Having my way with Ulysses

That is not more to stand.

And death is there in the background, we must run to arrive beforehand and understand it's already unimportant.

3:05 am

Instructions on how to kill yourself:

First, you must find a reason not to live. There exists uncountable reasons but you must choose at least one and try to make it as ineffable as possible so the people you leave behind may feel suitably at a loss for words when they find you. An added benefit: it will be easier for the people who attend your wake, interment, scattering of the ashes, memorial service, or what have you, to speak in hushed and reverent tones if they find themselves capable of speaking at all. Amongst the reasons not to live you might choose: you are suffering from progressive melancholia; by ceasing to exist you will bring your existence to the attention of the person who barely knows you exist, though you maintain a unique awareness of said person’s existence; pondering the great nothingness of everythingness has inverted your thoughts into a perpetual retrospective arrangement.

Once you have found your reason not to live, you must reduce said reason by cross multiplication of reverses of fortune. Take it all down to one point: a singularity which contains everything.

Compose a note to be found suitably near your corpse, but not in a place where it might slip beyond a finder’s field of vision. Clutched in the hand makes for great cinema and literature, but rarely works in real death. Include in your epistle a précis of your reason not to live. Ask somebody to be kind to your surviving pets.

Leave something in a book, marking a particularly resonant passage or one which will send the finder harkening back in a retrospective arrangement upon discovery. Possibilities may include leaving something in a book at a symbolic page number. One might even leave something in a book which will send the finder to something left in another book which will send the finder to more books always to the last term of the preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, originating in and repeated to infinity. Possible items to leave in books: puzzle pieces, scraps of a shirt, pages of other books. Possible symbolic number: 1132.

Select the method of suicide according to your own levels of drama, squeamishness, accessible materials, pain tolerance, or desire to leave a nice looking corpse. There is no need to be elaborate, if you are already poisoning yourself slowly with something: increase the dose; if you tend toward recklessness perhaps walk closer to the cliff edge until 32 feet per second per second takes care of the matter for you; have the light at the end of your tunnel be an oncoming train, or if your perambulations bring you near an oncoming Jagannath: toss yourself into his path. You’ll receive an added bonus for that last one.

If you have items locked away, say in a drawer, leave a key handy or better still, unlock the drawer before your demise so the living won’t have to destroy the furniture to access its contents. It’s just common courtesy.  Now go.

Nought Nowhere was Never Reached

But time between one and the other when was brief -- I mean the whens of waiting and of seeing heaven grow more radiant.2:26 am

Look at the stars if you can see them. I see clouds and darkness but I know the stars are there. No. I don’t know that. I know that they were there. The little lights which I do not see in the sky but possibly you do, come from a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a present before its probable spectators (excluding myself) had entered actual present existence. That which I do not see might not be there now, most certainly is not there now, as by now they will have red-shifted position. All those stars running off, taking their planets with them. Ours too. Such a fearsome isolation, all this expanding outwardly from each other, temporality stretching between us. So lonely, having no contact with each other. Yet if we did, our loneliness would compound. We could look up at the stars (I at starless clouds) into distances numbering nine to the ninth power to the ninth power and find our double, as if in a mirror shining back to us: we are here too. The joy of recognition; the first sighting of a lover! And then, and then. And then we will understand in advance the impostvidibility of the past. We will know as if we have already harkened back in a kind of retrospective arrangement that we are already and always have been ever alone. There is our lover, shimmering through lakes of dreams, seas of rains, gulfs of dews, oceans of fecundity, simultaneously loving us back yet already gone. Infinity rendered finite. We would be as the new moon with the old moon in our arms, but our state of solitude is one where there can be no entry. They are gone. The world is gone.

The proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing.

Under the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brightness. At first I thought it was spinning; then I realized that the movement was an illusion produced by the dizzying spectacles inside it. The Aleph was probably two or three centimeters in diameter, but universal space was contained inside it, with no diminution in size.Holy Mother Public Relations, Inc.

