Having my way with Ulysses

To substitute other more acceptable phenomena in the place of the less acceptable phenomena to be removed.

In order to cry, steer the imagination toward yourself, and if this proves impossible owing to having contracted the habit of believing in the exterior world, think of a duck covered with ants or of those gulfs in the Straits of Magellan into which no one sails ever.2:25 am

A father is a necessary evil, though it’s damn hard to feel necessity for something that might easily be nothing. How would I know anything? Coming into this mess: I’m a baby. I have no need of memory.  What do I want with a memory until I have some shot at using it for my own interests? I sure as hell knew who Momma was, but him? Was he even there? And me? I’m a newborn. I’m busy proceeding energetically from the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void. I’m dealing with the painful character of the ultimate functions of separate existence. Take any other baby born on the day of my birth, take them all: he could have been all their daddies. I can see why the immaculate conception sold so well. I’ll buy one of those and I’ll take a little apostolic succession on the side.  But these recurrent frustrations, just when I can see a critical turning point just there, just there, then down we tumble faster than 32 feet per second per second. It’s a battle against hopelessness carrying on like this. He’s my only begetter; I am his only begotten, but disarmed of fatherhood what is he? Who is he to me? All babies have fathers. Some fathers are not fathers. Therefore, some babies have not fathers. Take the imposition of natural law out of the picture and what, does that make life infinitely perfectible? Upward to some great goal. Suppose I am a father. Am I a father? If I were? A father is an unnecessary evil.

Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded himself twice not to forget.

The calendar is intolerable to all wisdom, the horror of all astronomy, and a laughingstock from a mathematician's point of view. 2:01 am

I have devised a stratagem. I cannot wait to tell you because it will be our entry key to a great high mystery the secret of which is found in, oh but shall I jump right in and tell you? To tell or not to tell. Oh where to begin. I must do this properly as my secret is so momentous, so illuminating. Now please quiet down, quiet down. Oh where to begin. Today, on this historic occasion, the feast day of dear Saint Martin I, pope and martyr and sufferer of dysentery (hang in there Marty!) this feast day of Saint Nilus the Elder not the younger who after the birth of his children desperately needed alone time and hey haven’t we all been there, on this feast day of Saint Emilian Cucullatus another of your hermit types, this glorious feast day of Saint Machar Irish emigree to Scotland, so there’s that then, so many memories, so many memories, and let me see, can’t forget old Saint Cunibert today on his feast day who did something or other I cannot recall, and this is feast day of Saint Cumian the Tall good god, how many saints are there? Today, as I said historic occasion, this grand feast day of Saint Livinus head cut off by somebody from the opposite camp, Saint Liafwine, English from Ripon, declared all gods dead but his, and let us not forget Saint Benedict’s day today, murdered by thieves. What’s a monk going to have that thieves want? To murder or not to murder? To steal or not to steal? Today is the feast day also of Saint Anastasius, or is it Astrik? Who remembers? And don’t forget dear Saint Rainerius of Arezzo, what a miracle worker he turned out to be. Today is also St John Della Pace’s feast day, a married hermit somehow, and the feast day of Saint Gabriel of Ancona who had a glorious account of his life drawn up but nobody can remember where to find it. Have you seen it? To look or not to look. And of course this is the feast day of Saint L. Ron Hubbard of the Church of the SubGenius.

