Having my way with Ulysses

This was a quandary

Pray don't imagine it was my intent To live with her on bread and cheese and kisses. No! just upon the threshold of our blisses, Kind Heaven must snatch away the gift it lent.1:01 am

The Mad Nun: [Not yet perfectly sober]  Shh get down! Jesus! O Jesus! Jesus!

Achates: [Disgustingly sober] Did they see us?

The Mad Nun: Shh! Don’t speak! Good god what is that noise that one is making in the street?

Achates: I think he’s trying to whistle.

The Mad Nun: He should leave whistling to the professionals!

Achates: Shh! They’re coming this way.

The Mad Nun: If we get caught I’m prepared to swear a hole through a ten gallon pot that it was you who came on to me.

Achates: Judas! And I’ve been so faithful.

The Mad Nun: Freeze in hell.  I know people so don’t piss me off.

Achates:  Well there’s gratitude. And after I wined and dined you. Gave you fancy bread, that came from the heart!

The Mad Nun: It went to my head. I’ll say you put something in my drink.  Now get down, there’s not as much room in here as we had last night.

Achates: The hearse tomorrow night?

The Mad Nun: It’s up to my husband.

Jesus: [Who up to then had said nothing whatsoever of any kind]  I’m in, but the state of our last cab was not what you would call clean when we left it to the tender mercy of others the last time, or more properly, last night when not to put too fine a point on it, we left an enormous wet spot, as it is called, or, more properly, dry crumbs.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.


The first and last rittlerattle of the anniverse; when is a nam nought a nam whenas it is a. 1:06 am

We really need to replace E.  Y too, damn it, its so awkward now. I really have to stop hooking up with the good looking ones, it never goes anywhere.  I can’t just assume all the time, no matter how hot they are, that a run of bad luck is never temporary. They don’t just need something to hold them over until whenever. There is no whenever.  There is never whenever. Remember that H we had that one time said he was doing research for a character he was writing. What a load of crap. Good looking guys can be losers too. Got to remember that. No, it was E. The E before the E we have now who just looked a bit like that H not that one time but the time before. And then the one today. Asking me out but would I mind paying because he’s out of work. I told him we had a three week waiting list for human directionals which means I’ll probably be carrying a sign myself tomorrow and that’s fine, because E is way too creepy to keep around. This place is infested with losers, but Hugh doesn’t pay me enough to put up with creepy.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Everyone according to his needs or everyone according to his deeds.

"Alas," said the mouse, "the world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into." "You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.1:10 am

Eggshells and fish heads. These are good, yes, tastes good, but i’m just eating to be social. I’m really just keeping company; don’t want to be rude. I know how to behave, properly. At least I accept what’s offered to me unlike some people i could mention. Imagine. I still can’t get over it. Did you see? Were you here? I bring my person a perfectly good fat little bird. Nice smell. Fresh. And I could have eaten it myself but did I? No. I didn’t. I did not. Hssssss! It’s impolite to call a gift disgusting. I could say the eggshells are disgusting. Ah who am i kidding eggshells are tasty. I like the crunch, like bird heads. Good calcium too. I will eat my fish heads and my eggshells with dignity. I have manners. And then I will take a piss under the bed.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Sounds are impostures, like names.

This never changes.1:11 am


  17. Gonzales Reyes — My silent names.

2 Responses to Sounds are impostures, like names.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Relaxing to a certain extent under the magic influence of diamond cut diamond.

I dance because I know thirteen different ways of deceiving people by pretending confidence in them. I didn't know there were any more, and now here's a fourteenth! That's why I dance! 1:15 am

