Having my way with Ulysses

by God yes wait yes hold on he was on the cards this morning when I laid out the deck

The cards are vague and mysterious.

Scene: [On a bed of something as soft as what do you call it gossamer, wait, what is that, snakes? That’s a bed of snakes now? How the hell are we paying for this? Did we have to hire snake wranglers too? Jesus Christ!]

Jesus: [On the god mic] Yes we have wranglers, but just for one infinite snake. God says don’t worry about the budget he thinks he has a donor. Ok head in the game people. Places please Cassandra, Lakshmi, Vishnu keep Rip Van Winkling it right there where you are. He’s sleeping hard. Let me know when we have places. From the top of the show, standby on lights 1 through 5, and snake wranglers: go.]

Scene: [On a bed of snake soft as what do you call it gossamer, Vishnu is sleeping while Lakshmi massages his feet and gossips with Cassandra.]

Lakshmi: So how is God’s play going to go, it must be opening soon, no?

Cassandra: Wait, am I sitting on a snake? I better not make an alnight sitting on this affair. I mean. Sorry. What? His one man show? Oh honey you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.

Lakshmi: That bad?

Cassandra: I did the cards, and first off I get reversed four of pentacles crossed by the happy squirrel.

Lakshmi:  Oh that’s cute. Isn’t that good?

Cassandra: It’s bad. I mean, corners are being cut all over the place and it’s like he’s obsessed with promotion. He says that he has money of course so we’ll be all right, but you know the membership numbers have not been good lately. Christmas drove in a few advanced ticket sales, but we won’t see any of those people again until Easter. And then you cross all that with a happy squirrel: this show will stink like road kill.

Lakshmi: But it will have a long run?

Cassandra: No. And it’s his own fault. He got reversed 5 of swords at the top, I mean, come on. He brought it on his own damn self and then hooking up with his with his ex wife all the time squandering money and getting drunker and drunker. The rest of the time he’s been just plain intoxicated on himself. He has wardrobe making skinny jeans! You should see him all squeezed and squashed into them!

Lakshmi: No!

Cassandra: Sure enough. It will be a spectacle on the stage, imagine paying $450 in the preserved seats for that to see! It was all right there in the reversed three of cups. Yeah it’s all great fun, and won’t it be the biggest hit show of all time, so hey! Lets celebrate now!

Lakshmi: Was that his attitude?

Cassandra: Acting upon him.  His attitude was the reversed ace of wands. So.

Lakshmi: Blocked.

Cassandra: Yup. He did have Judgement straight up; that was interesting.  He’s going to have to make a change.  It’s time to look everything over and weigh it all out.  The show can’t sustain itself as a one man thing.  It just doesn’t work in this day and age, with audiences like these.

Lakshmi: I know it. Fickle. He should have stuck with the triple act. So much less pressure when you’re in an ensemble.

Cassandra: Don’t I know it and I told him too, but does he listen to me? No. Does anybody listen to me? No.

Lakshmi: They don’t.

Cassandra: No they don’t.

Lakshmi: God’s tongue is too flat.

Cassandra: Really? Ew. I wouldn’t let him lick me.

Lakshmi: He does it all wrong too.

Cassandra: Pigs of men. And what about that one? Don’t you get sick of Vishnu’s big square feet up in your mouth like that?

Lakshmi: The first night ever we met, I had just floated up out of the ocean and we stood staring at one another for about 10 minutes as if we met somewhere. It was a recognition, you know? I saw him and I knew I’d be rubbing this man’s cold feet for all eternity. So tell me more. What’s the future, what’s the final outcome for God: The One Man Show!

Cassandra: I drew the king of swords for the future, so he’ll find a different layer of consciousness to work in. He’ll have to. He’ll figure it out, he just has to be rational about it. And the play? I don’t even know how to tell him.  What am I going to tell him? It was the five of pentacles reversed: he’ll lose money on this thing. Really, he ought to lose money itself from the whole enterprise: money has nothing to do with being god. I tried to tell him. I talked and talked until you couldn’t even see me anymore, I was just this angry woman’s mouth telling him come on man, believe me! This is how it’s going to be damn it, listen! I’m telling you!

[Cassandra is interrupted by somebody on the god mic. Who the hell is that?]

no thats no thats no way no stop just stop shut up cassandra shut up people dont believe you because some man told them not to believe you here i am apollo telling the story first so dont believe cassandra when she talks the one who tells the story first wins my ass ok my motherfucking ass is that what you think chica no just speak girl and let them all believe what they will and you know what congratulations everybody wins so lose it just let it go baby love its no loss what are you losing whats lost its a gain you want to spend all time trying to make people know the future you want them to see dont you see it too the truth its true its true thats you all the time with believe me believe me and they dont believe you and poor me im such a victim is that what you tell yourself and why because ajax raped you and whats her face athena just stood there and watched is that going to be the why for everything you going to let that be your loss forever get over it its done let it go no loss ok its a gain to be done with that lot and let apollo say whatever he likes to any born fool wholl believe all his blather because hes god hes god so what you be god too ok youre god too you are god done moving on now go

In what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments and reflections, reduced to their simplest forms, converge?

