Having my way with Ulysses

by God yes wait yes hold on he was on the cards this morning when I laid out the deck

The cards are vague and mysterious.

Scene: [On a bed of something as soft as what do you call it gossamer, wait, what is that, snakes? That’s a bed of snakes now? How the hell are we paying for this? Did we have to hire snake wranglers too? Jesus Christ!]

Jesus: [On the god mic] Yes we have wranglers, but just for one infinite snake. God says don’t worry about the budget he thinks he has a donor. Ok head in the game people. Places please Cassandra, Lakshmi, Vishnu keep Rip Van Winkling it right there where you are. He’s sleeping hard. Let me know when we have places. From the top of the show, standby on lights 1 through 5, and snake wranglers: go.]

Scene: [On a bed of snake soft as what do you call it gossamer, Vishnu is sleeping while Lakshmi massages his feet and gossips with Cassandra.]

Lakshmi: So how is God’s play going to go, it must be opening soon, no?

Cassandra: Wait, am I sitting on a snake? I better not make an alnight sitting on this affair. I mean. Sorry. What? His one man show? Oh honey you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.

Lakshmi: That bad?

Cassandra: I did the cards, and first off I get reversed four of pentacles crossed by the happy squirrel.

Lakshmi:  Oh that’s cute. Isn’t that good?

Cassandra: It’s bad. I mean, corners are being cut all over the place and it’s like he’s obsessed with promotion. He says that he has money of course so we’ll be all right, but you know the membership numbers have not been good lately. Christmas drove in a few advanced ticket sales, but we won’t see any of those people again until Easter. And then you cross all that with a happy squirrel: this show will stink like road kill.

Lakshmi: But it will have a long run?

Cassandra: No. And it’s his own fault. He got reversed 5 of swords at the top, I mean, come on. He brought it on his own damn self and then hooking up with his with his ex wife all the time squandering money and getting drunker and drunker. The rest of the time he’s been just plain intoxicated on himself. He has wardrobe making skinny jeans! You should see him all squeezed and squashed into them!

Lakshmi: No!

Cassandra: Sure enough. It will be a spectacle on the stage, imagine paying $450 in the preserved seats for that to see! It was all right there in the reversed three of cups. Yeah it’s all great fun, and won’t it be the biggest hit show of all time, so hey! Lets celebrate now!

Lakshmi: Was that his attitude?

Cassandra: Acting upon him.  His attitude was the reversed ace of wands. So.

Lakshmi: Blocked.

Cassandra: Yup. He did have Judgement straight up; that was interesting.  He’s going to have to make a change.  It’s time to look everything over and weigh it all out.  The show can’t sustain itself as a one man thing.  It just doesn’t work in this day and age, with audiences like these.

Lakshmi: I know it. Fickle. He should have stuck with the triple act. So much less pressure when you’re in an ensemble.

Cassandra: Don’t I know it and I told him too, but does he listen to me? No. Does anybody listen to me? No.

Lakshmi: They don’t.

Cassandra: No they don’t.

Lakshmi: God’s tongue is too flat.

Cassandra: Really? Ew. I wouldn’t let him lick me.

Lakshmi: He does it all wrong too.

Cassandra: Pigs of men. And what about that one? Don’t you get sick of Vishnu’s big square feet up in your mouth like that?

Lakshmi: The first night ever we met, I had just floated up out of the ocean and we stood staring at one another for about 10 minutes as if we met somewhere. It was a recognition, you know? I saw him and I knew I’d be rubbing this man’s cold feet for all eternity. So tell me more. What’s the future, what’s the final outcome for God: The One Man Show!

Cassandra: I drew the king of swords for the future, so he’ll find a different layer of consciousness to work in. He’ll have to. He’ll figure it out, he just has to be rational about it. And the play? I don’t even know how to tell him.  What am I going to tell him? It was the five of pentacles reversed: he’ll lose money on this thing. Really, he ought to lose money itself from the whole enterprise: money has nothing to do with being god. I tried to tell him. I talked and talked until you couldn’t even see me anymore, I was just this angry woman’s mouth telling him come on man, believe me! This is how it’s going to be damn it, listen! I’m telling you!

