Having my way with Ulysses

The bright stars fade

The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through it.... Ah, mortal! then be heedful; for so, in all this din of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar.

4:00 pm

Rallentando

They have the same effect on all of them.  Lure them in, smile, make them think they’re the only pebble on the beach.  Screaming laughter after they’ve gone.  God bless my deaf ears.  Those two Delilah’s in there don’t realize that they’ll be old crones soon enough.  Beauty fades, and fast.  Sucker them in, girls, better land one before he he he realizes what you are about.  Then God’s curse on the bitch’s bastard.  Ruffled their feathers it did, that that kid piano tuner, blind as he is, paid them no notice at all.  Proved their invisibility to them.  They don’t exist unless they think they have a man wanting whatever beauty they possess under those scales.  Play a man like a fiddle.  Look at Kennedy there, ignoring that one for all she’s worth.  That’s an art, boys, that takes some skill.  Drives them wild every damn time.  She knows what they want.  And that other one stretching over him with the clocks on his socks sipping that violet syrupy nonsense.  He’s a male version of them getting Doce’s best show, snapping her bra, ringing in the hour.  Let’s hear the time.  Twelve men a day or she’s not happy.  Flatter them, then cling with chipped talons and devour them whole.  Maneaters.  Customers coming in, two, middling in age.  They’ll take a table with a view: want to see, not be seen.  Married, likely.  They’ll watch and won’t realize their own deafness until they leave.  Poor bastards.  They’ll hear the music, though, and why not?  They have memory and anticipation, same as you.  Same as me.  I hear it.  I hear the music all the time: voiceless songs sung from within.  Sometimes I go for the old slow blues numbers: Ray Charles in the day; Eartha Kitt, Miss Kitt to you.  When I want to pick it up a bit I hear the big bands.  Benny Goodman and his orchestra doing Sing Sing Sing.  In my mind, mind.  I expect; I remember.  Feeling a little allegretto.  Going to run some Louis Prima between my ears for a while.

 

You’re bothering me.  Get out of my head, I have customers to serve.

And what star is that, Poldy?

Money is indeterminate, it is everything, a kind of general equivalent, it is nothing, a kind of blank meaning. Information, as blank meaning, is in the process of taking its place, as a general equivalent.Rochford is Boylan with impatience for me to show Blazes his bit of code when I see him later.  I’ll sound him out.  This is it, whatever sense you want to make out of it:  010101000111010101110010011011100010000001001110011011110111011100100000010011110110111000100000001010000111000001100001011110010010000001100001011101000111010001100101011011100111010001101001011011110110111000100000011101000110111100100000011101000110100001100101001000000110111001101111011101110010111000101001 Richie Goulding on financial business for Goulding, Collis and Ward walked blindly toward a woman no longer young, smiling, as she rushed, fully absorbed, toward him, on her way from superior courtroom W-331 to courtroom E-173.  Money to be made, Tom says, telling people what they see now.  Label the now and they’ll enjoy it more.  Augment that reality.  From Boeing Field, a string of stretch suv’s, one bearing flags, made its way toward the freeway.   Maybe money there but I’ll get mine some other how.  I have my methods.  He’s a hero, Tom, you know that?  Saved somebody stuck down a manhole, the one just down there under the poster of that dauby chick with the yellow hair.  Poor devil stuck halfway to hell choking to death on sewer fumes and down went Tom, tied a rope around him and up they hauled them both.  The act of a real hero.  Ambulance.  Can’t hear myself type.  Anyway, the race is on soon.  Bantam Lyons is putting everything he’s got on a horse somebody gave him that hasn’t an ice cube’s chance in hell.  McCoy kept himself out of it.  I can take my time; she doesn’t need these steaks yet.  I don’t think he appreciated my story about that dinner at Glencree either; he has some kind of feeling for Bloom maybe.  Says his wife sang there but did she?  Come on.  She a star?  Please.  The bright stars fade. Anyway, it was blue o’clock in the morning when we left with the car top down and I sat next to Bloom’s wife trying to get her top down.  Unfurnished Apartments, picked up and placed again on the window sash.  Bloom playing the astronomer pointing out this comet and that comet and stars and stars.  Left me to pay attention to his wife’s moon.  What star is that Poldy, she said.  Just a pinprick, needle dick.  He’s all right, though, Bloom.