My dead husband came back. No, not a resurrection though when I saw his face in the window it was like seeing a ghost. He had gone overseas to make some money for us and told me a story before he left, though I didn’t get it until now. What am I a child? Am I kid to be told stories so I won’t lie (my nose will grow), won’t cry wolf (nobody will help when it really counts), and will endeavor to follow some minor rules of thumb such as always build with brick, don’t bite the apple, and leave a party on time though it is ok to lose a shoe if the shoe is made from glass but not ruby.  But I was young, and determined to be in love so I listened. A man had been moving one step forward and two steps back in his so-called career for long enough to tell him he was going nowhere fast. He was still within the age range in which a drastic change can be a good idea.  So the man kissed his wife, who loved him despite his tendancy for backward mobility, and he left her in the care of his best friend, his wing man, his loyal Achates, for a lengthy overseas gig which would earn the man dollars somewhere where dollars still mean something big.  And that means dollars to save and bring home to you my adoring loving loyal wife. So off he goes. And the woman gets depressed and cries a lot and hangs out at the bar with the best wing man, the friend Achates, and drinks, then cries some more. Achates loves them both. He sympathizes. He empathizes.  She revitalizes. He mesmerizes. She fantasizes. She energizes. She tantalizes. He improvises. She rationalizes. He mobilizes. He organizes. He fertilizes. She hospitalizes. And now she has a baby and two men. In the mean time, Mr. reverse arrived somewhere developing, hit the ground running, made straightforwardly unrefusable offers, and is currently headed homeward at an angle of fortyfive degrees like a shot off a shovel.  Well shit, now what.  I’ll tell you what. The man came back, sized up the situation and danced his way out the door laughing, I’m free, I’m free!  The wife, happy to be unwived danced too, I’m free, said she, and danced away too. The wing friend, the man Achates, stands with a baby on his hands, watching the twin disappearances dancing off in opposite directions. He feels himself betrayed, stuck, used, dumped, and alone. Then he shuts the door, tucks the baby into his arms and dances and dances and laughing dances.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and the livers of horses.

I seemed to see their flanks torn by sharp fangs. 1:16 am

Mmm, look at you. You look good enough to eat! Come here darling, let me nibble on you just a bit, hey? Now now, don’t look worried. I won’t bite hard. Yet. You’d make excellent chicharrones, don’t you think? I know a chicharroneria in La Punta where we can take you and we can eat on the beach, little black rocks under our feet. It might be hard to render your fat first.  I don’t want to insult you, but you are now don’t take this the wrong way big. But once that’s done and we have the wood fire going you’ll be all meat. Nice with a good salsa criolla. I’m hungry now. Maybe something faster. Lomo Saltado? Too typical? I have the garlic, here peel that, will you? I have the aji, you, a nice onion. Shall I use a white or shall I use a red? Yes? Might not have enough tomatoes but that’s ok, I have the potatoes, cumin, soy sauce. I’m out of vinegar. Damnit I knew it would be something. Sweetie, be delicious and go to the store for me? Thank you honey.  And give me that. Who taught you how to peel garlic? What a mess. Now go.

3 Responses to And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and the livers of horses.

  1. Well, I have my ‘Everyman’s edition’ and a book of annotations and notes. I also have an unabridged recording of 40 disks pirated from the Library–for what good-just to have I guess. I’m off to see the wizard, or at least what’s behind the curtain. Does it really matter in the end? What did Colombus think the day before he sighted land-‘Oh boy am I in the shithouse’.’?

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

His inscrutable face which really was a work of art.



Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.




Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Fear not them that sell the body but have not power to buy the soul.

My guide said to me "Along this place you'll want to keep a tight break on your eyes, to let them wander would take no effort."1:23 am


Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.


1:25 am


God: Probably?



Jesus: I shouldn’t think simple is the proper word.


Jesus: Goes without saying.

God: Exactly.



Jesus: Like that?

God: No, put your back into it. Good.



5 Responses to The mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth.

  1. It has been many years since I have read Ulysses. And I don’t think I understood it at all then. I would like to read it again. Where should I start? Obviously at the beginning, but I mean to better help me understand the references and such?
    Secondly, why the reference to the poem at the end? I could only find it in reference to the movie “A Man with Two Brains.” Did you use it because both this piece and the movie humorously dealt with surgery? Or to help suggest that the soul is the second brain located in the same place?

    • When I taught it at the UW I assigned the Gifford annotations as an optional text. It’s good for cultural references, music, odds and ends. There’s also the Blamires book, students liked that one because it gives an account of the action of each chapter in as clear a way as possible. Ulysses in a quarter system is a race to get it done, so if I were to teach it again, I’d do it in two quarters if I could. If you are serious about it, and I think it would be good for you to study something again (And good for you to get your ass back into a poetry slam) read Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist first. Many people in Dubliners have parts to play in Ulysses, and it is important to know who Stephen is at the start. When you get to Ulysses you might also want to read chapters 1 and 4 together, 2 and 5, 3 and 6. They are mirrors of each other, almost beat by beat.

