Having my way with Ulysses

In what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments and reflections, reduced to their simplest forms, converge?

Shhh.

3:25 am

[Scene: Two lovers in bed, AE with Lizzie Twigg: coiled head to toe they quietly discuss the fixity of their volatility and the volatilization of their fixation, until within his fixedness AE has become nothing and feeling everything, Lizzie becomes volitive. They communicate intermittently in increasingly more laconic narrations. Also a small angry dog is trying to take up as much space as possible between them. It’s so cute! Come here little puppy, come here. What a good doggie. Who’s a good doggie? Oh Jesus God! He’s all teeth! Get off me! Like petting a piranha with fur.]

AE: It’s just that we define ourselves contrarily to each other. I am me because I am not you, and you are you because you are not me. We are poles apart.

Lizzie: We are the same person, AE, don’t you feel it?  After all the mutual deaths we have died? Resurrection, translation, return, distillation, putrefaction, decay, still you don’t know you had it backwards the whole time. You were resurrecting in the wrong direction.

AE: I know. I know it. I just wanted to be the material representation of eternality, in linear time. Just once. Just for a little while. Only long enough to re-experience that feeling of linearity. Don’t you miss it? And feel what it could be, to be linear and eternal simultaneously.

Lizzie: But you can’t just translate yourself into linearity and say I’m back, everybody, I’ve  gained bodily entry into eternity and now look at me! Look at what happened to Lazarus. No. If you want to see how a human mortal finds a place within eternity, that’s not going to cut it. That gets you nothing.

AE: Nothing’s not nothing. Don’t knock nothing.

Lizzie: No, nothing’s not nothing.

AE: I was trying be the eternal temporalized. I wanted to be the all at onceness linearized. I wanted to square that circle, just once. Just the one time and be it and feel it, really feel what it is to be the coexistence of the infinite and the finite.

Lizzie: Be eternality living in linearity? Darling, you’ve done it. You’ve been there already. The infinite and the finite are the same things whichever side you’re on, if you really must take sides, can’t you tell? Just look at us, two beings contrarily defined yet coexisting as aspects of the same reality.

AE: I know. I get it. You don’t have to scratch me like that.

Lizzie: That wasn’t me, but here’s a flash of light for you AE: when we were mortals we didn’t have to go around worrying all the time about gaining bodily entry into eternity: eternity had already gained bodily entry into us. We have always already been since time immemorial and forevermore, the material representation of eternality.

AE: We are God.

Lizzie: Exactly. We are already a squared circle: we can take a finite form, but our infinite selves are in there too.

AE: We are a circle, containing everything.

Lizzie: Everything and nothing.

[At rest relatively to themselves and to each other, the lovers settle into silent contemplation. Small birds rise gently, sweetly, from Lizzie and from AE. Hundreds of them flitter up in swirling concentric patterns bringing with them, as if reflected from the sheen of their feathers, an increasing luminosity of ruby light. Thousands of little birds, aeons of them, softly forming clouds as soft as what do you call it gossamer, the clouds forming mist, the mist gently drifting downward covering the lovers, the lovers blurring about the edges. Together they coalesce and dissolve, their bodies languid, breathing, watching their spirits unrestrained, circling, birds rising into mist falling, like self knowing wheels revolving uniformly: self knowing and self known.]

Dead he wasn’t. Simply absconded somewhere.

Come back here and take what's coming to ya! I'll bite your legs off!
1:42 am

I thought you were dead you yellow bastard. Grrrr. You resurrected yourself, didn’t you? or killed yourself or was laying low or something. Left my person a bloody weeping mess and no clue how to get you back. Sit! Stay! And now you’re back like a murderer to the crime scene. You’re a lucky dog Lizzie didn’t set me at you directly you got back. I’m going to pee in your shoes. Maybe she will go back to the convent soon, you think of that AE?  We liked it there. But we’ll have to sound the lie of the land first, would be prudent: Sister Mary Peter hates us now. Too bad really. I liked the smell of him better than you, you stink like the dead. Woof! And not in a good way. And here you are like the bath nobody wanted, destroying everything warm and comfortable. Before you, Lizzie would take me running. And we’d play go get it! And, who’s a pretty puppy! Now I’m lucky to get out of her purse more than twice a day. Thanks AE. Just, thanks. Well kill my dog you better hide your cat. I’ll get you my pretty. Now go.