Oh I have something big to announce. As we gather here on this the twelfth day of November of the year two thousand and twelve of the common era in the Gregorian calendar counting from the year zero, and for the Julians among us who possess quite a fine calendrical system despite its lacking a year zero we gather here on this the thirtieth day of October in the year two thousand and twelve on a day beginning at midnight. For you astronomers today’s Julian day is 2456243.5 and for you amateur astronomers it is 56243. You both get to start your day at the crack of noon, so that’s quite nice for you then. Ah, sholem aleykhem it is so good to see you all here this twenty seventh day of Heshvan Five thousand seven hundred and seventy three. Mazol tov on that lunar accuracy. To speak of the sun or to speak not of the sun? If you want to be precise, solarly speaking, then we gather here today on this fine Doshanbeh, this glorious twenty second day of Aban of the year one thousand three hundred and ninety one of the Persian calendar but no matter, no matter. Not when This is long count 12.19.19.16.1 1 Calli 1 Tecpatl 4 Cipactli Meztli 18 Cuauhuitlehua. Oh wait, my mistake. That’s Aztec! The Mayans have it as long count 12.19.19.16.1 4 Ceh 4 Imix! Whew! For a minute there things looked a little improved, at least for those of you linearists trying to square the Mayan calendar’s circle. Oh dear, I’ve offended some of you. Please don’t leave. Oh dear. Well, now, there are a few seats for those of you standing in the back! So there’s that then. Yes, where were we. To announce or not to announce? Today, friends we gather here on this Bahá’í Era Day 61598 Perfection, the third day of the week Asthma  (Names,9) of Qudrat (Power) 169BE, 169/13/9 and the tenth Vahid of the first Kull-i-Shay, so Alláh’u’Abhá! and a hearty Assalamu Alilkum Wa Rahmatulah Wa Barakatuh on this Saturday the twenty eighth of Dhu al-Hijjah, 1433 Anno Hegirae. Such a momentous day this fine Sunday November eighth, two thousand and twelve of the International Fixed Calendar; this Monday the twelfth of November 0072 in the year of hafnium in the New Science Calendar. And on this Sunday, Frederic ninth, two hundred and twenty four of the Positivist calendar we gather to hear such a momentous secret I shall tell only to you, on this Sunday of the Yew Moon twenty eighth, of the Moonwise year two thousand and twelve, and a fine Wednesday it is too this 2012 D-54 of the World Season calendar. Did I say Wednesday? I meant Somavara, the twenty first day of Kartika of the year one thousand nine hundred and thirty four of the Indian civil calendar. But for many of you this isn’t a work day, so. No. Today is indeed (to tell or not to tell!) for on this beautiful pre-dawn day one of week forty six of the year two thousand and twelve and day three hundred and seventeen of the same year of the ISO-861 Week and Day and Day of Year Calendar, this Unix time() value 1352678400, this momentous Excel Serial Day number 41225 (39763 for Macintosh), this Sweetmorn day 24 of The Aftermath, YOLD 3178 (augur) of the Discordian calendar, La Prime 1-364-298 of the Galactic Milieu calendar, this Monday Kali 29, 551 (5-0551-11-29) of the Goddess Lunar Calendar and isn’t she looking fine today with that tongue sticking right out there. Yes. Such a good feeling on this, ah, this, ah Onesday, eleven 8, 2012 of the Human calendar, though I’d rather get a good feeling of a little goddess. So difficult to remember. You are devastating. Ah yes. I feel a little sidetracked, a little houri. To remember or not to remember.  Oh my she does look so very blue today this Egyptian Coptic fourth day of Athor, 1729 or is it Hator. Coptic. Ethiopian? Hidar, 4, 2005. Um. What was I saying. To remember or not to remember this Earthday, the third of Aphrodite, 20 of the Millennium Mars Calendar. Aphrodite. Well, now, three’s company. My dear people, gods, goddesses if I can ask you to wait for me in the green room, I regret I must delay my announcement until cycle 78 year 29 (Ren Chen, Dragon) month 9 (Xin Hai, pig or is it Geng Xu? I forget and who cares, two goddesses!) day thirty 4710. Indeed, all things considering, this can wait until The Aftermath 23, CUW of the Jusanotoronian calendar, or rather ruz of Ashtad, mah, Avan 1381 as my dear friend Zarathustra puts it, did you know he invented calendar reckoning? I wonder if Kali knows that? Kali? Aphrodite? Wait for me girls, did you ladies know that today being the

The sins of the past are rising against you. Many. Hundreds.

The thing pleased him andt, and andt, He larved ond he larved on he merd such a nauses The Gracehoper feared he would mixplace his fauces. I forgive you, gorndt Ondt, said the Gracehoper, weeping, For their sukes of the sakes you are safe in whose keeping. 12:39 am

Thousands. They are raindrops rolling across a window, and you can see allpast right through them. Lets get up close. Magnification of where, distortion of how, inversion of what time, and with how many fluxes in octaves between convex and concave. Polytemporality wouldn’t know anything about that, strictly speaking, from here it’s ants all the way down. I dreamed something different perhaps maybe once if rememory serves. I disguised myself and walked, a dark visaged man, trailing hair, creamfruit smell.  I was dreaming and the dream was me. Like you. But you appear to be drowning just a bit. Partially drowning, like you misplaced your what’s that? Well, that’s your opinion, I’m just saying what I see from nowhen. Men like to ondts.

Shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past

We are reminded of that difference between genuine memory, and mere haphazard recollection, noted by Plato in the story he tells so well of the invention of writing in ancient Egypt.— It might be doubted, he thinks, whether genuine memory was encouraged by that invention. The note on the margin by the inattentive reader to "remind himself," is, as we know, often his final good-bye to what it should remind him of.

10:47 pm

I’ve seen that look before.  Rememory.  I’m almosting it.  Must have been fifteen seventeen years ago.  He looked to be about five then, sweet little boy standing on the urn.  Held up with hands around the urn.  The urn filled with wetted ashes and the Dillon girls and Molly holding him up.  Eating cherries.  He knew he liked it. He knew his mother would not like him standing on that urn.  He looked at her watching, her mother eyes on him to call him down.  Reproachful mother eyes speaking him to come down with mute secret words.  Sweet boy looking at his silent mother remote with the pain that was not yet the pain of love.

