Having my way with Ulysses

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

• Circe

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.

There under starshiny coelum.

• Oxen of the Sun

Checkmate. King to tower.10:56 pm

Thank you kindly, much obliged my man.  We have to all pull together, am I right, and these things can be damn expensive. When there’s a girl like that a ripe and a ready, a little venus of the people, and no man has yet gone before, then I want to be the man for the job, hey don’t spill on my new pants. We live but to die and there’s hair in your eye. I know it. I’ll never be a poet. I am a little sentimental about the girl, but the sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done.  Much obliged to now where did he go?  Oh there, getting some wine.  Two guinness for me.  And two for yourself?  Ah yes, she’s a bold bad girl.  Who’s paying? Well sir, it’s who’s invited us! Whoa! That one’s passed out. You don’t say? Had the winner until you? Wasn’t such a dead cert then.  Who gave him the winner? Him? Him that gave me the condom for my photo girl? With the wife in the window? Have to see her to be believed. Pull the blind baby, somebody’s watching. Wait, Bloo? He’s the one she calls papli? Ok then, is that the time. Getting late. Just slide over here by the door, Mulligan, look alive, look at that there by the door. A round of  absinthe? Sure sure, green poison the devil take the hindmost. Don’t mind us just going to take a look at something out here. Just outside. See ya adios bye bye catch you later gotta go.

The Apostates’ Creed

• Oxen of the Sun

Vitam aeternam10:50 pm

I believe in Deus Pater, keeper of a watch on the clock, and in Jay, an easy make, drunken minister in old clothes, conceived of the maternity hospital, shoved out into the bleeding limelight, suffered to stand though proud possessor of damnall, declared misery, bet to the rope, nantee saltee, and had not a red. He hentruded on death and avanced five parasangs on foot to Henry Nevil’s. He proceeded to the nearest canteen and there annexed liquor stores, at the right hand of the Bishops boosebox; from thence He shall stop short, whether on the scaffold high, never to go again. I believe in the holy spirits, two whiskeys for the Ubermensch, 12th rib gone, and his friend abaft, five Bass number 1’s, ginger cordial (I oughtn’t to have got myself swept along with those medics) wheels within wheels, Absinthe for me, pissedon green.

Obligated.

Don’t mention it.

The tangle of wined breaths

• Proteus

Ah, he's very thoughtful and sympatrico that way is Brother Intelligentius, when he's not absintheminded, with his Paris addresse! He is, really.11:13 am

Pimander is coming and how sweetly delicious he will be.  I see you, you man shepherd, I have my eye on you.  We will be yokefellows in arms.  We shall go to Paris and from the bed of your lover’s wife we will make a meal of it, our mouths yellowed with the pus and the taste of acetic acid so sweet and I shall thrust my fang between your lips.  Oh Pimander, I see a Vision limitless, all things turned into Light, sweet, joyous Light.  Transport me, appear in visions with me, I see you.  And you will show me the darkness coiling in my sinuous folds and the darkness will change into moist nature ineffable.  Drink and belch smoke and wail with the voice of fire.  Hang with me in the air, rise up and hang on the fire and mingle together.  Drink me.  I will wash you lacivious Pimander and bathe you in my most private green liquids.  I will rub your malefemale nakedness in the bath and like horseleeches oh to suck to suck the very blood to suck.