Having my way with Ulysses

Destruction of the fittest.

• Eumaeus

The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be master -- that's all. 1:48 am

Well let’s Humpty Dumpty ourselves through this one shall we? You’ve got him over here and that one over there, and here and there they’ve been until now they are adjacent spheres. How much of vesica piscis between? Well, we shall see if we reach the proper parabolic penetration. But what to fill it with? There’s the rub. This one subsists on oxygen and damage. That one has had some sort of bird gimbling at him, but pick and pick away little birdy, you’re making it easier for him to crack open and get real, though he does have plenty of it and doesn’t need to acquire much more.  Come to think, they’re both riding that particular train; no wonder they’re a little scrambled. You’d be too if your kings and horses and men put you together out of order. Now. Remembering it is already tomorrow we must act fast, like yesterday fast or the day before yesterday fast. And let’s fast: this is no time for eating. We are going to take what’s best of each of them and combine, forgetting the attributes we leave unchosen: we can’t make an omlette without cracking a few eggs. Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. They don’t know they are eggs. Right. Did they notice? No? Good. Ok. This one can see singing; that one dreams of gentlemanly farming a nice wabe under a shaded sundial, or did at one time.  He does dream of turning music into money, so there’s that.  Are you writing this down? We must work against impenetrability. Let’s manifesto that one. WE WORK AGAINST IMPENETRABILITY!!! That’s better. Though we mustn’t put all our eggs into the one basket, now mustn’t we. Let’s find the best crack and gimble away there first. So. This one thinks that one would be better off vesica piscandi (or piscia vesicandi as the case may be) with some sort of woman though a decent man would do in a pinch. Perhaps this one’s own daughter (being not a man but newly a woman)? Or wife for that matter.  She is, the wife rather, not the daughter being only fifteen, a still attractive married woman getting on for fair and forty, and might be partial to younger men given their malleability and willingness to learn (and to do what they are told if you don’t mind my saying) though they do have a tendency to get to their own 32 feet per second per second faster than one might prefer and nothing turns one off at a greater velocity than a man (or a boy rather) holding back.  Why ever do they think this is a good idea? Ever. Better to get on with things and bring in the wingman after to finish the job.  Keep the balls rolling as it were. How are we getting on? Filling that vesica piscis a bit out? Oh fuck me on the cross. Go ahead. No really, go ahead. Listen. Listen. Don’t wait for me kid, just let’s get on with it so I can finish the job with that one over there. He’s getting impatient.

History repeating itself with a difference.

• Eumaeus

(5b) To change reality for everyone -- the one I told you goes on -- is to accept the fact that everyone is (ought to be) what I am, and, in some way, to meld the real with mankind. That means admitting history, that is, the human race on a false course, a reality accepted until now as real, and away we go. 1:46 am

All right ladies, hold the mirror just so, can everybody see me? Just like this. Adjust your positioning so you can get a good angle yet still feel perfectly comfortable and supported. If anybody needs an extra rolled up blanket go ahead and get one. I’m sorry, I forgot your name, purple mat? Yes, you. Try switching hands. There you go. Good? Everybody ready? Now take a deep breath in through the nose, and feel your breath flowing through every part of your body, moving warmly down your spine, and exiting your body toward the mirror as you breathe out. Good. And breathe in through the nose like an inward voice two, three, four purple mat, you are sitting too tight. If you have a possible need to satisfy by moving a motion, no? Then you’ll need to get into position from standing again. Ok, feet shoulder width apart, there you go, mirror in the other hand, yup, breathe in through the nose and on the exhale bend down as if you let something drop, nice, then let your body fell down, 32 feet, per second, per second. There you go and breathe in, two, three, down the spine, and out toward the mirror. Good. Everybody still breathing? Keep breathing and follow my voice. As you look into your mirror I want you to focus your awareness on the opening just a short distance under where the back changes name. This is your when point; think of it as an omphalos if it helps you. Focus your breath towards your when point and allow this to be your breath’s one great goal. Now I want you to keep feeling the rhythm of your breathing and on your next inhale allow your breath to encircle all the calcifications of history within your body. Now imagine your breath melting history away. Breathe history down your spine and push it out toward the mirror. Good. And inhale, really feeling those mineral accretions of history melting into tailings. Keep breathing. Down the spine. And out. Now breathe in and feel the tailings shifting, melting, like ice into water two, three, four and out,  and on the next cycle we’ll push the last of history toward our one great goal. Ready and in, two, three, four, good, really focus, down your spine, and out, two, three, purple mat, there are buckets and rags in the utility closet. That’s ok. There’s one in every class.