10th Heaven
Empyrean

Meeting Minutes

Date: November 18
Time: 2:11 am
Location: 10th Heaven conference room C, Empyrean building
Purpose: Commission of a sculpture of the Immaculate Conception

Attendees:

The Virgin Mary, Holy Virgin of Virgins, Mother Most Pure, Mother Most Chaste, Mother Inviolate, Mother Undefiled, Virgin Most Prudent, Virgin Most Venerable, Virgin Most Renowned, Virgin Most Powerful, Virgin Most Merciful, Virgin Most Faithful, Queen of Virgins, Queen Who has Never Known the Touch of Man. Never. Also, Martha, Jesus, and Gabriel.

Agenda:

1. Discuss the commission of a hyperrealistic sculpture of the Immaculate Conception to be created by Martha, a woman of no independent means, currently residing in the third floor copy room of the Empyrean building, Holy Mother Public Relations.

2. Get Martha off our hands. No offense Martha.

Discussion:

1. With this sculpture Mary wants to express in the most more-than-realistic way possible, the experience she felt deep within her body, a pounding fullness of infinite size deep within her most finite space burning hot and dripping wet. Mary very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity, expressed her gratitude to Gabriel for delivering God’s message with such gratifying skill and finesse. Gabriel expressed to Mary that the pleasure was all his and indeed, worth repeating. Martha suggested Mary and Gabriel get a room.

2. Jesus proposed adjourning the meeting. And also, if God is an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, the moment Mom had knowledge of Dad might be expressed as an inscribed polygon within the sphere that grows more like a circle the more angles it has. Yet even though the multiplication of its angles be infinite, nothing will make the polygon equal the sphere unless the polygon is resolved into identity with the sphere. Martha asked so now she’s expected to enclose infinity within a finite space. It was really more of a statement than a question. Mary said yes, square the circle.

3. Jesus stated that the whole problem in planning an end of the world (particularly the end of history) sculpture, is that you have to speak of what lies beyond the end and also, at the same time, of the impossibility of ending.

Action Items:

1. Gabriel suggested he could provide Martha with an Immaculate Conception demonstration. Martha declined. Mary said Martha really should reconsider.

2. Mary stated the sculpture should be ready for the perceived if not actual cessation of the existence of temporality currently scheduled for this coming December 21st, though the date might be fudged a little.

3. Joseph will check Mary’s schedule and compile a list of possible alternate dates for the annihilation of the world and consequent extermination of the human species, inevitable but impredictable.

4. Joseph to check with Cassandra’s assistant: see when we can schedule a prediction on that.

4. Because Jesus is so damn linear, he will provide us with an end of the world, despite mathematical appearances that there will be no end because we are already in an excess of ends: the transfinite. And in an exceeding of finalities: transfinality.

5. Mary wants the sculpture to be both fascinating and spiritually enthralling, and as we have no vision of final conditions, it must portray an image of negative destiny in a kind of a retrospective arrangement. Also, Mary wishes to see herself as others see her.

6. Martha requires the following materials: two brushes (one green one maroon) and one thousand one hundred thirty two sheets of tissue paper.

Minutes typed by: Joseph
Approved by: Mary, Virgin and CEO

Looking back now in a retrospective kind of arrangement all seemed a kind of dream.

I danced over the water, I danced o'er the sea, and all the birds in the air couldn't catch me.1:43 am

It’s all lit up now, but try explaining to people more invested in my marriage than I was, and there were plenty of them, surprisingly. It was the oddest thing. Don’t get me wrong, he was a nice enough guy, just not up to scratch. A diamond in the rough somebody nice said. Yeah, I could see that. Going to be a diamond.

Looking forward in a prospective kind of arrangement I saw sparkling things, an illuminated life filled with art and philosophy. He was a talented musician despite having never heard of mathematics. Well he had three chords and the truth, so that’s all you need baby, that’s all you need. And if you have more than three chords and fewer truths than the truth? Then you still have >=< so that’s ok: it evens out. Well, to be fair, he did often speak the truth, he’d just leave out the jucy parts. And consider. Just think what he could be, given the proper pressure. But without the only effective kind of pressure (of the self inflicted variety) coal lumps don’t turn into diamonds. Natural forces, not artificial, or you end up with a drunk ass cubic zirconia. A drunk ass cubic zirconia is not as good as a lump of coal. And a fine lump of a coal all the same. I liked the lump of coal.

