce far niente in the sun, sleeping half of the year away.  Lethargy.  Heat brings it.  Idleness and flowers fed by the air.  The azotes of the alchemists, nitrogen the food of the plant and the stone.  Azoth they called it, Azotos in Greek, the lifeless air.  Used it as code for the quintessence, the thing of all things.  And for the fire of the kundalini serpent coiling up the spine.  Feel that slow burn.  They disguised it as a dove, sometimes, and silver rain.  In darker moments the regicidal son stepped in front of it so only they knew what they were talking about.  Also a whip for flagellating the naughty.  Oh you bad boy.  A nitrogen whip for sensitive plants.

Thus Spake Zaraϑuštra

• Telemachus

Also Spuke Zerothruster.9:39 am

Who am I?  So many have told of me and have spoken with my mouth.  They say I invented magic and then poof! I made astrology appear.  With that I gained the foreknowledge of truth that diligent stargazing affords the patient.  But those who lived my life didn’t stop there, oh no, not when it was relentlessly clear that I had invented truth itself.  Believe me.  That’s when my magic, they tell me, turned to the black variety and I became fearsome.  Those closest loved me, especially for the words they said with my voice.  He that stealeth from the poor lendeth to the lord.  I became for some a prophet of God!  Imagine that.  Nietzsche even said that the priests, those poets of the Veda, were unfit to unfasten my sandals.  Of course I too was a Vedic Priest.  As I understand, in that capacity I wrote millions and millions of lines of verse.  To give myself enough time for such a task, I invented the week.  You’re welcome.  And born from necessity, I invented hieroglyphics; I used them to hide my invention of Alchemy.  Well to speak the truth that element of my curriculum vitae never quite stuck; Those who move Hermes Trismegistus’ mouth had that particular market cornered.  Better PR.  In my later career I denied to oblivion many deities so I could invent a singular monotheistic morality.  Then Nietzsche used my voice to deny morality in favor of truth, my prior invention.  Ay me.  Well, what could I do?  My life is an accomplishment of others.  Rather grand and famous others too, I might add.  I was the teacher of Pythagoras, they say.  Plato liked the words in my mouth so much that he passed them off as his own.  Excuse me, Socrates’ own.  I was even Yeats’ pen pal!  There’s a laugh to rival the one I had on the day I was born.  My head came out pulsating and there I was, infant tiny thing giggling away.  To my mother’s horror my head could repel the touch of a hand.  You can’t touch this.  Oh a unique birth to be sure.  And rather an unnatural death as well.  I’m rather proud of this one.  By the time of my doom people were calling me a living star.  Can you imagine?  Me, a star!  So how does a star die?  I was murdered by another star.  Was it really a meteor?  Maybe lightning?  You’re asking me?  You show me what’s real.  I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t there.

Timing

• Calypso

So, how idlers' wind turning pages on pages, as innocens with anaclete play popeye antipop, the leaves of the living in the boke of the deeds, annals of themselves timing the cycles of events grand and national, bring fassilwise to pass how.9:39 am

I don’t enjoy getting dressed with Molly.  I timed her this morning:  9:15 did Roberts pay you yet.  Five minutes.  9:20 what was Greta Conroy wearing.  Three minutes.  9:23 what was I thinking when I bought this comb.  One minute.  9:24 cabbage makes me gassy.  Fifteen minutes.  Made me nick myself shaving.

Steeeeeeeeeeeephen

• Telemachus

And note that they who will for exile say can for dog while them that won't leave ingle end says now for know.9:21 am

When you see the arrow coming it has a softer strike, and I can see one clearly aimed right between my eyes.  I can enfuture myself and hear him say it: give me the key it is mine, I paid the rent.  And what can I do?  I can’t afford this place on my salary.  I can’t afford any place on my salary.  I remember clearly that bitch who does payroll telling me, when her mistake lost me my funding, I should go live in a shelter.  Good thing I got a TA, or I’d be living under a staircase somewhere.  Well, with what I make that might as well be my next home.  No.  Instead I do what I do now; I go up and down other people’s staircases.  When I think of the scheming and the senselessness I put up with my mouth fills with a salty bitter taste.  I smell toast.  No.  I’ll keep my honor and keep to myself.  Exile.  Time is screaming toward me and I had better be prepared for the blow.