Sly Uses

Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress.

October 1st • Circe

It seems that you can see, if I hear rightly, beforehand that which time brings with it, but in the present you have another view. "We see, like those who have bad vision, those things," he said, "which are far remote; the Highest Lord shines on us just so much. When they draw near, or are, all our intellect is in vain; if no one brings it to us, we would know nothing of your human state." 12:46 am

Let me see your hand. Come on then, hand it over. You worried I’ll see something you don’t want me to know? Oh sweetheart, we all wear our interiors on our surfaces. Honey it’s the same damn thing. Just look at what you show with your eyes. I see your fate there. You’ll meet with a, well, I’d better not say. Would do more harm than good perhaps. But I see it in your eye; I see it in the corner of your eye. Go look in the mirror honey, you’ll see it too. Don’t you want to? Go look. Look at your eyes like you are seeing somebody else. Stare hard. Look until all you see is eyes and the rest slips away. You’ll see what you are. You’ll see what I see, baby, you worried? You should be. Now go.

Though they stink yet they sting.

September 23rd • Circe

Look and see if anything is as great as this. 12:34 am

Everything’s a temporary dream. Look at the great pyramid, my creation of longest duration. A fat triangle in the desert, eh? You think they call me thrice great for nothing? I’m still dripping with the music of mathematics from since I played at dividing flowers and sweeties. I mean listen to it and work it out like a good young idiot. You people couldn’t do the half. Are you divided from your own organs? Listen to the harmonies of proportion and ratio; what composer tell me ever moved number so well. All is lost. You think I left it looking like that fat heap it is now, squat and spreading. But do you do anything about it, no. Nothing. Renovate it. Go ahead, it needs it. You have my permission, if not my help. Put some people on the job. Choose your most, your beautiful, your delicious, and your delightfuls, force them to say coactus volui and give them my pyramid so it might sing again. Paint upon it a diabolic rictus of black luminosity. Give it phosphorescent scorpion tongues. Paint its shafts like coal black throats and shine lights through them so out of itself it would make itself a lamp. Let the shafts open their windpipes to the outside all bloodred and sing. Add a few octaves. Here and or there. I’d hum along to that. Cover it. Take the original and jazz it up. What did I do when it was mine? I divided myself with the potentiality of it. Then I made a choice and left the rest unchosen. I covered it with white limestone and polished it to a mirror. And the sides: they were two in one and one in two. You think you see a triangle there? Look again. There are eight sides and though they sink yet they sing when the sun hits dead on. On the solstice the mirrors’ split face would absorb refract no reflect a divided sun like what do you call it gossamer. Is it a dream to think there’s nothing new under the sun?

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

September 18th • Circe

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.

Talk away till you’re black in the face.

September 15th • Circe

When the matter has stood for the space of forty days in a moderate heat, there will begin to appear above, a blacknesse like to pitch, which is the Caput Corvi of the Philosophers, and the wise men’s Mercury. Blacknesse once seen, thou mayst be sure a True Conjunction of the principles is made. 12:17 am

Scene: [An owl and a heavily made up goat argue while tending an enormous fire. Over the flames hangs a stork vessel containing a phoenix. They have begun their reversal of the great work.]

Azazel: [Circling the fire] I have sinned.

Lilith: [Circling the fire the opposite direction] I have suffered.

Together: Putrefaction, pray for us. Dissolution, pray for us. Coagulation, pray for us. Mortifacation, pray for us. Stench of graves, pray for us. Black of the blackest black, pray for us.

Azazel: See that?

Lilith: You scorched your eyelashes.

Azazel: Not that, that!

Lilith: White feathers! Not much of a swan. Just once I’d like to get to peacock.

Azazel: Focus, Lilith, just concentrate on returning it to crow. Carbonation, pray for us. Calcification, pray for us.

Lilith: Nothing. It is always much easier to illumination than to obscure. Why is that? Is nothing so difficult?

