Sly Uses

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.

This is the appearance is on me.

August 14th • Oxen of the Sun

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.

And all this while poured with rain.

August 3rd • Oxen of the Sun

Sunday 3 July 1664: Then up and spent the evening walking with my wife talking and it thundering and lightning all the evening, and this yeare have had the most of thunder and lightning they say of any in man's memory, and so it is, it seems, in France and everywhere else. So to prayers and to bed. 10:18 pm

Dear Diary,

I’m starting over. I’m going for the absolute purity of awareness, right, I want to have total awareness of all things I experience, all the minutiae of the detail of it all, while I’m living it. While I’m in it. So tearing out the pages and this is day one. Aleph Alpha nought nought one. I think trying to write this thing in the third person made me sound like an asshole. He took a picture of Her. He said so long to his cousins and will see them again shortly. Come on. Nobody ever anywhere will read these written words, I know that, but I still don’t want to sound like a total douche. Ok. So. Writing down my experience of appearances in the world. Sensations. Flow of time. Haircut. Good. The mundane. Perfect. So. Itchy skin on my neck. Sharp little bits of hair. Sharp little bits of hair poking inward while I. Well this is lame. I don’t want to write about itchy haircut hair. Ok, try again. It is raining. Infinite rain. Wet. Wetness. Wettening. Wetly. Wet wetness wettens wetly wet. Wet wet wet. Word lost meaning. Damn. That was going somewhere too. Ok think. Think think think. Perceive my subjective point of view. There was one big stroke of lightning just now and lots of thunder. A phenomenon. Phenomena have temporal features so. Am I still writing about my subjective experience? The appearance of phenomena and thinking about the appearance of phenomena enone themselves. Then they spread out a unity through time. Through. Well, whatever it is. So I’m still good. My temporal features are different from those of any single phenomenon because I can enfuture myself. Goals, some of which I can change. Some of which require the exercise of my free will. Some of which involve a certain young for her age, large for her age, beefy girl. Skittish. Will take some persuading but probably not much. Ok. Sticking with present phenomena which automatically continue being what they have been. A phenomenon has its own temporality. Infinite rain. See? Just look at it. And just one big stroke of lightning and lots of thunder with it. Wait. That off a bit. Seems off. Or is time a structure of the knowing mind? Then lightning and thunder as phenomena appearing in the world has no temporality of their own. That’s not right. Ok stick with my subjective point of view. My pure experience of my own lived experience as I experience it. My experience of experiencing experiences I experience. That’s it exactly. That’s what this is about. Sensations. The flow of time, that’s what counts. Look there he is. Wonder where he’s going.

So dark is destiny.

July 27th • Oxen of the Sun

& there they layed his corps in the body of the quere & sange & redde many saulters & prayes ouer hym and aboute hym 10:06 pm