One ear could hear what the other spoke.

[It] was of an oblong and concave figure, four feet in length, and two and a half in breadth, framed of a light wood, coverd with a bulls hide, and strongly guarded with plates of brass.10:36 pm

Well you know what I heard, I heard she commissioned a mechanical something that would turn her somehow into a cow.  Not that she needed a machine to do that, am I right?  Seriously though, I heard that she had this like plasmic memory, you know, she remembered everything ever in her head, but all at once.  It was like a noise or something like all her lives talking at the same time but sometimes she could hear the differences between the voices and one of them said moo. Moo! Just like that, she decided she was once a cow and obsessed about it. That’s why she’s always wearing that cowhide jacket and pants. Even in heat. I thought she was nuts. Turns out she is nuts! And you know what I heard, I heard that she heard this double moo in her head, like voices stuck together.  And the voices had one body like cows cleaved into the one and the two simultaneously.  I don’t know what that means, I mean come on.  Both one and two but not as in three. Whatever. She hears voices. I’m just telling you. I’m just saying.

The rich incrustations of time

he spat in careful convertedness a musaic dispensation about his hearthstone, if you please (Irish saliva, mawshe dho hole, but would a respectable prominently connected fellow of Iro-European ascendances with welldressed ideas who knew the correct thing such as Mr Shallwesigh or Mr Shallwelaugh expectorate after such a callous fashiion, no thank yous! when he had his belcher spuckertuck in his pucket, pthuck?)

5:51 pm

Sedimentary reality — that’s history.  Do you see?  History is made from memory, and the memories that make history, the ones that stick, the ones that calcify, you know the ones, the ones that start out as shifting sands until they become mineral accretions on our bodies, oh where to what to.  I’ll stand to say it.  The memories that make history are the ones compressed into our souls through force, through hatred, through persecution.  All the history of the world is full of it.  Persecution, injustice.  Look at your self.  Train your eye on yourself.  What is your nation?  And what about your race? What are these worlds?  Where dyoublong?  You think, you think, you think history is what was when?  It happened then?  Over there?  Back before whatchuyoucallitwhen?  No.  There is no over there back when.  It’s here now.  Now.  Right now.  This very moment.  This very instant.  Look, the hatred, the injustice, you think that goes away?  It hardens and sticks.  It creates layers all over the place.  Layers right here now, all over us.  Everywhere.  And it persists.  I don’t mean extension in time, no.  There’s no line here from then to when.  I’m saying it is all right here now persisting.  Calcifying.  Barnacling.  Do you see?  Force, hatred, injustice, history.  Insult.  History.  That’s history.  That’s history.  And it’s no way to live.  No life.  You can’t.  You can’t.  But you know it’s no use to stand up to hatred.  Hatred collects and and and it shifts, and it compacts and compresses and it calcifies into memory.  And then it becomes history.  That’s how it happens.  The layers become reality.  Sedimentary reality.  The real built on shifting sands, until it creates a nice hard surface.  No standing up to that.  It’s the opposite of that is life.  It’s.  Oh, what is it?  That world everybody knows.  You know it, don’t you.

Where are our missing twenty millions of Irish should be here today instead of four, our lost tribes?

(Ah, crabeyes, I have you, showing off to the world with that gape in your stocking!) Wold Forrester Farley who, in deesperation of deispiration at the diasporation of his diesparation, was found of the round of the sound of the lound of the.5:42 pm

Where?  Right here.  What are you, blind to the world?  Open your eyes.  Look me square in the eye and I’ll tell you we are here.  We are right here.  All over the place.  But do we know it?  No.  Not really.  No.  We are dilluting.  Watering down.  Merging, really, with others.  Come St. Patrick’s day we’re back in an eye blink.  Kiss me I’m Irish and here’s mud in your eye!  Then the next day, in the twinkling of an eye, memory fails before it can remember.  We have some Irish in us, but we don’t remember what that means.  Some of us think we have no heritage at all, the blind leading the blind to the world.  No-one so blind as those that will not see.  Now get the hell out of my sight.

The voice of Esau.

