1:00 pm
Fed gulls today, like that time out with Milly. Food tastes like what it eats. Feed pigs lots of stout and they come out tasting of it. Robinson Crusoe ate swan meat, what do swans eat? What would I taste like? Well, no accounting for it. And no need to know what’s in it, just eat it. Every morsel. I tried to fool the gulls with the throwaway given me. Look out below, Elijah is coming! What goes up must come down, at 32 feet per second per second bombs away! That’s the law. Did he get lifted up in a tornado? He left his clothes behind so he’ll be coming back down naked. If I threw myself down? Likely to swallow lots of water like Reuben J.’s son. Elijah will be hungry after his splashdown but plenty are well prepared to feed him. Birds wouldn’t touch the paper I threw away for them. Not a bit of it. They know what’s good for them. Spread foot and mouth disease though. Mouth and foot, foot and mouth. Mouth south. That’s how writers write. The flow of language. The stream of it. Write it and send it into the stream of life, doomed like Hamlet’s father to walk the earth.
1:10 pm
Saw a good idea today, a rowboat with a sandwich board ad on it, anchored in the ship canal. Kino’s selling pants for $49.99. Not bad. Can spend that much just getting a pair altered. A good idea is a good idea. Better than hiring human directionals to carry the signs around like Hely pays for. Pays Boylan? Must be McGlade’s work. Those bring in nothing. Still, people will look at anything, even nothing. Stand and stare; other people will too. Or be like Maginni dancing around. He is his own ad. Can put ads for std doctors in urinals. Feel the burn? Somebody standing there can relate and oh Christ. What if he? Oh God no. No. He wouldn’t, would he? I don’t believe it. No. I can’t. I can’t think about that. What’s the time? The diameter of the sun as seen from. Oh God. Focus. As seen from earth is one half of a degree. 24 hours in the day divided by 360 degrees times 60 minutes to one hour times the radius of the sun or 1/4 of a degree. It moves by its own radius every minute. That’s the time. As seen from wherever on earth. No? What about parallax views? Never quite got parallax. Greek word. Should look it up. Parallel parallax. I feel like Molly with her met him pike hoses until I explained about the transmigration of souls and the stream of life. Life is a stream. Flowing and flowing. Not like time. Time doesn’t flow. What is it flowing through if it is flowing? Not flowing. Fluxing. Time a phenomenal flux. Fluxing along in the flux of life. Changes and changes. Like water. Who was it said that? We can’t walk into the same ocean twice. The ocean is different every time and we are different every time. Yet we stay the same. Stay the same by changing, dissipative structures. Like the Argo, not a toothpick on that ship the same as when it began, yet always the Argo. Look in the mirror, not the same hair, not the same skin, not the same cells as when we were born. We flux like the Ocean. Walk in to our death and come out of other waters in a new body. Not resurrected. Transmigrated. Only the soul is the same. Somebody asked Plato if the soul gets tired. Does it wear out like old pants? Can get new ones for $49.99. See? A good idea is a good idea.
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.
1:16 pm
Ran into Josie Powell today. Breen. Still beautiful eyes. Womaneyes. How are you, How’s Molly, Milly at a photographer’s, yours? Not sure how many. I didn’t ask. Sad to lose old friends she said when I told her about Dignam. Was once Molly’s closest and mine too, well that’s quite enough about that. Asked about her lunatic husband. Hard to get around to that. Just: quietly: husband? She answered by looking in her purse, chipped rattlesnake. He’s a caution to them she said. Women’s purses. Rummaging, wide open. Money, change, credit cards, used tissues, tampon, lipstick, lipstick, lipstick, phone charger, clean diaper, altoid that was: fell, receipts, hair clips, wrappers, take a number: D26, phone, checkbook, who carries those around anymore, medicine bottle, postcard. Up? U.P. U.P: up. Somebody taking a rise out of him. He went to oyster eyes Menton wearing slippers on his feet; sue for libel. Well he has kids, so there’s the proof of that particular pudding. If that’s what, I don’t know. Up? Meshuggah. The guy is nuts. Not as nuts as Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell who swung past us on the outside of the lampposts. That rat fell into a brewer’s vat and never recovered. Can say the same for Josie Powell. Breen. Shabby, old clothes. Used to be a tasty dresser. Beautiful eyes that night at Luke Doyle’s. Only a year or so older than Molly. Lines around her mouth. Lunch on her shirt. Smells, maybe from her, of butter, flour, demerera sugar. A rhubarb tart with liberal fillings, rich fruit interior. I could still eat her up.