There was no stopping her. He died on his eleventh day, dead of winter, and he was getting cold. So tiny. So small. A week and a half old, just changed enough from his first moments to start to look like her and to start to look like me. It was a start. Eleventh day. Eleven. Elf. Elfin boy he’d have been now. Sweet eleven. She measured him and got out her best wool she had been saving. Measured him around. Circled his little body. Cannot make a circle without eleven. Measure a circle seven across and it will measure eleven halfway around. Seven and eleven, a thread between square and circle. Square the circle and maybe. Maybe eternity. Find him there. She orbited around him as he cooled. She is the moon and while she knit he was her whole world. She orbited and he cooled in 3:11 ratios. Moon:Earth, he took on enormous proportions but she would knit for him. She had wool and time had stopped. Oh the ground. The Earth is cold in winter and his sweet little body was cooling. Pull the moon to the earth. Pull her close, the three to the eleven. Now circle them. I circled them. I circled them in radii of seven. Our circumference was 44, the same as the perimeter of a square around Rudy, named for my self-murdered father, my whole world. She knit, I circled for the length of his body cooling. She measured. She chose her needles and her best wool she had been saving. Soft, no itch, 4 ply dk merino. And she swatched. She measured. She cast on 32 stitches and knit two rows. Then she knit 2 * yfd k2tog, to end k1. Next row K. The next row she k2 * and she made 1 in the next of each stitch to the last k3. Next row K. Next row K3, P to last 3 then K. He cooled, she knit in patterns: K4 *k1B k1 to last 3 sts k3, next row k, k5 k1B *k1 k1b to last 5 sts k5, next row k and she continued for five inches. Then she k6 k2 tog k1 to the last 5 sts k5. I circled. I squared. She k3 P to last 3 K3. I circled. She K3 yfd K2 tog to last 2 sts K2. I squared. K3 P to last 3 K3. He cooled. The perfect square lacks corners. She K2 tog, knit in pattern to the last 4 sts and she k 2tog twice. Then a row of K she knit. She knit for two more inches. The wrong side facing, all wrong, k to the middle, k 2 tog twice, k to the end. The next wrong row she did it again. And the next wrong row she did it again. One last row in pattern. Last time. Then our sweet, our little, our baby love. We placed him inside. We put in our kisses, warm to cold. Weeny hands. Smallest love. Our sweet circle. Our whole world. Then the seam. She grafted 32 stitches and snipped the yarn with her teeth. Basta. Enough.

The clock on the mantlepiece in the priest’s house cooed.

July 22nd • Nausicaa

9:00 pm

Unportal my loves, let’s tell them the sin of my when.

cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo
cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo
cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo

There now. I’m very proud of you my sweets. Please, no inner remorse of conscience. Not that again. Is it such a sin to yelp a perfect number? Sing the numbers of me, birdies, spring from my own mouth and boast the pride of my heart. Sin my foulness to God and the world and sing of nothing but me. Give my offering sweet canary birds, this ennead of night. Stand on the fourth twig of pride’s branch and let’s eat the fifth leaf. Yum Yum, tell my hour so I might open my mouth and swallow this now, the sin of when.

Magnetic needle tells you what’s going on in the sun, the stars.

July 13th • Nausicaa

Has there not been Over Man a long period of Time, when he was Nothing -- (not even) mentioned? Verily We created Man from a drop Of mingled sperm, In order to try him: So We gave him (the gifts) Of Hearing and Sight. We showed him the Way: Whether he be grateful Or ungrateful (rests On his will). 8:51 pm

Can a watch stop in despair? Or from guilt? Or worse than guilt, what about shame, there’s a big difference between guilt and shame. But let’s not talk about shame, let’s talk about me. Everything depends on your understanding of me and how you create me. I am your creature, my pet, and I am nothing without you. Well, not nothing. Even nothing is something. Take yourself out of the equation and mathematically I’m still out there, if you insist on thinking geographically which I don’t. But if you like, I’m out there in some other place from yours. And I’m linear. I cycle too, you’ve seen my periodicity but what are you doing standing under the starcase when I’m taking them two three at a time? I’m circular then. Spherical. But that will move and change. It’s a phenomenon. I’m phenomenal flux. Believe me. Have faith. Cross my heart and go to endlessness. I’ll be endless duration. I make the difference between creature and creator. I am your creator, my creature, and I am nothing without you. I am you. We were never born and will never die. We are eternity of being. Lord I’m feeling, how do you say? I feel it like an ache at the butt of my tongue. What’s that word. I just had it too. I know it in my language, but it gets lost in translation somewhen between perception and articulation. Well. You know what I mean. Maybe it was just magnetism stopped the watch. Wristwatches always going wrong. Must be magnetic influence between people, his magnetic personality, and the watch felt it all the way to now. Larger bodies have greater gravitation fields, perhaps it is her then? It must be about magnetism. It’s been the sun, and water flowing out, and fire burning things which worked only so long as people knew what each hour smelled like, sand, machines. You try building a wheel that turns in perfect synchrony with the equinoctial circle. If only a magnetic globe could be made to float nicely parallel to the celestial axis. Yes, magnetism too. Let’s say I’m that. That now is magnetism. The back of everything. The watch felt it. Like a sneeze coming.

