Having my way with Ulysses

Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself?

• Aeolus

12:46 pm

[Scene:  Atop Mount Pisgah in Madaba, Jordan, two men gaze to the west and the southwest and reminisce.]

Manetho:  This view transfigures the soul.  Do you have a light?

Moses:  Use the bush.  Yes, soultransfiguring.   I never lived there you know.  I came this close.

Manetho:  Frustrating.

Moses:  Yup.

Manetho:  [bends over the flames, his unglazed linen collar appears behind his bent head soiled by his withering hair.  He rises and the men smoke together, their smokes ascending in frail stalks that flower with their speech]  Handy, that.  Yes, so close.  And for what dear Moses?  Why did you Jews not accept our culture, our religion, our language.  We were the greatest, the biggest, the baddest of them all.  What were you?  Not much.  No wealth, no country, no nothing.  Primitives.  Babies.  We had ages of history, polity, priesthoods, literature.  It boggles, your choice, it boggles the mind.

Moses:  I died here.  No I didn’t enter the land I was promised.  I died instead, a sudden-at-the-moment-though-from-lingering-illness-often-previously-expectorated-demise.

Manetho:  And with a great future behind you.  You must feel such regret.  All this way, intoxicated by an obscure idol.  And just one, imagine!  We had Isis!  We had Ammon Ra!  Not to mention Osiris, Horus, Anubis, Seth, Nut, Thoth.  I could go on.  As above so below.  How can you Jews create a civilization with just one deity?  And we had more.  We were strong with armies and with ships.  We had trade.  You were weak, plagued with daylabourers.  The world trembled at our name; they heard your name and said who?

Moses:  And then what?  As much as you rose you were destroyed, over and again.  You rose and you decayed.  We could have stayed and bowed our will and our spirit, and we could have prayed to your armies and deities.  Yes we might have stayed by the fleshpots tasting the salt bread.  And then?  And then?

Manetho: [belches] Then assimilation into Egyptian life.  You realize that even those things which are subject to decay are good.  Nothing can be corrupted if it were not in some way good.  And yet that which is corrupt is still good, for if a thing were deprived of all good, it would not exist at all.

Moses:  Ah, curse you!  That’s Saint Augustine.  And he is talking about the creations of the obscure idol we chose instead of your life, your will.  And that God of obscurity, that soultransfiguring God led us in a pillar of smoke, like these we create together, but singular and beautiful, swirling and undulating shapeless shapes.  We followed that pillar of cloud by day and left our house of bondage.  I spoke with the ineffable.  Have you any idea of that?  The eternal spoke to me on mountaintops.  On this one, here.  This very place.

Manetho:  You Jews became outlaws.

Moses:  We were  given the law, and we shine even now with the light of inspiration.  Had we stayed we would have been enslaved.  You did us evil, you Egyptians, and you tortured us, saddling us with punishing work.  Our God, the Pure One who dwells on high, raised up a community, a people beyond counting.  And let me ask you this, Manetho, whose name is more remembered: mine, or any in your lists of kings?

Manetho:  Ok.  Ok.  Next year in Jerusalem.

Moses:  You’d better believe it.

Manetho:  I do take exception to your last point.  What has ever been greater than Egyptian civilization or lasted so long?  And what people today are so kind, so beautiful.  But Moses, remember please, all things that rise must fall and then must rise and then must fall and then rise again and fall again.  The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today.  We all have our day.

Moses:  We all have our day.

Begone! The world is before you.

• Aeolus

Slow in the hazy light I have been asking, Almost as a comfort, if the past Belonging to this now unhappy Adam Was nothing but a magic fantasy Of that God I dreamed. Now it is imprecise in memory, that lucid paradise, But I know it exists and will persist Though not for me. The unforgiving earth is my affliction, and the incestuous wars of Cains and Abels and their progeny. Nevertheless, it means much to have loved To have been happy, to have laid my hand on The living Garden, even for one day.12:20 am

In a hurry to get that ad.  Just need to run out to get that Keyes ad.  What’s that Lenehan is doing under the desk there?  Geometry?  Don’t want to trample him.  Bull in china.  I’m in a hurry.  Going now.  Better get going because I want to catch Keyes.  Got to go.  Let’s blow.  Breeze on out.  Ease on down the road.  Descend that staircase.  No time like the present.  Here I go.  I’ll take my coat and my leave.  Just run round to Dillons.  Mazurka round to Dillons.  Steal a march round to Dillons.  Ok?  Is that ok?  I’ll be right back.  Back in no time.  Fast as the wind.

Beneath a reign of uncouth stars.

