Having my way with Ulysses

Releasing the potential energy contained in the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements to enter into free union with the oxygen of the air.

Then it seemed to me it rotated a little, then terrible as lightning she descended and snatched me upward into the fire. Therein it seemed that she and I were burning; and this imagined burning so scorched me that my sleep was broken. 2:03 am

Give me four minutes, and you’ll have your fire.  There is an art in lighting a fire, and attention to how you make ready the place of sacrifice should be the true object of any creator: that is one of the secrets. The beauty of any holocaust, no matter how slight your agenbite of inwit, must always be within the purification of your own intent. That’s where we will find beauty. I said we. There’s creation. There’s union. So what is it we are burning today? What did you bring?

The last straw.

Friends, I have forgotten two things. I wish all to know that I do not propose to sell any part of my country, nor will I have the whites cutting our timber along the rivers, more especially the oak. I am particularly fond of the little groves of oak trees. I love to look at them, and feel a reverence for them, because they endure the wintry storms and summer's heat, and not unlike ourselves seem to thrive and flourish by them. One thing more: those forts filled with white soldiers must be abandoned, there is no greater source of trouble and grievance to my people.

12:44 am

Scene: [Tranquilla convent, infirmary. Lizzie Twigg is unconscious and lying on a tinseled oak bed. The shading she has painted with loving pencil on her eyes, bosom, and shame is badly smeared. Sister Mary Peter lifts her from the secondbest bed while St. Agatha straightens the warm impress of her warm form.]

St. Agatha: Don’t jostle her like that.

Sister Mary Peter: I should drop her for what she’s done. She has sinned. We have suffered!

St. Agatha: Sister. Our Sister. Shh! Just look at her. Classic curves: a thing of beauty. Here, put her down on her stomach, we can take the powderpuff to the spot where her back changes name.

Sister Mary Peter:  No, please I beg you. What must my eyes look down on. [Nearly drops Lizzie Twigg but catches her with her leg.]

St. Agatha: Nekum! Remember your wounded knee! Come on, let’s see if she has hair there.

[Sister Mary Peter returns Lizzie Twigg to the bed, facing up.]

Lizzie Twigg: [Talking in her sleep] Where dreamy creamy gull waves o’er the waters dull.

Sister Mary Peter: Oh that’s it. [Gives Lizzie Twigg a hard shove with both hands. She rolls a dummymummy in the sheet off of the bed and onto the floor.

St. Agatha: Mary Peter!

Lizzie Twigg: Bbbbblllllblblblblobschb! What’s happening? I feel like I fell from a cliff!

St. Agatha: You fell out of bed. Sister Mary Peter help her up! [St Agatha rushes to kiss Lizzie Twigg in four places as she crawls jellily forward from under the bed, with dignity].

Lizzie Twigg: [Returning to bed] I’m fine. What happened? Mnemo? I don’t think I’m in full possession of my faculties. I feel like I’ve been run over.

Sister Mary Peter: You were run over, and me too trying to save you. I think I have a concussion.

St. Agatha: Ssh! She is right, our sister. Don’t you remember, dear? You tried to perform a solo ghost dance and then you threw yourself under Jagannath.

Lizzie Twigg: [Covers her face with her hands looking through parting fingers] Oh God. Where’s AE?

Sister Mary Peter: Where’s AE? Sacrilege! Who cares about AE? He’s nothing! What are you doing trying to re-kill yourself over a man? Your crucifix not thick enough? What do you lack within our barbed wire?

St. Agatha: Ssh! Lizzie, you can’t kill yourself again. We immortals have no word for that in our dictionary. I know AE’s return was difficult for you.

Sister Mary Peter: Difficult!

St. Agatha: Ssh, sister yes, it was difficult. Lizzie, you fell 32 feet per second per second for him all over again. But here at Tranquilla we are brides of Christ. You must have no more desire. We are only the ethereal.

Lizzie Twigg: Only ethereal! Then how do you account for that large moist stain on Mary Peter’s robe? And Mother Agatha, I can smell the cloud of stench escaping from your crack.

St. Agatha: [A button pops off of her sackcloth habit; she’s lost a charm] Listen sister, we know where we’d all be if we were only ethereal, but we won’t turn your strength into our weakness. Where do you think you were going to end up, after Jagannath squashed you? Where? Where was that ghost dance going to take you? To Sitting Bull floating in the ether? Rise up all you want, go ahead, but you’ll come back down. You think you were going to ghost dance yourself up to some cloudy waiting lounge, then sit around wondering when the vorex will open under AE’s feet? Circumstances alter cases, have you learned nothing from your time here? Don’t you understand anything? Our convent is built on buffalo holocausts. The skull mountains: we’ve shaped them into cathedrals. You think we don’t bleed? We are the sisters of the last straw and Grandfather Tatanka Iyotanka is our patron saint. [Looking toward Standing Rock] Father I come! Father give us back our arrows! [Looks at Lizzie Twigg with features hardening] You say you are done with AE then you try this? Fool someone else sister, not me.