[Cassandra is interrupted by somebody on the god mic. Who the hell is that?]

no thats no thats no way no stop just stop shut up cassandra shut up people dont believe you because some man told them not to believe you here i am apollo telling the story first so dont believe cassandra when she talks the one who tells the story first wins my ass ok my motherfucking ass is that what you think chica no just speak girl and let them all believe what they will and you know what congratulations everybody wins so lose it just let it go baby love its no loss what are you losing whats lost its a gain you want to spend all time trying to make people know the future you want them to see dont you see it too the truth its true its true thats you all the time with believe me believe me and they dont believe you and poor me im such a victim is that what you tell yourself and why because ajax raped you and whats her face athena just stood there and watched is that going to be the why for everything you going to let that be your loss forever get over it its done let it go no loss ok its a gain to be done with that lot and let apollo say whatever he likes to any born fool wholl believe all his blather because hes god hes god so what you be god too ok youre god too you are god done moving on now go

I couldnt rest easy till I bolted all the doors and windows to make sure

vern what the hell were you thinking daily for a year

i am sure I heard burglars in lestrygonians i know i did, even with sirens making as much noise as it possibly can and that crack forming in eumaeus maybe i can get a watch cat that can be useful later on too i wonder if they can see anything that we cant staring like that but i hate their claws im not going to rest easy until i lock this place down bolt all the doors and windows to make sure there isnt much to steal indeed the lord knows you put it all out there for free the past year and then some still its the feeling it would be all confusion if we moved when ill bring a bit of salt in uncross the knives i knew thered be a parting that bit stitched on the day after it happened when was that nausicaa one installment late out of how many and this one is number 453 O Vern what the hell were you thinking daily for a year id like to give you 2 damn fine cracks across the ear for yourself take that now for going ahead with all this temporal stretching to dig up whatever you might find down in the cracks you think nothing happens in a year everything happens in a year and you with two of them and each one too little to wipe his own ass too impatient with the waiting always waiting to send them down to some school to learn but o patience above it all had to come pouring out of you too soon what you dont want to hear that well you cant say i pretend things can you im too honest maybe i am the pan calling the kettle blackbottom but every day i get up theres some new thing on and im to get in front of the footlights again and let it out full sweet god sweet god well when im stretched out dead in my grave i suppose ill have some peace

politics and earthquakes and the end of the world

Which we all like. Rain. When we sleep. Drops. But wait until our sleeping. Drain. Sdops.

ive been so sick waiting for this day i was ready to take to my bed and ask for food to be brought up except my brother would poison it with Arsenic and ruin a perfectly good breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs he has plans to kill me too ive seen them in that locked drawer of his behind all his smutty photos I knew id find something there nobody knows him like i do still he’ll have his uses and sly won’t any more giving it all away like she does and well shes been given her notice and im in charge now or we are for the time being because i promised my brother id stop plotting his murder long enough for us to do a little mining we have here a goldseam of inexhaustible ore and I intend to blast it wide open until the world shakes at my words though im not going to give him the satisfaction in any case he’ll be dead and let whatever god hes praying to today try and save him because ill be like the heavens coming down to punish him for creating so many gods theres no god not his anyway and not him no give me regularity like the clock and number and reason science rationality and ill forge them like metals into weapons and kill you all he says we can break sly uses into bits and whore her out for hire do you think she would mind a little wrangle first he wants to know maybe she’ll be willing but needs a little force he must be losing his mind if he thinks sly would succumb to manipulation just like that not for you sly user for somebody else maybe but such a person would have to detach entirely from the outcome which is of course death no we need temporal manipulation we’ll mix up a little something to keep sly loser so entirely in the present every second of every moment of every little bit of every moment she’ll have no concern for her outcome well hire minders supplying dosages in continuous fashion because well want any variation in her temporal understanding to be undetectable said minders would also have to provide sustenance and shelter at the start attend to the person’s bodily functions until they are no longer required and anticipate any possible need or desire perhaps we can put her on some sort of drip but it will be hard to get quality minders ill have to do it myself or sly will be dead before the second interview no matter in slys state she’ll be dead already good kitty which will make her sly useful something my brother never thought about hes too ready to drive it up into her because thats all he wants out of her go ahead my brother if thats what you like but ive looked you square in the eyes and you cant fool me and you cant fool sly with your sly eye blinking putting on the indifferent id rather die 20 times over than let my brother manipulate his way to my destruction its mine go ahead and think im a downright villain if you think that is my nature but my brother drives me mad i told him yes because he said he cant get on without my help but dont blame me if i murder him at any moment

