Having my way with Ulysses

A new era is about to dawn.

Awake! Awake Jerusalem! O lovely Emanation of Albion Awake and overspread all Nations as in Ancient Time for lo! the Night of Death is past and the Eternal Day Appears upon our Hills: Awake Jerusalem, and come away.12:02 am

It can’t be done. I won’t do it. You’ll need another architect, I can’t do this shit. What do you take me for? I’m no magician. Ok. Ok. listen. Just look at your plan here, 40,000 rooms and only 12 doors.  In what universe does this make any sense: 40,000 rooms arranged in a perfect square, excuse me, cube. It will be hideous. No architect will touch it.  A big ugly cube — it will look like a Wallmart. You want your new Bloomusalem to be a Wallmart? I mean, maybe we can do 200 x 200 rooms with tall ceilings, which might be our only shot at symmetry under the cemetery wall, but look how tall the damn rooms would have to be. The ceilings will have their own weather! Otherwise we can stack 34 or 35 but we won’t get anywhere near your perfect 40,000. Maybe we can get there with an octahedron, and make the sides 44 of whatever measure you like, in length. Close enough to 40,000. We can include an annex for the rest. But that brings us to another problem, how big is this place? Your plan uses stadia and furlongs. And cubits! Who measures anything with cubits? None of your numbers make sense. Seriously. What are we using to measure this thing? It’s a beast! You want cubits, fine. It’s your deal. But you have here each side of the cube measures 12,000 stadia. That’s four million nine hundred thirty three thousand thirty three cubits.  So a cubit being 1/1000 the distance the earth rotates at the equator during one second of time, we are talking about the length of about an hour and twenty minutes of Earth’s rotation. What planet are you on man? Do you know how big that is? By the time I even get the foundations laid (12 foundations? Dude!) the Earth’s rotation will have slowed down enough that we’ll have to redefine the length of the cubit. And then what, we start over? And with what work force? Who is building this thing? Where are they going to live eat shit? Schools for their kids? Hospitals? Food? We’ll have to build a new Bloomusalem just to house the people who will build the new Bloomusalem, which will require Bloomusalems for those builders recursive to no end point. I’ll take the lake of fire. Really. I’d rather have a good eternal swim in the lake of fire. I don’t want any part of this. Find another contractor, I’m out.

Shut your eyes and see

Creating space, Creating Time according to the wonders Divine Of Human Imagination, throughout all the Three Regions immense Of Childhood, Manhood & Old Age; & the all tremendous unfathomable Non Ens Of Death was seen in regenerations terrific or complacent varying According to the subject of discourse & every Word & Every Character Was Human according to the Expansion or Contraction, the Translucence or Opakeness of nervous fibres such was the variation of Time & Space 11:00 am

The world is real and eternal.  Don’t take my word for it, think through your eyes.  Look at the idealists, they knew how to use a good work around.  Take Berkeley for example.

Berkeley:  There is not existence without the mind.  Objects cannot exist without a mind perceiving them.

So to perceive is to be.  Oh yeah, then when I leave the room does it disappear?  Come on.

Berkeley:  Objects continue because God sees them.

And there you are.  A likely story.  Convenient to invent a universal perceiver so all things can be seen and thus be real.  Even Schopenhauer, who had a bit more sense than the other idealists, speaks this treason.

Schopenhauer:  The world is my idea.

Please, what about that sun up there behind those clouds?  And this beach, these shells I crunch under my feet and this sand washing through my fingers?

Schopenhauer:  It is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun and a hand that feels the earth.

But what about time?  Close your eyes.  Think of a very short space of time.  You aren’t closing your eyes.  You think I can’t see you?  I can’t see you and you are real.  Now close them.  Nothing will disappear.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait.  Ok, close your eyes later and think of very short times of space.  And listen.  Rhythms, the nearing tide, the crunch under your feet.  Close your eyes and look through the opacity of your eyelids.  Is it is all still there?   World without end?   All the time, and all time?  You did not need to see to believe.  All still here.  Me too.  Look, there are my feet.  Buck’s shoes.  I’m wearing his pants too.  And Jim’s hat.  But whether one thing comes after another or they stand nicely side by side, the world is not the idea of a creator.  There is no Los, that fallen earth owner creating material reality in his forge, or holding his diaphanous orb of fire as he walks into the crypt of eternity wearing Blake’s hat.  Nor are there ghosts within.  Listen.  That’s a ghost talking, Hamlet’s father.  Howsomever thou pursuest this act, taint not thy mind nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother.  Now look what you’ve done.  I should never have spoken to you.  Your fault!  My mother, ghost with ashes on her breath, is walking here.  No.  Jesus!  I will not fall over that cliff that beetle’s o’er his base.  Oh Christ look now, look with your thoughts.  There I go.