Having my way with Ulysses

Beehives, soupladles, stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline,

We accept reality so readily -- perhaps because we sense that nothing is real. I asked Argos how much of the Odyssey he knew. He found using Greek difficult; I had to repeat the question. Very little, he replied. Less than the meagerest rhapsode. It has been eleven hundred years since last I wrote it. 5:54 pm

[Scene:  The Star and Garter Ballroom, Empyrean Building, Holy Mother Public Relations.  The party planning committee including Saints Martha, Agatha, Patricia, Augustine, Genevieve, Wenburgh, Cecilia, and the Holy Mother herself, Blessed Virgin, Queen of the Heavens, CEO Holy Mother Public Relations, etc. are preparing for the imminent arrival of what will be possibly most likely perhaps God willing a new saint: Saint (maybe) Ahasuerus.]

Mary [Frazzled] Jesus H Christ, where are Anne and Margaret?  They were supposed to be here a half hour ago with the welcome banners!

Jesus [Appearing suddenly as if from nowhere]:  Mom?

Mary: Holy Christ you scared the bejesus out of me!  What did I tell you about popping in unannounced like that?  I completely forgot what I was doing!  What do you want?

Jesus:  Sorry  Mom, I thought I heard you calling me.

Mary:  Well, you didn’t.  Go back to your father, it’s his week to have you.  Oh, but first, I need you to make some wine.  God I need a drink.  I tried to get some beer out of Amand, but it’s too late in the day to catch him sober.  Best I can hope is he doesn’t vomit on the guest of honor.

Jesus:  Who is it this time?

Mary:  Ahasuerus.

Jesus:  That guy?  I thought he was supposed to wander the earth until I returned.

Mary:  Well, there’s a chance he’s coming today, dead or not, unless it’s some sort of mistake.  He’s got some tunnel visioned meat head after him who’s getting ready to crack his head open with a biscuit tin, but that’s if he has the depth perception for it.  Personally I don’t want him here, I could do without yet another one of these enormous parties.  I’ve got Agatha and Patricia fighting over command of the kitchen and that sour bitch Martha complaining about both of them.  Look, here she comes.

Jesus:  Speak of the devil.

Martha:  Hey Jesus.  Mary, I could really use some help in there.  Why am I always the one stuck in the kitchen doing everything?  Patricia is beyond useless and I’d give my left breast to get Agatha to shut up about the Glencree dinner already.

Mary:  What are Margaret and Anne doing?  Aren’t they in there with you?

Martha:  Mina Purefoy went into labor and called on both of them.  They’ll be with her for days.

Mary:  Both?  Well get Aquinas then, where the hell is he?

Martha:  That fat ass?  He’s in the kitchen, but he’s eating everything in sight: loaves, hogs, stags’ horns, hawks, eyes on a dish, unicorns.  I have Wenburgh  in there resurrecting what she can, but I still have to cook it all over again.  And how do you resurrect a seed cake?

Jesus:  Yeah, that’s not easy.

Mary:  Well, Genevieve is working on the look of the room, I’ve got Fiacre on flowers and Cecilia is handling music.  You can have Amand, but he’s shitfaced drunk.

Martha:  Yeah, great.  Thanks.  Might as well give me a swarm of locusts or a rain of frogs for all the good he’ll do me.

Jesus:  Maybe we can delay Ahasaures’ arrival somehow?  You don’t want him here anyway, do you Mom?

Mary:  Oh Christ no.

Martha:  Really?  Oh that would be great.  I hear he’s bad news anyway.  Uses his wife to help him cheat at cards.  Son of a grifter too, who defrauded a bunch of people with unsecured loans before he killed himself.

Fiacre: [Carrying an enormous bunch of aconite]  Oooh, who are we talking about, Ahasuerus?  I heard that he won buckets of money on a horse race, and then refused to buy a round at the bar.  What a cheap ass.  Cute as a shit house rat too.

Mary:  All right, think.  What do we do to buy some time?

