Having my way with Ulysses

History repeating itself with a difference.

(5b) To change reality for everyone -- the one I told you goes on -- is to accept the fact that everyone is (ought to be) what I am, and, in some way, to meld the real with mankind. That means admitting history, that is, the human race on a false course, a reality accepted until now as real, and away we go. 1:46 am

All right ladies, hold the mirror just so, can everybody see me? Just like this. Adjust your positioning so you can get a good angle yet still feel perfectly comfortable and supported. If anybody needs an extra rolled up blanket go ahead and get one. I’m sorry, I forgot your name, purple mat? Yes, you. Try switching hands. There you go. Good? Everybody ready? Now take a deep breath in through the nose, and feel your breath flowing through every part of your body, moving warmly down your spine, and exiting your body toward the mirror as you breathe out. Good. And breathe in through the nose like an inward voice two, three, four purple mat, you are sitting too tight. If you have a possible need to satisfy by moving a motion, no? Then you’ll need to get into position from standing again. Ok, feet shoulder width apart, there you go, mirror in the other hand, yup, breathe in through the nose and on the exhale bend down as if you let something drop, nice, then let your body fell down, 32 feet, per second, per second. There you go and breathe in, two, three, down the spine, and out toward the mirror. Good. Everybody still breathing? Keep breathing and follow my voice. As you look into your mirror I want you to focus your awareness on the opening just a short distance under where the back changes name. This is your when point; think of it as an omphalos if it helps you. Focus your breath towards your when point and allow this to be your breath’s one great goal. Now I want you to keep feeling the rhythm of your breathing and on your next inhale allow your breath to encircle all the calcifications of history within your body. Now imagine your breath melting history away. Breathe history down your spine and push it out toward the mirror. Good. And inhale, really feeling those mineral accretions of history melting into tailings. Keep breathing. Down the spine. And out. Now breathe in and feel the tailings shifting, melting, like ice into water two, three, four and out,  and on the next cycle we’ll push the last of history toward our one great goal. Ready and in, two, three, four, good, really focus, down your spine, and out, two, three, purple mat, there are buckets and rags in the utility closet. That’s ok. There’s one in every class.

My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between.

Seen in this manner, all our acts are just, but they are also indifferent. There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once. No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist. 2:58 pm

I feel somebody behind me.  Who?  You?  Breathing on me.  Neck prickilish.  The moment is now.  Where?  Why?  Why.  Cease to strive, that’s why.  Peace of druid priests I want.  Hierophantic like descent, search, ascent.  I’ll stand over the omphalos and perform the unrepeatable rites.  I’ll drink the kykeon and walk the earth with the step of a pard.  Descend, then search.  I’ll wander in exile with the eternal Jew.  We shall perform the auguries described by Scotus and practiced by Cornelius Agrippa.  Together we will descend, then search.  We shall sail with the ancient mariner, eternal Odysseus, yes, beyond the bounds of will and time.  Ascend.  Yes, part.  The moment is now.

Heteroousios Dinner Theatre Presents: Contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality Starring Arius the Illstarred Heresiarch!

Far worse than uselessly he leaves the shore more full of error than he was before, who fishes for the truth but lacks the art. Of this Parmenides, Melissus, Bryson are clear proofs to the world and many others who went their way but knew not where it went; so did Sabellius and Arius and other fools, like concave blades that mirror, who rendered crooked the straight face of Scriptures. So too let men not be too confident in judging, witness those who in the field would count the ears before the corn is ripe11:03 am

God:  Hello! God here.  Aleph, Alpha, no headset chatter please.  Jesus let me know when you have places.

Jesus:  Nobody can find Arius.

God:   What! Why?  Entrées are coming out of the kitchen already.  Just look!  Plate after plate of clotted hinderparts.  Where in my name is he?

Jesus:  Not, not one of us can find him.

God:  Oh Christ.

Jesus: [materializes in the booth]  I’m here.

God:  Holy Jesus Christ you scared the shit out of me!  What are you doing in the booth?  It’s as if you came from nowhere.

Jesus:  Sorry.  I thought we should keep this off the headsets.  Arius said some odd things before the show.  Something about how you are not really my dad and we are both part of the same thing.  And that I should be co-stage manager instead of ASM.  Also, he didn’t look very good.

God:  I know, he was terrible in the first act, coming down the steps flabbily, with splayed feet.

