Having my way with Ulysses

Petals too tired to

Dream. Ona nonday I sleep. I dreamt of a somday. Of a wonday I shall wake. 10:00 am

Saw a kid smoking outside a bar today.  Wanted to tell him to stop but let him.  His life isn’t a bed of roses, waiting outside to bring dad home.  Slipped out to check email undisturbed.  Did it while looking at a tea shop window.  Nobody saw.  Ceylon tea, the far east.  Lovely there I imagine, floating on a lotus.  Drifting.  Those snaky lianas of the satyr man.  Vishnu dreaming just before he.  I wonder if it is like that, dolce far niente in the sun, sleeping half of the year away.  Lethargy.  Heat brings it.  Idleness and flowers fed by the air.  The azotes of the alchemists, nitrogen the food of the plant and the stone.  Azoth they called it, Azotos in Greek, the lifeless air.  Used it as code for the quintessence, the thing of all things.  And for the fire of the kundalini serpent coiling up the spine.  Feel that slow burn.  They disguised it as a dove, sometimes, and silver rain.  In darker moments the regicidal son stepped in front of it so only they knew what they were talking about.  Also a whip for flagellating the naughty.  Oh you bad boy.  A nitrogen whip for sensitive plants.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Careless air

(the gravitational pull perceived by certain fixed residents and the capture of uncertain comets chancedrifting through our system suggesting an authenticitatem of his aliquitudinis)10:03 am

I close my eyes.  Picture it.  I am floating on water.  Dead sea water, no effort.  I can float with a book if I want to and rest for hours.  Yes.  Easy.  Languid.  Peace.  A solid body immersed in a liquid.  There’s a law.  Who?  Archimedes maybe.  Archimedes floating in a bath tub.  Oh buoy, he said, and ran home naked to write it down.  Remember half listening to Vance in high school.  Science class late in the day, drowsy.  32 feet per second per second, falling bodies.  Just dropping in.  Accelerating per seconds through space.  Spacetime, a curved thing with geographical features.  Bumps, hollows, canyons, mountains.    Shaped by things in the way, some of them falling per second per second.  Energy too, shaping spacetime.  Not falling per second per second.  Gravity giving us that heavy feeling.  The Earth drags spacetime behind it and around.  Like the wake of a boat, losing satelites in the ripples.  Seattlites too.  Where are they?  More like when are they.  Earth’s wake moving slowly, languidly through the dead sea.  Ripples under my floating per second per second.  Floating.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Mark time

You need drugs you need a pill / You need drugs you need a pill / Make it easy to do the drill / Make it easy to do the drill / Sound off, One Two10:04 am

Checked for an email from.  Might have gone too far last time.  No answer yet.  Saw a billboard recruiting for the army.  Join the army, win a Wii.  Can’t play it, though, you’ll be at war somewhere getting stds.  Half the military infected with something.  Rotten with it.  The other half intoxicated.  Kid in the billboard, eyes front, half closed.  Half baked.  Hypnotized.  Here’s your care package from home, some nice Vicodin and a bottle of clean pee.  But who needs the care package?  Opium comes from the battlegrounds.  No import fees.  Locally grown.  Drift through the war.  Old Tweedy in uniform.  Showy.  Women like that.  Wonder what his regiment was on when he was.  Hello!  Email for henry_flower@rocketmail.comShe answered anyhow.  An attachment too.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Eeleven