1:23 pm
Time means nothing. Nothing at all. Eighty seven hours so far? Is that what they said talking about me like I’m not here in this body. It’s the body and the baby they focus on. I’m in here if you want to know is she Latina ask me bitches I’m right here! Talking behind my head here comes one. Pain it comes from far away, a distance away. From some other place then it is here now ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Remembered not to hold my breath that time. Make the noise. Helps, not sure how. Sacred ohm sounding, but doula didn’t get it when I told her. Minute and a half? Means nothing. Time stretches and contracts like me stretches contracts dilates, not like me. Never felt it like this before. Feel it undulating with me during, when. Pushing through me like a wave in a tube. How many centimeters. Just a bit left they said. Stuck. Watching me watching them sharpening the knives. Give her one more hour then cut her open, get it done. Walk more. Rock. Birth ball. Dance shuffle side to side. Again same hallway again. Walk. Come on. Anesthesiologist checking in. Standing by. Wants to go to lunch probably. Plotting. Here comes one, distant traveler, coming closer, time unduuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuulaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatiooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.
Oh. Never ends. I live here now. The after, it went more quickly than they say. I am fine between. Ready. Should have ignored midwife. Get in the bath she said, slow it down so you can rest. Rest my ass. Pretending to sleep so he could sleep. I need him later. Rest, you’ll never rest again. Pain worse lying down. Pacing in patterns. I don’t remember the first day much. Now. All that is. Everything and nothing. Time shortened and lengthened together. When the pain comes time comes with it, squeezing. A peristaltic now. They told me not to eat. Don’t vomit when we slice into you. Sneaking food. Can’t do it for this long just on fumes. Inhumane. Do they remember my humanity. I am a human body and no more. I was in here too. Before. Then there’s that one at her computer. Recording angel obstetric nurse who never had a baby. The miracle of life, the beauty of birth, shut the fuck up. Coming now. She’ll see it on her monitor. Hasn’t looked at me in hours. Like a visit from purity of and God and pain and pain. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Oh Christ I am running out of time. I need help. help me. help me. Grandma come. I need you. Show up. Everybody out grandma come. Hello. Hand on my face. smile. She looks. And then she is with. Mamama. Mamama here. Hello. Hello. Help me Mamama. She stands aside and a veiled woman. Older. Mamama touches my hair, holding me calm. The veiled woman her hands inside me swirling in patterns, pushing, moving, gentle. What. They look at each other. Nod. Mamama. Oh she is holding me I’m in her arms so little and she loves me. She loves me. I was special to her. I didn’t know. I didn’t know her. She loves me. Look she says with her eyes. Look and I’m holding him, my beauty love. I’m holding him. She’s gone so fast and he’ll be here now. He’s coming now. She has me, we’ll be ok. Thank you. Thank you.
uuugh uuugh uuugh uuugh uuugh uuugh
this one is just beautiful.
1:26 pm
[Scene: Percy Apjohn (killed in action) and Pen …? Pen something. Of course it’s years ago. Percy Apjohn and Pen Something recent graduates of metempsychosis, have taken a nice supper of human leavings and are now engaged in a little after meal frolic. Must be thrilling from the air.]
Pen Something: Who will we do it on? I pick the fellow in black.
Percy Apjohn: Hold on, I think I knew that one. What was his name? Hard to remember anything after metemwhatever.
Pen Something: Really have to squint to see him. Yeah. I think I knew his wife.
Percy Apjohn: Mack something. We called him Mackerel. Mmm, could go for one of those.
Pen Something: Well, ready for the attack. You?
Percy Apjohn: Here goes. Here’s good luck!
