Having my way with Ulysses

Bellchime and handtouch and footstep and lonechill.

For abundance, even of things that are good, makes people esteem them less, and scarcity, even of bad things, lends a certain value.

2:33 am

Feel the reverb in your body
Where the sound of the bell just was:
Time dying, and
An infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later,
Time newborn.
Time dying, time birthing.
Simultaneous double vibrations and double reverberations
Bell, body, dead, newborn,
Patterning everything and nothing.

Feel the reverb on my lip
Where the touch of your thumb just was:
Love dying, and
An infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later,
Love newborn.
Love dying, love birthing.
Simultaneous double vibrations and double reverberations
Thumb, lip, dead, newborn,
Patterning everything and nothing.

Feel the reverb in the earth
Where the step of my foot just was:
Fear dying, and
An infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later,
Fear newborn.
Fear dying, fear birthing.
Simultaneous double vibrations and double reverberations;
Foot, fear, dead, newborn,
Patterning everything and nothing.

Feel the reverb in the air,
Where the chill of your breath just was:
Will dying, and
An infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later,
Will newborn.
Will dying, will birthing.
Simultaneous double vibrations and double reverberations;
Breath, will, dead, newborn,
Patterning everything and nothing.

For the solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life.

These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope, they do not point on me. 2:07 am

Now, the best answer to any problem, not to be too woo woo about it, is to let the universe decide, or rather, leave it up to the universe to tell you the best path.  The choice is yours, you have free will as far as I can see. You do. You have lots of it. But it can help, or at least it can’t possible hurt to gain a little advice from a power greater than ourselves.  So come on, do you have cold feet about the cosmos or are you with me?  Now. Hold the hand mirror in the proper position and imagine any problem you might be having.  A matter of the heart maybe, or a financial problem.  Perhaps another person is sleeping with your beloved. Or maybe you can’t decide how much cream to put into your cocoa.  It can be anything, just hold your question in your mind with clear intent and allow me to practice sortes Shakespearianae on your behalf.  I am using a leatherbound Shakespeare complete, 1926, kept carefully upright and once owned by Guare Swofr Jr. from what I can make out of his or her appallingly illegible signature.  Ready? We ask the blessed universal oneness to grant us clarity and insight and guide our hand to the correct place for enlightenment. The answer to your problem is:

Shame and confusion! all is on the rout; Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds where it should guard.

That’s from the second part of King Henry VI, act 5, scene 2, spoken by Young Clifford.  Tell you anything?  Tells me you should maybe avoid the cocoa and stick with water.  And somebody is definitely sleeping with your beloved. Oh dear. You look terrible.  Do over! Let’s do it again.  This time we’ll try sortes Biblicae. I have a nicely dogeared copy of the bible inscribed To Mike. From: Robbie Nelson.  The copyright page has been torn out. Ready? We ask the universe with full hearts and clear heads for the answer to our questions and your solution is:

Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits.

Pretty! Book of Daniel 3:1, so I’d say pour the cream! Not sure what this says about your other problems though.  Perhaps you should find a nice golden idol to worship?  Or craft one of your own?  Maybe we should try again. The universe is never wrong, you understand, it does sometimes want clarification. How about sortes Cortazarae? In times of confusion I often turn to, yes, where is it now? Where? Green book, paperback, yellow piece of paper with chapter numbers and checkmarks marking chapter 110. Here! Ready? Now, we ask the universe and so on and so forth:

137
MORELLIANA
If the volume or the tone of the work can lead one to believe that the author is attempting a sum, hasten to point out to him that he is face to face with the opposite attempt, that of an implacable subtraction.

So you see! So use mathematics and start subtracting: lay off cocoa and dump your lover. Can’t get a clearer answer than that.

The difficulties of interpretation.

