Ulysses and the Cyclops 1954
Nardo The One-Eyed Cyclops - Tales of Ulysses
*Gifford’s note: A mysteriously offensive curse to the Victorian and Edwardian ear that continued to be offensive until the 1930’s;
no one can quite explain how or why. Joyce thought, or at least said he thought, that it derived from By Our Lady; others suggest By God’s Blood.
"Patches, we don' need no steenking patches!"
A fair depiction of the nature of Nardo except without the patch
Before I knew the Nardo was legally blind in one eye since birth, some medical condition, I only knew him as drugged on meds and loud and
drunk when he got nervous and self-medicated.
GF was not aware of his stupid drinking because he hid it from people at first. He would drink to be somebody, to build up courage to address his needs more openly I guess. He exhibited signs of schizophrenia, muttering to himself, or be oblivious to what was going on around him not hearing what was said to him, and otherwise would communicate with over exuberance, like he was compensating for his insecurity, or his mind was simply somewhere else. I described my encounter with the old sone years ago, when GF dragged his ass from Ontario on suicide alert and flew him back to La-la-land to clean him up and get him functioning like a human being with the support of family. The strange memory of that encounter haunts me to this day. It’s not so much what he did, but also what he said to me like he was channeling some demon entity wanting me to do something or wanting to do something to me.
The day I came home tired and lay on the yoga matt in my room stretching and relaxing, he had been drinking heavily, and now I understand he doesn’t remember anything. Being under the influence is just that, being unaware of your actions and consequences. When he walked into my space and hovered over me shoving his face into my face threateningly, I never knew the reason he turned his face at me was because he can only see properly with one eye. It was like Hook himself was threatening me, one black eye patch invisible to me. What I will not forget is what he said to me in his drunken stupor, “If you help me, I’ll pay you back.” What? I thought.. “Fuck off!” I said, “Leave me alone, I’m tired and I’d like to rest.” Yet he persisted and pushed his face closer as if to threaten me. I don’t hang out in bars and talk to drunks, I felt like I was in a Frankenstein movie, with a tall dumb animal threatening my face.
I used to collect monster models and watch horror b-movies, so that was my context for his rude behaviour. Bela Lugosi said it best when he describes Karloff in Ed Wood playing Frankenstein comparing to Dracula, “Karloff is all grunting and costume - Aargh! Smoke and mirrors. That’s not acting, just bumping and moaning like some animal. It takes refinement to play a serious role.” I wasn’t sure what to make of this. It came out of the blue when I was resting, shocked out of my reality in some RPG mystery.
“What do you want?” I asked directly, “Just leave me alone, I need to rest.” But he wouldn’t leave. I got up and escorted him out of my room. He came back and insisted on addressing me, like he wanted something that I couldn’t comprehend..I quickly found out he was lying about many things. “He didn’t repeat what he had said, just pressed his attention like he wanted me to answer him. And answer him I did. I pushed him forcefully out of my space, to which he turned and put his fists up readying for me to lay assault on him. If I let my anger escalate, I wasn’t sure of what I would do, maybe pound the shit out of him. This wouldn’t bode well for me with GF who might not appreciate me kicking the shit out of her beloved son. I really wanted to take him down and pound my fists into his head and kick him in the gut and ass and groin. I saw it in movies, maybe there was something fun in it. I didn’t.
We begin to notice just how constraining to live only in the first person. The pronoun “I” becomes another metaphor for the Cyclops, for only being able to see things one way. It’s directly opposed to the idea of parallax - seeing one thing from a number of different points of view in order to get a fuller sense of the thing. I feel like I'm in some kind of Trojan war, my dick against his dick. Cock fight at close contact. "Eh, Mr. Cyclops? I severe your nuts!"
I told him to leave me alone or I’ll call the cops and have him removed from my home. I locked my door. I was trapped in my room. If I left my room, which I wanted to do just to escape, he could be lurking. I did. As he was pounding on my door wanting to come in again, I called the cops and then walked past him and went out of the house, and waited for the cops too come. I walked up the street, they arrived, I told them he was int he house and he threatened me. He’s been in jail before for punching out some elderly lady on the street, out of the blue for no apparent reason. GF hauled his pathetic ass out of jail on that occasion.