At that very instant: Oh, what I would not give for the joy of being at your side in Iceland inside the great unmoving daytime and of sharing this now the way one shares music or the taste of fruit. At that very instant the man was at her side in Iceland.2:46 pm

A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella, and in my case the reality of my existence has become reason for footnotes here or there.  And that’s it. A theory published in a lesser journal then even more delicious, a theory refuted in a much more promising journal.  Where am I going with this?  I forget.  Oh, I hate it when.  Completely gone from my head.  Wait.  Let me walk back to where I was when.  Positional memory, you understand, it will come back.  Can’t walk away though, busy borrowing a pair of typing hands.  I’ll wander with my mind.  Are those your shoes?  You walk around in those things?  Deplorable.  At least clean them up or something.  Rub the dirt off.  Here give them to me.  I’m a shoemaker;  I’ll fix them up for you.  Oh I forgot.  I’m here, you’re there.  Well, do it yourself then.  Oh yes!  That’s right.  I existed.  I exist.  I’ll keep existing if you’ll invoke me, but unfortunately I was the first of five surviving brothers and stories work so much better with three, so a couple of us had to go.  Banishment from heart and home.  And memory.  Most people even deny I was a relative!  As if there could just happen to be two unrelated John Shakespeares in Stratford.  So, exiled I went to the land of lost umbrellas.  People prefer to think of brothers in threes, you see that don’t you.  We crave things in threes.  Three is the magic number, yes it is, it’s the magic number.  No more, no less.  In comedy, three beats to a laugh.  In fairy tales, two bad examples then one good.  One two three, two two three, three two three five.  I was the first of five brothers, named for our father.  Then, forgetting our sisters if you’ll allow it, came my famous brother you know the one.  The others, Gilbert, Richard, and Edmund, were a haberdasher, a dimwit, and an actor, respectively.  Edmund, following Will’s footsteps, treaded the boards in my shoes.  But it was Will’s boots that changed the shape of Edmund’s feet.  Until he died too early, that is, carried out of the theatre feet first and put into the ground with a forenoon knell of the great bell.  We all felt the loss, though Will paid the bill.  Maybe he felt that inner gnawing bite of conscience.  William, the false, usurping, adulterous brother.  I was the eldest.  And I sold my birthright for so little.  But I did have what I had.  And I still have, thanks to eternity.  Whatever anywhere wherever was, is and is and is three and five times over and then some.  What else is there to want?  We all want what we already have.

One who has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners.

What is love? 'tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure: In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure. 2:10 pm

I married a ghost.  And I died before I was born.  Liliata rutilantium.  Well, I died sixty-seven years after I was born, but what is it to you how we lived or died?  Forget me.  He did.  He left me and he gained a world of pretty theatre boys in the cast off armor of court ladies.  The world believes William made a mistake marrying me.  And got out of it as best he could and quickly too.  Stephen thinks a man of genius makes no mistakes, that his errors are volitional, to be used as portals of discovery.  Well William’s genius discovered my portal sure enough.  Made use of me.  And don’t think that because I was twenty-six and he a full eight years younger than me that I drew him in, trapped him into bed and then ruthlessly wed.  Listen to greenroom gossip if you like, but consider:  what would I want with a boy pauper for a husband?  Call me a whore before and a shrew after, what do I care, but the truth is he came after me.  The mistake was mine and he knew it.  He made it Ophelia’s mistake too.  But instead of drowning myself in the Avon, I told my family and they fixed it.  Took care of business.  Five months after our wedding I gave birth to our daughter, my sweet light-of-love.  But did he care?  No.  Gone he was to London and no agenbite of inwit to it.  And for me what was he, a ghost by his absence to haunt me.  And my status?  Not widow.  Hardly a wife.  A stationary target for his debt collectors.  As he rose I became conspicuous.  Like a bad smell in the room, worse than that stench hovering around Æ.  The smell of him!  I may not have a nose left to my face but wow!  That reek will raise the dead.  But the point odoriferous Æ makes is valid.  What use is it to pry into my husband’s life, the bastard.  Good for nothing.  Lousy father.  It was no use to me, that I can assure you, I wept alone.  Leaving us to starve on our own in Stratford.  His drinking, his debts.  Stephen owes AE almost $100, did you know that?  But did he catch AE’s hint?  Bringing up my worthless husband’s financial incontinence.  He caught it.  Then he rationalized his way out of it.  Stephen five months ago was a different set of molecules went his logic.  It wasn’t me.  It was those molecules of Stephen that borrowed the money, the Stephen now is composed of entirely new stuff and cannot be blamed for what any prior Stephen has done.  Free and clear.  No agenbite of inwit, eh Stephen?  Nice try kid.  Good use of physics.  That handy second law of thermodynamics, those molecules from five months ago will decay as plainly as did the nose on my face.  But don’t you forget that first law.  There are still constants to deal with and your memory persists.  It changes things, does a little rearranging here and there, always a bit of phenomenal fluxing within grey matter, but memory persists.  And don’t forget your form of forms.  That soul rattling around within those nice new molecules of yours persists too.  Just look at me if you need a bit of proof.  Or get a whiff of AE  if you prefer your proof to be more on the measurable side of things.  You owe what you owe.  Pay your own damn way.

As if it wasn’t broken already

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.