Now let me tell you about being Peruvian, or half so. I can’t tell you much because I don’t know that much about it, but as a half Peruvian and a half Canadian and half Swedish, via half German, who was caught mingling in there with the half Scottish who was half Ulster, and as it turns out not half French (the half German half Swede, not the half Scottish half Ulster) but half Jewish in disguise. Oh yeah and half Dutch in there somewhere. I thought the Swedes and the Germans would be neck in neck, but for the Dutch to pop up was a twenty to one shot at least. So that’s being half American. But only half, the other half’s Peruvian. And types like us: the passionate abandon of the south, casting every shred of decency to the winds, wouldn’t do things by halves. What is the half life of real love existing between married folk supposing another man? Now, I had loosened many a man’s thighs but never when I was in a relationship. Then I was loyal and loving and after the first I’d say two months of sex it settles into lots of god knows what and no sex. In these situations other men, no matter who, take on a what do you call it gossamer quality. See right through them. But. And it’s a big but. No wait, that was the lump of coal. Ha! Sorry. The hemispheres on him! Haha! Just had to. You know. A big butt! Whooo. Let me catch my breath! Oooh. That felt good. When were we? Oh yeah. Butt. I am so trying not to laugh. Butt. Butt butt butt. Ok. Ok. So funny. Butt.

Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a second?

For our beginnings are a barred and palpable body, the mean of a fugitive spirit and watery gold without conversion, from which our masters have accepted their own lives, the end however is permanent.11:40 pm

You slumming here!  You ought to see yourself. Tell me, do you remember the night we, when there was, when we were so inclined to? We had such a nice little mix up of the marital, is it beyond recall? Can we again, maybe, oh how time flies, hark back in a retrospective arrangement to the housewarming party remember? Blindfolded feeling for partners (oh you had such soft corners!) and you and I by the teapot talking about what it means, what it meant to me. You. And you now. Lady and the Unicorn (what were you thinking?) but we can’t change that now. Or maybe we can, eh? Want me to kiss the spot? Could you? I have a little present for you, if you’ll ever forgive me for it.  If you are so inclined. Just for a moment. A second. A half second, really, just a small. Just a little. Won’t count really, just a little fraction of a fraction. Mathematically insignificant. What is time, really? Just a pin prick of it, just a little something, shall we, won’t in the grand scheme of, don’t you see, I know somebody won’t like it but the ears can’t see what the lips won’t hear, if you understand my dear, my faun, my hart. How graceful are your feet in those gold sandals. You are so elusive in them. My fugitive. Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. Whatever do you think of me? Do you remember what I whispered in your ear that night? I bit your ear and sent you a secret valentine and said

There as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey presto!)

The relief was hinted to me from a superior power when I, poor slave, had not a hope but that I must wait another seven years with Jacob; and lo! the Rachel which I coveted is brought to me.10:39 pm

My father had a mirror, it was the most astonishing thing this mirror. My father had a mirror he kept behind a picture of my mother.  The picture made no sense because it was blurry and ordinary. Her mouth was open. She could never shut up long enough to smile for a picture. Anyway. it’s the kind of picture you’d delete or not develop or whatever it was they did.  Develop and leave in the envelope with the negatives.  Anyway, he had it in a thick frame but if you turned it over and pushed the little metal clips to one side and pop the back off, there was a little mirror in there. I didn’t get it.  What’s a mirror doing in there? He saw me see him messing with that picture and I knew something was up with it. I figured something was in there.  But I was hoping for money or a note or something. Treasure map. A woman’s phone number. Something. Made no sense.