Jesus:  Who’s the one going to throw the biscuit tin?  We can mess with his aim.

Martha:  Good idea.  Maybe we can blind him?

Mary:  Well I can’t spare Genevieve, she’s up to her tits in work getting this place decorated.

Jesus:  What about Nicholas and Anthony?  Nick can steal his glasses and Anthony can hide them.

Mary:  That might do it.  Jesus, you find them and get them on it asap.  Martha, get your ass back into the kitchen.  I’ll see if your sister can help.

Martha:  Fat chance.

Jesus:  No. She doesn’t need to be here.

Martha:  See.

Mary:  And Jesus, get back to your father after you find Tony and Nick.  I can’t have him bitching to the lawyers again about me violating his visitation rights.  Costs me a fortune every time.

Thought is the thought of thought

10:10 am

Hello.  We have not yet met, though I confess I have been watching you.   I hover in the background around these parts.  Your name?  I’m Genevieve.  Pleased to meet you in person at last.  You have nice eyes.  I’m sorry, have I embarrassed you?  I notice eyes.  I keep my eye on a young man who frequents this place.  I’m using his hands now.  Not his eyes, oh no, they are terrible.  He can hardly see!  You should see the font size he uses.  Still he is much better off than my mother was, before I cured her blindness.  Yes, that was one of my miracles.  Love me.  Hey!  I saw that.  Don’t give me that look.  I did cure her.  I did.  Ok fine, I was the one who made her blind in the first place.  I’m sorry, ok, but she was being totally controlling; she didn’t want me to get married because she thought I was too young.  It’s not like he wasn’t a nice guy, he was God!  I wanted to be a bride of Christ, so shoot me.  Ok, yes, I was only seven years old.  But still.  Anyway once when I asked to go to my boyfriend’s house to hang out, do a little worshiping, get out of doing housework, she grounded me and slapped me across the face.  So I made her blind.  But then I unblinded her.  Eventually.  Let’s not make a federal case of it.  I am a saint.  That means I am pure and good and people worship me.  Now where were we.  Oh yes. Stephen has terrible vision, that guy Jim is all but blind, and Stephen spent the morning trying to teach blind old Milton to a bunch of hung-over eye-rollers.  Freshmen in the winter quarter aren’t scared anymore and it is clear he lost authority pretty much on day one.  You can see it from space.  So here I am, doing my community service.  I look out for Stephen sometimes because he can’t very well look out for himself.  See?  I like the way your eyes move, back and forth like that.  It’s nice.  Steven was all about movement today.  In his head, right behind his eyes.  He had his students droning on about Lycidas “And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.  Now Lycidas the Shepherds weep no more.”  Bore me to tears.  I wish Stephen could see his student’s eyes when he teaches.  Or be like me just once and peek under their lashes at what they are thinking.  They would be much more interested in his thoughts than in his so-called lesson plans.  Stephen was thinking today that reality must be the actualizing of whatever is possible.  The movement of it.  You see?  Look over there, headed this way.  It’s possibility, you see?  Teeming multitudinous potential now moments.  Not now yet.  To be, but not is.  Then there is the chosen one.  I don’t mean my boyfriend!  Not that kind of chosen one.  I mean the now moment that rides between what could be and what was.  The verb of the thing, you see?  Reality doesn’t live in the multitudes of possibilities or in the chosen one event that turns into history.  It is in the movement from what could be to what was.  At least, that is what Stephen thinks today.  Is he right?  Well, that’s not for me to show you.  He’ll figure it out in his tranquil brightness.  His soul, you see?  The form of forms.  He was also thinking about dragons.  That was fun.  Blake’s dragons, you know.  You know him?  A real visionary that one.  Nice eyes too.  Big, widely set.  Blake’s dragons emerge from their caves whenever there is a real battle that needs fighting.  A war, the intellectual kind that happens in eternity.  The kind of war that clears the way for creative work.  And our boy Stephen, as reluctant as he may be, has some fights ahead.  Anybody with eyes can see that coming.