Having my way with Ulysses

Three seekers of the pure truth.

They never listen to the voice of reason without being tied up by their prejudices, as Ulysses was by his fellow travelers, and giving them the order in advance: "Pull the rope tighter, the more I squirm and beg to be set free, until we will have lost sight of the Sirens."2:17 am

[Scene: Atop Mount Pisgah in Madaba, Jordan, Moses greets two more Moseses who have come to play a little chess, grill up some lamb, and argue, always argue. Always the same fight about the same damn thing.  Move on already.]

Moses: Welcome gentlemen, Moses, your face.  Not this again.

Moses Maimonides: [His badly scarred face sports wounds in varying stages of freshness. Some of them weep a yellow pus. Stinks. Moses, put a bandage on or something. A mask. Nobody wants to see that.]  Nothing.  A mirror.  Nothing.

Moses Mendelssohn: [Back bent double but nicely dressed]  Oh I’ve done that. Hurts.

Moses: You have to stop. This ridiculous pursuit. It must end. Let it go.

Moses Maimonides: I just wonder, if I could just, if I could just hear it from him once and for all.

Moses Mendelssohn: He was not Jewish. Aristotle was not a Jew. Don’t waste his time asking him that, please, man, have some dignity.  Remember who you are. From Moses to me there was none like you.  You talked Aristotle into the void! Why does his faith mean so much to you?  My closest friend is a, well, not a Christian per se, certainly not a Spinozist or some sort of athiest, more of a pantheist. He’s not Jewish anyway and you don’t see me trying to make him into a Jew.

Moses: It is Plato who is Jewish, not Aristotle. Or Socrates rather.

Moses Mendelssohn: Nonsense. Must anyone be anything? Aristotle. He dealt in reason: his philosophy conjures the purity of truth found only in mathematics. If this equals that then that equals this. Mathematics, not superstition. Most of humanity embark on the journey of life with delusion of superstitions and with the firm resolve to complete that journey with them.  You think a man who rejected the infinite and the void with an even greater resolve was a Jew?

Moses: Stop. Superstitions! I did not lead my people, God’s chosen people, all the way to the holy land for superstitions! With kids too! Are we there yet? Are we there yet? And feeding everybody, and everybody all cooped up together bickering and sick to death of each other already, and can we stop here, and can we stop there every five minutes.  I can’t tell you how many times I threatened to pull the whole thing over and turn around.

Moses Maimonides: And you did it for what? You died here!

Moses Mendelssohn: But the view, Moses, it’s soultransfiguring.  The light in the morning hours must be magnificent.

Moses: It’s a nice place to end up, I’ve got to say.

Moses Maimonides: Your barbeque pit is phenomenal, you could roast just about anything in there. How do you keep such a good smolder going?

Moses: Eternal fire. Really, it comes down to how you shape your burning bush. I like a nice pyramid with a pan of water next to it.

Moses Maimonides: Get that from the Egyptians?

Moses: Yup. You know, Moses, I’m going to ask Plato if he was Jewish. I just have to ask.

Moses Maimonides: I know, right?

Moses Mendelssohn: I can’t listen to these words.

Moses: It’s too late Moses, we are deep into the quicksand now. Our world without end is a different kind of world without end, so don’t give us your mathematical rationality. Parallel lines meet at infinity now.A = A + B.  Mathematics has been entangled in strings of its own making for infinities beyond infinities now.

Moses Maimonides: And all that bound into a finite space too.

Moses: Exactly. Everything is made from infinity and void as you well know. And was Aristotle a Jew? It was Socrates I’m sure of it, or Plato rather.  Was Aristotle Jewish? Let Moses ask him.  See what he can do.

Moses Mendelssohn: Fine. Go ahead Moses, it’s your face.

Moses: Good. Now how do you like your lamb?

What of those Godpossibled souls that we nightly impossibilise?

Then̄e quene Igrayne waxid dayly gretter & gretter so it befel after within half a yere as kyng Vther lay by his quene he asked hir by the feith she ouȝt to hym whos was the child within her body. Thēne she sore abasshed to yeue ansuer.10:05 pm

Scene: [An impromptu meeting at the shrine of St. Foutinus.  A statue of St. Foutinus stands erect in an impressively sized bathtub allowing a variety of palmers and bedesmen to pour their wine offerings over his genitalia while those unable to be delivered of their spleen of lustihead leave wax images of their withered members in hopes a redress God grant.  Doesn’t hurt to try.]