A small cronopio was looking for the key to the street door on the night table, the night table in the bedroom, the bedroom in the house, the house in the street. Here the cronopio paused, for to go into the street, he needed the key to the door.2:06 am

First it happens, then it means something. Rarely, the bolt of lightning will hit one directly (perhaps from a forty five degree angle like a shot off a shovel) and there within the simultaneity of the electrical discharge and the acoustic report you know as it’s going down that this now this is it is this moment (this very instant) that means already in advance and simultaneously what it will come to mean. But really what are the odds of an event and its significance occurring simultaneously? We can’t know all the conditions so there must be some sort of calculable probability. Twenty to one? And this is assuming of course that there is indeed such a thing as simultaneity, but this is no time for parlor games. There is no simultaneity, event and meaning intersect only with lovers, and there is no free will. Oh yes, also: do not risk, do not expect, do not be disappointed, be satisfied, sustain no positive loss, bring positive gain to others. Now, finish carving that on the tablet, make a duplicate to use as light to the gentiles, and bear it down the mountains in your arms, the secret of the race, graven in the language of prediction.

Having reached the end of his tether.

I turned aside Ulysses, although he had longed to journey; who grows used to me seldom departs -- I satisfy him so.1:57 am

Oh I’ve had the bit between my teeth like a knife in the mouth, but now my tongue is severed and I’m free as a god. Yes, yes, another gone. Not that there is anything so free about gods, and certainly not the one Dante chased, those three globes fluxing together, usurping each other. Like smoke. What’s wrong with the three-in-one, you say? It’s dead I say. And they’re full of itself. No, this is a different kind of free, I don’t mean I think I have free will. I’ve not lost all reason, what do you take me for? I’ve changed sirens and this one sings more sweetly. When I listen to her I can see the past and the future and feel atonement with all. I can hear her now. She’ll say show me the edge of the cliff she’ll say. She’ll say you might have to force me a little. I’ll say I might not have a choice. She’ll say i’m willing, but leave me wanting. She’ll say I’m willing, now force me. I’ll say delicious. She’ll say make me wait for mine. She’ll say I’m wearing something you can rip right off of me. I’ll say you’re killing me. She’ll say I’ll be so grateful. She’ll say I’ll beg you on my knees. I’ll say where are you? She’ll say where do you want me? I’ll say oh god where are you? She’ll say follow my voice. She’ll say can you hear me? I’ll say where, here? She’ll say can you feel me? I’ll say where are you? She’ll say follow my voice.

Nes. Yo.

Orca Bellona! Heavencry at earthcall, etnat athos?12:36 am

In the beginning was the world, in the end the word without end. Oh my heart, am I my mother? Fantasy. Just anima’s fantasy. Here’s how it goes; you’ve heard it I’m sure: there’s nothing naked under the clothing moon. But first, I’m all of a mucksweat. The day ins and outs of it born from a heart and nine months hard labor, but then coming forth of darkness and Orc’s away now! Nice, no? Every phenomenon has natural cause, even revolutions in the word. First, cause. Then I’ll be thy mouth given unto me! Fly as the hawk’s right eye! Free will! But watch out for the 32 feet per second per second. Oh that. What goes down must come. It goes the other way too. As below, so above. Rock becomes root becomes worm becomes serpent in the garden. Beryl was there, and the other rainbow girls. How’s that for gloomery glamory? Shall I be the toad on your shoulder? Come here, my Athos and warm me up.  I’ll whisper little somethings right where the camel went through the needle. I’ll obey your every. I’ll be slave to your chic, Dave to your dick, and we’ll root in the fat of the land. I’m willing, now force me. Good dog.

And all this while poured with rain.