10:05 am

McCoy on phone from Conways.  Bob Doran is on one of his benders.  Starting early.  I’m watching a woman outside packing up her car.  Skirt.  Windy.  Tpying too.  Multitasking.  Had to pick up phone.  Can’t keep blowing him off.  Still, hhate to be interrupted when.  Ggust!  Nice.  Sheesh the guy can talk.  Doesn’t need much of an answer besides yes.  yes.  um hhum.  He’s a nice guy, McCoy.  Ttries too hard though.  Insufferable for that.  Borrows stuff and doesn’t return.  Will be asking for a suitcase for his wife’s imaginary out of town gig.   Bantam Lyons there too.  At Conways.  Doran used to be a serious guy.  Qquiet.  Changed once he saddled himself to his mother-in-law.  Nno blame there.  Hold on.  Standing in car door to reach luggage rack.  Stretch.  Yyes.  I see pretty clearly today.  Rich: expensive.  They’re all the same once you touch the right sspot.  McCoy heard about Paddy Dignam.  Tterrible death.   Sees me looking.  Always an eye out.  Good to have backup.  Hello.  Dropped something.  Watch!  Watch!  Sshit!  Truck went by.  Right at that moment.  Another gone.  Ddamn McCo

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Who’s getting it up?

Queen was in her bedroom eating bread and.10:07 am

Molly on her bed with her cards, laying them out in two rows, the queen of spades and knight of diamonds set aside.  Cat in the middle of it.  Queen of spades, the widow.  A young widow.  Poor Dignam.  Or the divorced woman.  Which option?  Or the bad woman with ill will.  Or the dark woman familiar with sorrow.  And with the knight of diamonds.  A knave.  A brave unemployed man.  A young stranger.  A scholar.  A jealous person.  A useful man.  Who?  Planning her concert.  Her phone face down on the bed.  Texting.  Singing some sweet old song.  McCoy says his wife singing too.  Believe when I see.  Don’t want to hear, no guts in it.  Screechy woman.  Freckled.  Cheeseparing nose.   You and me in the same boat he says, flattering me.  Irritating.  Your wife, my wife.  Wonder is he pimping after me?  Maybe a little softswapping?  I wouldn’t think Molly his type.  Maybe he means me?  Still in the closet I thought. 

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Ffoo!

10:08 am

Why does all the action happen offstage?  Think of Ophelia.  Poor Ophelia!  She has such few lines.  The token chick.  Oh Ophelia, you sweet dead thing.  Probably for the best.  The thing is you fell in love with the wrong guy.  Chica, didn’t anybody ever tell you?  I’ll say it.  Don’t fall in love with crazy.  Don’t do it girl.  Just don’t.  I don’t care how much family money he has, I don’t care that you think he’s cute.  I don’t care that you think you can change him.  You can’t change him.  And I don’t care that you what?  Wait.  What did you just say?  Are you kidding me?  You thought he’d marry you?!  Girl you are delusional.  Are you out of your damn mind?   Hasn’t anybody ever told you to get a ring on it first?  A guy would have to be a lunatic to buy the cow if he’s already getting the free milk.  And a prince?  Please.  He’s got girls coming at him from all sides.  Honey you are just one of the herd.  He gave you some, ahem, private time and what did you do?  You were free and bounteous.  Typical.  Then you couldn’t even kill yourself onstage.  Come on.  We didn’t have a chance to look at your face.  We had to hear about it from Gertrude and you know how she tells a story.  Anything could have happened out there.  She probably drowned you herself.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Too full for words

How incomplete is speech, how weak, when set against my thought!10:09 am

What do you want, I’m eating.  I see you.  I see what you think.  You think that I am a dumb creature and I have no sense beyond this bag stuck to my face.  Damn all we might know or care about anything.  Keep us, drug us with feed.  Condemn us to a mine somewhere until we die, no hope of fresh air or natural light again.  No problem.  We only want our feedbag.  Is that it?  Look I may be no Incitatis with gold flakes in my oats and a high paid job, but I am more than you think.  I am real.  I don’t speak, no.  But not because of this bag, whatever you might say.  We see you.  You think we are gently champing our oats, regarding you silently.  We see you.  And I cannot speak for us all but what I see, what I’ve seen, freezes me to a solid and chills me to silence.  I’m filled with it.  Look at the things you have done.  Don’t you get it?  Look between my legs for a start.  What do you want me to say?  Incomprehensible idea.  If I were to verbalize something I would be placing myself into human rationality.  No thank you. You poor brutes.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

I do not like that other world.