Her sweet flowerlike face

July 8th • Nausicaa

8:46 pm

I’ll say goodbye using the only language deemed acceptable by the conventions of Society with a big ess. Here, my love, I send my message in the language of flow wafting softly through the evening and that little bat flying around to and fro just to show what a good bat she is had better not tell. Little bats don’t tell. Smell me! Smell me! Wonder if he is too far to? I’m no she-rose. But he’ll forgive me that. He’ll give me a sweet forgiving smile verging on tears. There will be no goodbye. We shall meet again. Then, tomorrow, in good time or outside of time no matter, and we’ll dream together of yester eve. Here, right here! Please, don’t imagine what we will do then, I’m blushing like a girl! Look at the color of me!

Talking about the time all the time.

July 5th • Nausicaa

The ritual extinguishing of fires is to be attributed to the same tendency to put an end to existing forms (worn away by the fact of their own existence) in order to make room for the birth of a new form, issuing from a new Creation. 8:40 pm

I must be getting my cycle again. I’m all bloated and I can feel everything tight on me, and I was just skinny. Must be time again because I got it the last time I cut my hair and it was a full moon then too. Thirteen a year, I wonder what we’d call month 13 and where we put it. Somebody will come along and name the new month after themselves I’m sure, like the romans did all the time. June, July, Coca-Cola, August. It’s coming. So. Look at him over there. He’s watching, starting his watch again. I’ll just swing my leg a little in and out. Give him something to see. See if he can keep time to me. Wish Edy would disappear. She’s always there like clockwork to notice everything and point it out too just to try to embarrass me. Thanks for always pointing out the subtle over and again so it can be nice and obvious you bitch. Reggy didn’t dump me, we weren’t together this time and what’s it to her anyway. I can have anybody I want, obviously, I mean look at that guy. He’s literally worshipping at my shrine! His look is for me and just for me, and she knows it. Scrawny ugly jealous bitch. And Cissy too, fixing the twins’ hair so she can look good. None of her business what happened between Reggy and me. I could get him back any time I want to and I don’t want to. His loss. He’ll come back around and I’ll be long gone! Ha! I’m so much better than all of them and there’s the proof sitting right over there staring right up my skirt. I hope I’m not starting my cycle.

I’ll run ask my uncle Peter over there what’s the time by his conundrum.

July 4th • Nausicaa

Talis is a word often abused by many passims (I am working out a quantum theory about it for it is really most tantumising state of affairs). A passim may frequent you to say: Have you been seeing much of Talis and Talis those times? 8:38 pm

What’s the time? Well, there’s a conundrum. I might have to cry uncle on that one. Excuse me, please, I’ll just, I’ll just catch my breath. My watch. Have to take my hands out of my front pockets and find my watch. Don’t mind me. Startled a bit. Was a bit busy doing never you mind doing what. What is the time you say? The time, that irritable little gnat. Always will be too. No-one can get on with anything without time poking her nose into what is no concern of hers. It is after dark so the sundial will be shaded. It takes 24 hours for us to move around the sun. The diameter of the sun as seen from this beach, when the sun was up you understand, but it is now down, but up the diameter is 1/2 a degree and we call a minute the amount of time, yes, time that gnat, the amount of time it takes to move the length of its own radius. But this particular minute? Let’s see. I can count on my hands, Oh look at that, back in my pockets, pardon me. I do have a passionate nature you understand, and it takes enormous control to determine the time once the sun is gone. We’ll have to take into account gravity, constant acceleration, the square of time. What was it that Uncle Peter said about that particle? It has the same properties viewed from every direction, makes it indistinguishable from empty space so in that sense the time the time. And given that it decays rapidly on microscopic time scales, please don’t look at my hands, without any intrinsic angular momentum. I’m spinning! Your question collides with my purpose. Of course inside an event horizon time-like vectors become space-like vectors and vice versa. One can no easier move spatially away from a singularity as one can move backwards in time outside an event horizon. My goodness, I feel an electroweak symmetry breaking. And me without my clepsydra! I do apologize, my watch appears to have stopped at half past kissing time.