1:30 pm
We die. Mors Certa, Hora Incerta. So how can we be anything? No-one is anything. From the void and to the void, and again and again. Things go on the same. One born every minute. Well more like, let’s see, carry the one. Stop a minute so I can calculate this. Women all over in their life throws. Sss. Dth, dth, dth! They won’t stop so I can count. There’s more born, washing the blood off. All are washed in the blood of the lamb. Not stillborn of course. They are not even registered. Trouble for nothing. Well, I am almosting it. So. So. So far this year there have been 30,275,000 births rounding up. 84 days so far this year. 360,417 births a day, rounding up. That’s 15,018 births an hour. 251 births a minute. Wait a second. That’s, yes, 5 births a second. No point rounding down. How long did it take your eye to move from we die to 5 births a second? Cities of people coming and coming. Lives and lives. Passing away too. In your life were you the Gracehoper or the Ondt? Doesn’t matter, back to the void with you! How many? How many. Wish I had paper. Um. 12,930,000 deaths this year, might as well round up. People die and we don’t even know. Months later somebody smells something. A drip through the ceiling from the tenant above. 153,929 deaths a day. That’s 6,414 people every hour. 107 a minute and every second 2 people die. 1.78 really. One dies and one gets 78% of the way there. Mostly dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. Give it a second. You can’t be mostly dead all day. There you go. Welcome to the void. You have been unmade. It will be the making of you. You were a being. You filled space. Now you are a becoming. Not changing, no, I mean fulfilling. You took a form intended for you all along. That is, your form is gone. Your form is formlessness. I know, death is new to you. You’ll get there. Destruction and creation are simultaneous. Death and rebirth are the same thing spelled different ways. You hungry? Of course not, what am I saying. Sorry. It’s this time of day. This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed. Intended. Caught that did you? Well. Well, well.
1:33 pm
[Scene: Around the ideal form of a table sit Æ., Lizzie Twigg, the Reverend Dr. Salmon, Cassandra, and a Wizard. The stage is darkly lit and the theatre is neither over heated nor chilly but at a comfortable temperature as typically a séance releases an unusual amount of magnetism, thus the room generally becomes warmer than ordinary. The shades of the living like good ventilation too, so keep that in mind. On a side table a buffet brunch waits congealing for any hungry living soul which may come. Today’s menu includes nut steak, weggebobbles cooked in soda, fruit, two headed octopus, eyes of cow, and poached eyes on ghost.]
Æ: Those cow eyes are following me everywhere I go. Right. Let’s get started, shall we. Five of us today, not an ideal number. I would have prefered seven or something occult like 13, more symbolic.
Rev. Dr. Salmon: Take yourself in hand, Æ, you can’t have everything. Am I right Miss Twigg?
Lizzie Twigg: Not saying a word. Just taking it all in.
Cassandra: It is easier with one medium but we appear to have two. Well, as long as he remembers who is running the show, we can’t have the energies dividing. Now, the purpose of today’s séance is to attract a living spirit Æ might possess long enough for his astral body to re-enter the physical world.
Wizard: Metempsychosis?
Æ: No, resurrection. I’ll be needing my body which I understand will regenerate around me.
Rev. Dr. Salmon: Hold on a minute. That body was tinned long ago, you’ll smell like a bad egg, you can’t put an egg back into the shell, the genie is not going to fit back into the bottle, once you get it out it’s hard to get it back in.
Cassandra: Please, too many images scrambled. Let’s keep clear, yes?
Æ: My vegetative body will be attracted by my active astral body and through the vibration of molecules the phenomena of density and apparent weight will collect particles together along with an unseen mass of electrical and magnetic matter, and from that my physical body will form within the living world. Easy. Scientific.
Lizzie Twigg: I answered the wrong ad. I could have picked the other gentleman who wanted aid in literary work. Or even the riding companion one. That sounds pretty good now. I could use a good belt of booze.
Æ: Shall we venture now into the untrodden woods to carve the future ways?
Wizard: Æ, Æ beware of the day! For dark and despairing, my sight I may seal, but man cannot cover what God would reveal: ‘Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, and coming events cast their shadow before.
Lizzie Twigg: [Agitated, her stockings loose over her ankles. I detest that. Tasteless.] Yes! Remember, time put by a myriad fates that her day might dawn in glory; death made wide a million gates so to close her tragic story. I took it all in. Didn’t you pay attention to your own words? Why go back? Here, there, eternity, temporality. What difference does it make to us? We have left the day to day.
Rev. Dr. Salmon: I say, it is feeling quite close in here.
Æ: We are doing this. I want to do this. I’ll get a different séance circle, but I am going back.
Lizzie Twigg: This isn’t what you thought it would be, is it Æ? There is nothing dreamy here, or cloudy, or symbolistic. You wanted the light of lights. You still do. You miss wanting what you didn’t get. So you retreat back into wanting. You want to be the head upon which the ends of the world have forgotten to come.
Cassandra: Please, you are disturbing the vibrations. Let us join hands and begin.
Lizzie Twigg: Fine. But why anybody would want to entrap themselves into the present moment amongst the unenlightened. This will never work.
Cassandra: Believe me, we will channel the living and Æ will go back.
Wizard: Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale.