People usually contrived to load that sort of onus on to the other fellow.

The question is, have I learned anything about life? Only that human beings are divided into mind and body. The mind embraces all the nobler aspirations, like poetry and philosophy, but the body has all the fun. The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. I think the worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever. After all, you know, there are worse things in life than death. If you've ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, you know exactly what I mean. The key here, I think, is to not think of death as an end, but think of it more as a very effective way of cutting down on your expenses.1:21 am

Hello, yes, thank you for waiting. Sit down, sit down please. Coffee? No? So. Great to see you, great to see you, how’s your day, good? Follow any sports teams? Listen. You are real smart to come in today, truly, it is a fucking genius move and I’m not kidding, between you and me the time is precisely now if you are looking for good premiums on cash value whole resurrection insurance.  Here, take a look at this chart, where the hell is it? here.  You see here this is what you save by buying young, younger I should say, before you sin too much. What religion? None? I suggest you get one, you could lower your premium by another three quarters of a percent.  But I’m going too fast here.  Coffee? No? Water? Listen. If you die and go to hell tomorrow what would happen? Suffering? Pain? How do you feel about that? And tell me, how many years do plan on living?  The longer your life the more opportunity you have to sin, you realize.  And you will do it.  Listen, The chances are 20 to nil that you’ll get married, have a couple of children, get drunk at a party and fuck somebody in a closet, destroy your marriage, damage your kids’ psyches, get nasty in the divorce, then drip venom on all around you in your ongoing seething bitterness.  That’s a fact.  How do you feel about that?  Now I’m not asking you to be sentimental about your decision, remember, the sentimentalist is he who would incur too immense a debtorship for a thing done.  I’m saying take sentiment out of it.  Let hell be for the other guy.  Am I right? Why take chances. Do you want to take risks with your afterlife? You might as well buy lottery tickets to heaven and cross your fingers.  Do you believe in letting your hereafter depend on luck?  How do you feel about that?  Friend, think of whole resurrection insurance as a work around you can’t afford not to buy.  Don’t think of it as $1132 annually, think of it as 13 cents an hour. Thirteen cents! Thirteen cents an hour for peace of mind that the only hell you’ll experience is the one in this stream of life and no other.  Now, are you ready to purchase?  Let me rephrase that.  Will you be paying with cash or credit?

Relaxing to a certain extent under the magic influence of diamond cut diamond.

I dance because I know thirteen different ways of deceiving people by pretending confidence in them. I didn't know there were any more, and now here's a fourteenth! That's why I dance! 1:15 am

My dead husband came back. No, not a resurrection though when I saw his face in the window it was like seeing a ghost. He had gone overseas to make some money for us and told me a story before he left, though I didn’t get it until now. What am I a child? Am I kid to be told stories so I won’t lie (my nose will grow), won’t cry wolf (nobody will help when it really counts), and will endeavor to follow some minor rules of thumb such as always build with brick, don’t bite the apple, and leave a party on time though it is ok to lose a shoe if the shoe is made from glass but not ruby.  But I was young, and determined to be in love so I listened. A man had been moving one step forward and two steps back in his so-called career for long enough to tell him he was going nowhere fast. He was still within the age range in which a drastic change can be a good idea.  So the man kissed his wife, who loved him despite his tendancy for backward mobility, and he left her in the care of his best friend, his wing man, his loyal Achates, for a lengthy overseas gig which would earn the man dollars somewhere where dollars still mean something big.  And that means dollars to save and bring home to you my adoring loving loyal wife. So off he goes. And the woman gets depressed and cries a lot and hangs out at the bar with the best wing man, the friend Achates, and drinks, then cries some more. Achates loves them both. He sympathizes. He empathizes.  She revitalizes. He mesmerizes. She fantasizes. She energizes. She tantalizes. He improvises. She rationalizes. He mobilizes. He organizes. He fertilizes. She hospitalizes. And now she has a baby and two men. In the mean time, Mr. reverse arrived somewhere developing, hit the ground running, made straightforwardly unrefusable offers, and is currently headed homeward at an angle of fortyfive degrees like a shot off a shovel.  Well shit, now what.  I’ll tell you what. The man came back, sized up the situation and danced his way out the door laughing, I’m free, I’m free!  The wife, happy to be unwived danced too, I’m free, said she, and danced away too. The wing friend, the man Achates, stands with a baby on his hands, watching the twin disappearances dancing off in opposite directions. He feels himself betrayed, stuck, used, dumped, and alone. Then he shuts the door, tucks the baby into his arms and dances and dances and laughing dances.

(Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly)

O! father & mother, if buds are nip’d And blossoms blown away, And if the tender plants are strip’d Of their joy in the springing day, By sorrow and care’s dismay, How shall the summer arise in joy, Or the summer fruits appear? Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy, Or bless the mellowing year, When the blasts of winter appear?1:00 am

Eleven. Elf. Sweet eleven. The perfect square lacks corners and look, even the wool came back. Her best merino. So soft, no itch. It is cold in the ground. She knit, I circled, he was our whole world. So dark is destiny. But here, here is something. Not what I tried, but a gift still. Still a gift. No dark ground so cold. He is well, and breathing. Somewhere. Here. Peaceful. Resurrected, though not returned. I see him. I saw him. Curly, dark hair, I saw his face. I saw his face. She knit and I circled. My boy, my boy.

From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.

Swiftly she set out, with joy. But he gave her, stealthily, the honey-sweet berry of the pomegranate to eat, peering around him. He did not want her to stay for all time over there, at the side of her honorable mother, the one with the dark robe.12:28 am

Think back. Remember. I am almosting it. I spent those summer months, the first ones after, with circles and squares. As one would. It’s natural. Look at that circle there. You see it? A reflection of your eye looking at me.  I’ll reflect mine back to you in case you need, no? Fine then. So beautiful your circle. A circle is a circle because it is not a square.  A square is a square because it is not a circle.  The perfect square lacks corners, but I get ahead of myself. But I can’t get ahead of myself, that’s my predicament. Nor can I get behind myself either, damn it. But let’s return to the roundness, the fullness of your circle. All points of your circumference are equal from your center. Such pretty, such sublime perfection. Such infinity. Such simultaneity of number. Ba! Look at that square, now, ugly thing. In front of you, see it? Around where you stare. You should blink more, this is very bad for your eyes holding them open like that. Blink. Now see that ugly square binding your reflection. My reflection back. Corners. Angles. Limited. Linear. Like me. Ba, this has been an unusually fatiguing day. And this day, like any other day is this day now. Here. Now. Endlessly now. Nothing but now, only now forever and always now. I know for you it is different. I see it is different from here. Good Christ you can see it from space, but for me, when I look at myself I see only this and no other then. When? I exist between before and after in a durationless instant, and I unite them. Before and after exist because of me. You exist because of me. But I heard once of a way, a secret way. Closer, I’ll tell you. If the square married the circle, yes? You see it? Forgive the allegorical language but this is top secret understand. If the square married the circle they would mate, yes, and be united. Unified. If the perfect square lacked corners and if the circle had rationality. Think of the implications! Imagine what it could mean! The eternal and the temporal entwining. Infinity plunging into linearity. We can do it. So gently, so carefully. This is virgin territory. The past that was can be caressed into the now. And the future that beckons, we shall be the ones saying come hither sweet little thing you are. Aren’t you curious? Nobody’s looking baby love, we can do it. The cause is sacred. Stop. You don’t agree, do you. You think I’m wasting time. But the quadrature of the circle is all I have left, don’t you see? I live in temporal succession and this compounds my grief. You think it’s so easy to? You. Your center is everywhere and your circumference is nowhere. Ba. When have you ever needed to resurrect anything? Simultaneity. You are nothing. Leave me. Sorrow lives only in linearity; what do you know of my troubles? Now go.

It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy’s three star.