Nardo the Fucked Up Samurai Cowboy
He dresses like this when he goes out, cowboy hat, long coat, invisible sword
He has a fondness for Japanese culture and owns a ceremonial samurai sword, his treasure that we hid from him so he wouldn’t hurt himself or us in one of his unconscious moments. From his cooking course out east, he brought an army of kitchen knives most butchers would envy, like a stash of knife weaponry. Lord knows what went through his head when he drank, since he acted delirious. We lived in constant vigilance, wondering where he was or what he was up to constantly. GF used to text him from work to find out what his plans were daily and try to keep him from drinking and staying on task. He said he hears voices. His life was a fucking mess. I feel guarded around him, and he lost my trust from lying to me to cover up his boozing. Nor is he able to cook anything with favour or finesse to my taste. He eats pot loads of mashed up shit, which to my perception just ends up in the toilet. All this in spite of having studied culinary in college out east. He doesn't practice food safe, nor does he consider the average palate or the preferences of others when he partakes on his Gargantua and Pantagruel feedings.
Perhaps breakfast is a good metaphor; some people, not happy with saying "this is not to my taste", must pronounce it loathsome. On the numerous occasions Nardo has charred inedible remains spiced with poisons, I have refused to partake in the tribal feeding. I remain in exile in my own kitchen.
He first got fucked up on ritalin given to him by some university counsellor to help him study for music exams. Really? You give young people ritalin to help them study? But Nardo didn’t just take ritalin, he was prone to drinking and the two didn’t seem to get along. I guess the pressure to him was overwhelming, with peer pressure of kids that were into music from very young. He just came to it after graduating high school and felt he couldn’t compete with them. Then it happened, the incident. He explained when he was injured in hospital to his mother that he was standing on a sofa in a window adjusting a curtain and flew out of a second story window. Really. You didn’t jump, you just fell out of a window. Ok. So you’re lucky you’re hear with only a concussion to tell about it. What the fuck was he thinking? Jumping out a fucking window, like he was in some video game? After the incident doctors wanted to diagnose him schizophrenic, which GF contradicted, but he was considered adult and chose to go on meds, which whacked his ass and made him docile, except when he was drinking. They put him on disability and he never finished his music studies. He never completed and went on to other things like collecting comic books, games and videos and fucking over friends and pissing off people.
He had a girlfriend for 6 years who was helpful to his stability, but she gave up on him. She couldn’t stop him drinking. He burned his friendships with everyone in his sphere of influence, while being obnoxious under the influence, I gather from his drinking, but the meds are more indicative.
He would hide his booze from us, when he was staying with us, and show up in the kitchen or living room, talking excessively loud and knocking over things. Or be sitting at the TV with his Playstation shouting euphemisms at whoever entered his space. Mostly he would go, “Hey! How’s it going?” like he felt uncomfortable that we were there and needed acknowledgment. Then he would utter nonsense, about something irrelevant that I couldn’t follow and with his tall stature command his space, so that I felt uncomfortable and I would simply leave and go do something else rather than make something to eat or sit and relax in nearby chairs. I felt like Igor was in my custody and I was his reluctant keeper.
I won’t even get into toilet training and trying to get him to clean up after himself. Suffice it to say, he was a filthy inconsiderate slob looking for another place to defecate. (*See previous entry)
Ulysses gets a stool thrown at him by one of the residents when he returns to his home, disguised as an old man.
He stole things from me, books and CDs from my library, to sell and pay for booze. We put locks on our rooms so he couldn’t access them when we weren’t home. He himself was on disability since his fall out of the window in university. Resurrecting him from the gutter has bankrupt both GF and myself. I can’t pay the debts I now owe, thanks to his disability and now mine. It bankrupt us both to cover all the additional costs of living. His disability doesn’t begin to cover his basic needs, let alone medications. It has diminished our ability to fend for ourselves. The fucking wifi from our downstairs neighbour caused us EMF hypersensitivity into fatigue and also didn't help (*See other entry for this shite). Nardo living with us took away my studio space, where I could teach or paint. His use of the internet interfered with my open access to it when I was doing graphic projects. He spent days on his fucking games while we were working our asses off. GF has spent thousands just saving his ass to get him to stop drinking, and getting him herbal supplements called Truehope to get him off meds. Also GF found an herbal patch called Alcostat that he uses into fooling his body that he’s had a fix.