Cassandra: Please. You don’t believe me? Tell me something I haven’t heard before. Ok. Moving on. We call on the living spirit of the one who has been hovering near. I feel you. I know you are here. Make a sign to us. One click for yes and two clicks for no.
Æ: Anything?
Cassandra: I heard something but it was more a mouse than a click.
Wizard: The war drum is muffled.
Cassandra: I call upon you, you know who you are, to draw near. Lean in honey, we can hear you breathing.
Lizzie Twigg: Look at Æ!
Wizard: Oh! mercy dispel yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell! Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs, and his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.
Cassandra: Oh holy Zeus I didn’t believe myself this time but look! Æ? Can you hear us Æ?
Æ: Click.
Lizzie Twigg: Where did he go? Oh Jesus Fucking Christ, I swear to stage manager, nothing good can come from this.
God: [from the booth on the god mic] Ok hold. Jesus, what in my name is going on down there? Where is Æ?
Jesus: I’m not sure. He’s gone. I think they resurrected him.
God: He can’t be resurrected. This is supposed to be a dress rehearsal, and people please stay on script and stick to the blocking. The light cues were a mess toward the end of that. Jesus, get Æ back and let’s go again from the top.
Jesus: I can’t get him back, he’s been resurrected. Like Lazarus, remember?
God: [On the god mic] How can I forget that debacle? Can still smell his stench.
Rev. Dr. Salmon: How was I? I felt a little off.
Cassandra: You were very convincing, believe me.
Rev. Dr. Salmon: I didn’t get to say my speech. The dreamy cloudy gull, waves o’er the waters dull.
Jesus: Um, God? Now that Æ is loose in the world, well, that’s going to throw a wrench into Scylla and Charybdis.
God: [on the god mic] Not our problem. Jesus Christ where’s the holy spirit? Why we are going with a director we can’t keep track of, only I know. Well, we don’t have time for this. Let’s recast Æ and move on. Is Arius busy? Did he get over his, well, issue? Maybe call his agent. Let it be done. Don’t forget we have casting for Circe coming up and tech for that will be a nightmare.
1:36 pm
The moon and the sun are the same size. Apparent size, but what else is there for us on the ground? They are both 110 times their diameters away from us. Why the same? Now that’s really a coincidence. Maybe it has something to do with parallax?
Measure your diameter. Then multiply by 110. Now, stand that far away from Molly. Go ahead, you’ll be in good company. That’s where I am, apparently. Welcome to my world. She said she could never like it again after Rudy died. Something changed. She held up her finger. Hold up your finger and measure your finger tip. Multiply by 110 — that’s about your arm’s length, a coincidence? Stretch out your arm with your finger erect and blot out the sun. Go ahead, give it the finger! Feel that power. Sexual. Yes. Yes. Ah. Well.
It was a full moon that night walking with Molly, he on the other side of her. The daughter of the moon and she’s beaming. He’s blazing. Their fingers touch palms. Ask with finger in palm, a little tickle. Touch me. Answer back. Yes. Eclipse me baby. Stop. Stop. If it was it was. Is, is. Done. Stop. Something else.
Would I go back to times before fingers and touches and apparent distances? Can’t bring back time. Can’t bring back anything. Like holding water in your hand. I am the water. Time is not a thing, it is an experience and even a feature of me. And I was happier then. I was. Was that I? Am I now I? If it is true that I am someone, and that I was also someone, are we (this I, that I) the same I? If we were all suddenly somebody else. I was happier then. Absolutely. There is no absolute. And I. I am not I. I am a multiple divided creature. I am we. We are legion. Enough. The machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of men.
1:40 pm
Funny the way she says things. Wuz nc & all teh bfls wer out. Saw one today with white stockings, dressing lingerie shop window. Naked mannequins with sale signs, pinning on garters, flimsy silks. All in red. Thick feet she had. Hope they get mucked by the rain. Need to get a pincushion for Molly. Might not like that though, throws away the black headed ones too. Superstitions. Get pricked by a pin and lose your lover. Sleep with two pins crossed under your pillow. Not sure why. Sharp things cut lo. Never hand a pin to somebody point first. Nice red things they had there. For Molly. For women. All for a woman. Home and houses, the wealth of the world for them. Molly. Molly’s skin. Must get her lotion. Warm full perfumed. Kissed, yielded, tangled, trembling breath. For them. For her. Men. Men, men, men. See the animals feed. Pungent meatjuice. Swilling, wolfing gobfulls. Bulging eyes. Stink of manpiss and sweat. Am I like that? I can’t see myself like that. Is that how others see me? Watch me eat. Ramming down knifefulls, sticky, masticating chewchawchew. Spitting back the gristle. Shoveling into my gullet. Chump chop lick the plate. Eat or be eaten and choke to death on a salmon bone, bite off more than I can chew, and kill! Kill! I hate dirty eaters.