A visit to a house of mourning

June 16th • Wilderness

Even if the whole universe did not recollapse, there would be singularities in any localized regions that collapsed to form black holes. These singularities would be an end of time for anyone who fell into the black hole. At the big bang and other singularities, all the laws would have broken down, so God would still have had complete freedom to choose what happened and how the universe began. 6:07 pm

[Scene: The lights in the house are down except for one single lit candle sitting comfortably on a stool in the center of the stage. The candle gives off a darkness shining in brightness which brightness cannot comprehend.]

God [on the god mic]: Let me ask you this: is there a difference between the world as known by ordinary mortals and what they think might be my world? Well I’ll tell you, all the world’s a stage. What’s different from here to then? It depends on if you think mortality is about duration. Linear duration. And if you thus imagine my theatres exist in another kind of time entirely. Do you think that? Many have done before you. Well who am I to say when’s when. What’s the opposite of a line? I don’t know. I guess an all at once condition. Plenitude of being. That sort of thing.

Here, I’ll give you a piece of my mind. Wait. What? Aw, Jesus Christ! What did I say about headset chatter? Come on. What did you say?

Jesus [Appears on stage is if from nowhere and talks to the booth]: I said, maybe here is where we should put in that bit about number. You know, the insertion between acts 1 and 2.

God [on the god mic]: That? Come on. Even the director thinks it’s crap.

[Bird excrement falls from the grid, lands on the candle and puts it out. A faint but increasing luminosity of ruby light becomes gradually visible].

Jesus: I get it. Can we at least try it? For Bloom’s sake?

God [on the god mic]: Bloowho? Oh him! Yes. Yeah. He’s in a bit of a black hole right now. A dark period of time. In his world it is between 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm. He started the day at 8:00 am and went dark at 6:00 pm.

Jesus: Six to eight. Eight to six. 6 is the number of creation, 8 the number of death. Symmetry under a cemetery wall.

God [on the god mic]: Yes. So it was 10 hours from starting bang to dark period.

Jesus: The number of unity and perfection.

God: [on the god mic]: This is a one man show, kid. Yes, unity, perfection. There’s the 1, the source number which adds to itself and makes all the other numbers, and Queen Zero, the female number, and if I may speak phallically and yonically, just look at them together: 10. One goes through all the other numbers to join with 0 and she gives birth to the next set of ten.

Jesus: Ten hours of wandering to get to 6:00, and then two hours go by: the blank period of time. And then? And then?

God: [on the god mic] Don’t interrupt, we’re going here. Line?

Jesus: Onan.

God [on the god mic]: And then he pulls out. Like Onan. And is stranded for a time. For a time. Line?

Jesus: For a time starting at 8:00 pm.

God [on the god mic]: For a time starting at 8:00 and following a moving now through linear duration to an end point at line?

Jesus: 2:00 am

God [on the god mic]: 2:00 am. 6 hours. 6 is a revolving sphere so he goes from linearity to oblivion (wilderness) to circularity and then ends up in bed with eternity. Do people still care about circular numbers?

Jesus: Hell if I know.

God [on the god mic]: 6 squared is 36, 6 to the third power is 216, 6 to the 4th power is 1296, to the 5th power is 7776, to the 6th power is 46656 and so each and so on to no last term. The last digit of every one of them is 6.

Jesus: It circles back to itself.

God [on the god mic]: It circles back to itself. Mortals get that, right? This thing is getting too long.

Jesus: Yeah, we can leave that out. The six circles fit around one thing too. Anybody with seven maneuverable circles knows that one. Goes back to six is the number of creation too. That whole 6 days thing and on the seventh you rested.

God [on the god mic]: Yeah right. I wish I had that much time off! But there’s no rest for the wicked, eh boy.

Jesus: You said it. Should we take it from the top?