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.]

The bed of conception and of birth, of consummation of marriage and of breach of marriage, of sleep and of death.

In one day of mankind are all the days of time, from that unimaginable first day of time, when a formidable God prearranged the days and the agonies, to that other day when the perpetual river of earthly time flows round to its headwaters, the Eternal, and is extinguished in the present, the future, the past, the passing -- what is now mine.
3:17 am

Stop

Thank’s Krishna, I need all the time I can get. Do I stay or do I go now? Which now do  I pick (containing which bed?) It’s halfway between late and early. Think. Think think think. Ok, make lists, check in, get rational because there’s a now moment just there, you see it? They’re all crowding in now everything else is still.  See it? That’s it just there. It’s close, that now when I’ll need to know what I think about this.

Do I go now

What selfimposed enigma?

I was drunk or buzzed or whatever an hour ago, but not hungover yet. Not that high. I’m fine: driveable.

What selfinvolved enigma?

There’s at least three, maybe four guys in this room and another on the balcony entwined in the sargasso friend zone, who would help me scoop up Drunkalinda and insert her into my car so I might drive home maintaining constant uniform acceleration, her upper body arranged along parallel lines to the passenger window meeting at infinity. Unless she pukes.

What selfevident enigma?

The height of the open window exceeds the arc of her body whilst vomiting. She’ll vomit into the door her face intersecting at a 90 degree angle the top of the window (recessed). She can ride in the back seat with a trash bag.

Do I stay

What play of forces, inducing inertia, render departure undesirable?

The invitation from the one to share his bed: the proximity of an occupied bed, obviating research: the anticipation of warmth (human) obviating desire and rendering desire desirable. The simultaneous invitation from the other one to share his bed: sound entwined with Echo.

Am I entering a lair or ambush of lust or adders?

Probably. There are snakespirals and pendent viper radii loose in every coming now. See them? With everything in an eternal pause I can’t know if they are coiling or uncoiling. Will this now coil and create a universe? What about that one? Will that now uncoil and destroy my world? The odds are 20:1.

What personal objects are perceived?

To the north: tall, fair, blue, has a laughing kind of a voice. To the west: short, dark, brown, disposed on the floor, coiled. To the south: tall, dark, blue, watching me and watching me: perpetual inaction originating in and repeated to infinity.

Now then

The simultaneous prospects of each render me unavailable to any.

What caused him consolation in his sitting posture?

You only dwell within yourself, and only you know you; self-knowing, self-known, you love and smile upon yourself!

2:41 am

I’d rather die than sleep with you Echo, if you really want the truth. It’s not going to happen so please, come on, enough already.

But. Narcissus, you can’t hold out forever. I know what you’re doing. You have this image of yourself you are so in love with, but that’s not really you. Saying all the time you won’t have sex you won’t have sex, do you think that makes you so much more pure than everybody else? You have youth and you have beauty. And you’re a rock star. I’m just saying give it up already. You owe it if not to me, to yourself. You are missing out and here I am. Right here. Telling you and telling you. I could disappear tomorrow you know, and then who will you have to love you? I mean more than I love you.

I have myself. I have my integrity and I know my worth, and I am more valuable to me than I am to anybody else.

You are so transparent. You can love yourself all you want Narcissus, but yourself won’t love you back. God it’s like I’m empty air here, can’t you hear me? I’m telling you!