Averroes: [Holding a small lump of wax]  What are you doing here?

Moses Maimonides: [The wounds on his face infected in places, pus oozing past stitches] I’m not speaking to you yet.  Hlo Lilith.  Are you allowed to swim in there?

Lilith: [Naked.  Floating on her back in St. Foutinus’ tub.]  Not really.  But Foutinus and I have a little understanding, don’t we darling.

St. Foutinus:  Screech owl!  Night hag!

Lilith:  He’s a little stiff at the moment.  What are you doing here.  Oh, I see.  Sorry.  Averroes, didn’t you have enough wax?

Averroes:  Never you mind! You should get out of there, you could get pregnant that way.

Lilith:  Oh honey, if that’s what you think no wonder you can’t get it up.

Moses Maimonides:  Idiot.

Averroes:  I though you weren’t speaking to me.  Besides it’s true.  St. Ultan bathes in cold water on windy days, just to avoid it.  He’s got enough mouths to feed.

Moses Maimonides:  You just told Lilith she could get pregnant.  Dumbass.  Don’t you know who she is?  She is the inception of termination.  She is the eraser of mistakes.  She is the darkness at the end of the tunnel, the reliever of stomach bloat and frequent urination, the great evacuator.  She’s what’s between a woman and her doctor.  She takes care of it.  She is the saver of the mother’s life!  Might as well tell her the wind will get her pregnant.

Lilith:  Oh is Zephyrus here?  He blows both ways you know.

Moses Maimonides:  [After a pregnant pause] Does he?

Averroes:  [Dissembling, as his wont was] My apologies Lilith, but what are you doing bathing in there?  That vinegar cures barrenness!

St Foutinus:  Vampire! I smell your reek of moonflower!

Lilith:  Just making my monthly contribution, drum up a little business.  Benefits everybody you know.  She who stealeth from the poor, lendeth to the Lord.

Averroes:  Who was it who said that?

Gone too from the world

A darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.10:20 am

Scene: [A narrow street in 12th century Cordoba, Spain.  Two men are huddled together, tussling over a cracked mirror.  They are fighting but palpably they are not angry.  These men are close in age and have known each other since childhood.]

Abulguailid Muhammad Ibn-Ahmad ibn-Muhammad ibn-Rushd (aka Benraist, Avenryz, Aben-Rassad, and regionally Averroes):  Give it back!

Moses Maimonides: No!

Averroes:  [letting go suddenly so the mirror strikes Moses Maimonides in the chest] Fine.  Go ahead and try.  But you know you can’t reach him without me.

Moses Maimonides:  (defeated, with a sigh) Together then.  But I speak first.

Averroes:  Agreed.  Now make room, I can’t see.

Moses Maimonides:  That better?

Averroes:  Yes.  Ok go.

Together:  We call upon the ani

Moses Maimonides:  Stop!  I’m speaking first.

Averroes:  Fine.  Agreed.  Let’s get on with it.

Together: We call upon the anima mundi, the great soul of the world, to show us in this mirror the face of the one we most believe, the seeker of pure truth.

[The face of Aristotle appears in the mirror.  He is irritated.]

Aristotle:  You two again.  Sheesh, can’t you leave a man in peace?  What do you want now?  I’m busy.  Aquinas and I were trying to prove some nonsense of his with algebra over lunch.  Well, he was having lunch, I was in the mirror.  So what now?

Averroes:  I have found two words in your Poetics that I do not understand.

Moses Maimonides:  No.  Stop.  Don’t listen to him.  We want to ask you about resurrection.  I think that once we are dead that’s it for the body.  In the world to come we will be souls but won’t need bodies.  I’m certain you believe this is true.

Averroes:  Incoherence!  That is the incoherence of incoherence!  There will be no personal immortality; we are all participating in the same intellect.  Now as for those words I cannot translate

Aristotle:  Have you read nothing I have written.  Read first before you bother me!  Look.  I’m going to give you a piece of advice.  Focus on the here and the now.  That should be enough for both of you.  Stick with the observable and above all, break that mirror and leave me alone!

Averroes:  But I must understand!  What is the meaning of comedy and tragedy?  What are these things?

(In a blaze of pyrotechnics Aristotle makes his exit.  Moses Maimonides obediently, and also in an attempt to reach the other side, smashes his face into the mirror.  It shatters and in the reflected multiplicities of the shards still falling, Moses Maimonides sees the reflection of Averroes and the bloody mess of his own face, perplexed, gently disappear.)