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

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.

Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.

And now, O Alcibiades, the divine thing having been performed, tell me, are the girls and the youths and the philosophers as fond of thee as ever?10:42 pm

Scene: [Around the ideal form of a table sit Glaucon, Alcibiades, Pistritus, and a mirror reflecting an even more ideal form of a table around which sit Glycera, Chloe, Phyllis and a mirror reflecting ooh look at that table, way more ideal, around which sit Anemone, Posie, Echo in a mirror, and a mirror reflecting ok now I like this one best, wait, can I see that first table again? reflecting Mars, Venus, and Juno and a mirror reflecting turtles all the way down.  On each ideal form of a table sits a container of plums. Some of the containers are coffins, some are eggs.]

Glaucon: [Brotherly, breathing on the mirror while the others stare hard at the plums] On behalf of Alcibiades, for the fulfillment of his one great goal, I call them to life across the waters of Lethe.

Juno: [Chewing a plum] You hear that?  Venus, get off of Mars, we have to troop to the call.

Anemone: Poor ghosts. I really anticipate disaster here.

Echo: Disaster here.

Posie: [Carving into the table with a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife reminiscent of Roman history]  e ar space ach e ar e period.

Alcibiades: Anything yet?

Anemone: He is so expectant!

Echo: expectant!

Posie: [Carving]   tea ay en tea exclamation point.

Glycera: [Wearing a frock of muslin and yellow shoes]  He wants me again.  Already.

Phyllis: Well don’t go.  That man would make his own mother an orphan.

Chloe: Isn’t his father the son of his own mother?

Anemone: He heard her say that.  Look his face is growing dark.

Echo: Growing dark.

Posie: eye en gee space dee ay ar kay period.

Pisistratus:  All is lost.  I’m leaving.

Glaucon: Stay, we have all the mirrors aligned in perfect harmonic proportions.  This will work.

Pisistratus: It will work if we bribe somebody.

Alcibiades: Glycera’s soul is far away.  What if she won’t assume her etheric double?

Juno: Ok, place your bets. Will she assume her etheric double?  I say yes.  A whore like that? Come on.

Mars: I say yes too. Last time she had her leg up over our left shoulder.  I could watch that again 16 times in a row.

Venus: Alcibiades’ left shoulder. She won’t.  He’ll beg until he’s black in the face but I’ll have to incarnate for her.  Where’s my ruby dress?

Phyllis: Huzzah! I think Venus will go for you. I wonder if she has a ride?  She can take Aristotle, he’s parked out back.

Juno: Venus your bet’s a throwaway.  Just listen to her heart beating! Can hear it two mirrors over.

Glycera: I guess I can go, but I won’t use a condom. I hate condoms. Well at least I had my period last week so there’s that.  He bites, though.  It’s off putting.

Chloe: You’re fertile!  Oh you’ll have a nice ripe egg for him.

Glycera: Oh fabulous, I’ll get pregnant.  Great.

Anemone: Will she?

Echo: She?

Posie:  capital ess ach e question mark.

Glycera: What do you think, ladies?

Phyllis: It’s a holocaust; you’ll get burned.

Chloe:  Yes she’ll burn. The young green shoots of new plumtrees require putrefaction first. End it now and go to him, it will be the beginning of something.  And the Gods are involved, so there will be mirror effects all over the place.  Lose yourself in it.  I mean, look at these plums.  They’re dying. They won’t be fully empowered until putrefied. The tomb of death is the womb of new life.

Glycera: Ok, here I go.

Juno: You hear that? Let’s get started.

Juno, Venus, and Mars: [Breathing on the mirror] We call them to life across the waters of Lethe.