Sunday 3 July 1664: Then up and spent the evening walking with my wife talking and it thundering and lightning all the evening, and this yeare have had the most of thunder and lightning they say of any in man's memory, and so it is, it seems, in France and everywhere else. So to prayers and to bed.10:18 pm

Dear Diary,

I’m starting over. I’m going for the absolute purity of awareness, right, I want to have total awareness of all things I experience, all the minutiae of the detail of it all, while I’m living it. While I’m in it.  So tearing out the pages and this is day one.  Aleph Alpha nought nought one.  I think trying to write this thing in the third person made me sound like an asshole. He took a picture of Her. He said so long to his cousins and will see them again shortly.  Come on. Nobody ever anywhere will read these written words, I know that, but I still don’t want to sound like a total douche. Ok. So. Writing down my experience of appearances in the world.  Sensations.  Flow of time. Haircut. Good. The mundane.  Perfect.  So. Itchy skin on my neck. Sharp little bits of hair. Sharp little bits of hair poking inward while I. Well this is lame. I don’t want to write about itchy haircut hair. Ok, try again. It is raining. Infinite rain. Wet. Wetness. Wettening. Wetly.  Wet wetness wettens wetly wet. Wet wet wet.  Word lost meaning. Damn. That was going somewhere too. Ok think. Think think think.  Perceive my subjective point of view. There was one big stroke of lightning just now and lots of thunder. A phenomenon.  Phenomena have temporal features so. Am I still writing about my subjective experience?  The appearance of phenomena and thinking about the appearance of phenomena enone themselves.  Then they spread out a unity through time. Through. Well, whatever it is. So I’m still good. My temporal features are different from those of any single phenomenon because I can enfuture myself. Goals, some of which I can change.  Some of which require the exercise of my free will.  Some of which involve a certain young for her age, large for her age,  beefy girl.  Skittish.  Will take some persuading but probably not much. Ok. Sticking with present phenomena which automatically continue being what they have been.  A phenomenon has its own temporality. Infinite rain. See? Just look at it. And just one big stroke of lightning and lots of thunder with it. Wait. That off a bit. Seems off. Or is time a structure of the knowing mind? Then lightning and thunder as phenomena appearing in the world has no temporality of their own.  That’s not right.  Ok stick with my subjective point of view. My pure experience of my own lived experience as I experience it. My experience of experiencing experiences I experience. That’s it exactly. That’s what this is about. Sensations. The flow of time, that’s what counts.  Look there he is.  Wonder where he’s going.

Space: what you damn well have to see.

Then Eno a daughter of Beulah took a Moment of Time And drew it out to Seven thousand years with much care & affliction And many tears & in Every year made windows into Eden. She also took an atom of space & opend its center Into Infinitude & ornamented it with wondrous art. 2:06 pm

Forming.  Forming.  And I thought the afterlife was for fulfilling.  Try resurrection some time!  I died.  I came back.  Who does that?  I must be, yes, I am a God.  Yes. Yes.  Feel it.  I was the formless spiritual and now I am the Allfather, Adam Kadmon, the heavenly man.  Jesus Christ I’m a magician now, the magician of the beautiful!  Oh yes, I am back.  I was never an ordinary person.  I lived the life esoteric, and look at me now!  Get a glimpse of my elemental!  Not so blurry today.  This is the virgin birth, right here.  In this space.  At this time.  Soul reinserted into body.  I am God!

Krishna:  Stop!

Wait, what just happened.  Who are you?  Why did everything just freeze in place?  Why are you blue?

Krishna:  I have stopped time.  Listen to me, I will tell you the secret of life.

I already know the secret of life.  I am the secret of life!  Look at me.  I’m back, baby.  I’m here.  I’m in a library talking Hamlet with a kid and an old new critic.  And I am the only one here who knows the truth of the afterlife that the kid dances around.

Krishna:  Those who are without faith in my teaching cannot attain me; they endlessly return to this world shuttling from death to death.

Ah, but that’s where you are wrong blue man, I haven’t been reincarnated.  This is not your ordinary metempsychosis.  You are looking at resurrection!  This is altogether a different kettle of fish.

The Ondt:  [Clipping the end of a cigar.  Havana.  A fine Romeo y Julieta]  You smell like a kettle of fish, Æ, your Auric egg’s gone bad.

Krishna:  That rotten egg smell is your sulfuric breath, Ondt.  What are you doing here?  How did you get into this moment?  I stopped time, this is our now.  Out, Ondt!

