Having my way with Ulysses

Letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing

• Cyclops

But they will teach us that Eternity is the Standing still of the Present Time, a Nunc-stans (as the Schools call it;) which neither they, nor any else understand, no more than they would a Hic-stans for an Infinite greatness of Place.

5:40 pm

This place is filled with bugs.  Look at that one there in the corner.  Oh wow, that’s a spider eating another spider.  No wait, not eating.  Well, that’s natural.  Told Joe I could wait for the money he owes me if he would talk to Myles about the Keyes ad.  He won’t do it.  Look at those spiders.  Right here with us, living lives.  Mating.  Sharing our houses strangers to us.  What civilization do they have, I wonder.  They crawl so close over everything we have, everything we’ve made.  Our art, our literature, our beds.  And we busy with our moderation and botheration and civilization and syphilisation to be much to them but goodfornothing gods lighting sideways on their lives smushing them so you wouldn’t see a trace of them after and leave them for our dogs to devour or wipe them off with something and into the trash with you, honey.  And here are these two in the corner just in time to be late to know that somebody will smash them before they are done and well, that’s natural.  Obliterated to nothingness.  Well, not nothingness.  Nothing is not nothing.  Think about zero, yeah?  What is it but a place holder.  It makes things clearer in writing down numbers so 1132 can be seen right away as different from 11032.  Zero is a quantity of nothing.  Until you try to divide something by zero.  Then nothing turns into something pretty quick.  It becomes a whole lot of something, infinite something.  Suddenly nothing is everything.  Those spiders are nothing.  Those spiders are the kings of infinite space.

Quicker, darlint! On now. Dare it. Let there be life.

• Aeolus

12:56 pm

He didn’t see it.   He suggested I name it It is a God who Gave us this Peace.  People always quote the first page.  Doesn’t anybody read on?  Tityrus worships Rome with his speech to his exiled friend; that’s the god he means.  Early Virgil, still a masterpiece, but it doesn’t work for the story as I told it.  I named it A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The Parable of the Plums.  You get it.  The elements compound and compound and that’s where to find the story.  Accretion.  What do you want to read?  Over and again it is: once upon a time and every day until one day and because of this and because of this until finally and ever since that day.  Excretion!  If that’s the story you want to consume then open wide, we’ll spoon it right in.  Here’s the airplane coming in for a landing.  I talked about two vestals aged 50 and 53 out for the day.  You could see them.  Midwives.  I filled it and filled it.  You could even smell them.  Childless and condemned to be so forevermore.  Carrying with them a misbirth with a trailing navelcord.  Planting their plum stones per second per second onto concrete.  Too tired to see the view.  Too tired to look up or down or speak and spent their savings to get there.  See them?  They’ll be sore tomorrow.  And for their aches they use Lourdes water.  What more than what I? What else could I?  And I think it’s funny.  Even if it did remind me of that time with the alley girl.  Crawford didn’t realize I was done either.  And Professor MacHugh didn’t see it.  I don’t know.  Maybe I’ll include it in a short story collection.

Any time he likes, tell him.

• Aeolus

12:53 pm

I raced the wind to get to Myles after having to kiss Keyes’ ass over the ad renewal and he blew me off.  He was on the street talking with J. J. O’Molloy, they came up together you know, started off together back in the day.  I don’t know, maybe I interrupted something.  O’Molloy had a long face.  Seemed a bit defeated.  More than usual that is.  Sad.  Tried to get to Myles fast before he’d be too far gone but I pretty much missed that window.  Ever brief.  And he was on the way to the bar behind a few of them, arm in arm, off for a drink.  Lenehan in front but I suspect Stephen Dedalus was the prime mover.  Wearing better boots today; last time he had holes in his heels.  And I saw him on the way to funeral, wonder what he does down there?  Weighing a bit on me.  Wanted to breeze it by Myles and I was so out of breath he didn’t get much more than Keyes would give the ad, but only for two months and if we put in a puff peace.  I can get the image at the library, House of Keys.  Keyes, get it?  Two crossed keys.  I must have interrupted something.  Myles turned his eye on me as best he could considering and said I should tell Keyes to kiss his ass.  Ths loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock’s wattles.  Kiss my hairy white ass.  He can kiss my ass he said, got that.  Kiss my ass, ok, Póg mo thóin.  Got it?   And for me kish mein touchess and more formally shakli b’tahat.  With heart.  Tell him any way you like.  Then no break red faced riffing gaand chaat mara besa me culo tel’has teezee kyss meg i raeva isskay ymay assay qabula izinga honi ko’u ‘elemu fila mou to kolo.   Ama kwana mwach ka boro too koonam cui mi gaza.  Soen my boudt.  Cusano fy asen.  And that’s straight from the horses mouth.  Tell him.

Akasic records of all that ever anywhere wherever was.

• Aeolus
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

• Aeolus

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.
 

A scarlet beaked face, crested by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in

• Aeolus

It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which delivered o'er to the voice, -- the tongue, -- which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. 12:13 am

What is it?  North Cork Militia.  The BLOODY TINTH!  Won every time.  EVERY TIME WHAT?  Drink!  No drinks served before mass.  Getonouthat.  Bloody old pedagogue.  North Cork and Spanish officers.  Won’t march in Ohio or anywhere for the bloody Prince of Ales.  He could be the prince of my ass.  WON’T MARCH!  What?  In OHIO!  MY OHIO!  Bing bang bing bang, drink?  That will be all right.  All right.  Never you fret.  Never fret.  All right now.  Hello.  That’s all right.  All right.  What’s in the wind?  What?  Canada swindle case.  $90 buys instant Canadian citizenship.  Hello!