Having my way with Ulysses

Beware of the steamroller.

The door to suicide is open, but theologians assert that, in the subsequent shadows of the other kingdom, there will I be, waiting for myself. 1:56 am

Our lives are in peril tonight. I know this because look, up close everything is shifting sifting just slightly into newness. Look at yourself, closer, there. Look yourself in the eyes and see that. You are your own deliverance from sin, see it? A different grouping of bones and flesh. Throw your used up old self under the wheels and absolve yourself for lifetimes. Let him crush you like a spider and you’ll walk with the kings of infinite space. Be a body present absent mindedness and chuck yourself under Jagannath’s wheels. Kill yourself: it will do you good.

His inscrutable face which really was a work of art.

A Spider is an air worm, as it is provided with nourishment from the air, which a long thread catches down to its small body. Its web is always tight. It never stops working, cutting out all loss of time without interruption in its skill.1:20 am

I’m coming for you motherfucker. You just wait. I’m waiting. I am waiting. I’m a spider and I’ll stab you in the fly. I’m the king of infinite space, cultivating my time, and the instant you so much as twitch I’m on you. I’ll be there. On you like that. You hear me? Course you don’t but I hear you. I see you. I’m staring back. And I’m coming at you from all sides asshole. I’ll put pills in your water and a knife in your back and it will be so fast you wont even, you’ll think maybe. It won’t even register. Funny, very! I’m coming for you; it’s a matter of time. I can feel in my soul the time it takes to count the numbers between the nerve impulse at the start of my strike and your movement into ideal position. The numbers are small when calculating for the slimmest little knife blade of a kairotic moment. O but I’ve made a science of transecting knives; it’s become my religion. You keep to the spirit of where ignorance is bliss; I’ll get you in my own time.

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.

Shame all put on before third person.

She can't move, there in the deepest part of the jungle she's trapped in a spider's web, or no, the spiderweb is growing out of her own body, the threads are coming out of her waist and her hips, they're part of her body, so many threads that look hairy like ropes and disgust me, even though if I were to touch them they might feel as smooth as who knows what, but it makes me queasy to touch them8:52 pm

You don’t scare Arachne.  Did you really think you scared Arachne?  Arachne is just startled, didn’t see you coming.  Why the face?  Under jaw stuck out, head back.  You look like you got a whiff of potted herring gone stale.  Never mind.  Arachne’s seen it before.  You are jealous of Arachne; it’s only natural.  Arachne’s talents intimidate even the goddesses, why not you.  You know Arachne will hold up a mirror and show you your crimes, as if you even need Arachne to do that.  Just look at you, guilt hanging all over you like nets or a fine veil.  Fine like what do you call it gossamer.  And what’s that Arachne smells?  In the air just now (why smell it only now? mysterious) ever so many millions of tiny grains blown across.  Smell that?  Took its time in coming, slow but sure.    Shame.  Arachne thought so.  Must be the heat bringing it out of you.  Must cling to everything.  Arachne supposes people like the smell of shame or they wouldn’t exude so much of it.  Like flies around treacle.

Letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing

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.