Blackness is the beginning of whiteness, and a sign of putrefaction and alteration, and that the body is now penetrated and mortified. From the putrefaction therefore in this water, there first appears blackness, like unto broth wherein some bloody thing is boiled. Secondly, the black earth by continual digestion is whitened, because the soul of the two bodies swims above upon the water, like white cream; and in this only whiteness, all the spirits are so united, that they can never fly one from another.12:26 am

Scene: [In an alchemists laboratory, an exhausted owl and a disheveled goat move in opposing arcs around a stork-shaped alembic suspended over an enormous fire. A nebulous obscurity that looks like what do you call it gossamer occupying space within the alembic is communicating with the assembled company, which includes Cassandra, Lizzie Twigg, and St. Agatha.]

Lilith: [Obviously missing some feathers] But what you don’t understand, AE, is that you have not reincarnated and you are most certainly not deathless.  Just look at yourself!

Cassandra: Or smell yourself for that matter, isn’t that thing supposed to be hermetically sealed?

Azazel: [Mascera running down his face, lipstick on his teeth, dead roses slipping off of his horns, in obvious need of a mirror] AE, can you hear me? AE, pay attention! You are manifest without rebirth, that’s it. You are nothing. You accomplished your nothingness badly too and for what?

AE: [with a voice of waves] I’m not leaving here until I deliver my message to the world.  Death is the highest form of life. And the highest form of life is me. I am death!

Cassandra: What a narcisist. He’s going to talk about himself until he’s black in the face.  Lilith, can we get on with the re-death without AE’s cooperation?  We have fire, the bicycle pump for air, and what is that thing?

Lizzie Twig: A lobster?

Lilith: A crayfish.  We couldn’t source a real lobster. [Scowls at Azazel].

Cassandra: A crayfish then, for water.  We need something earthy.

Lilith: Something sexually titilating for him, perhaps a pair of breasts? Agatha?

St. Agatha:  I left them at the convent.

Lilith: Lizzie, tell us about your first time with AE.

St. Agatha: She’s a bride of Christ! She can’t be confessing her every little past indiscretion.  What will he think?

Lizzie Twigg: No that’s ok, Agatha. I want to do this; I need closure. I remember I had just answered an ad to aid AE in literary work, but typing skills weren’t required. In a weak moment I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it. I had been drinking Bass, and absinthe, or was it burgundy and absinthe. I remember the absinthe, but what else was it?

Lilith: Doesn’t matter. He’s listening.  Look.

Azazel: AE, seek thou the light!

AE: I won’t have my leg pulled!

Cassandra: Good idea. Lilith, reach in there and let’s fish him out.

Lilith: Yes. Azazel, stoke that fire.  We’ll need the cream to rise to the top so we can reach him.

Lizzie:  Fire? Is he a holocaust? Oh don’t hurt him!

Lilith: Honey, you can’t make butter without a lot of flogging.  Do you want him back or don’t you?

Lizzie: I don’t know. In the beginning for us was the word. I suppose it makes sense for us to end it in the world without end. Bring him back, but I think I really fit in with the guys at the convent, it’s my home now, so I’m going back there with Agatha.  AE is nothing to me.

Lilith: Oh honey, he’s nothing to us too.  Trust me.

Azazel: Nothing, pray for us.

Talk away till you’re black in the face.

When the matter has stood for the space of forty days in a moderate heat, there will begin to appear above, a blacknesse like to pitch, which is the Caput Corvi of the Philosophers, and the wise men’s Mercury. Blacknesse once seen, thou mayst be sure a True Conjunction of the principles is made.12:17 am

Scene: [An owl and a heavily made up goat argue while tending an enormous fire.  Over the flames hangs a stork vessel containing a phoenix.  They have begun their reversal of the great work.]

Azazel: [Circling the fire] I have sinned.

Lilith: [Circling the fire the opposite direction] I have suffered.

Together: Putrefaction, pray for us. Dissolution, pray for us. Coagulation, pray for us. Mortifacation, pray for us. Stench of graves, pray for us. Black of the blackest black, pray for us.

Azazel: See that?

Lilith: You scorched your eyelashes.

Azazel: Not that, that!

Lilith: White feathers! Not much of a swan. Just once I’d like to get to peacock.

Azazel: Focus, Lilith, just concentrate on returning it to crow. Carbonation, pray for us. Calcification, pray for us.

