Having my way with Ulysses

The difficulties of interpretation.

• Ithaca

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.

Hating partial contact by immersion or total by submersion.

• Ithaca

As he tried to quench his thirst, inside him, deep within him, another thirst was growing, for he saw an image in the pool, and fell in love with that unbodied hope, and found a substance in what was only shadow.2:04 am

Hello and good morning ladies, gentlemen. Welcome newcomers, I see we have quite a few newbies with us today. If you are here for the cynophobia group your room is across the hall, and as I see some of you are here for the vestiphobia group, I am so sorry, the schedule has changed and you’ll find that you now meet on the third Sunday of each month. Check your email. Ok. Spread out please, there is no reason anybody must sit uncomfortably close to anybody else. If you feel secure in proximity to the aqueous substance of glass please take a seat near the windows so we can free up space next to the wall for those who need those seats. Also, feel free to open windows to let in some fresh, yes, the window sticks just give it a good, there you go. That’s better. Right. So. Please be aware that there is a gym with showers on the third floor of the building, but we will have no reason to go up there or even to leave this room. There is a drinking fountain in the hallway, about fifteen feet to the right of our door near the main exit, but it is quite possible to exit the building by turning left and going down the back stairs. Outside that door you will find no running water of any kind, no stream, no swimming pool, and the downspout from the roof gutter has been relocated to around the south corner of the building and away from any sight lines. Just be sure to turn north and then walk around the building clockwise to get to the south parking garage. Now, there is a water feature in the park across the street, but we have planted shrubs which block your view of it, but you still might want to know it is there. I don’t think you will be able to hear too much splashing or trickling but if you do just remember that the absence of the sight of the fountain will disturb you less than the presence of noise. Ok? Yes, you have your hand up? No. No no, we do not allow liquids of any kind in this room. This is a safe space. If you do feel thirsty, we can have a member of staff give you a lidded beverage with a straw you can drink in the hallway, or you can have somebody accompany you to the drinking fountain. Oh! I almost forgot. We have had the sinks removed in the lavatories on this floor. Ok? So. Last time we all made such great progress imagining water’s universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level. Today I thought we’d consider water’s ubiquity as constituting 90% of the human body, so if you’ll look under your chairs you’ll find a hand mirror. Everybody ready?

Releasing the potential energy contained in the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements to enter into free union with the oxygen of the air.

• Ithaca

Then it seemed to me it rotated a little, then terrible as lightning she descended and snatched me upward into the fire. Therein it seemed that she and I were burning; and this imagined burning so scorched me that my sleep was broken. 2:03 am

Give me four minutes, and you’ll have your fire.  There is an art in lighting a fire, and attention to how you make ready the place of sacrifice should be the true object of any creator: that is one of the secrets. The beauty of any holocaust, no matter how slight your agenbite of inwit, must always be within the purification of your own intent. That’s where we will find beauty. I said we. There’s creation. There’s union. So what is it we are burning today? What did you bring?

From inexistence to existence he came to many and was as one received: existence with existence he was with any as any with any: from existence to nonexistence gone he would be by all as none perceived.

• Ithaca

Thanks eversore much, Pointcarried!
2:00 am

Sit down and take a walk with me, won’t you? I’m remodling my treehouse, getting extravagant. Hyperbolic space simply has more room than Euclidean, so you can’t really blame me. Shall we parallel? You’ll have to project yourself over here, honey, steriographically. Form a point, there you go. Now circle that square; I’ll give you a hand. Pivot. Pivot. Mind the möbius transformation! Oh whacked your head right on it: sorry about that, it was in a different place yesterday. There you go and square the circle. That’s better! Now shall we be asymptotic or ultraparallel? I know, six of one. Though it does seem the older I get the fewer I know.

Having reached the end of his tether.

• Eumaeus

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.

Beware of the steamroller.

• Eumaeus

The door to suicide is open, but theologians assert that, in the subsequent shadows of the other kingdom, there will I be, waiting for myself. 1:56 am

Our lives are in peril tonight. I know this because look, up close everything is shifting sifting just slightly into newness. Look at yourself, closer, there. Look yourself in the eyes and see that. You are your own deliverance from sin, see it? A different grouping of bones and flesh. Throw your used up old self under the wheels and absolve yourself for lifetimes. Let him crush you like a spider and you’ll walk with the kings of infinite space. Be a body present absent mindedness and chuck yourself under Jagannath’s wheels. Kill yourself: it will do you good.

Simply abounding in immortal numbers.