Once when was sitting behind a chair, hiding and pretending to write in my notebook, he either forgot I was there or didn’t notice, and I saw him do it.  I saw him close up.  He was smoking that pipe of his and then he did it so fast.  Picked up the picture of my mother and popped the back off of it.  He pulled out something that fit in his hand I didn’t see.  And then and then he breathed smoke into his hand.  He exhaled into his hand.  And for an instant (fiat!) light filled the room.  Then that feeling, the vibe of it.  I’ll never forget it.  I’ll remember it forever.  It was like passing from life into eternity.  I can’t explain it.  But there behind my chair I knew within me the precise age of my soul so immense, but also I knew my soul to be something shriveled, something that dwindled to a tiny speck within the mist.  It was horrible.  Before all that murky bright could clear away, I got the hell out of there.  I was young, and I was utterly blown away.

So I tried it myself.  I said I was young.  By myself.  I got the pipe and my mother’s picture and I looked her straight in the mouth.  And then I lit up.  I took a lots of short fast puffs and held it in too long while I twisted the metal clips to the side.  Then, out it popped: a little mirror.  I didn’t pause.  Ok, yes I did pause.  I coughed up a lung.  But I wasn’t scared of anything apart from being caught.  So I stared myself in the mouth, and I took another hit.  Held it in, not so long this time.  Then I exhaled right into my mouth exhaling.  Hold.  Back.  I’m tripping balls.  Entwined in the nethermost brightness I was looking at mirrors within mirrors within mirrors and in one of them it was raining and I was with a girl in the rain pinned up to a wall.  And in another mirror I was holding a baby and the baby was still.  Still and cooling.  In another I was typing.  I was at a desk typing.  And there was my father holding a mirror looking at me, watching the letters appear as I typed them.  Under his nose as I type them.  He isn’t looking at me; he’s watching the screen.  He’s witnessing the letters appear one after the other, left to right and together he and I have a feeling. We have together an obscure feeling that some good has happened to us.

What are the wild waves saying?

The glass was green water, and she a mermaid, slung with pearls, a siren in a cave, singing so that oarsmen leant from their boats and fell down, down to embrace her; so dark, so bright, so hard, so soft, was she, so astonishingly seductive that it was a thousand pities that there was no one there to put it in plain English, and say outright "Damn it Madam, you are loveliness incarnate," which was the truth. 4:30 pm

Armonioso

 

Stop.  Do you see the woman with the seashell?  She’s pretending to hear the ocean in a shell, holding it to the man’s ear.  He’s pretending too.  She found the shell with a gentleman friend she tells her gentleman friend.  Perfect tempo.  They are listening to their own blood moving, an echo in a kind of retrospective arrangement.  The corpuscles moving nicely in the man now.  There’s blood in the water.  Competition: a perfect chord. She’s doing well. Hiding her ears with seaweed hair, exposing to place the shell, now hiding again.  Neck: brief exposure.  Her proportions perfect, he speaks, she waits, speaks.  All done in precise phi ratios.  The ratio of the F holes to the violin’s upper and lower pins, the ratio of the woman’s waist to her hips, the ratio of perfect mathematical harmonies in a scale, the ratio of his desire to hers, yes, that’s the important one, as it moves through time.  She calculates nicely the ratio of her eyes above the sheet to the face remaining hidden, the speed of her corpuscles to his.  Patience and timing.  Rhythm.  Like waves on a beach.  She knows her business now.  Lean in baby, mathematically you could be much closer.

Now in a kind of retrospective arrangement.

Caution! Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.Ow at ush a good gim, ah I ooked gook rinkig ig oo.  Resh uh parg ah en shome ah awayg agept uhgever hey offer: appearansh an pawmp weshponshivish ish uh key oo gook shawesh.  Nice to spend a little time with John Henry Menton in the pub just now.  Haw awking pawicish. Amewica, give ush your poor, your ire, your huhwew mashesh, jush ot roo our shoushern bowerer ash we’ew buiwing a waugh.  Elijah is coming to save us all!  Aw awe equaw hewe bu immigwantsh fwom shome cowtwiesh awe mow equaw tham oshersh.  Caw kew a shawe.  Denis Breen, impatient, gives up waiting for John Henry Menton to emerge from his inner office and, with his wife following close, carries dangerous stacks of papers and books toward the offices of Collis and Ward.  Angewoush woute oo go dowe.  Covershatiow ca gew ow of cogtrow an hen you oosh a shawe.  Am goo giw at wash.  Oooks goo.  Shame oshe cawsh mishe sheeing ush.  Uh pweshieng!  Shame.