      Other than that, get out of your own way. Ulysses is not difficult if given a proper shot.

      I riff on The Man with two Brains throughout the post, and on Aquinas’ discussion of the soul in the Summa Theologica, as does Joyce. I wanted to point a little levity at the idea that the soul could have a location or even a distinction from other elements of personhood. It was an ancient and medieval obsession, one of the fun ones, and this idea still pops up wearing other clothes here and there. I also wanted to use this post to introduce an idea from Plotinus that temporality is an attribute of the soul and the soul is the site for unity between timelessness and temporality. Plotinus thought the body was too corrupt to have any connection with eternity, so where else are you going to put time? He would think that though, he had a nasty case of leprosy and was generally terrified of physical contact. I don’t have any idea why the Man with Two Brains popped out. It just fit.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

The point was the least conspicuous point about it.

1:26 am



Caesar: What’s the point?


Caesar: Blah blah blah.




Caesar: I refuse to accept other selves.


Caesar: Leave me alone

Time: The point is always alone.


Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless necessary animal of the feline persuasion

Oh kittens, in our house of ease, uncertain toys and full of fleas. When pain and anguish hang o'er men, we turn you into sausage then. 1:28 am

Now I’d like to turn our discussion of the white meats to cat, which just so happens to be my own favorite for a good old succulent tuckin with garlic de rigueur.  Culled from the wild or farmed at home, these widely available roof rabbits are crowd pleasers regardless of season. Now cats caught wild are best eaten between three months to a year old, as they do get more sinewy after that time.  I’d go as far as two years if the cat in question lives nearby and you can acquire it on the quiet and, I should add, on the cheap.  You will find the more sedentary farmed cat, though somewhat inferior in flavor, can be butchered at an older age with no significant loss of tenderness. Both the cat farmed at home and its wild cousin tend to be on the gamey side, so it is always best to leave it in a stream or under running cold water for three days; what comes out is a delicacy! If running water is in short supply, the tried and true vinegar method works nearly as well. In this case soak the cat in a mixture of 6 1/4 cups water and 3/4 cups white wine vinegar for 30 minutes before you cook. Cat works marveously in many recipes, but when purchasing be sure to ask the butcher to show you the head. Shocking as it might seem, rabbits are a common substitute, though they come nowhere near cat meat for tenderness.  Cat in a thick sauce is better than chicken, rabbit, or pigeon.

2 Responses to Except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless necessary animal of the feline persuasion

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Always snapping at the bone for the shadow.



Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Their two or four eyes conversing.

Others asked such questions as "Why should we care what happens after we are dead" or "If this Rebellion is to happen anyway, what difference does it make whether we work for it or not?"

1:33 am

Scene: [A rabbi and a priest walk into a bar. The rabbi says:]

Rabbi: Where is everybody, are we the first ones here?

Priest: Must be. Good, I wanted to talk with you alone. You and I need to take control of this thing before it bloats to an inmanagable size.

Rabbi: Yes. Our revolution must come on the due instalments plan, if we expect to pull this thing off at all.

Priest: [Turning away from the others who probably and speaks nearer to, so as the others in case they.]  Shush for Christ sake.

The Rabbi: Am I not right?

The Priest: Yes, but this place is all eyes. I don’t want to indulge in any, orthodox as you are.

Rabbi: Right. Of course. Listen. We want to homogenize all faiths yes, but some faiths are, you understand. I mean, all faiths are equal.

Priest: But some faiths are more equal than others.

Rabbi: Indeed. So your plan to raise money, I don’t see it.  How do your people do it? It seems you raise your money on false pretenses, fork it over and you’ll go to heaven. What heaven? Show me heaven.

Priest: The abstract future reward is always more powerful than immediate gain or punishment. Don’t you know that yourself? Heaven, its glories, its boundless bountiful plenitude, the sheer everythingness of the whole concept can take any size, it can stretch to any or no limit, it can fill every space, it can

Rabbi:  Save it for your congregation, father, you can be all their daddies but not mine. Try selling buy now receive later to people who concern themselves with life here and now. I walk in with future reward and say pay money for it, I might as well sell crosses. Mine won’t be the only ones, prepare yourself, and what about the Muslims?

Priest: That’s where self sacrifice for eternal reward will pay off.