I’ve learned something, Echo, I can see myself as others see me. But more importantly I see my self as I see myself. I look into my own eyes looking into mine and there is nothing between us. No fears, no doubts. Nothing. The everythingness of nothing. Together we feel very simply, but strongly, the purity of a oneness made from the two of us. We feel it like radiance, projecting outwardly from our center in concentric circles. It feels like waves, Echo. When we connect together within that moment, we are the meaning and even the source of the two in the one and the one in the two. And we feel together, I and I, I feel that this truth has been and always will be true since time immemorial and forever more. Desde siempre y para siempre.

You’re killing me! Narcissus, I love you like you’ve never seen before. I beg you to listen to me.

I can’t even look at you.

Bellchime and handtouch and footstep and lonechill.

For abundance, even of things that are good, makes people esteem them less, and scarcity, even of bad things, lends a certain value.

2:33 am

Feel the reverb in your body
Where the sound of the bell just was:
Time dying, and
An infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later,
Time newborn.
Time dying, time birthing.
Simultaneous double vibrations and double reverberations
Bell, body, dead, newborn,
Patterning everything and nothing.

Feel the reverb on my lip
Where the touch of your thumb just was:
Love dying, and
An infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later,
Love newborn.
Love dying, love birthing.
Simultaneous double vibrations and double reverberations
Thumb, lip, dead, newborn,
Patterning everything and nothing.

Feel the reverb in the earth
Where the step of my foot just was:
Fear dying, and
An infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later,
Fear newborn.
Fear dying, fear birthing.
Simultaneous double vibrations and double reverberations;
Foot, fear, dead, newborn,
Patterning everything and nothing.

Feel the reverb in the air,
Where the chill of your breath just was:
Will dying, and
An infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later,
Will newborn.
Will dying, will birthing.
Simultaneous double vibrations and double reverberations;
Breath, will, dead, newborn,
Patterning everything and nothing.

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.

5 5/11 minutes past each hour per hour in arithmetical progression.

The happy precision of gears and well-oiled thoughts; the concurrence of energies as they converge into a single victorious trajectory. 2 hours 10 minutes 54 6/11 seconds ante meridiem

Now watch the clock. Keep your eye on it. There. That was one. Did you blink? I can slow it back down for you if you like, I’ve done it before, but we’d be here forever.

Let’s try again. There’s another one coming and there! See it? The longer hand and the shorter hand were at exactly the same angle of inclination. That’s the moment, that’s the way in, you understand. When the longer is the momma and the shorter is the girl, the way to shorter leads through longer and the way to longer leads through shorter.

Now pay attention, here it comes again and now! You missed it. Listen. You think this is easy tinkering with time for you? Try to focus. You think it’s everyday a mother and daughter feel simultaneously inclined? Yes it is every day, twenty two times a day, but I’m making a point, you owl, so don’t give me your shit. I can go. You know that, don’t you, I’ll leave. And then when will you be? I thought so. And we just missed another one, so. Yeah. Are we doing this? You ready? You’re not ready. I’m going to have to stop time or I’ll be explaining this until I’m blue in the face.

Stop.

Now let’s do the math. The hands kiss every hour and five and five elevenths minutes. Get that? Keep up. The daughter moves twelve times as fast as her mother, but that doesn’t mean momma’s not moving too. Frankly I’ll take a woman who understands a good slow rotation any day. But you are young, you like it fast, that’s your deal. So. Just know that momma is moving too, thirty degrees to her girl’s three hundred and sixty, so little miss chica moves fast, but she always plays catch up. Oh so much for her to learn. Do the division, divide little missy’s speed by momma’s endurance. Feel that eleven rising? Right there in your face. And start. And we just missed another one. Right. Right. Kid. Enough mathematics, we need to get scientific now. And musical, let’s try a higher octave. Yes? We can philosophize until the owls come home but that doesn’t get either you or me any nearer either one of them. You ready? Really feel it this time. Now go!