With her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion.

• Eumaeus

In differential calculus the function is given and the differential is obtained (and this frenzy to be lifelike can only be our mythic denial of an apprehension of death).1:45 am

Don’t look bored. Don’t look bored he says. Easy for you to say you’re doing something. I’m doing something he says. What am I doing that’s so? Estupido. Have me sitting here. I have pride. I don’t have to sit here for him or no anybody. And for what? For him to sell me in the streets? that’s what I mean to you hey? Just sit here. Wear this. Be the circus girl. Come on now baby, you’re the circus girl he says you’re the contortionist and you can bend and twist all around me  yes and rub yes ruby your body yes and twist round me and I’ll twist all around you. We’ll criss cross, you do me I do you. Snaky helixing. Caedeusalicious.  All to see. You want to sell me in the streets? You want i should walk the streets? I will too and I’ll get good money and men I’ll have men I take all of the men. Doubles: the only kind of doubles I play. How you stand there and paint. Don’t look bored. Hours and don’t look bored. I could be doing anything from A to G, but you got me sitting here all fucking whatever time it is while you try and prove that painting can somehow be closer to theatre than a photograph or 32 photographs per second per second.  You ever think you might be the only one who sees it that way? Come on. Please. I sit here with my back and you look at me like I could be the tent. Don’t look bored. I’m keeping the outfit.

Looking back now in a retrospective kind of arrangement all seemed a kind of dream.

• Eumaeus

I danced over the water, I danced o'er the sea, and all the birds in the air couldn't catch me.1:43 am

It’s all lit up now, but try explaining to people more invested in my marriage than I was, and there were plenty of them, surprisingly. It was the oddest thing. Don’t get me wrong, he was a nice enough guy, just not up to scratch. A diamond in the rough somebody nice said. Yeah, I could see that. Going to be a diamond.

Looking forward in a prospective kind of arrangement I saw sparkling things, an illuminated life filled with art and philosophy. He was a talented musician despite having never heard of mathematics. Well he had three chords and the truth, so that’s all you need baby, that’s all you need. And if you have more than three chords and fewer truths than the truth? Then you still have >=< so that’s ok: it evens out. Well, to be fair, he did often speak the truth, he’d just leave out the jucy parts. And consider. Just think what he could be, given the proper pressure. But without the only effective kind of pressure (of the self inflicted variety) coal lumps don’t turn into diamonds. Natural forces, not artificial, or you end up with a drunk ass cubic zirconia. A drunk ass cubic zirconia is not as good as a lump of coal. And a fine lump of a coal all the same. I liked the lump of coal.

Now let me tell you about being Peruvian, or half so. I can’t tell you much because I don’t know that much about it, but as a half Peruvian and a half Canadian and half Swedish, via half German, who was caught mingling in there with the half Scottish who was half Ulster, and as it turns out not half French (the half German half Swede, not the half Scottish half Ulster) but half Jewish in disguise. Oh yeah and half Dutch in there somewhere. I thought the Swedes and the Germans would be neck in neck, but for the Dutch to pop up was a twenty to one shot at least. So that’s being half American. But only half, the other half’s Peruvian. And types like us: the passionate abandon of the south, casting every shred of decency to the winds, wouldn’t do things by halves. What is the half life of real love existing between married folk supposing another man? Now, I had loosened many a man’s thighs but never when I was in a relationship. Then I was loyal and loving and after the first I’d say two months of sex it settles into lots of god knows what and no sex. In these situations other men, no matter who, take on a what do you call it gossamer quality. See right through them. But. And it’s a big but. No wait, that was the lump of coal. Ha! Sorry. The hemispheres on him! Haha! Just had to. You know. A big butt! Whooo. Let me catch my breath! Oooh. That felt good. When were we? Oh yeah. Butt. I am so trying not to laugh. Butt. Butt butt butt. Ok. Ok. So funny. Butt.

Dead he wasn’t. Simply absconded somewhere.