1:43 pm
Why does no one starve in the desert? Because of all the sandwich is there. Had a gorgonzola sandwich with mustard. Easy on digestion. Cheese digests all but itself. Ate it trying not to see the drip from Nosey Flynn’s nose. Davy Byrne quiet, ingratiating. Puts up with Nosey Flynn talking horse racing, money to throw away. A regular is like the roommate you never wanted. Nosey curious about Molly’s concert tour, is Blazes Boylan involved. Well, a free ad is a free ad even if it does bite at the heart. Told him. Word of mouth. Word is he’s covered in fleas, or worse. Scratching in his pants pockets, talking about a fight at Lewis-McChord. That place breeds the worst of them all. Something about the Northwest maybe. The rain? More serial killers here too. Train them up here, make them into murderers. Teach them war is a live action video game. Get them to like it. Then off they go to sunny places, full of power, false authority, prescription drugs and hash. Make the mission vague and change it up so they won’t wonder about why. License them to kill farmers for fun, murder holy men and whole families. Villages. Toss the candy out the front of the convoy and drive over the little ones. Leave behind a Russian gun. Murder staged to look like combat. We were attacked, they’ll learn to say. Then bring them back to Lewis-McChord so they can implement their education. Watch them put their cigarettes out on their women’s skin and don’t forget to torture the children. Waterboard a little boy because he can’t say the alphabet. Another because he wet his bed. Killing each other and themselves and everybody else. War is the safest bet: heads all lose, tails all lose. Easy money. Dark thoughts to chew over. Scars on the anima mundi. A shock to the heart. Nosey’s ambush, unintentional presumably. Collateral damage. Think about something else. Something else. Nice quiet bar, Davy Byrne has. Nice counter wood; like the way it curves. Nicely planed. Look how the light touches it just there. Gentle.
1:46 pm
Flowers, her eyes were. Rememory a trailing navelcord stretching backward. The cords of all link back. I imbibe their juices with wine. Swirl them together and heatpalm warm it. There. Here now. On the grass, ferns and rhododendrons. Nobody to see us but a goat we heard then saw laughing coming through the rhododendrons, still, no-one to see. And the goat didn’t look. The sky. The colors of it. The colors of her. Her skin womansoft with ointments. I lay on top of her on top of my coat, her hair, my hand in her nape. Soft hand caressed me, her eyes never looked away. Never looked away. Joy. Life. My mouth to her mouth’s kiss, she pushed a seed cake chewed into my mouth and laughed. I ate it warm and soft and she was warm and soft. The sun shines for you today I said. I kissed her lips plump soft kiss her breath in my mouth. Breathing in my mouth. Truth in my mouth. In my life nothing ever anywhen more true. You are a flower, a secret touch, a mountain’s secret, a flower of the mountain she was. I told her. Warmscented breathing flowers kissed her eyes, her lips. Yielding. She kissed me. Me.
1:50 pm
[Scene: Immortal lovely Venus, Juno, and Galatea, shapely goddesses with curves the world admires, stand naked together. All to see. They don’t care what man looks.]
Venus: Mortal!
Galatea: Quick, be statues.
Juno: Stop breathing Galatea. Why can’t you stop breathing?
Galatea: Hey, that’s not my fault. Blame Venus.
Venus: Mortal coming! Whisper! Try to look like the three graces.
[A man and ready on his way to the yard pauses, drops something, bends down to look. See if she. He stands and before walking on he makes swift passes in the air with juggling fingers. Obviously in the craft.]
Venus: Is he gone?
Juno: Yes. Why do they always look?
Galatea: Attention defecate disorder. They think we have no.
Venus: I’d like to surprise the next one. Give myself to him, a man with manly conscious. Lay with men lovers occasionally.
Juno: I’ll bet you would.
Galatea: I prefer mortals. But they do reek of food. And shit. Disgusting things they eat too, how did they ever think to eat things like snails, or oysters? Unsightly things like clots of phlegm. Stuff them in one hole and out the other behind. Like stoking an engine.
Venus: Oysters have an effect on the sexual.