• Proteus

For one of those gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or (more precisely) a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply and disseminate that universe. 11:46 am

[A slight whispering wind blows through the theatre and we hear the sound of an incoming tide.  The veil of the temple rises revealing a circle of people lying on their backs staring up at the sky.]

Cassiopeia: [gazing at herself in a hand mirror] The stars are beautiful at this time of day, don’t you agree?  Though not as beautiful as me of course.

Pan:  Of course, baby.  Now come over here and sit on my lap.  My energies are rising.

Cassiopeia:  None so beautiful as me.

Shadow: [rolling over, bending himself toward the rocks, turning his back to the sun] Darkly they are there behind this light.  Darkness shining in the brightness.

Proteus:  [in the shape of a long stick, curved at the end, no knots]  We are here to look at birds people, not stars.  Now pay attention before I change my mind, I’m getting tired.  Did you hear that rook?  That means it will soon rain.

Pan:  This is Seattle, everything means it will soon rain.  Look, a dog!  It will soon rain. Look, a wave!  It will soon rain.  Please.  So, Virgin, your hand is so gentle.  Love the longlashed eyes, baby, want to trust me a little?

Cassiopeia:  She, she, she.  What is she to compare to me?

That Virgin:  [pointing] That cloud looks like a book.  See it up there?  Oooh, now it looks like letters.  U. P.

Pan:  [visibly aroused]  A lady of letters!  I am lonely here, touch me.

Proteus:  [in the form of our souls]  Goodness!  Look at that manshape ineluctable! I’ll sit on your lap. Cling to you a little, a woman to her lover.

Pan: [in his flutiest voice] The more the more!

Shadow:  [flatly] Come back to us Proteus, I see shadows of birds on a white field.

Pan: [Flutier] Don’t listen Proteus, come, cling, then come.  Now where the blue hell are you?

Proteus:  [In the form of a mirror] That’s better.  Feel a bit shamewounded.  Now where were we.  Oh yes.  Those birds, Shadow, are magpies and there are one, two, seven of them.  A secret.  And my stars, look, an owl!  And it is nearly noon, no wonder I am so tired.  Let’s see, owl, a revelation at night.  Also a bitter mystery.  A mysterious secret will be revealed at night.  Also, it will soon rain.

Cassiopeia:  [rubbing lotions into her skin]  Proteus, you’ve never looked so flat, yet in you I see distance.  Near, far, east, me.  Oh there I am.  Me.  Oh Proteus, you are so beautiful.  Oh, I feel something!  What is that word known to all men?

That Virgin:  What is that word?  I want to feel it too.  Point over here Proteus, show me what Cassiopeia sees.

Proteus: [In the form of Berkeley]  You see nothing.  You think you see.  Everything is flat, and you only think you see distances.  Those stars unbeheld behind this light?  Their distance is only an element of your idea of them.

Pan: [masturbating gently]  I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now.  I am quiet here alone.  Sad too.  Touch, touch me.

Shadow: [in the form of my form]  Not for all the word.

The dog’s bark ran toward him, stopped, ran back

• Proteus

Is not your time as irreversible as that same river where Heraclitus, mirrored, saw the symbol of fleeting life? A marble slab awaits you which you will not read -- on it, already written, the date, the city, and the epitaph. Other men too are only dreams of time, not indestructible bronze or burnished gold; the universe is, like you, a Proteus. Dark you will enter the darkness that awaits you, doomed to the limits of your traveled time. Know that in some sense you are already dead. 11:30 am

Haines, the dog of my enemy, and I just stood pale, silent, bayed about.  What do I want from these pretenders then or now.  Live their lives.  His life to be his and mine to be mine.  For this I am pining?  He is not fortune, he is fortune’s primrose knave.  Smiling at my fear.  Mocking me in their house of death.  Enough.  Nobody wants my medieval abstrusiosities.  Tell the truth.  He saves men from drowning and I shake at a dog’s bark.  Would I save somebody?  I’m not a strong swimmer.  The water is cold, soft.  But spit it out, yes, I would want to.  I would try.  It’s his eyes, though, a drowning man’s eyes scream the horror of his death.  I would drown with him.  Together.  I could not save her.  Lost.