There would he lay till they would him descry, spancelled down upon a blossomy bed, at one foule stretch, amongst the daffydowndillies, the flowers of narcosis fourfettering his footlights, a halohedge of wild spuds hovering over him, epicures waltzing with gardenfillers, puritan shoots advancing to Aran chiefs. 10:10 am

Email from Martha.  Attachment: a yellow flower.  Aconite?  Not what I thought.  What is she saying?  No waiting?  I didn’t go too far then.  She’s angry with me.  Naughty boy.  Wants me to wrote back before her patience are exhausted.  And wants the real meaning of.  Afraid of words.  I can be brutal, why not?  Says will punish me, naughty boy.  Go further next time.  And give her Molly’s perfume, what perfume does your wife?

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Tansy

In its own way, this book consists of many books, but two books above all. The first can be read in a normal fashion and it ends with Chapter 56, at the close of which there are three garish little stars which stand for the words The End. Consequently, the reader may ignore what follows with a clean conscience. The second should be read by beginning with chapter 73 and then following the sequence indicated at the end of each chapter. In case of confusion or forgetfulness one need only consult the following list10:11 am

Anemone:  I have been so looking forward to seeing everyone, and look, here we all are!  I can’t remember the last time we had our full membership together.

Forget-me-not:  I can, it was last spring.  But then our group didn’t include Cactus or Nightstalk, and Primrose was still with us.

Violet:  Can’t count on her.

Tulip:  Good riddance, her opinions pissed me off most of the time.

Anemone:  Well, welcome to Manflower.  Do you know everybody?

Manflower:  Everbody but this American beauty next to me.

Rose:  [blushing] how lovely!

Violet: That’s enough false modesty Rose, so did everybody do the reading?

Cactus:  I read every word.

Forget-me-not:  So did I and I remember all of it.  I loved every part of it!

Rose:  Wait, stop right there.  Remember that we don’t say if we liked it or not until the end.

Forget-me-not:  Oh that’s right, how could I forget.  Manflower, that’s one of our only rules.  That and we never reschedule via email.  If you cant come you can’t come.

Violet:  You didn’t forget.

Manflower:  I can come.

Rose:  Oooh!

Tulip:  Well, I had a hard time reading it.  How do you read the bloody thing anyway?  You click on it and there you are somewhere in the middle.  Who reads anything from the middle?  It makes no sense.  Then you have to click to previous posts to find out what’s been going on in a kind of retrospective arrangement.  There’s no linearity to it.  No logical flow.  No forward progression.  I don’t get it.  Who reads like that?

Rose:  Use the tags.  They are so beautiful!

Tulip:  So what?  What about important things that happen only once?  The tags don’t help with that.  You might as well cut all the pages out of a book, scramble them up and then read them that way for all the sense this makes.

Nightstalk:  You have to start at the beginning like I did and read it backwards.  I read every word.

Violet:  You didn’t read it backwards.  And you didn’t read every word.

Nightstalk:  How would you know, you pansy?

Cactus: I can endure anything Nightstock, but don’t be so prickly.

Violet:  I’m telling you with full candor that you didn’t read it backwards.  I, however, read it, then I found out that there is text under every picture so to be faithful to the thing I went back and hovered over all of them.  And I looked for all of our names using the search, except for mine of course.

Anemone:  Oh, tell me what you found!

Violet:  Not much.

Forget-me-not:  Maybe we should all say which picture we remember truely loving the best?  How about you Nightstalk?

Nightstalk:  Um.  I liked.  Lets see.  There was that one.  Um.  All of them.

Violet.  You didn’t look at any of it, did you?

Tulip: This whole conversation is as pointless as this month’s reading.  It isn’t even a real book!  Who can get any pleasure from this?  Look, I’m wilting.  Let’s have dinner and say if we liked the damn thing or not.  I hated it.

Manflower:  So did I.

Rose: Oh me too!  How beautiful that we have that in common.