Galatea: But how would they know that? The first one to say yum, that looks like I could eat it. Imagine! Disgusting.
St. Leger: Waugh! Waugh! Iiiiiichaaaaaaach!
Juno: What is he saying?
Galatea: I think he is calling us whores again. Shut up you two dimensional freak! I can’t stand the sight of him hanging there day after day. Eyes gouged out, no lips.
Venus: No tongue, lucky for us. Can you imagine having no tongue. How would you?
Juno: Stop. Please no vivid accounts Venus, you’ll get Leger even more agitated and then there will be no end to the howling.
Venus: He needs to get laid. And not by me.
Galatea: Me either.
Juno: Oh Gods no.
1:53 pm
Zzzzzzzzzzzzz insuranzz? No, advertizzzing. Zzzzzz. Zzz. Zzzzzz. Lizzzziningzzz. Troubuzzzzle? Humanzzzz. Zzzdairyzzcreamzzzzz! Creamzzzzz! Zzz. Zzzz. Bzzzzzz. Creamzzzz? Elzzzewherezzzz. Tooz buzzzzad. Zzzzafe manzzz? No zzzafe manzzzz. Zwat! Mayzz the catzzz eatzzz zzhem andzz zhe devvvilzzzz eatzzz the catzzzz. Nevvvvver zzzzign namezzzzz. Humanzzzz. Ezzztrazzz. Zzzzmell. Zzztale drinkzzzz on thatzzz. Thizzz onezz drunkzzzzz. Zzzzewerzzz!! Zzewerzz! Thatzz humanzzz in zzewerzzz! Nizzze. Zzz. Zzzzz. Zzore legzz? Zorezzz? Nozz. Zzz. Horzzze? Horzzze? Zzzz. Razzezz. Zzzinfandelzzz? Zzzz. Dyzzpepzziazzz? Diezz zzoon! Hopezzzz. Duckzzz! Duckzzzz! Lordzzz Lovvvzzz uzzz, Duckzzzz! Zzz! Zz! Zz! Zzz! Zz!
1:56 pm
Blindness. I wonder what they see? Can do things we can’t. Read with their fingers. Senses heightened. Nose like a dog’s. Why then do dogs eat their vomit? Must smell good. Fingers feel things the rest of us miss. Feel a fingerprint. Feel colors. Maybe they really can smell fear? What would that? Smell hope. Smelling into the future for that, for fear too. Whiffs of things to come. That’s one way out. Smell your way. Taste. Better with eyes closed? Helped that blind kid cross the street. Piano tuner. Sizing me up by the feel of my hand. Pious looking face. Penrose! That’s the name I couldn’t. Penrose. Wished I could have sniffed that one out back when I. Smell coming events. What do blind people dream? Smells and tastes? Dream the feel of a woman, this curve, that hip bone. Taste and feel together. All of life, every part of every now would be a dream. Maybe a nightmare. Next step could be your last. Could fall into a manhole and need Tom Rochford to fish you back out of sewer vapors, smell heightened. Choked. Breathing your own death. Fall from the dark into blacker than dark. A waking nightmare. And yet, we all. More or less all. A waking dream for us all.
1:59 pm
He didn’t see me, light in his eyes. Blazing. It was him, surely. I couldn’t look! Saw and turned to the right fast, denying my short breath and looking cool until my heart could break. Headed for museum. Goddesses. My heart! Still quopping. Think goddesses, cream curves of stone. Cold. Didn’t look. Pockets. Looked for something. Kibbutz, where did I? Potato, soap. Need to get her lotion. Then safe! Safe. Is it? Afternoon, she said. In the afternoon. Almost certain. Yes it is. Yes, that. Not see. Get on.
surely Eric Satie should get a look in here.
Delicious idea! Our velvet Satie is a dreamy fish and we would welcome the titillation of his gaze, but we hear he doesn’t care for playmates.
Hello,
I would like your permission to use the above image of ‘Elijah is Coming’ in a book I am writing on James Joyce’s Ulysses. It will be a digital book and most of the proceedings will go to a non-profit organisation. I shall galdly provide more information if you need.
Thank you in advance for permitting me to use the image.
Sincerely
Chandra
If you properly cite me, Vern Tonkin, as the author of the image/text, and the source of the image — Slyuses.com using proper citation for a website, then yes feel free to use it. Its title is “Better Set an Extra Place” not “Elija is Coming.” Please let me know when your book is published as I’d love to see it!
Thank you very much, indeed! I shall certainly inform you when the book is published.
Chandra