Shhh.

3:25 am

[Scene: Two lovers in bed, AE with Lizzie Twigg: coiled head to toe they quietly discuss the fixity of their volatility and the volatilization of their fixation, until within his fixedness AE has become nothing and feeling everything, Lizzie becomes volitive. They communicate intermittently in increasingly more laconic narrations. Also a small angry dog is trying to take up as much space as possible between them. It’s so cute! Come here little puppy, come here. What a good doggie. Who’s a good doggie? Oh Jesus God! He’s all teeth! Get off me! Like petting a piranha with fur.]

AE: It’s just that we define ourselves contrarily to each other. I am me because I am not you, and you are you because you are not me. We are poles apart.

Lizzie: We are the same person, AE, don’t you feel it?  After all the mutual deaths we have died? Resurrection, translation, return, distillation, putrefaction, decay, still you don’t know you had it backwards the whole time. You were resurrecting in the wrong direction.

AE: I know. I know it. I just wanted to be the material representation of eternality, in linear time. Just once. Just for a little while. Only long enough to re-experience that feeling of linearity. Don’t you miss it? And feel what it could be, to be linear and eternal simultaneously.

Lizzie: But you can’t just translate yourself into linearity and say I’m back, everybody, I’ve  gained bodily entry into eternity and now look at me! Look at what happened to Lazarus. No. If you want to see how a human mortal finds a place within eternity, that’s not going to cut it. That gets you nothing.

AE: Nothing’s not nothing. Don’t knock nothing.

Lizzie: No, nothing’s not nothing.

AE: I was trying be the eternal temporalized. I wanted to be the all at onceness linearized. I wanted to square that circle, just once. Just the one time and be it and feel it, really feel what it is to be the coexistence of the infinite and the finite.

Lizzie: Be eternality living in linearity? Darling, you’ve done it. You’ve been there already. The infinite and the finite are the same things whichever side you’re on, if you really must take sides, can’t you tell? Just look at us, two beings contrarily defined yet coexisting as aspects of the same reality.

AE: I know. I get it. You don’t have to scratch me like that.

Lizzie: That wasn’t me, but here’s a flash of light for you AE: when we were mortals we didn’t have to go around worrying all the time about gaining bodily entry into eternity: eternity had already gained bodily entry into us. We have always already been since time immemorial and forevermore, the material representation of eternality.

AE: We are God.

Lizzie: Exactly. We are already a squared circle: we can take a finite form, but our infinite selves are in there too.

AE: We are a circle, containing everything.

Lizzie: Everything and nothing.

[At rest relatively to themselves and to each other, the lovers settle into silent contemplation. Small birds rise gently, sweetly, from Lizzie and from AE. Hundreds of them flitter up in swirling concentric patterns bringing with them, as if reflected from the sheen of their feathers, an increasing luminosity of ruby light. Thousands of little birds, aeons of them, softly forming clouds as soft as what do you call it gossamer, the clouds forming mist, the mist gently drifting downward covering the lovers, the lovers blurring about the edges. Together they coalesce and dissolve, their bodies languid, breathing, watching their spirits unrestrained, circling, birds rising into mist falling, like self knowing wheels revolving uniformly: self knowing and self known.]

Looking back now in a retrospective kind of arrangement all seemed a kind of dream.

I danced over the water, I danced o'er the sea, and all the birds in the air couldn't catch me.1:43 am

It’s all lit up now, but try explaining to people more invested in my marriage than I was, and there were plenty of them, surprisingly. It was the oddest thing. Don’t get me wrong, he was a nice enough guy, just not up to scratch. A diamond in the rough somebody nice said. Yeah, I could see that. Going to be a diamond.

Looking forward in a prospective kind of arrangement I saw sparkling things, an illuminated life filled with art and philosophy. He was a talented musician despite having never heard of mathematics. Well he had three chords and the truth, so that’s all you need baby, that’s all you need. And if you have more than three chords and fewer truths than the truth? Then you still have >=< so that’s ok: it evens out. Well, to be fair, he did often speak the truth, he’d just leave out the jucy parts. And consider. Just think what he could be, given the proper pressure. But without the only effective kind of pressure (of the self inflicted variety) coal lumps don’t turn into diamonds. Natural forces, not artificial, or you end up with a drunk ass cubic zirconia. A drunk ass cubic zirconia is not as good as a lump of coal. And a fine lump of a coal all the same. I liked the lump of coal.

