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?

I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief.

God (I've begun to think) implants a promise in all that insubstantial architecture that makes light out of the impervious surface of glass, and makes the shadow out of dreams. God has created nights well-populated with dreams, crowded with mirror images, so that man may feel that he is nothing more than vain reflection. That's what frightens us. 2:52 pm

Eureka!  Come in my darling, the water’s fine.  The tub is small, but we’ll get comfortable.  Watch that displacement!  Oh well, what’s a little water on the floor.  Is that your foot?  Shove over baby, make some empty space.  We must have space independent of things.  Get that matter out of the void!  Can we do that?  Create from void?  Creatio ex nihilo?  The Greeks believed not.  Most of their creations come from water, although Heraclitus prefered creation from fire.  Imagine a tub of that!  No, this is much nicer. And cosy too, eh baby?  Come, let’s fingerponder the materia prima a little. Honey, you are filthy!  Look at that sheen forming on the water.  All those layers of belief you carry around.  Here, have some soap, nice citronlemon.  Get behind those ears.  Wash every nook and cranny.  Especially your cranny.  Want me to get that for you?  Not yet?  Now, where does everything begin?  Well of course, it begins with me.  I am God.  Yes.  Yes.  Wait, you don’t believe me?  Well you should.  And don’t worry, you can be God too.  You are God, ok?  God.  Oh I see.  You believe in a different God.  Well you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.  Go ahead.  He’s a he.  Ok.  White guy.  Yup.  Seated, gotcha.  A throne?  A king of some kind?  When was the last time you listened to a king?  Ok, ok, it is your belief.  Keep going, rinse it out of there.  Facial hair.  Old.  A light.  A heart.  An eye in the sky.  Well now, you’re just riffing.  Tell me, have you ever seen God?  Ok, I get it.  Faith needs no proof; you do not need to see to believe.  But what about unbelief?  That is so much harder to accomplish, you know.  What will it take for you to unbelieve?  What do I have to do to wipe away that God stain marring your vision?  You’re putting a sticky film on the surface of everything.  Ick.  Smells too.  Wait, what did you say?  What about my stains?  My sheen on the water?  Do I believe my own theory?  No, of course not.  I neither believe nor disbelieve.  I need help too, a nice push one way or the other.  Want to take care of it for me?  Tell me, do you push both ways?  Now relax a little baby, roll over and let me get to that cranny.

They like buttering themselves in and out.

How chimant in effect! Alla tingaling pealabells! So a many of churches one cannot pray own's prayers. 'Tis holyyear's day! Juin jully we may! Agithetta and Tranquilla shall demure umclaused but Marlborough-the-Less, Greatchrist and Holy Protector shall have open virgilances. 1:13 pm

[Scene:  The kitchen of Tranquilla convent, well appointed with red Dockrell’s wallpaper and decorated with daguerreotypes from the studio of Stefan Virag of Szesfehervar, Hungary.  The room smells of American elderflower soap and of winds that blow from the south.]

Saint Patricia:  Great Christ and Holy Protector we are running out of everything!  And even more curious, table twelve has used up their pillar of salt, do we have another?  Oh!  Oh!  Oh dear God you are bleeding!  What is that on your plate, bread loaves, bells?

Saint Agatha:  Don’t touch me!  I want to coagulate and your touch will just liquify everything.   It’s my breasts, I think we should fry them in butter.

Saint Patricia:  We fry everything in butter.

Saint Agatha:  No lard for us!  I’m hard pressed to think of anything else to give these albatrosses.  We already ran out of the rabbit pie, the port soup, the lap of mutton with chutney sauce is gone, and that base barreltoned man Ben Dollard ate the barons of beef.

Saint Patricia:  He drank all the Bass number one too.

Saint Agatha:  What, two?

Saint Patricia:  Too.  We still have some of the mulled rum.  This is a crowd to rival the Glencree dinner!  Remember?  For that one we had to bring out bread with drippings to satisfy them all.

[A priestylooking chap name of Pen something (Pendennis? My memory is getting.  Pen . . .?) opens the kitchen door and squints in with weak eyes.]

Saint Agatha:  Where are they all coming from?  Like flies to a picnic.  Perhaps we should start the entertainment now, then serve the sticky stuff.

Saint Patricia:  Good idea.  Where is old Goodwin?  Lucky we have him, I understand this will be his last performance.

Saint Agatha:  They always are.  Look behind you, we have lots of Plumtree’s in the cupboard, let’s send it out now.  After that we won’t have much left to offer.

Saint Patricia:  Not if that woman in the elephantgrey dress keeps sticking her fingers into every pie.  She can be rude.  Did you see her?  And after the band plays, we have.

Saint Agatha: We have sugarloaves with caramel.  Our staple food.  And once that’s gone that’s it.  We’ll have to barricade our doors with barbed wire.

Saint Patricia:  Well, I am glad to communicate with the outside world, but today I have suffered!

Saint Agatha:  I agree.  Just think back to our morning devotions.  Happy.  Happier then.  Here, let me straighten your brown scapular.  There you go.

Saint Patricia:  Thank you.  I’d better get back out there.  Some of them, Masons I think, are making noise about some lottery tickets.  Some scandal or other.  Thing like that spoils the effect of a night.

Saint Agatha:  Yes.  But it is all part of the stream of life, no?

Saint Patricia:  Yes, the stream of life.

Just to see

And so too may you, like the very wind of destruction, rid by fire all the wickedness from the land.12:06 am

The silly Penis.  Once I heard sweet old Monks said this to himself after Nannetti shouted for where’s what’s his name Monks.  And he sees Monks every day.  Nice old man.  Must have seen it all.  Obituary notices and found drowned and scandals and schism and all the rest.  Started out as a linotype operator back in the day.  Could type blind, see with his fingers.  Still in the shop but now it’s a MAN Roland.  I wonder if Monks had to type backwards into his linotype.  .epytonil sih otni sdrawkcab epyt ot dah sknoM fi rednow I   Skilled.  Art to it.  Papa could read backwards.  Read his Haggadahbook that way, pointing his finger to me.  Why should this night be so special?  L’shanah haba’a bi Yerushalayim.  It’s a long time to wait for a hungry kid.  Long business about that brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage.  Then the twelve brothers, Jacobs son’s.  Some of them were citron farmers.  Pocket smells of Citronlemon.  What kind of perfume does your wife?  Keep losing that soap in pockets.  And the part about the one little goat the one little goat, that slit the throat, the Holy One, blessed is he, who butchered the butcher, who slaughtered the ox that ate the staff, that beat up the cat, that scratched the dog, that drank up the water, that put out the fire, that burned up the Angel of Death.  Silly sounding but it all means justice when you look into it well.  That and it’s everybody eating everybody else.  That’s what life is after all.  I’m hungry what time is it?  I could bus home still.  Forgot something maybe.   Molly dressing, get there before.  No.

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.

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.