However, in spite of all his progress and our support, he overreaches over ambitious to prove himself, then gets all fucked up and nervous, then acts clumsy and loses focus. Why he chose to work in a commercial kitchen is beyond my comprehension. One has to give him merits for trying, but sooner or later he's bit off more than he can chew and gets fucked up again, then is let go with yet another disappointment as a feather in his cap. Two months is the longest job he's had, so that's a step in the right direction, isn't it?
Life is highly allusive and also imitates the styles of different periods of English literature.
For further reading you might try Ulysses by James Joyce : http://www.girldetective.net/?cat=69
So here we are years later, after many things, the wifi sensitivity, my TGN facial nerve pain, not being able to work think or focus properly without pain, going on disability, and finding myself at the mercy of some strange creature living in my space. Everyday is crisis management for me. I’m beginning to resemble him. I’m very guarded around him. O Nardo, you make me sick! Literally. So now working from a place of scarcity, I think, “You can begin to pay us back any time, sonny.” Pay me back, my ass. He still isn’t self reliant or fully functional. He gets distracted, can’t focus, can’t keep a job, and still remains on disability. He lays about playing video games, we’ve limited his TV for which I pay internet costs. How is that paying me back? Yes, how indeed?
Today i’m going to the food bank because I can’t afford groceries. I'm going to see if they have rice I can cook to make my own micro biotic salads. I need to eat simple for my own health. I’ve got rent, and hydro hanging over my head among other things. I haven’t taught this month so no additional income. February was the month from hell financially, behind the eight ball more than ever. My life is collapsing and I’m stressed, depressed, bankrupt and not sure what to do about it.
.
*Gifford’s note: A mysteriously offensive curse to the Victorian and Edwardian ear that continued to be offensive until the 1930’s;
no one can quite explain how or why. Joyce thought, or at least said he thought, that it derived from By Our Lady; others suggest By God’s Blood.
"Patches, we don' need no steenking patches!"
A fair depiction of the nature of Nardo except without the patch
Before I knew the Nardo was legally blind in one eye since birth, some medical condition, I only knew him as drugged on meds and loud and
drunk when he got nervous and self-medicated.
GF was not aware of his stupid drinking because he hid it from people at first. He would drink to be somebody, to build up courage to address his needs more openly I guess. He exhibited signs of schizophrenia, muttering to himself, or be oblivious to what was going on around him not hearing what was said to him, and otherwise would communicate with over exuberance, like he was compensating for his insecurity, or his mind was simply somewhere else. I described my encounter with the old sone years ago, when GF dragged his ass from Ontario on suicide alert and flew him back to La-la-land to clean him up and get him functioning like a human being with the support of family. The strange memory of that encounter haunts me to this day. It’s not so much what he did, but also what he said to me like he was channeling some demon entity wanting me to do something or wanting to do something to me.
The day I came home tired and lay on the yoga matt in my room stretching and relaxing, he had been drinking heavily, and now I understand he doesn’t remember anything. Being under the influence is just that, being unaware of your actions and consequences. When he walked into my space and hovered over me shoving his face into my face threateningly, I never knew the reason he turned his face at me was because he can only see properly with one eye. It was like Hook himself was threatening me, one black eye patch invisible to me. What I will not forget is what he said to me in his drunken stupor, “If you help me, I’ll pay you back.” What? I thought.. “Fuck off!” I said, “Leave me alone, I’m tired and I’d like to rest.” Yet he persisted and pushed his face closer as if to threaten me. I don’t hang out in bars and talk to drunks, I felt like I was in a Frankenstein movie, with a tall dumb animal threatening my face.