• Eumaeus

After that holy soul had, with his silence, showed he was freed from putting in the woof acrose the web whose warp I set for him, I like a man who, doubting, craves for counsel from the one who sees and rightly wills and loves, replied to him: I clearly see, my father, how time is hurrying toward me in order to deal me such a blow as would be most grievous for him who is not set for it.1:55 am

Let’s look at music. No, I said look. Can’t you see music? No? I’ll help you. Good grief who can’t see music? Music finds its reality in time, so how blind must you be never to consider its spatial component? Never mind. I do apologize and I take that back. Some people can’t help being, ah, different. We are all equally special and so on. Perhaps you are only looking in the one place. Sound waves expand in space: you must adjust for that. So, let’s look at music. Here, take my arm and I’ll guide you. You’ll feel like a different person after, trust me. Let’s take a peek at Mozart, or is that too predictable? How about Wagner maybe? or if prefer something a scoach less antisemitic we might spy a little at the Gloria from the Twelfth Mass. I find Catholic music the most geometrically pleasing, don’t you? Much better than what comes out of the opposite shop. Doesn’t really matter, they are all the children of mother matrix and papa pattern, but one does have one’s favorites. Now then. See for yourself the musical notes numbered and grouped into symmetry and written into proportion, now watch when they, yes! No? You didn’t see? They sound aloud together in tessellating patterns. See them? Numbers in proportional bunches running this way, now transposed, now running that way. The woof and the warp: weave weaver of the wind. Peek at the numbers and you’ll see inversions, rotations, reflections flipped vertically or horizontally, even reflections that glide and slide along sideways. Sure there are deviations here and there in the numbers, just to wake us up a little, see if we’re still looking, but look close and you’ll see numbers arranged into self-similarity across scale. Forget your ears. Listen with your eyes! And your body. Wait, what did you say? I can’t allow myself to hear that. Don’t say it. Just don’t. You can’t feel music? Oh honey, you really are special.

Apropos of coffin of stones.

• Eumaeus

And behind it came so long a file of people, that I should never have believed that death had undone so many. 1:53 am

Most of these are filled with them, you know. Stones. Our bodies rot away, or they do at first. We’re eaten by the rats too, go down like hot cakes. We have a grip on them by their stomachs, as Wetherup likes to say. Sometimes if we are young fresh and female we get dug up for a last wild hurrah before they leave us to rot and be eaten. Don’t tell the families. It’s not quite dust to dust, there’s a lot going on in between. Ultimately, though, our coffins fall apart: eaten too by the crawling things, and hastening our disappearance. This is not all; both our bodies and our caskets become penetrated by tree roots and crushed by settling earth until we fill with nothing. We become nothing. Being former occupants of bodies, we still like to walk with you sometimes: on the right side of you, it’s a habit of ours, do pardon us. We are that strange feeling next to you, sinewless and wobbly and all that. Why am I telling you? Well, this is it for you, didn’t you guess? The chairs are upside down on the tables and somebody will sweep up in the morning because it’s quitting time, you are done.

The exploits of King Willow

• Eumaeus

Your temple is reared on the sands, and the first tempest will wash away its foundation.1:52 am

Auspicious King Willow would cry in his pillow
And cry in his pillow would he
He called for his love, and he called for his soul
And he called for the sands in the sea.

Oh good King Willow, don’t cry to your pillow,
Why not dream your blue dreams with me?
I’ll show you a heart, and I’ll steal you a soul,
And I’ll shape all the sand into she.

But look close King Willow, you’ve made a mess of that pillow,
And your tender Achilles is she.
Get up, grow a pair, search your soul, don’t you care?
There’s more lovers than sands in the sea.

People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riles them was a bite from a sheep.

• Eumaeus

There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.1:50 am

Some believe that the bite from a sheep makes people angry whilst the wolf bite is a mere cost of doing business.  Perhaps this is true because the wolf bites everybody and now here we have somebody who happened to land on the bad side of a sheep on top of everything else. Would piss anybody off. That is, the wolf bitten person, has been wolf bitten since time immemorial and will be forever more, and now here’s a sheep come along to finish the job. The last straw, as it were.

Even so, I disagree that the sheep bite would stand as something greater than the wolf bite, even if it is two bites to the one. The effect is equal on either side, a bite from a wolf equals a bite from a wolf plus a bite from a sheep no matter what rumpus is kicked up on the sheep end of things. Here, I’ll prove it:

Let wb = wolf bite and let sb = sheep bite.

My theorem: wb = wb + sb

Proof:

(wb + sb)² = wb² + 2wb + sb

Bring 2wb + sb to the left:

(wb + sb)² – (2wb + sb) = wb²

Subtract wb(2wb + sb) from both sides and factoring:

(wb + sb)² – (wb + sb)(2wb + sb) = wb² – wb(2wb + sb)

Add ¼(2wb + sb)² to both sides:

(wb + sb)² – (wb + sb)(2wb + sb) + ¼(2wb + sb)² = wb² – wb(2wb + sb) + ¼(2wb + sb)²

or:

[(wb + sb) – ½ (2wb + sb)]² = [wb – ½(2wb + sb)]²

And taking the square roots of both sides as one would quite naturally:

(wb + sb) – ½(2wb + sb) = wb – ½(2wb + sb)

Add ½(2wb + sb) to both sides and find wolf bite plus sheep bite equals wolf bite alone, or wb + sb = wb.  A bite is a bite and no more quad erat demonstrandum. With apologies to the sheep, for who can blame the sheep for wanting a bite?