Having my way with Ulysses

A star I see. Venus?

Say them all but tell them apart, cadenzando coloratura! R is Rubretta and A is Arancia, Y is for Yilla and N for greeneriN. B is Boyblue with odalisque O while W waters the fleurettes of novembrance. Though they're all but merely a schoolgirl yet these way went they. I' th' view o' th'avignue dancing goes entrancing roundly. 8:53 pm

[Scene:  Rehearsal for Circe.  Venus dressed as a heliotrope in furs is practicing the Dance of the Hours with the  Roygbiv Vance dancers: Rose, Sevilla, Citronelle, Esmeralde, Pervinca, Indra, and Viola.  The director is perched in the upstage grid and the stage manager and asm are in the booth. The nobleman, McIntosh, the newsboys, a hag carrying a bottle and Grace Darling are waiting stage right to rehearse their number: “O by the by that Lotion”]

God [On the god mic.  Always on the damn god mic.  Does he really need the entire house to hear him?  Really?]  I know the sun sets in the west Venus, I was the one who put it there in the first place!

Venus:  The hell you were!

God:  Nevermind the direction, this is theatre!  Our business is illusion.  We are representing truth, not telling it.  Who bloody cares if the sun is setting in the Southeast?

Venus:  I do! I need to absorb all the reality I can so my instrument can feel the very atmosphere of the scene.  How can I do that if you move the sun to the wrong place?

God: Look, you think it’s easy to move the sun around?  My joints are on the rack!

Jesus:  Dad?  Those distant hills seem coming nigh.

God:  I know, they needed to be closer for this scene.  Ignore them, the’ll stop soon.

Venus:  Listen God, I need the light to set in the west: it is a kind of reassuring.  I can’t.  I can’t work like this.

[A feather falls slowly from the grid, lands on Venus’ head.  She bursts into tears.]

Venus:  [Addressing the bird in the grid]  Thanks.  You’ve always brought me such peace.  You really are a promise of hope to me.  The girls too.  Sorry I got your names mixed up Indra, Viola.

Viola:  Don’t worry about it love.  Shall we go again?

McIntosh:  Do already!  The corns on my kismet are killing me!

Venus:  Who is that guy?

God: Jesus?

Jesus: Nobody knows, he just showed up.  Wait.  Where did he go?  Doesn’t he know it’s damn frustrating when people appear and disappear just like that!

God:  Never mind him, he was probably just a mirage.  Now Venus, the director wants you to practice in front of a mirror, hold his feather while you do it if it helps you.

Venus:  There’s no way I can do that.  I don’t want to see myself, that would shatter the reality I’m creating.

God: It’s hard I know, but still you learn something.  We all could stand to see ourselves as other see us. That’s the way to find out.  See yourself, scowl or smile, then ask yourself, who am I now?  Will you try it?

Venus:  Can I do it naked?

God: So long as women don’t mock what matter?

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.