I used to collect monster models and watch horror b-movies, so that was my context for his rude behaviour. Bela Lugosi said it best when he describes Karloff in Ed Wood playing Frankenstein comparing to Dracula, “Karloff is all grunting and costume - Aargh! Smoke and mirrors. That’s not acting, just bumping and moaning like some animal. It takes refinement to play a serious role.” I wasn’t sure what to make of this. It came out of the blue when I was resting, shocked out of my reality in some RPG mystery.
“What do you want?” I asked directly, “Just leave me alone, I need to rest.” But he wouldn’t leave. I got up and escorted him out of my room. He came back and insisted on addressing me, like he wanted something that I couldn’t comprehend..I quickly found out he was lying about many things. “He didn’t repeat what he had said, just pressed his attention like he wanted me to answer him. And answer him I did. I pushed him forcefully out of my space, to which he turned and put his fists up readying for me to lay assault on him. If I let my anger escalate, I wasn’t sure of what I would do, maybe pound the shit out of him. This wouldn’t bode well for me with GF who might not appreciate me kicking the shit out of her beloved son. I really wanted to take him down and pound my fists into his head and kick him in the gut and ass and groin. I saw it in movies, maybe there was something fun in it. I didn’t.
We begin to notice just how constraining to live only in the first person. The pronoun “I” becomes another metaphor for the Cyclops, for only being able to see things one way. It’s directly opposed to the idea of parallax - seeing one thing from a number of different points of view in order to get a fuller sense of the thing. I feel like I'm in some kind of Trojan war, my dick against his dick. Cock fight at close contact. "Eh, Mr. Cyclops? I severe your nuts!"
I told him to leave me alone or I’ll call the cops and have him removed from my home. I locked my door. I was trapped in my room. If I left my room, which I wanted to do just to escape, he could be lurking. I did. As he was pounding on my door wanting to come in again, I called the cops and then walked past him and went out of the house, and waited for the cops too come. I walked up the street, they arrived, I told them he was int he house and he threatened me. He’s been in jail before for punching out some elderly lady on the street, out of the blue for no apparent reason. GF hauled his pathetic ass out of jail on that occasion.
Nardo the Fucked Up Samurai Cowboy
He dresses like this when he goes out, cowboy hat, long coat, invisible sword
He has a fondness for Japanese culture and owns a ceremonial samurai sword, his treasure that we hid from him so he wouldn’t hurt himself or us in one of his unconscious moments. From his cooking course out east, he brought an army of kitchen knives most butchers would envy, like a stash of knife weaponry. Lord knows what went through his head when he drank, since he acted delirious. We lived in constant vigilance, wondering where he was or what he was up to constantly. GF used to text him from work to find out what his plans were daily and try to keep him from drinking and staying on task. He said he hears voices. His life was a fucking mess. I feel guarded around him, and he lost my trust from lying to me to cover up his boozing. Nor is he able to cook anything with favour or finesse to my taste. He eats pot loads of mashed up shit, which to my perception just ends up in the toilet. All this in spite of having studied culinary in college out east. He doesn't practice food safe, nor does he consider the average palate or the preferences of others when he partakes on his Gargantua and Pantagruel feedings.
Perhaps breakfast is a good metaphor; some people, not happy with saying "this is not to my taste", must pronounce it loathsome. On the numerous occasions Nardo has charred inedible remains spiced with poisons, I have refused to partake in the tribal feeding. I remain in exile in my own kitchen.
He first got fucked up on ritalin given to him by some university counsellor to help him study for music exams. Really? You give young people ritalin to help them study? But Nardo didn’t just take ritalin, he was prone to drinking and the two didn’t seem to get along. I guess the pressure to him was overwhelming, with peer pressure of kids that were into music from very young. He just came to it after graduating high school and felt he couldn’t compete with them. Then it happened, the incident. He explained when he was injured in hospital to his mother that he was standing on a sofa in a window adjusting a curtain and flew out of a second story window. Really. You didn’t jump, you just fell out of a window. Ok. So you’re lucky you’re hear with only a concussion to tell about it. What the fuck was he thinking? Jumping out a fucking window, like he was in some video game? After the incident doctors wanted to diagnose him schizophrenic, which GF contradicted, but he was considered adult and chose to go on meds, which whacked his ass and made him docile, except when he was drinking. They put him on disability and he never finished his music studies. He never completed and went on to other things like collecting comic books, games and videos and fucking over friends and pissing off people.