Now let me tell you about being Peruvian, or half so. I can’t tell you much because I don’t know that much about it, but as a half Peruvian and a half Canadian and half Swedish, via half German, who was caught mingling in there with the half Scottish who was half Ulster, and as it turns out not half French (the half German half Swede, not the half Scottish half Ulster) but half Jewish in disguise. Oh yeah and half Dutch in there somewhere. I thought the Swedes and the Germans would be neck in neck, but for the Dutch to pop up was a twenty to one shot at least. So that’s being half American. But only half, the other half’s Peruvian. And types like us: the passionate abandon of the south, casting every shred of decency to the winds, wouldn’t do things by halves. What is the half life of real love existing between married folk supposing another man? Now, I had loosened many a man’s thighs but never when I was in a relationship. Then I was loyal and loving and after the first I’d say two months of sex it settles into lots of god knows what and no sex. In these situations other men, no matter who, take on a what do you call it gossamer quality. See right through them. But. And it’s a big but. No wait, that was the lump of coal. Ha! Sorry. The hemispheres on him! Haha! Just had to. You know. A big butt! Whooo. Let me catch my breath! Oooh. That felt good. When were we? Oh yeah. Butt. I am so trying not to laugh. Butt. Butt butt butt. Ok. Ok. So funny. Butt.

Though they stink yet they sting.

Look and see if anything is as great as this.12:34 am

Everything’s a temporary dream. Look at the great pyramid, my creation of longest duration.  A fat triangle in the desert, eh? You think they call me thrice great for nothing? I’m still dripping with the music of mathematics from since I played at dividing flowers and sweeties. I mean listen to it and work it out like a good young idiot. You people couldn’t do the half. Are you divided from your own organs? Listen to the harmonies of proportion and ratio; what composer tell me ever moved number so well. All is lost. You think I left it looking like that fat heap it is now, squat and spreading. But do you do anything about it, no. Nothing. Renovate it. Go ahead, it needs it. You have my permission, if not my help. Put some people on the job. Choose your most, your beautiful, your delicious, and your delightfuls, force them to say coactus volui and give them my pyramid so it might sing again. Paint upon it a diabolic rictus of black luminosity. Give it phosphorescent scorpion tongues. Paint its shafts like coal black throats and shine lights through them so out of itself it would make itself a lamp. Let the shafts open their windpipes to the outside all bloodred and sing. Add a few octaves. Here and or there. I’d hum along to that. Cover it. Take the original and jazz it up. What did I do when it was mine? I divided myself with the potentiality of it. Then I made a choice and left the rest unchosen. I covered it with white limestone and polished it to a mirror. And the sides: they were two in one and one in two. You think you see a triangle there? Look again. There are eight sides and though they sink yet they sing when the sun hits dead on. On the solstice the mirrors’ split face would absorb refract no reflect a divided sun like what do you call it gossamer. Is it a dream to think there’s nothing new under the sun?

It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy’s three star.

Blackness is the beginning of whiteness, and a sign of putrefaction and alteration, and that the body is now penetrated and mortified. From the putrefaction therefore in this water, there first appears blackness, like unto broth wherein some bloody thing is boiled. Secondly, the black earth by continual digestion is whitened, because the soul of the two bodies swims above upon the water, like white cream; and in this only whiteness, all the spirits are so united, that they can never fly one from another.12:26 am

Scene: [In an alchemists laboratory, an exhausted owl and a disheveled goat move in opposing arcs around a stork-shaped alembic suspended over an enormous fire. A nebulous obscurity that looks like what do you call it gossamer occupying space within the alembic is communicating with the assembled company, which includes Cassandra, Lizzie Twigg, and St. Agatha.]

Lilith: [Obviously missing some feathers] But what you don’t understand, AE, is that you have not reincarnated and you are most certainly not deathless.  Just look at yourself!

Cassandra: Or smell yourself for that matter, isn’t that thing supposed to be hermetically sealed?

Azazel: [Mascera running down his face, lipstick on his teeth, dead roses slipping off of his horns, in obvious need of a mirror] AE, can you hear me? AE, pay attention! You are manifest without rebirth, that’s it. You are nothing. You accomplished your nothingness badly too and for what?

AE: [with a voice of waves] I’m not leaving here until I deliver my message to the world.  Death is the highest form of life. And the highest form of life is me. I am death!

Cassandra: What a narcisist. He’s going to talk about himself until he’s black in the face.  Lilith, can we get on with the re-death without AE’s cooperation?  We have fire, the bicycle pump for air, and what is that thing?

Lizzie Twig: A lobster?