Rabbi: Yes, but their temporality, so unpredictable. So branching and forking.  Touch it and it folds up on itself, how do we manage that? Call something a crusade and they feel it like it happened yesterday. And so it did happen yesterday. Bring up any event of any kind and bam, it’s now. We’re in it now. We’ll need a work around.  I’m assuming we’ll want everyone to go linear?

Priest: Makes sense to me. The Hindus are persuadable, but the Buddhists, the Taoists especially.  They’ll make trouble, and that’s not trouble we want.

Rabbi: No.

Priest: No.  To keep linear time we’ll have to speak of other things. Distract them with other issues. Look, we’ll have to say: it’s hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is. We pose to them that we all resent violence or intolerance.

Rabbi: Yes. It never reaches anything; It never stops anything.

Priest: Never. It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular.  No. We must be practical.  We must imbue ourselves with the proper spirit.  It will be the only way to create our New Bloomusalem.  By the way, do you like the symbol I came up with?

Rabbi: It’s a little busy. The Hindus might like it. It’s a good job you didn’t add a bleeding saint to it, or we’d never convince the Muslims to get on board.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or didn’t say the words the voice he heard said, if you work.

(Ah, crabeyes, I have you, showing off to the world with that gape in your stocking!)1:35 am

Stare at nothing in particular, but do swim your eyes closer. Work with me here, and I mean that in the widest possible sense. I work, though it seems my work is taken as a word of a different color being so translucently pro bono. Why work? Someone asked me this. What difference if you miss a day or don’t do it at all, are they paying you? Are you making any money? Think of all the money expended on your education, you are entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. We all have a price. Ah well, look here, look there. No price here. No space sold to others: I pay for that privilege. I have every bit as much right to live by my pen as any other but come on now. What the hell are you doing I’ve heard coming from eyes I didn’t expect. Stop. Who said anything about stop? It would take the hand of God, clawlike, crabby shaped, green with malignant red eyes sticking deep its grinning claws into my heart to make me stop.  Beware God’s hand.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to.

While we sleep here, we are awake elsewhere and that in this way every man is two men.1:36 am

Look. Don’t you know that if you fuck a whore, you together become one body? It’s old, this idea, thousands of years written by people who were no better than they should be. They say in their most sacred “The two shall be one flesh.” The beast with two backs and the molecules entwining.  And more than that, it’s turtles all the way down baby; you’ve just thrown yourself into the den of lions. So far be it for me to put two and two together, but we are each other, you and I. You think we are cultured fellows, promising so brilliantly and indeed we are and them too, though they don’t know it. And we’ve all fucked around: we’ve had sex with everybody. You sleep with him, he sleeps with him and her, and she sleeps with she and she with he and all of us all together form one body of no uncommon calibre.  Whatever shall we wear?

2 Responses to Six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to.

  1. Don’t take this the wrong way, but as I was reading this I thought how delightful it would be to be in bed with you (nothing would have happened) and have a cigarette–just that moment. (I love what you do. I domn’t always recognize until later but liker I said its rare that you don’t put a smile on my face.>KB PS: Still haven’t gotten off pg. 1–shit keeps happening.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Different ways of bringing off a coup.


  • Establish dominance, think alpha male. But less is more, remember Al Gore in 2000? Not that kind of alpha male. Carry your revolution as if it has a really big dick, but you don’t need to whip it out to prove it.  Be everybody’s daddy.
  • Don’t play musical chairs. Be ruthless whilst removing the former bastards in power. Why have a coup if you keep all the same people around?
  • Make friends with the army, but don’t make promises. You don’t want the people with the weaponry suddenly thinking they can throw a better revolution than yours.
  • The military likes to play with their guns, so let them handle any civil opposition that will undoubtedly crop up.  You can’t bake a cake without breaking a few eggs. You can, however, hire somebody to break the eggs and bake whatever you tell them to bake.
  • Come up with a proper pronunciamiento to justify your new world order to the masses.  Clarity trumps veracity.  Remember a real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation.
  • The first person to tell a story wins, so get out there with whatever truth you like, and fast.  Remember, a proper coup happens suddenly.
  • When delivering your first epistle, don’t try to be more fascinating than thou.  The proletariat hates a show off.
  • The proletariat also hates a smartypants. Don’t lead with your philosophy.  People need to be wined and dined a little, talk about them, then you can get down to ideology.  Promise things.
  • Once you are in, spread out. The initial revolution will be a public in-your-face event, but remember that the best coup carries on behind the scenes and under the table for years to come. Quietly take over whatever you like, but of course start small. Identify all the mechanisms of public discipline and link them together one by one, under your own power structure.
  • Keep track of everything and everybody, subject everybody to a field of visibility and let them all know it: in this way you ensure that if anybody steps one toe outside of your idea of what they ought to be doing, they will make themselves visible. Let visibility be their trap, if only to prevent a coup designed to depose you.
  • Get rid of the old regime’s intellectuals, particularly if they are smarter than your intellectuals. Endeavor to have the smartest intellectuals. Do this through assimilation if you can at all manage it. Otherwise, just toss the ones you don’t like to the military.  Now go.