Lilith: Nothing. It is always much easier to illumination than to obscure. Why is that? Is nothing so difficult?

Azazel: [Pawing the ground] Nothing is not nothing, Lilith, focus. There can be no corruption without regeneration, ok, so can we concentrate please?  If you see Kay, pray for us. See you in tea, pray for us.

Lilith: What did you say?

Azazel: See you in tea pray for us?

Lilith: No. The other thing you said. You can’t have corruption without regeneration. Do you realize what you were saying?

Azazel: What was I saying? I don’t know. I was just saying stuff to get your head back in it.  I meant nothing.  Come on.

Lilith: Nothing. Exactly. I think we’re missing something.

Azazel: We’re missing something? I’m missing something.

Lilith: We’re missing nothing. We need nothing. We need something better than a phoenix if we want to achieve purity of absence. We keep getting the invisible trace of something not there but we want what do you call it void. D’ye see? We don’t want just ordinary death.  We want the quintessence of death.

Azazel: Oh Christ Lilith, the problem’s not in our materials, it is in us. The phoenix is fine. You know how hard it is to source a phoenix? We need to focus. You need to focus. We already got to swan and.

Lilith: Looks more like a tailor’s goose.

Azazel: It’s a swan and look, it’s turning a bit blue around the edges already. We’ll get to crow if we concentrate.

Lilith: I say we get a reincarnated human.

Azazel: Jesus Christ.

Llith: AE

Azazel: A what?

Lilith: [Reversing her direction around the fire] AE. We’ll use him. Trust me, this is the direction we should go. Can I use your mirror?

Azazel: Lilith wants me to trust her. Fine, use it. There’s no talking you out of this. Weep for me O daughters of Erin.

Lilith: [Breathing on the mirror]  We call them to life across the waters of Lethe.

This is the appearance is on me.

 To heap shame on my own head is all the satisfaction I have left to offer to offended heaven. My story has drawn down these judgments: Let my confession atone—but, ah! what can atone for usurpation and a murdered child? a child murdered in a consecrated place? List, sirs, and may this bloody record be a warning to future tyrants!10:37 pm

I’m soft.  I’ve gone soft. Look, can you see me? It is so hard to see myself as others see me. Look closer, look at my head. Below I’m a mess, but my eyes are still here, ayin tachat ayin.  Oh I am punished. This must be hell. Now I know what hell is. Yes I expected some obliteration, but must I pay such a high price for it?  Is it such a crime resurrection?  Is translation so horrible?  So loathsome? It’s not like I murdered a child or something; I should think the living would have some fun with it. Surprise, I’m back! There’s so much potential, and for the benefit of all, properly executed.  Except it’s hard to see me. That’s a problem. And I understand I smell like something murdered, but I’ve never smelt it myself. I’m here, though, you can see me. I’m like looking at some sort of dark animal at night. Or at a spider: all head, web body.  It’s not so bad.  My hell is in this life but it’s not so bad.  And I don’t have it in me to cause my own re-death so here we are. I’ll have to make do. Besides Lizzie will have my head if I dare show my face amongst the dead. Think of the vendetta. Well, history is to blame for that, I refuse to feel guilty.  Or what’s that other world?  She’ll make dope her hope, but perhaps I’m being rather a sentimentalist there.  But really, I’ve incurred too immense a debtorship for my enjoyment.  Well, a thing done is a thing done.  I’ll camp out here. Distractions. Burn something. It is rather nice to be back in some of my old haunts. Eternity is fine but I admit feeling a bit nostalgic for the present.

Sometimes they are found in the right guess with their queerities no telling how.

September 2, 1666: And as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire.

The journal of AE, Master Mystic, 10:20 pm but time makes no difference I am God.  I can do whatever the hell I want.  I’ve translated. Basta! Enough. Besides, who ever anywhere will read these written words?

Fire will come take us on to Edenville but it’s freezing hell getting there. Oh fire will come aslowly burning, I can see it from here, slow creeping burning up oh and down too poor body. This is the eighty seventh hour and I had a sweetheart of a dream.  The faces in the dark showed me kırmızı terlik ve altın kanatand. So there it is, clear as the rain: change is in the air and fire will come.