Lilith: A crayfish.  We couldn’t source a real lobster. [Scowls at Azazel].

Cassandra: A crayfish then, for water.  We need something earthy.

Lilith: Something sexually titilating for him, perhaps a pair of breasts? Agatha?

St. Agatha:  I left them at the convent.

Lilith: Lizzie, tell us about your first time with AE.

St. Agatha: She’s a bride of Christ! She can’t be confessing her every little past indiscretion.  What will he think?

Lizzie Twigg: No that’s ok, Agatha. I want to do this; I need closure. I remember I had just answered an ad to aid AE in literary work, but typing skills weren’t required. In a weak moment I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it. I had been drinking Bass, and absinthe, or was it burgundy and absinthe. I remember the absinthe, but what else was it?

Lilith: Doesn’t matter. He’s listening.  Look.

Azazel: AE, seek thou the light!

AE: I won’t have my leg pulled!

Cassandra: Good idea. Lilith, reach in there and let’s fish him out.

Lilith: Yes. Azazel, stoke that fire.  We’ll need the cream to rise to the top so we can reach him.

Lizzie:  Fire? Is he a holocaust? Oh don’t hurt him!

Lilith: Honey, you can’t make butter without a lot of flogging.  Do you want him back or don’t you?

Lizzie: I don’t know. In the beginning for us was the word. I suppose it makes sense for us to end it in the world without end. Bring him back, but I think I really fit in with the guys at the convent, it’s my home now, so I’m going back there with Agatha.  AE is nothing to me.

Lilith: Oh honey, he’s nothing to us too.  Trust me.

Azazel: Nothing, pray for us.

It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh.

The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night—nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience.10:41 pm

Scene: [In the house of Mary and Martha, Mary prepares for her wedding while Martha, ever the bridesmaid, ruminates under yards and yards of what do you call it gossamer veils bunched into the ideal form of a bridesmaid dress. O Martha, thou lost one, you’ll totally be able to wear it again (if you like looking like a fat red triangle!)]

Mary: I’m so so happy! I feel my soul soaring, wafting over regions of cycles of generations that have lived! Have you seen Lilith? She didn’t show up for her fitting.

Martha: [Muttering with the thunder of rebellion] That screech owl? She’s probably fucking Azazel in the bathroom. Wish I was with them.

Mary: O Martha! Martha Martha Martha! The wonder of it! The love I have for Jesus grows to heaven’s own what do you call it magnitude! I feel like I’m floating, flowing, simply swirling! Hey, do you think he’ll like these gold sandals with my dress?

Martha: Yeah. If he likes you to look like Hermes.

Mary: Oh Martha, everything will be so beautiful.  All the stars are aligned perfectly for us too!  He’s a Capricorn and I’m a Virgin.

Martha: [Moaning] Yeah right.

Mary: And I’m a Virgin, young dear and radiant, so we make such astrological sense together. We will have parallax minds and hearts!  Do you have to drink so much?  Such horrible gulpings, you’ll be drunk before the ceremony.  And I want everything to be perfect.  Together we will spin out our love into the infinite of space and of time! And just think Martha, our wedding will be the alpha and nothing, absolutely nothing will go wrong!

Martha: [Ominous, revengeful]  Nothing will go wrong. That’s a good idea, Mary.  For once you’re thinking with that horse’s head you’ve got wafting above all that simply swirling.  Nothing.  Nothing is everything, if done properly. Have you seen my phone?

Shame all put on before third person.

She can't move, there in the deepest part of the jungle she's trapped in a spider's web, or no, the spiderweb is growing out of her own body, the threads are coming out of her waist and her hips, they're part of her body, so many threads that look hairy like ropes and disgust me, even though if I were to touch them they might feel as smooth as who knows what, but it makes me queasy to touch them8:52 pm

You don’t scare Arachne.  Did you really think you scared Arachne?  Arachne is just startled, didn’t see you coming.  Why the face?  Under jaw stuck out, head back.  You look like you got a whiff of potted herring gone stale.  Never mind.  Arachne’s seen it before.  You are jealous of Arachne; it’s only natural.  Arachne’s talents intimidate even the goddesses, why not you.  You know Arachne will hold up a mirror and show you your crimes, as if you even need Arachne to do that.  Just look at you, guilt hanging all over you like nets or a fine veil.  Fine like what do you call it gossamer.  And what’s that Arachne smells?  In the air just now (why smell it only now? mysterious) ever so many millions of tiny grains blown across.  Smell that?  Took its time in coming, slow but sure.    Shame.  Arachne thought so.  Must be the heat bringing it out of you.  Must cling to everything.  Arachne supposes people like the smell of shame or they wouldn’t exude so much of it.  Like flies around treacle.