One Response to Different ways of bringing off a coup.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Dead he wasn’t. Simply absconded somewhere.

1:42 am


Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.






Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

With her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion.



Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

History repeating itself with a difference.

(5b) To change reality for everyone -- the one I told you goes on -- is to accept the fact that everyone is (ought to be) what I am, and, in some way, to meld the real with mankind. That means admitting history, that is, the human race on a false course, a reality accepted until now as real, and away we go. 1:46 am

All right ladies, hold the mirror just so, can everybody see me? Just like this. Adjust your positioning so you can get a good angle yet still feel perfectly comfortable and supported. If anybody needs an extra rolled up blanket go ahead and get one. I’m sorry, I forgot your name, purple mat? Yes, you. Try switching hands. There you go. Good? Everybody ready? Now take a deep breath in through the nose, and feel your breath flowing through every part of your body, moving warmly down your spine, and exiting your body toward the mirror as you breathe out. Good. And breathe in through the nose like an inward voice two, three, four purple mat, you are sitting too tight. If you have a possible need to satisfy by moving a motion, no? Then you’ll need to get into position from standing again. Ok, feet shoulder width apart, there you go, mirror in the other hand, yup, breathe in through the nose and on the exhale bend down as if you let something drop, nice, then let your body fell down, 32 feet, per second, per second. There you go and breathe in, two, three, down the spine, and out toward the mirror. Good. Everybody still breathing? Keep breathing and follow my voice. As you look into your mirror I want you to focus your awareness on the opening just a short distance under where the back changes name. This is your when point; think of it as an omphalos if it helps you. Focus your breath towards your when point and allow this to be your breath’s one great goal. Now I want you to keep feeling the rhythm of your breathing and on your next inhale allow your breath to encircle all the calcifications of history within your body. Now imagine your breath melting history away. Breathe history down your spine and push it out toward the mirror. Good. And inhale, really feeling those mineral accretions of history melting into tailings. Keep breathing. Down the spine. And out. Now breathe in and feel the tailings shifting, melting, like ice into water two, three, four and out,  and on the next cycle we’ll push the last of history toward our one great goal. Ready and in, two, three, four, good, really focus, down your spine, and out, two, three, purple mat, there are buckets and rags in the utility closet. That’s ok. There’s one in every class.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Destruction of the fittest.



Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riles them was a bite from a sheep.


Some believe that the bite from a sheep makes people angry whilst the wolf bite is a mere cost of doing business.  Perhaps this is true because the wolf bites everybody and now here we have somebody who happened to land on the bad side of a sheep on top of everything else. Would piss anybody off. That is, the wolf bitten person, has been wolf bitten since time immemorial and will be forever more, and now here’s a sheep come along to finish the job. The last straw, as it were.

Even so, I disagree that the sheep bite would stand as something greater than the wolf bite, even if it is two bites to the one. The effect is equal on either side, a bite from a wolf equals a bite from a wolf plus a bite from a sheep no matter what rumpus is kicked up on the sheep end of things. Here, I’ll prove it:

Let wb = wolf bite and let sb = sheep bite.