Cactus:  Careful Manflower, she has thorns.  Rose, get a room already.  The book, non-book, or whatever we are calling this thing just touched me the wrong way.  I hated it too.

Forget-me-not:  I loved it!

Anemone:  We know.  Thanks for ruining the anticipation.

Nightstalk:  I enjoyed it.

Violet:  You didn’t even look at it.  Well I suppose there is enjoyment in that.  I hated it too.  So thats all of us then.

Anemone:  You forgot me!  Why am I always forsaken?  I didn’t like it.  For next month let’s read a real book.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Let everything rip

Don't piss off Martha10:12 am

I hate my sister.  Look at her in there.  She’s totally throwing herself at Jesus.  What a bitch.  She’s actually sitting at his feet and hanging on his every word.  Way to be cool Mary.  And I’m stuck here in the kitchen with this old hag grinding up garlic.  Great.  I’ll reek of it and fish too and meanwhile there’s Mary making Jesus think she’s interested in everything he says.  Oh tell me more and more about your dad, he sounds fascinating!  Cunt.  I’m going to spread the biggest rumor about her.  I’ll tell everyone she’s a total slut.  I’ll take a picture of her naked and it is so going on the internet.  I’ll put her number on Craigslist.  When I’m done she’ll go down in history as the biggest whore who ever pissed off her sister.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

One Response to In cups of rocks it slops

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Still life

He who like the sun has gone to rest is comparable to nothing whatsoever. The notions through which his essence might be expressed are simply not to be found. All ideas are nothing, as bearing upon him; hence, all modes of speech are, with respect to him, unavailing. 10:14 am

St. James.  Seems old, even for a new world.  1950’s but designed to look older.  Proper cathedral atmosphere important.  Lulls.  Quiet.  Man snoring over there.  Better not let that oculus Dei see.  Look alive.  Not the thing in here.  Not like Buddha, lying down having a rest.  Relaxed religion.  Opium.  Peaceful.  Mind and body the same.  Subject and object and object and object the same.  Hard to put into words.  What is?  Ineffable.  Can’t put into pictures either.  Everything in illuminated dissolution.  Not so this place, they like to see their deity bleed.  Show us your body.  Suffer a little.  Crying statues and stigmata  Entranced with the corpus.  It’s a bit of corpse, but don’t bite it.  Ouch.  Just break it up with your tongue.  stupefies a little.  Then some wine to top it off.  Wonder what.  Merlot?  A blend?  Lulls all pain.  Christ died for our sins.  But 2000 years ago so sin it up boys, it’s prepaid.  Open bar, tab’s been taken care of.  Go on a bender wake this time next year.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

God’s little joke

And I schschschschschsch. And did you chachachachacha? And why did you? 10:15 am

Feels like it should be later than now.  I asked Molly what INRI means.  She said Iron Nails Ran In.  And IHS means I Have sinned: or no: I Have Suffered.  Wouldn’t mind suffering a little more.  I’ll command Martha to meet me at St James.  Run into whom?  Exactly.  Hear the mass.  Christ or Pilate?  Christ, but don’t keep us all night over it.  I’ll say do not deny me.  Bring a veil and a black bag.  Want a little wine?  Prepare for confession.  Everybody wants to.  Come on, tell me a little then I will tell you all.  And now some penance.  Punish me please.  Lovely shame.  Hello! Fly open.  This whole time?

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

How goes the time?

penteplenty of pity with lubilashings of lust for Olona Lena Magdalena 10:16 am

Quarter after.  What is quarter of?  I’ve never understood that one.  Quarter of, is it before or after?  Whatever.  Why quibble over a preposition, there is no before or after.  Time enough yet.  Always time.  Where is this?  Ah yes, the last time.  That’s where.  Wait.  Have to go for Molly’s lotion.  When did I get it last?  No prescription.  Alchemist can look it up.

[The shop door rings as Bloom enters.  A toothache he had been experiencing is suddenly cured]

Mary Magdalene: Can I help you?