Tansy

In its own way, this book consists of many books, but two books above all. The first can be read in a normal fashion and it ends with Chapter 56, at the close of which there are three garish little stars which stand for the words The End. Consequently, the reader may ignore what follows with a clean conscience. The second should be read by beginning with chapter 73 and then following the sequence indicated at the end of each chapter. In case of confusion or forgetfulness one need only consult the following list10:11 am

Anemone:  I have been so looking forward to seeing everyone, and look, here we all are!  I can’t remember the last time we had our full membership together.

Forget-me-not:  I can, it was last spring.  But then our group didn’t include Cactus or Nightstalk, and Primrose was still with us.

Violet:  Can’t count on her.

Tulip:  Good riddance, her opinions pissed me off most of the time.

Anemone:  Well, welcome to Manflower.  Do you know everybody?

Manflower:  Everbody but this American beauty next to me.

Rose:  [blushing] how lovely!

Violet: That’s enough false modesty Rose, so did everybody do the reading?

Cactus:  I read every word.

Forget-me-not:  So did I and I remember all of it.  I loved every part of it!

Rose:  Wait, stop right there.  Remember that we don’t say if we liked it or not until the end.

Forget-me-not:  Oh that’s right, how could I forget.  Manflower, that’s one of our only rules.  That and we never reschedule via email.  If you cant come you can’t come.

Violet:  You didn’t forget.

Manflower:  I can come.

Rose:  Oooh!

Tulip:  Well, I had a hard time reading it.  How do you read the bloody thing anyway?  You click on it and there you are somewhere in the middle.  Who reads anything from the middle?  It makes no sense.  Then you have to click to previous posts to find out what’s been going on in a kind of retrospective arrangement.  There’s no linearity to it.  No logical flow.  No forward progression.  I don’t get it.  Who reads like that?

Rose:  Use the tags.  They are so beautiful!

Tulip:  So what?  What about important things that happen only once?  The tags don’t help with that.  You might as well cut all the pages out of a book, scramble them up and then read them that way for all the sense this makes.

Nightstalk:  You have to start at the beginning like I did and read it backwards.  I read every word.

Violet:  You didn’t read it backwards.  And you didn’t read every word.

Nightstalk:  How would you know, you pansy?

Cactus: I can endure anything Nightstock, but don’t be so prickly.

Violet:  I’m telling you with full candor that you didn’t read it backwards.  I, however, read it, then I found out that there is text under every picture so to be faithful to the thing I went back and hovered over all of them.  And I looked for all of our names using the search, except for mine of course.

Anemone:  Oh, tell me what you found!

Violet:  Not much.

Forget-me-not:  Maybe we should all say which picture we remember truely loving the best?  How about you Nightstalk?

Nightstalk:  Um.  I liked.  Lets see.  There was that one.  Um.  All of them.

Violet.  You didn’t look at any of it, did you?

Tulip: This whole conversation is as pointless as this month’s reading.  It isn’t even a real book!  Who can get any pleasure from this?  Look, I’m wilting.  Let’s have dinner and say if we liked the damn thing or not.  I hated it.

Manflower:  So did I.

Rose: Oh me too!  How beautiful that we have that in common.

Cactus:  Careful Manflower, she has thorns.  Rose, get a room already.  The book, non-book, or whatever we are calling this thing just touched me the wrong way.  I hated it too.

Forget-me-not:  I loved it!

Anemone:  We know.  Thanks for ruining the anticipation.

Nightstalk:  I enjoyed it.

Violet:  You didn’t even look at it.  Well I suppose there is enjoyment in that.  I hated it too.  So thats all of us then.

Anemone:  You forgot me!  Why am I always forsaken?  I didn’t like it.  For next month let’s read a real book.