My theorem: wb = wb + sb


(wb + sb)² = wb² + 2wb + sb

Bring 2wb + sb to the left:

(wb + sb)² – (2wb + sb) = wb²

Subtract wb(2wb + sb) from both sides and factoring:

(wb + sb)² – (wb + sb)(2wb + sb) = wb² – wb(2wb + sb)

Add ¼(2wb + sb)² to both sides:

(wb + sb)² – (wb + sb)(2wb + sb) + ¼(2wb + sb)² = wb² – wb(2wb + sb) + ¼(2wb + sb)²


[(wb + sb) – ½ (2wb + sb)]² = [wb – ½(2wb + sb)]²

And taking the square roots of both sides as one would quite naturally:

(wb + sb) – ½(2wb + sb) = wb – ½(2wb + sb)

Add ½(2wb + sb) to both sides and find wolf bite plus sheep bite equals wolf bite alone, or wb + sb = wb.  A bite is a bite and no more quad erat demonstrandum. With apologies to the sheep, for who can blame the sheep for wanting a bite?

One Response to People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riles them was a bite from a sheep.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

The exploits of King Willow


Auspicious King Willow would cry in his pillow
And cry in his pillow would he
He called for his love, and he called for his soul
And he called for the sands in the sea.

Oh good King Willow, don’t cry to your pillow,
Why not dream your blue dreams with me?
And I’ll shape all the sand into she.

And your tender Achilles is she.
There’s more lovers than sands in the sea.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Apropos of coffin of stones.

And behind it came so long a file of people, that I should never have believed that death had undone so many. 1:53 am

Most of these are filled with them, you know. Stones. Our bodies rot away, or they do at first. We’re eaten by the rats too, go down like hot cakes. We have a grip on them by their stomachs, as Wetherup likes to say. Sometimes if we are young fresh and female we get dug up for a last wild hurrah before they leave us to rot and be eaten. Don’t tell the families. It’s not quite dust to dust, there’s a lot going on in between. Ultimately, though, our coffins fall apart: eaten too by the crawling things, and hastening our disappearance. This is not all; both our bodies and our caskets become penetrated by tree roots and crushed by settling earth until we fill with nothing. We become nothing. Being former occupants of bodies, we still like to walk with you sometimes: on the right side of you, it’s a habit of ours, do pardon us. We are that strange feeling next to you, sinewless and wobbly and all that. Why am I telling you? Well, this is it for you, didn’t you guess? The chairs are upside down on the tables and somebody will sweep up in the morning because it’s quitting time, you are done.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Simply abounding in immortal numbers.

After that holy soul had, with his silence, showed he was freed from putting in the woof acrose the web whose warp I set for him, I like a man who, doubting, craves for counsel from the one who sees and rightly wills and loves, replied to him: I clearly see, my father, how time is hurrying toward me in order to deal me such a blow as would be most grievous for him who is not set for it.1:55 am

Let’s look at music. No, I said look. Can’t you see music? No? I’ll help you. Good grief who can’t see music? Music finds its reality in time, so how blind must you be never to consider its spatial component? Never mind. I do apologize and I take that back. Some people can’t help being, ah, different. We are all equally special and so on. Perhaps you are only looking in the one place. Sound waves expand in space: you must adjust for that. So, let’s look at music. Here, take my arm and I’ll guide you. You’ll feel like a different person after, trust me. Let’s take a peek at Mozart, or is that too predictable? How about Wagner maybe? or if prefer something a scoach less antisemitic we might spy a little at the Gloria from the Twelfth Mass. I find Catholic music the most geometrically pleasing, don’t you? Much better than what comes out of the opposite shop. Doesn’t really matter, they are all the children of mother matrix and papa pattern, but one does have one’s favorites. Now then. See for yourself the musical notes numbered and grouped into symmetry and written into proportion, now watch when they, yes! No? You didn’t see? They sound aloud together in tessellating patterns. See them? Numbers in proportional bunches running this way, now transposed, now running that way. The woof and the warp: weave weaver of the wind. Peek at the numbers and you’ll see inversions, rotations, reflections flipped vertically or horizontally, even reflections that glide and slide along sideways. Sure there are deviations here and there in the numbers, just to wake us up a little, see if we’re still looking, but look close and you’ll see numbers arranged into self-similarity across scale. Forget your ears. Listen with your eyes! And your body. Wait, what did you say? I can’t allow myself to hear that. Don’t say it. Just don’t. You can’t feel music? Oh honey, you really are special.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Beware of the steamroller.



One Response to Beware of the steamroller.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.

Having reached the end of his tether.



One Response to Having reached the end of his tether.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.