He had a girlfriend for 6 years who was helpful to his stability, but she gave up on him. She couldn’t stop him drinking. He burned his friendships with everyone in his sphere of influence, while being obnoxious under the influence, I gather from his drinking, but the meds are more indicative.
He would hide his booze from us, when he was staying with us, and show up in the kitchen or living room, talking excessively loud and knocking over things. Or be sitting at the TV with his Playstation shouting euphemisms at whoever entered his space. Mostly he would go, “Hey! How’s it going?” like he felt uncomfortable that we were there and needed acknowledgment. Then he would utter nonsense, about something irrelevant that I couldn’t follow and with his tall stature command his space, so that I felt uncomfortable and I would simply leave and go do something else rather than make something to eat or sit and relax in nearby chairs. I felt like Igor was in my custody and I was his reluctant keeper.
I won’t even get into toilet training and trying to get him to clean up after himself. Suffice it to say, he was a filthy inconsiderate slob looking for another place to defecate. (*See previous entry)
Ulysses gets a stool thrown at him by one of the residents when he returns to his home, disguised as an old man.
He stole things from me, books and CDs from my library, to sell and pay for booze. We put locks on our rooms so he couldn’t access them when we weren’t home. He himself was on disability since his fall out of the window in university. Resurrecting him from the gutter has bankrupt both GF and myself. I can’t pay the debts I now owe, thanks to his disability and now mine. It bankrupt us both to cover all the additional costs of living. His disability doesn’t begin to cover his basic needs, let alone medications. It has diminished our ability to fend for ourselves. The fucking wifi from our downstairs neighbour caused us EMF hypersensitivity into fatigue and also didn't help (*See other entry for this shite). Nardo living with us took away my studio space, where I could teach or paint. His use of the internet interfered with my open access to it when I was doing graphic projects. He spent days on his fucking games while we were working our asses off. GF has spent thousands just saving his ass to get him to stop drinking, and getting him herbal supplements called Truehope to get him off meds. Also GF found an herbal patch called Alcostat that he uses into fooling his body that he’s had a fix.
However, in spite of all his progress and our support, he overreaches over ambitious to prove himself, then gets all fucked up and nervous, then acts clumsy and loses focus. Why he chose to work in a commercial kitchen is beyond my comprehension. One has to give him merits for trying, but sooner or later he's bit off more than he can chew and gets fucked up again, then is let go with yet another disappointment as a feather in his cap. Two months is the longest job he's had, so that's a step in the right direction, isn't it?
Life is highly allusive and also imitates the styles of different periods of English literature.
For further reading you might try Ulysses by James Joyce : http://www.girldetective.net/?cat=69
So here we are years later, after many things, the wifi sensitivity, my TGN facial nerve pain, not being able to work think or focus properly without pain, going on disability, and finding myself at the mercy of some strange creature living in my space. Everyday is crisis management for me. I’m beginning to resemble him. I’m very guarded around him. O Nardo, you make me sick! Literally. So now working from a place of scarcity, I think, “You can begin to pay us back any time, sonny.” Pay me back, my ass. He still isn’t self reliant or fully functional. He gets distracted, can’t focus, can’t keep a job, and still remains on disability. He lays about playing video games, we’ve limited his TV for which I pay internet costs. How is that paying me back? Yes, how indeed?
Today i’m going to the food bank because I can’t afford groceries. I'm going to see if they have rice I can cook to make my own micro biotic salads. I need to eat simple for my own health. I’ve got rent, and hydro hanging over my head among other things. I haven’t taught this month so no additional income. February was the month from hell financially, behind the eight ball more than ever. My life is collapsing and I’m stressed, depressed, bankrupt and not sure what to do about it.
.