Disguises, clutched at, gone, not here

• Proteus

No one has ever been so many men as this man, who like the Egyptian Proteus could exhaust all the guises of reality. 11:20 am

He lights the fuse and I see that flame dangerous, blue, a flame too close to the face light us, reveal our position.  Breathe it in.  Pause.  Blow it up to the sky.  A signal.  Time now.  A wild escape, light the fuse.  Hide. Then shattered glass and toppling masonry.  Ruin of all space and most particularly all time.  That’s gone.  And there’s death too.  As if death were not too.  Then, and lets be authentic now.  We are talking about the real here, no bullshitting around, the getaway happened under the disguise of the full blaze of day.  A wedding, honeymoon car, hide as a bride.  Easy.  People look and see a wild escape and imagine their own.  Ah well.  They all end the same.  Now our spurned lover is loveless, the wife is wifeless.  Again, the plain light of day washes over us all.  Think of all the landless now.  The exiles in America in particular.  The children of the children.  I think we have some Irish: American mutt.  They have forgotten.  Who?  Remember us, O Sion, we do not remember you.

As if it wasn’t broken already

• Hades

There was no one in him; behind his face (which even through the bad paintings of those times resembles no other) and his words, which were copious, fantastic and stormy, there was only a bit of coldness, a dream dreamt by no one. At first he thought that all people were like him, but the astonishment of a friend to whom he had begun to speak of this emptiness showed him his error and made him feel always that an individual should not differ in outward appearance. 11:16 am

He looks a bit like Shakespeare, or so they say.  I see it.  He’s an intelligent man, doesn’t deserve his cyclical life.  Drunk wife, dancing around in a kimono with an umbrella that time, pawns furniture, he buys it back.  She sells it again Friday and he starts again Monday.  Sisyphus without the rock.  Would wear the heart out of a stone.  It was just after we saw the tiny coffin, white, Martin tried to turn the talk away from.  Poor little thing in that coffin.  Well out of it as Dedalus said.  In the midst of life we are in death.  And we all understand what that means perfectly well.  Don’t we?  I mean, I always believe.  At least for me.  Take Rudy for example.  Sweet little dwarf body weak as putty.  They say a mistake of nature.  Meant nothing, better luck next time.  He doesn’t have to.  Or at least he will never.  Hell with this, what was I saying?  Death in the midst of life.  Yes.  Nabokov said the cradle rocks above an abyss.  You see?  Life is a pinpoint of light surrounded by eternitites of darkness.   Where we came from, where we are going: the same place.  Oh they look on suicide badly enough, greatest disgrace to have in a family, cowardly, temporary insanity was Cunningham’s charitable view.  But I don’t know.  It is a route at least.  It’s one way to get there.  Poor Papa.  He was in a room with hunting pictures on the walls.  At his hotel.  The bottle was there and they said they thought he was asleep at first.  But then saw the yellow streaks on his face.  I didn’t want to look and see him differ from.  And the letter.  For my son Leopold.  No more pain.  Rattle his bones.  Over the stones.  He’s only a pauper whom nobody owns.  Nobody owns.

God, we simply must dress the character

• Proteus

History adds that before or after dying he found himself in the presence of God and told Him: "I who have been so many men in vain want to be one and myself." The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: "Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dream your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one." 11:10 am

Let’s see, who shall I be?  I am a human shell and of course so are you.  What shall I fill myself with now?  I can wear my latin quarter hat with puce gloves and just say in the most natural tone: when I was in Paris, Boul’Mich, I used to.  Feel that?  Felt good, no?  Real.  And now it is for you to say you seem to have enjoyed yourself and yes, I seem.  It’s all in the seeming.  If it seems not it is not.  So then so.  Look around, no-one about?  Good.  Can shift to a new seam.  It’s allright, nobody saw.  And if caught wearing the wrong seem, well easy enough.  Other fellow did it: other me.  Which me?  Well there’s the me you can see and who the hell that is who can say.  Does it matter?  Who the hell are you?  Who are you to?  Who do you think you?  Well, you know who you, in all your glorious pluralities.  I see you shifting.  Where are you anyway?  Where makes you who just as much as when.  Is that an office?  Are you at work?  I can’t see.  Shift over a bit so I can.  Oh I see, now that makes more sense.  Of course who you are here is not who you are there.  There either.  You are free to act this way with these but not that way with those.  Fill yourself with yourself, but not all of yourself.  Save some for your solitary seem.  Nobody knows that who, not even you.

And and and and tell us,

• Proteus

And into the river that had been a stream (for a thousand of tears had gone eon her and come on her and she was stout and struck on dancing and her muddied name was Missisliffi) there fell a tear, a singult tear, the loveliest of all tears (I mean for those crylove fables fans who are 'keen' on the pretty-pretty commonface sort of thing you meet by hopeharrods) for it was a leaptear. 11:06 am