• Eumaeus

Come back here and take what's coming to ya! I'll bite your legs off!
1:42 am

I thought you were dead you yellow bastard. Grrrr. You resurrected yourself, didn’t you? or killed yourself or was laying low or something. Left my person a bloody weeping mess and no clue how to get you back. Sit! Stay! And now you’re back like a murderer to the crime scene. You’re a lucky dog Lizzie didn’t set me at you directly you got back. I’m going to pee in your shoes. Maybe she will go back to the convent soon, you think of that AE?  We liked it there. But we’ll have to sound the lie of the land first, would be prudent: Sister Mary Peter hates us now. Too bad really. I liked the smell of him better than you, you stink like the dead. Woof! And not in a good way. And here you are like the bath nobody wanted, destroying everything warm and comfortable. Before you, Lizzie would take me running. And we’d play go get it! And, who’s a pretty puppy! Now I’m lucky to get out of her purse more than twice a day. Thanks AE. Just, thanks. Well kill my dog you better hide your cat. I’ll get you my pretty. Now go.

Different ways of bringing off a coup.

• Eumaeus

He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.1:41 am

  • Establish dominance, think alpha male. But less is more, remember Al Gore in 2000? Not that kind of alpha male. Carry your revolution as if it has a really big dick, but you don’t need to whip it out to prove it.  Be everybody’s daddy.
  • Don’t play musical chairs. Be ruthless whilst removing the former bastards in power. Why have a coup if you keep all the same people around?
  • Make friends with the army, but don’t make promises. You don’t want the people with the weaponry suddenly thinking they can throw a better revolution than yours.
  • The military likes to play with their guns, so let them handle any civil opposition that will undoubtedly crop up.  You can’t bake a cake without breaking a few eggs. You can, however, hire somebody to break the eggs and bake whatever you tell them to bake.
  • Come up with a proper pronunciamiento to justify your new world order to the masses.  Clarity trumps veracity.  Remember a real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation.
  • The first person to tell a story wins, so get out there with whatever truth you like, and fast.  Remember, a proper coup happens suddenly.
  • When delivering your first epistle, don’t try to be more fascinating than thou.  The proletariat hates a show off.
  • The proletariat also hates a smartypants. Don’t lead with your philosophy.  People need to be wined and dined a little, talk about them, then you can get down to ideology.  Promise things.
  • Once you are in, spread out. The initial revolution will be a public in-your-face event, but remember that the best coup carries on behind the scenes and under the table for years to come. Quietly take over whatever you like, but of course start small. Identify all the mechanisms of public discipline and link them together one by one, under your own power structure.
  • Keep track of everything and everybody, subject everybody to a field of visibility and let them all know it: in this way you ensure that if anybody steps one toe outside of your idea of what they ought to be doing, they will make themselves visible. Let visibility be their trap, if only to prevent a coup designed to depose you.
  • Get rid of the old regime’s intellectuals, particularly if they are smarter than your intellectuals. Endeavor to have the smartest intellectuals. Do this through assimilation if you can at all manage it. Otherwise, just toss the ones you don’t like to the military.  Now go.

Six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to.

• Eumaeus

While we sleep here, we are awake elsewhere and that in this way every man is two men.1:36 am

Look. Don’t you know that if you fuck a whore, you together become one body? It’s old, this idea, thousands of years written by people who were no better than they should be. They say in their most sacred “The two shall be one flesh.” The beast with two backs and the molecules entwining.  And more than that, it’s turtles all the way down baby; you’ve just thrown yourself into the den of lions. So far be it for me to put two and two together, but we are each other, you and I. You think we are cultured fellows, promising so brilliantly and indeed we are and them too, though they don’t know it. And we’ve all fucked around: we’ve had sex with everybody. You sleep with him, he sleeps with him and her, and she sleeps with she and she with he and all of us all together form one body of no uncommon calibre.  Whatever shall we wear?

Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or didn’t say the words the voice he heard said, if you work.

• Eumaeus

(Ah, crabeyes, I have you, showing off to the world with that gape in your stocking!)1:35 am

Stare at nothing in particular, but do swim your eyes closer. Work with me here, and I mean that in the widest possible sense. I work, though it seems my work is taken as a word of a different color being so translucently pro bono. Why work? Someone asked me this. What difference if you miss a day or don’t do it at all, are they paying you? Are you making any money? Think of all the money expended on your education, you are entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. We all have a price. Ah well, look here, look there. No price here. No space sold to others: I pay for that privilege. I have every bit as much right to live by my pen as any other but come on now. What the hell are you doing I’ve heard coming from eyes I didn’t expect. Stop. Who said anything about stop? It would take the hand of God, clawlike, crabby shaped, green with malignant red eyes sticking deep its grinning claws into my heart to make me stop.  Beware God’s hand.

Their two or four eyes conversing.

• Eumaeus

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.