Jesus:  And he had the worst gas.  Smelled like he was about to have a violent relaxation of his bowels.  Those front row tables!  I wept for them.

God:  Is that what that was?  I smelled it in the booth!  Look, we can’t just sit here navel gazing, we’re out of time.  Have you checked the toilet?

Jesus:  I just had that same thought.  I’ll look there, but I have a bad feeling about it.

God:  I just thought that same thing!  It’s like we have one mind.  Oh and Jesus, we should look into replacing him.  How about Adam Kadmon?  He can play anything.  Where’s that review of Edenville?  Here.  Listen to this: “he was a man and a woman at the same time”  he can play all the roles!  And this: “quite pure in breeding.  He could give birth parthenogenically at will.”

Jesus:  We can have a cast of thousands!

God:  “and he had a body that could pass through trees and stones”  that might be hard to plan for.  Think our technical director is up for it?

Jesus:  Heva?  Come on, she’s a viper.

God:  Well, go see if Arius is stalled on the throne or somewhere.  And don’t forget we are meeting for drinks at The Ship at half twelve.  And by the way, go easy with your money like a good young imbecile.

Thanking her stars she was passed over

In the ignorance that implies impression that knits knowledge that finds the nameform that whets the wits that convey contacts that sweeten sensation that drives desire that adheres to attachment that dogs death that bitches birth that entails the ensuance of existentiality.11:00 am

We should all thank our stars, death is a horrible thing.  Dying, there are good ways to go.  But death?  No connection, no contact with those who are now.  In it, you see.  Make room, I’ll ride with you.  Here.  I’ll get that door.  Again.  Got it that time.  Now what was I saying?  What were we talking about?  Oh yeah, the woman watching us out her window, grateful to the stars for the mark on her door.  So death.  No bridging from what will be to what is.  Will be always turns to is, and I’ll tell you what the meaning of is is.  Look around you.  Feel it quickly.  Motion, stillness. Stillness, motion.  It’s a protean thing. Smell, breathe in.  Is that smell you?  Yes, and catch that?  Listen.  You heard a click.  Finger on plastic.  Tap.  Click.  All that is part of is.  And that’s all there is for the likes of you and me.  And that woman there watching us out.  Glad to see us go we give them such trouble coming.  And once we leave the is?  We’re dead, we won’t even know who will undress us and how.  Wash us.  What do they wash?  Cut a new omphalos and pour the fluids in and out.  Too much?  Fine.  Cut our fingernails and hair?  Okay I’ll stop.  Sheesh.  Keeps growing after we die, I wonder how much?  Waiting.  Sitting on something.  That soap in my pocket.  Will wait.  Move it later.  Blinds down.  Keep the house dark, hushed.  Whispering.  There’s a young guy in black.  Have seen that hat before.  Hey Dedalus, there’s somebody you know.  It’s your kid.  By himself.  Nosy.  Full of his son.  Crissie is how old?  Richie Goulding that Sunday morning.  Had two hats on his head dancing around in the street.  Shitfaced drunk.  Bad back.  No insurance, lots of pain meds.  If Rudy had lived.  He’d have me in his eyes, hold our hands.  Somebody to pass things on to.  Teach him something from me.  Was an accident, really.  Happened by chance.  Molly at the window watching two dogs going at it.  She was dying for it.  How life begins.  Got big.  I could have helped him.  Sent him to college.  Milly, same thing as Molly watered down.  Fifteen now.  D Papli, Thrs a yg Im crushin on.  Grown up now too.  There we go.  Nice they rented limos, crushed in here though.  What is that on the seat, crumbs?  Unless I’m mistaken, that’s not food crumbs.   Well, that’s natural.

Also I think I. Yes I.

Beyond that, I am doomed -- utterly and inevitably -- to oblivion, and fleeting moments will be all of me that survives10:17 am

Oh the darkness of her eyes.  She pulls the sheet up to her Peruvian eyes, smelling herself.  Skin.  Feed it nettles and rainwater and oatmeal steeped in buttermilk.  Skinfood.  What perfume does your wife?  Peau d’Pérou.  There’s dirt rolled up in my omphalos.  Curious longing I.  Could use a.  Time enough for a massage.  Body shampoo.  Sweet waxy perfume.  Pity no time for a happy ending, combine business with pleasure.  Would be nicer if a nice girl did it.