Wander years of dreams return

Down through the generations men built the night. In the beginning it was blindness and sleep and thorns that tear the naked foot and fear of wolves. We shall never know who forged the word for the interval of shadow which divides the two twilights; we shall never know in what century it stood as a cipher for the space between the stars. Other men engendered the myth. They made it mother of the tranquil Fates who weave destiny, and sacrificed black sheep to it and the cock which presages its end. The Chaldeans gave it twelve houses; infinite worlds, the Gateway. Latin hexameters gave it form and the terror of Pascal. Luis de León saw it in the fatherland of his shuddering soul. Now we feel it to be inexhaustible like an ancient wine and no one can contemplate it without vertigo and time has charged it with eternity. And to think it would not exist but for those tenuous instruments, the eyes.8:59 pm

I am a dream and I am your dreamer and also, look close, I am a page torn from an old copybook you cannot read so leave it, leave me. Trust me I am a bread cast on the waters. What’s this in your hand? I am a stick see? Too dark. Throw me, goodbye dear, thanks. I’ll stick here. I am a stick with lines and scars and letters inked into my flesh.  Carved upon the winedark sea. Wait.  No.  That’s my kidney.  I am a kidney, burn me instead.  I am a holocaust provided by an angel in stead.  I am a recording angel.  Read me if you can see but only the bats can see in the dark. Sleep, but first bend to see my face there. I am a dark mirror breathe on me. I stir. I am a reflection, nothing grows on me. I am a reflection of you done half by design. We’ll never meet again, O sweety. I fly here. There. Here. No harm in me, I am a transparency, but you can’t see me now.  I am a dark mirror. Don’t look too close naughty Grace darling, lean back swoony lovey and sleep. That’s better. Shhh. There you go. Shhh. There you go. I am a sleep.

And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of the sun

Quat Abraham, "god fal bifen, Quor-of ðe ofrende fal ben; Sellik ðu art on werlde cumen, Sellic ðu falt ben heðen numen; Wiðuten long ðhrowing and figt, God wile ðe taken of werlde night, And of ðe seluen holocaustum hauen, ðanc it him ðat he wulde crauen" Yfaac waf redi mildelike, Quan ðat he wifte witterlike. Oc Abraham it wulde wel quat-fo god bad, ðerted he it neuer a del; Yfaac waf leid ðat auter on, So men fulden holocauft don; And Abraham ðat fwerd ut-drog, And waf redi to flon him nuge.5:57 pm

Bloom, don’t say it man.  Don’t say it.  Don’t even talk to that one-eyed dick, he’s not worth it.  You’re gonna get burned.  You remember your kidney this morning, burnt offering for a god (you! Well now, we were thinking a bit more highly of ourselves then, now weren’t we).  We.  But baby, that kidney has taken on giant proportions, don’t you get it?  Take a look at yourself.  See what you’ve become?  Now see where you are flying to, like a shot off a shovel.  Right toward the sun baby.  You’re a holocaust.  Don’t believe me?  You think you’re on the rise?  Well let’s ask Isaac.  Isaac.  Hey Isaac.  Isaaaac!

Isaac:  I heard you.  I was hiding around the corner, you understand.

We get it.  Trust issues.  So Isaac, what was it like for you when your dad nearly, well,

Isaac: That’s ok.  Everybody asks, I’m used to it.  I mean, I should have guessed when he made me carry the kindling and he had a lighter and a sword and nothing to burn.

Yeah, that must have been weird.  What did you do?

Isaac:  It was my dad, you know?  I trusted him.  He said that the offering fell in the dirt and got all muddy.  Then he went on about how wonderful is the world to come and how great it would be to be taken there.

Wait, what did he say?  It fell in the dirt and you bought that?  I’m not feeling it.

Isaac:  Fine don’t believe me.  Ask Chitragupta, he’s got the transcript.  Chitragupta!  Hey, Chitragupta!

Chitragupta: [while writing everything he says and hears]  Yes?

Isaac:  Chitragupta, will you read back what happened that day my dad tried to make a holocaust of me?

Holocaust?

Isaac:  Burnt offering.

Chitragupta:  [writing] holocaust of me.  Holocaust?  Isaac:  Burnt offering.  Yes, here it is.  holocaust of me? Holocaust? Isaac: Burnt offering. Yes, here it is. holocaust of me. Holocaust? Isaac: Burnt offering. Yes, here

Chitragupta!

Chitragupta:  Abraham said “it fell and became muddy, where the offering had fallen.  Wonderful you came into the world and wonderful you shall be hence taken.  Without long suffering and fight, God will take you from the world this night.  And when you see the greetings given to the holocaust, I think that he would crave it himself.  When he knew it truly, Isaac was ready and peaceful.  And Abraham wished it well, whatsoever good or bad, he never thwarted it in grief.  Isaac was laid on that altar that men use to accomplish a holocaust.  And Abraham got out the sword and was ready to slay him now.  An angel forbade him and bore the child from the dead.  Then Abraham became soothed of his quivering, for Isaac loved him and didn’t blame him.  Behind, prepared, he did not notice fast in the thorns a willing calf that an angel had killed in Thor’s dwelling.  It was burnt in Isaac’s stead.

That had to be awkward.  Were you really ok with it?

Isaac:  Not really, but it makes for a better story.

Bloom, you paying attention?

Isaac: Bloowho?