Akasic records of all that ever anywhere wherever was.

The methodical task of writing distracts me from the present state of men. The certitude that everything has been written negates us or turns us into phantoms. Akasic Records Office
Ad hoc Committee Meeting Minutes
The meeting was called to order at 12:50 pm
Secretary: Lord Chitragupta
 
Present:  O’Madden Burke, Myles Crawford, Stephen Dedalus, Matt Lenehan, Professor MacHugh, J.J. O’Molloy
 

The minutes of the previous meeting stand approved as corrected.

Professor MacHugh moved to consider the motion that the troop of bare feet heard rushing along the hallway and pattering up the staircase be dubbed oratory.  The motion carried.  Aye: Burke, Crawford, Dedalus, Lenehan, MacHugh, O’Molloy.

Stephen Dedalus moved to adjourn.

O’Madden Burke raised a point of information: Is it not perchance a French compliment?

O’Madden Burke moved to amend the motion to indicate an immediate change of venue and that said change include the adoption of a wine jug in Ye ancient hostelry metaphorically speaking.

Matt Lenehan moved to amend the motion to indicate the meeting venue be changed to Mooney’s.

Matt Lenehan raised a point of information: Will we sternly refuse to partake of strong waters?

Matt Lenehan moved to amend the motion to indicate that the committee will not drink any more.

Matt Lenehan moved to amend the motion to indicate that the committee will not drink any less.

Miles Crawford moved to amend the motion to indicate that Stephen Dedalus is a chip off the old block.

Miles Crawford raised a point of information:  Where are his blasted keys?

Professor MacHugh moved to close debate and vote immediately on the pending question.  Motion carried.  Aye: Burke, Dedalus, Lenehan, MacHugh.  Nay: Crawford, O’Molloy.

Unfinished Business:  The publication of crushed typesheets, location: Crawford’s pocket, regarding Deasy letter, topic: foot and mouth disease.  The pending meeting of a committee formed by  O’Molloy to include Crawford concerning a point of information (financial).

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.
 

Begone! The world is before you.

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.

Hush, I hear feetstoops

12:16 am

Ok, stoop down here.  Don’t mind me, just picking up these racing forms. Figure this out on my own.  La la la. So what do we have.  Sceptre 5 to 4, Zinfandel 7 to 4, Maximum II 10 to 1.  Those are the most likely.  Will include least likely, Throwaway 20 to 1 for a control.  A throwaway.  So.  Ok.  Draw a circle, homogeneous non-differentiated space.  Divide into duality in order to create.  Division within unity.  Now.  Center is O and radius OA=1.  Diameters AA’ and BB’ at right angles and with centers on diameter BB’ draw two circles.  Ok,  each with a radius half that of original circle.  Yup. From point A swing an arc NM tangent to circumferences of the two inner circles.  Repeat from point A’.  Construct square ACB’O from the radius of the original circle.  That’s the racetrack.  Good.  Ok.  The arc of the semi-diagonal of the square and the radius AE of the arc NEM is Φ  and the arcs NEM and NDM divide the radii AO and A’O into the golden division of 1/Φ and 1/Φ2.  Hum. Paradox now. Divide a circle into a yin yang like that and the circumferences of the inner circles are equal to that of the larger circle but the area within them is only half that of the original circle. One has become two. So Zinfandel?  Not Maximum II.  That seems out.   A unity becomes a duality.   Homogeneity becomes polarized.  Separated.  Jockey falls off?  Which one?  Mutually repellent forms arise from a common source.  Well that’s life.  And that sounds like Zinfandel to me.  The pentahedron to the cube, the heptahedron to the cube, the decahedron to the unity.  The icosahedron to the unity.  Hm.  So now, construct a square equal in area to the original circle.  If only pi were 3.17, then it would be Maximum II and what a payoff!  But have to base this on reality.  So.  So.  Φ2= 1+r2 and r = √Φ-1 and r = √Φ and the circumference equals 2∏√Φ with √Φ=1.272. . . and ∏=three point one four one five nine do da do da, so, hm.  If the perimeter of the square is approximately 8.  But I don’t want approximates.  Then, well.  This isn’t very mathematically exact.  A bit like throwing money into a hurricane.  But it looks like Sceptre.  That’s just where it’s shaking out.  I can feel it in the numbers.  My money, all of it, on Scepter.  Respect.  A dead cert.