Oh weeping God, the things I married into.  Drunken accountant and his brother.  Stephen the artist visiting them, couldn’t he fly a bit higher than that?  Nuncle Richie and Crissie, papa’s little bedpal, his lump of love.  And how does that visit go?  I’ll tell you, by Christ, same every time.  Stephen rings the bell and that cross-eyed Walter with his sir yes sir no sir sir checks for bill collectors, repo depot, summons servers then lets Stephen in to sit in the only chair.  Offer up the back ache pills, that’s all there is.  And then what?  Drunk in the morning Ritchie holding forth in his house of decay.  And and and and how is Uncle Si?  Stephen says his uncle is a Judge, his uncle is a general.  You’re awfully holy Stephen, aren’t you.  But you will never be a saint.  You prayed to the Blessed Virgin to spare you from drink and to the Devil to spare women from clothes.  You’d sell your soul for that, shouting Naked Women! Naked Women! from the top of a city bus.  Cry it to the rain kid.  And what about that.  What about what?  You’d read two pages each of seven books every night then bow to yourself in the mirror.  Stars in your eyes.  Applause!  You think no one saw.  House not that big kid.  Hurray for the Goddamned idiot!  Hray!  And where are those books you were going to write with letters for titles?  Have your read his P?  Yes but I prefer U!  FW is wonderful but don’t read SU. You were going to write on everything that can be known and the critics would say when one reads the words of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once won.  And once one has won the hearts of the one who reads the one that one has won, then one may write one more one like that one but not like the other one, you know the one.  Jesus wept, and no wonder by Christ.

Maximum the second

• The Lotus-Eaters

In my childhood I have seen old men who, for long periods of time, would hide in the latrines with some metal disks in a forbidden dice cup and feebly mimic the divine disorder.10:18 am

Show us a minute.  Bantom Lyons materiallized as if from nowhere and said this with his hand.  Show us a minute.  I gave him my newspaper.  Tried anyway, to get rid of him.  Show us a minute?  Look at the sun, it moves by its own radius every minute.  That’s if you can see the sun which we cannot.  Not in this town.  There’s no telling a minute under these clouds.  And you shouldn’t look directly into the sun.  Maximum the second.  That’s what Bantom Lyons’ yellow blacknailed fingers said next.  I suppose the inability to see a minute would maximize the second.  Stretch the moment; make it plastic.  It’s what we have to work with.  Can’t add anything to it.  Better to think of the second instead of the minute.  Lyons has some bad dandruff.  His head just under my nose.  He is Irish.  Decended from the lost tribe that never went back.  Going to throwaway his money on a horse race.  I must have said something because he suddenly looked at me, said he’d risk it, and took off toward Conway’s.  God speed and get the fuck out.

Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!

• Nestor

Neither vengeance nor pardon nor prisons nor even oblivion can modify the invulnerable past. To me, hope and fear seem no less vain, for they always refer to future events: that is, to events that will not happen to us, who are the minutely detailed present. I am told that the present, the specious present of the psychologists, lasts from a few seconds to a minute fraction of a second; that can be the duration of the history of the universe. In other words, there is no such history.10:50 am

Why is history a nightmare from which I am trying to awake?  I’ll tell you why.  We are consigned to the moment we choose to experience.  That’s it.  Done.  Once we’ve turned a moment of now into an event that’s past then that’s that.  Live with it.  All other possibilities are impossible.  History is a trap.  I’ll admit this to you, I don’t give a shit, I’m telling you.  I am paralyzed by my lot in time.  The pain of it.  I can’t help it.  None of us can.  You can’t either.  The events of my life have shaped me to what I am at this moment and I am afraid.  The choices I’ve made cannot be unmade.  And worse, the actions I choose not to perform can never be possible again.  No wonder I feel guilt.  No wonder I am estranged from the light.  Are you afraid too?  I’ll lay it on the line for you:  it is not just about the things I have done or not done.  History is nightmarish because the more choices I make, the more compounded are the infinities of possibilities that are no longer available.  Finito.  Untouchable.  Pick a slim number of things to do to say to never do to never say, and you leave an infinity unchosen.  I could have, I should have, I might have, I would have.  There is no waking from this nightmare.  I am trying but what if at that sweet moment of consciousness that nightmare gives me a back kick?  So I go back to lucid dreaming.  Deasy is waiting for history to perfect itself into deity.  But listen to that?  You hear that?  That shout?  That’s God.  There’s God.  A shout in the street is all the deity there is.  Come one, you know what I mean.  You can sniff out the truth.  Smell it.  When was the last time you shouted for any reason?  Joy, fear, rage, ecstasy, what have you.  Feel it now.  During that shouting moment, that tiny moment, in the space of that sweet bit of infinity in the palm of your hand, you have no idea of history at all.  No thought of it, no need of it, no influence from it, no back kick, no memory, no guilt, no remorse, no horrible regret, no nothing.  Shout and you are free.  You transcend.  You are the manifestation of God.