Bloom:  Yes, a shrunken skull, the philosopher’s stone, a lemony soap, and a refill of a prescription lotion for Molly Bloom.

Mary Magdalene:  Is she in our system?

Bloom:  [with a drugged mental excitement] Yes.

Mary Magdalene:  And you could use a cure for that dandruff.

Bloom:  Not for me.  Do you mean me?

Mary Magdalene: [Mixing ingredients in an alabaster jar]  No of course not.  Let’s see, need to rinse scalp with a little laurel and green tea steeped in distilled water.  Any allergies?

Bloom: Bee stings, so please not an electuary.  Can’t be too careful.

[Mary Magdalene hands Bloom the jar then whacks him across the face]

Bloom:  [With obvious pleasure] Why?

Mary Magdalene:  In case of reaction.  Want to be careful.  Anything else?  Having trouble sleeping?  Maybe some chloroform?  Laudanum?  How about a nice love philtre?

Bloom:  Does it constipate?

Mary Magdalene:  Clogs the pores.  Or the phlegm rather.

Bloom:  Can you mix it into Molly’s lotion?

Mary Magdalene:  Ah yes.  A remedy where you least expect it.  That’s the acid test.

Bloom: [Coyly] I’ll come for it later.  You know, you ought to physic yourself a bit.

Mary Magdalene: [flirtatiously]  And gradually change my character?  You have a bit of pluck!  Now as for Molly’s lotion, tell her she wants to be careful.  Too much and she will experience a lifetime in a night.

Bloom: [Exiting, inhaling slowly the keen reek of drugs]  Yes.  I said yes.  I will.  Yes.

One Response to How goes the time?

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Also I think I. Yes I.

Beyond that, I am doomed -- utterly and inevitably -- to oblivion, and fleeting moments will be all of me that survives10:17 am

Oh the darkness of her eyes.  She pulls the sheet up to her Peruvian eyes, smelling herself.  Skin.  Feed it nettles and rainwater and oatmeal steeped in buttermilk.  Skinfood.  What perfume does your wife?  Peau d’Pérou.  There’s dirt rolled up in my omphalos.  Curious longing I.  Could use a.  Time enough for a massage.  Body shampoo.  Sweet waxy perfume.  Pity no time for a happy ending, combine business with pleasure.  Would be nicer if a nice girl did it.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Maximum the second

In my childhood I have seen old men who, for long periods of time, would hide in the latrines with some metal disks in a forbidden dice cup and feebly mimic the divine disorder.10:18 am

Show us a minute.  Bantom Lyons materiallized as if from nowhere and said this with his hand.  Show us a minute.  I gave him my newspaper.  Tried anyway, to get rid of him.  Show us a minute?  Look at the sun, it moves by its own radius every minute.  That’s if you can see the sun which we cannot.  Not in this town.  There’s no telling a minute under these clouds.  And you shouldn’t look directly into the sun.  Maximum the second.  That’s what Bantom Lyons’ yellow blacknailed fingers said next.  I suppose the inability to see a minute would maximize the second.  Stretch the moment; make it plastic.  It’s what we have to work with.  Can’t add anything to it.  Better to think of the second instead of the minute.  Lyons has some bad dandruff.  His head just under my nose.  He is Irish.  Decended from the lost tribe that never went back.  Going to throwaway his money on a horse race.  I must have said something because he suddenly looked at me, said he’d risk it, and took off toward Conway’s.  God speed and get the fuck out.

One Response to Maximum the second

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Always passing, the stream of life

And it is all one to me, where I am to begin; for I shall return there again. 10:19 am

Who?  Oh, it’s you.  Float with me a little.  Mmmmmmm.  Nice womb of warmth under a bud of flesh.  Floating around.  A languid floating flower.  Oh this stream of life.  Round like a wheel.  With spokes too.  And life, it doubles up, it turns like a horseshoe.  Never mind.  You are too young to understand.  Not like me.  Float with me.  In the stream of life we trace.  Oh this womb of warmth is dearer thaaan them all.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.