The Ondt:  [making faces at himself in the window] Honey, this is my space.  I can crawl into your now through spaces smaller than red globules of man’s blood and back out through Blake’s buttocks into eternity if I like.  You hold to the now all you like, but it is the here, through which all future plunges to the past.

Krishna:  Fine.  Æ, we shall proceed regardless.  You have not become deathless; you have merely become manifest without a rebirth.  You are most certainly not God or even a god.  I am God!  I am known by everyone as the many, the One; behind the faces of a million gods, they can see my face.  I am the ritual and the worship, the medicine and the mantra, the butter burnt in the fire, and I am the flames that consume it.

The Ondt: [Taking the form of the Lord of Loaves]  Got a light?  And hey, don’t burn up all that butter.

You both need to cool it.  Look, I used to think that the world’s revolutions were born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on a hillside, from the people for whom the earth is a living mother.  But I don’t think so anymore.  The world’s revolutions are born from those of us who say this verily is that.  I took my own fate by the balls.  The point is I am the point.  I have free will!  I used to think that God is a stage manager in the theatre of the eternal, but I am beyond that now.  I am God if I say I am God.  What of it?  You can be God too if you like.  And look there, you see that person breathing all over us?  That one who clicks instead of talks?  And stares and stares, eyeballs moving here and now here and then over to here.  There is God.  God is a click in the street.

The Ondt:  [Blowing smoke rings] The peatsmoke is going to his head.

Krishna: [Crossing his arms defensively.  He is caught between the devil and the ocean of Theosophy]  I know all beings who have passed, and all who live now, Æ, and all who are yet to be.  In the face of the one who can see all temporalities, how can you be so distressingly shortsighted?  How can you believe your will is free?

You guys can blow smoke up my ass all day if you like, I don’t care.  I know what I know.  Talk until you are blue in the face.  I’m making plans.

No-one is anything

He had eaten all the whilepaper, swallowed the lustres, devoured forty flights of styearcases, chewed up all the mensas and seccles, ronged the records, made mundballs of the ephemerids and vorasioused most glutinously with the very timeplace in the ternitary -- not too dusty a cicada of neurtiment for a chittinous chip so mitey. 1:30 pm

We die.  Mors Certa, Hora Incerta.  So how can we be anything?  No-one is anything.  From the void and to the void, and again and again.  Things go on the same.  One born every minute.  Well more like, let’s see, carry the one.  Stop a minute so I can calculate this.  Women all over in their life throws.  Sss. Dth, dth, dth!  They won’t stop so I can count.  There’s more born, washing the blood off.  All are washed in the blood of the lamb.  Not stillborn of course.  They are not even registered.  Trouble for nothing.  Well, I am almosting it.  So.  So.  So far this year there have been 30,275,000 births rounding up.  84 days so far this year.  360,417 births a day, rounding up. That’s 15,018 births an hour.  251 births a minute.  Wait a  second.  That’s, yes, 5 births a second.  No point rounding down.  How long did it take your eye to move from we die to 5 births a second?  Cities of people coming and coming.  Lives and lives.  Passing away too.  In your life were you the Gracehoper or the Ondt?  Doesn’t matter, back to the void with you!  How many?  How many.  Wish I had paper.  Um. 12,930,000 deaths this year, might as well round up.  People die and we don’t even know.  Months later somebody smells something.  A drip through the ceiling from the tenant above.  153,929 deaths a day.  That’s 6,414 people every hour.  107 a minute and every second 2 people die.  1.78 really.  One dies and one gets 78% of the way there.  Mostly dead.  There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.  Mostly dead is slightly alive.  Give it a second.  You can’t be mostly dead all day.  There you go.  Welcome to the void.  You have been unmade.  It will be the making of you.  You were a being.  You filled space.  Now you are a becoming.  Not changing, no, I mean fulfilling.  You took a form intended for you all along.  That is, your form is gone.  Your form is formlessness.  I know, death is new to you.  You’ll get there.  Destruction and creation are simultaneous.  Death and rebirth are the same thing spelled different ways.  You hungry?  Of course not, what am I saying.  Sorry.  It’s this time of day.  This is the very worst hour of the day.  Vitality.  Dull, gloomy: hate this hour.  Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.  Intended.  Caught that did you?  Well.  Well, well.