I tried hard to have a father but instead I had a dad

For in the beginning of literature is the myth, and in the end as well.9:12 am

My dad says he doesn’t believe in being a stern father and he makes a point of talking to me as a friend and an even bigger point of telling everybody he talks to me as a friend.  Wants to be my brother, but my big brother who can still eclipse me and be the better man for it.  Or fade me out like he is the sun and I’m a shadow that doesn’t stand a chance.  He’s like that. Likes to think he’s so badass he’s everybody’s daddy.  Lazy bitch.  He called me that once.  We’re as old as we feel he says and he is feeling my age.  Buck called me Japhet in search of a father, looking for atonement.  Iapetos more like.  The Greek version of Japhet fits the bill a bit better I’d say.  Iapetos the god of the mortal life span, who with his brothers the other Time gods turned their father into a bitch.  Their mother Gaia, the earth, started it.  She wanted a divorce.  An old school divorce.  Their father Uranus was an asshole of mythic proportions.  He would hide the brothers in the earth once they were born just to keep them down.  You can be a man, sure, but not as good a one as me.  Mama Gaia got sick of this, as you can imagine, and made a plan.  Then she gave Kronos a sickle.  Now Kronos is the god of all-devouring Time so Mama’s plan fed right into his destructive side and he hopped on board fast as lightning.  The rest of us needed little persuasion.  Krios, my brother who runs the measurement of the year felt ripe for it, and Hyperion with his days and months always wanted to be a part of whatever Krios did, so he came along too.  It took just a little longer for Koios to come around.  He is the god of the axis of heaven and even though he said he saw it coming he couldn’t decide what was in it for him.  Sheesh, you’d think the world revolves around him.  He’s the one married to Omphalos, that blowhard, you know her?  She’s full of hot air.  Anyway, the only one of us who didn’t want to get one up on the old man was Okeanos, but he’s just in charge of moving of the planets and he does a piss poor job of it too apparently, with them going backwards whenever they want.  What does he know about Time?  So here’s what we did.  We knew Uranus was on his way to sleep with our mother (the less I describe about that the better, don’t want this thing to start sounding like a Greek tragedy) and just as he was spreading himself all over the top of her, Krios, Koios, and Hyperion each grabbed a corner of daddy dearest and I grabbed the fourth. Then Kronos, who had hidden himself somewhere near the omphalos, jumped up fast and cut his dick right off.  Just like that.  One slice.  Balls too.  He howled so much you can still hear it now.  Listen, hear that?  Blood splashed all over the place like Carrie at the prom and a whole lot of shit happened after that, but that’s another story.  The upshot is there was no atonement; it was an ambush plain and simple and now dad sings soprano.  And Kronos still likes carrying that sickle around.  He’s working as a travel agent these days.  Wait.  Hold on.  Who is telling this story?

The Butterly Effect

Down, sir! How dare you, sir!9:03 am

So we each have a key to the apartment but there is only one do-not-duplicate key for the building, and from the very initial moment of our shared existence we have struggled over it, clandestinely.  At the moment I have it.  Haines wanted to know what’s the rent?  $700.  There are several studios like ours along the Market, but Buck told Haines ours is the omphalos, which would be about the right size of our place if the Market were a body but in that case our little hole in the wall would be located a bit farther south and around the back.  They say all dynamic systems are sensitively dependent on initial conditions, and the current one I am flapping around in is starting to bug me.  I’m feeling denied.

Navel gazing

For I feel like an experiment, I feel exactly like an experiment; it would be impossible for a person to feel more like an experiment than I do, and so I am coming to feel that that is what I am -- an experiment; just an experiment, and nothing more.8:27 am

Yes this is a blog.  Omphaloskeptics  unite; we are a society of navel gazers.  You read these words and trust my voice to speak the truth, from a first person.  Read on pastfacingwise and you skip. You’re scanning. And you trust me maybe.  So I speak what has been written for me to think according to the will of the creator, that writer of the great book into which we are all recorded.  Or at least into which I am recorded and a few others.  I don’t know what you believe.  I don’t believe it in the slightest but I am telling you that I do.  Some believe, like Phillip Gosse whose book Omphalos (written last  thursday) that all the world was created with past intact and fossils of dinosaurs were created to be found, but the dinosaurs themselves never were: effect without cause.  Sometime after last thursday Borges wondered if he had ever heard an ancient (that is to say, written around last thursday) sentence quoted by Rafael Cansinos Assens’ Talmudic anthology: “It was only the first night, but a number of centuries had already preceded it.”