Having my way with Ulysses

Time’s livid final flame leaps and, in the following darkness, ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.

This was his first and never-forgotten image of the city; those massive buildings that seemed to say We are here forever.12:52 am

What made time? This is the western world I’m swimming in; within these waters I know deep in my gills that time was made. I open my eyes and see fish; perhaps you open yours and see flow. Maybe your temporality isn’t something that can be said to have begun. What the hell do I know about that, I’m breathing water here. Your geographical location will tell your gills other truths. Maybe your temporality has no need of a beginning. So. What made time? This time, yeah? A god? A god made time? Nice work dumbass, you made something that breaks too easily. Your temporality is too fragile. It smashes whenever we make something formed from what is that word everybody knows? What’s the point (ah the point!) of a temporality that breaks whenever we corrode sublimate smash something into nothing. Break it down boys. We can clear this place out in no time flat. Make quick work. Sudden, sometimes. But look at the materials: creatio ex nihilo, so what do you expect? Shows what you get when you make something from nothing. Must not have been much of a primary void. You want void? You want nothing? We have nothing. We have plenty of nothing right here. In this country. Right here. Go look at the sky just above our greatest city. That particular nothing ranks with some of our greatest and most terrible nothings ever to cleave time, and we’ve had some enormous nothings on our record. Millions of leaping final flames. Tear stained trails of them. When a world watches with hearts in mouths while receiving a nightmare’s bad kick, what is the more grievous sight? The buildings falling? The dust clouds and smoke rising spreading filling smothering settling? No. It’s the oh my god the towers aren’t there. That. It was that. Remember that? That ripple of obvious entwined with inconceivable? It was visceral, that moment. That’s the sight that cleaved time. There’s what rent temporality. That monumental nothing. We look into that nothing. That hole in our sky. That hole in our temporality.  And we look into that nothing and name everything on that side “before” and on this side “after.” Why have we yet to build something to fill nothing? Our monument of nothing is too compacted, too dense; it won’t just drift off with the tide just like that. You want something not nothing? Good luck to you. Put what you like there, go ahead, put it all there. Make it everything, that nothing’s not going anywhere.