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.

You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.

IX. Do not write under the empire of emotion. Let it die, then invoke it later. If you are able then to revive it as it was, you have arrived in art, in the middle of the road. 12:07 am

Scene: [As McIntosh begins his return descent through the trap door, decreasing luminosity of ruby light burns inwardly.  The muses enter en masse from the grid.]

God [On the god mic]  And now, the 9 new muses present the 10 new commandments!

The Muse of Commerce:  [Stabbing herself through the heart] You shall have no other gods before me.

The Muse of Operatic Music: [Chained inside a water tank]  Create no images of any thing that is above, on, or beneath the earth. And nothing underwater.

The Muse of Amor:  [Drinking prussic acid]  If you do make images, you shall not worship them or buy them. You love only me. I get jealous and I’ll come after you, your children, your grandchildren, and their kids.

The Muse of Publicity: [Sucking on a pastille of aconite] My name is under copyright protection. Don’t invoke me.

The Muse of Manufacture: [Snorting arsenic] Only one day of rest, people, not two.

The Muse of Liberty of Speech: [Opening her veins]  Don’t talk back to your parents.

The Muse of Gastronomy: [Refusing food]  Don’t kill.

The Muse of Plural Voting:  [Casting herself under Jagannath]  If you’re married, don’t sleep around.

The Muse of Private Hygiene:  [Casting herself from the top of the Space Needle]  No five finger discounts.

The Muse of Seaside Concert Entertainments:  [Casting herself into a wine vat]  Don’t talk about people behind their backs.

The Muse of Painless Obstetrics:  [Asphyxiating herself in a gas oven]  Don’t lust after married people.

The Muse of Astronomy for the People:  [Hanging herself with stylish violet garters]  Just don’t even look at what other people have.

The Veiled Sibyl: [Leaping from Windows]  And don’t read fiction published on the internet; there’s no future in it.

As if it wasn’t broken already

There was no one in him; behind his face (which even through the bad paintings of those times resembles no other) and his words, which were copious, fantastic and stormy, there was only a bit of coldness, a dream dreamt by no one. At first he thought that all people were like him, but the astonishment of a friend to whom he had begun to speak of this emptiness showed him his error and made him feel always that an individual should not differ in outward appearance. 11:16 am

He looks a bit like Shakespeare, or so they say.  I see it.  He’s an intelligent man, doesn’t deserve his cyclical life.  Drunk wife, dancing around in a kimono with an umbrella that time, pawns furniture, he buys it back.  She sells it again Friday and he starts again Monday.  Sisyphus without the rock.  Would wear the heart out of a stone.  It was just after we saw the tiny coffin, white, Martin tried to turn the talk away from.  Poor little thing in that coffin.  Well out of it as Dedalus said.  In the midst of life we are in death.  And we all understand what that means perfectly well.  Don’t we?  I mean, I always believe.  At least for me.  Take Rudy for example.  Sweet little dwarf body weak as putty.  They say a mistake of nature.  Meant nothing, better luck next time.  He doesn’t have to.  Or at least he will never.  Hell with this, what was I saying?  Death in the midst of life.  Yes.  Nabokov said the cradle rocks above an abyss.  You see?  Life is a pinpoint of light surrounded by eternitites of darkness.   Where we came from, where we are going: the same place.  Oh they look on suicide badly enough, greatest disgrace to have in a family, cowardly, temporary insanity was Cunningham’s charitable view.  But I don’t know.  It is a route at least.  It’s one way to get there.  Poor Papa.  He was in a room with hunting pictures on the walls.  At his hotel.  The bottle was there and they said they thought he was asleep at first.  But then saw the yellow streaks on his face.  I didn’t want to look and see him differ from.  And the letter.  For my son Leopold.  No more pain.  Rattle his bones.  Over the stones.  He’s only a pauper whom nobody owns.  Nobody owns.