To give you peace, to hear you speak, now while the wind is silent in this place.

I reached a place where every light is muted, which bellows like the sea beneath a tempest, when it is battered by opposing winds. The hellish hurricane, which never rests, drives on the spirits with its violence; wheeling and pounding, it harasses them. I learned that those who undergo this torment are damned because they sinned within the flesh, subjecting reason to the rule of will. 12:36 pm

I saw it.  I was present.  I saw with eyes that were no less amazed than his.  I was good but he was all their daddies.  Psha! you say.  Psha!  Well, it has been centuries and he is still the one who makes our gaze more ardent.  I see your mouth twitching, unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.  Who would wish that mouth for any kiss?  How do I know?  Well, why did I write it then?  Oh but what he does with words.  He writes about eternity using a temporal art and how?  By twisting it, entwining it, tossing in numbers and ratios and divine proportions.  He uses circles to move time into eternity and more impossible to move eternity into time.  He speaks the ineffable.  And then he serves it to us on a peaceful golden flame and we eat and drink and slurp it yum into our souls.  Oh we are all in the middle of the path of life, locked into a moving now between past and future and elsewhen.  Now is real, all else is a feature of imagination.  No matter our age, we are all in the middle of the path of life.  He knew this.  And he mimics this in his rhymes.  Here are some line endings:

Mouth / Womb / South

Tomb/ Time / Bloom

Rhyme / Now / Sublime

Rhyme now sublime.  Catch that movement?  Oh feel it move you.  Forward and backward.  The middle word of the first becomes the outer words of the next.  Forward and backward and forward and backward.  Whenever we are in our temporal trajectory, we are always in the middle.  Three by three, his words are female forms entwining.  His words are like a boat that, starting from its moorings, moves backward, backforeward, so he may move us forward.  Ah my friend, take no more from me, my eyes are all amazement.  Look at us now, old men.  Penitent.  Dressed the same, looking the same.  Await no further word or sign from me: your will is free, erect, and whole — to act against that will would be to err:  therefore I crown and miter you over yourself.  And when I said this he looked at me, his sight becoming pure, and he let me know that will is free, to a point.  And what’s the point?  The point in which all times are present.  The point that sent forth so acute a light that anyone who faced the force with which it blazed would have to shut his eyes.  The point on which depends the heavens and the whole of nature.  The point that has no extension in space or time.  The point indivisible.  The point that is the start of all geometric possibilities.  The one point all whens and wheres end.  The point that seems enclosed by that which it encloses.  The point that is both circumference and circle.  The point which says that separate things can be the same thing.  The point that says our own existence in the middle of the path of successive time necessitates these distinctions.  Oh my God, the point. 

Sphinx face

There was once a young writer named Joyce whose diction was ribidly choice, And all his friends' woes were deduced from his prose which never filled anyone's purse. 12:30 am

To rise is to fall Sallust said,
Mother Rome is now beastily dead,
Beauty may be decorious
Intellect is quite glorious
But decline is where we are led
 
If you think I wrote that I’ll see red
Or blush ’till I’d rather be dead.
That will be fine
I’ll read in good time
When I’m sober his sheets will be read.
 
Listen to me I appeal,
This riddle is funny I feel!
What Opera smacks
of straight railway tracks?
The wheeze?  It’s the Rose of Castile!
 
Your joke is unusually clean.
Gee, you poked merely my spleen.
With umbrella I sigh,
play along for a guy.
I feel a strong weakness obscene.
 
You look like both past and present,
Yet you hold only a segment.
Take it from me,
Your will is not free.
I’ll show you, but it won’t be pleasant.