Azazel: [Pawing the ground] Nothing is not nothing, Lilith, focus. There can be no corruption without regeneration, ok, so can we concentrate please? If you see Kay, pray for us. See you in tea, pray for us.

Lilith: What did you say?

Azazel: See you in tea pray for us?

Lilith: No. The other thing you said. You can’t have corruption without regeneration. Do you realize what you were saying?

Azazel: What was I saying? I don’t know. I was just saying stuff to get your head back in it. I meant nothing. Come on.

Lilith: Nothing. Exactly. I think we’re missing something.

Azazel: We’re missing something? I’m missing something.

Lilith: We’re missing nothing. We need nothing. We need something better than a phoenix if we want to achieve purity of absence. We keep getting the invisible trace of something not there but we want what do you call it void. D’ye see? We don’t want just ordinary death. We want the quintessence of death.

Azazel: Oh Christ Lilith, the problem’s not in our materials, it is in us. The phoenix is fine. You know how hard it is to source a phoenix? We need to focus. You need to focus. We already got to swan and.

Lilith: Looks more like a tailor’s goose.

Azazel: It’s a swan and look, it’s turning a bit blue around the edges already. We’ll get to crow if we concentrate.

Lilith: I say we get a reincarnated human.

Azazel: Jesus Christ.

Llith: AE

Azazel: A what?

Lilith: [Reversing her direction around the fire] AE. We’ll use him. Trust me, this is the direction we should go. Can I use your mirror?

Azazel: Lilith wants me to trust her. Fine, use it. There’s no talking you out of this. Weep for me O daughters of Erin.

Lilith: [Breathing on the mirror] We call them to life across the waters of Lethe.

Shattering light over the world.

August 29th • Circe

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite, and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt. 11:34 pm

Hey turn that light on, will you? No, not that one. Over here. Closer. Don’t be scared, I won’t bite. Hard. You’re shivering. Come warm up. Now about that light. There, that’s the one. Let’s get you from all that potentiality into something a little more actual. That’s better. Now hush, I need to listen to your body, your movements. No don’t speak, don’t speak. Just do a little dance or something. I want to know you. Not what you can tell me with your tongue, but on that subject, show me your tongue. Go ahead. Stick it out. Ah. Aaaah. There. Like a gift. Now I see you. Spin around. For me? Give us a twirl. There you go. Nice structural rhythm, I see your whole form now, in all your entelechaotic glory. Stretch out your hands. What’s that you’re saying, you hungry? Thirsty? A jug of bread maybe, no? You held your hands in intersecting planes, so I thought I’d ask. Must have been your head tilting back. Move a little closer. Near the mirror, I want to see your structural rhythms. No not that one, the convex. That’s it. Diverging, you are. All that light outwardly reflected. And that imaginary focal point, well done there. Good. Good to get a bit of distance on the subject. Don’t worry about the distortion, we’re all distorted. You know that, don’t you. Don’t have to tell you. Walk closer to it, approach the sorcerer’s eye, ah, not so fast! There now. Now you are looming over yourself properly. Difficult to do in company, but you seem to have the hang of it. Good. Now move very slowly, slowly I said! toward the concave. That’s it. See that? Go back a bit and do it again. There stop! Focus. See, you’ve inverted. Nice, no? Wait, where did you go? Oh there you are! Well what do you know, light camoflauges you. Look at you! Very interesting. You appear to define your boundaries by motion. Makes a nice contrast between yourself and your background. I do like that in a, well, whatever it is you call yourself. What are you anyway? A flasher? Searchlight? I know, aurora borealis! No? Too chilly? But you’re shivering. Oh no. I see you now. Can’t be. The stagnant fumes arising. That glow. No. Go. Go now get out. Go. Ga Giest! Firen! Fyr! Fyr!

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

August 17th • Oxen of the Sun

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.

There as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey presto!)

August 15th • Oxen of the Sun

The relief was hinted to me from a superior power when I, poor slave, had not a hope but that I must wait another seven years with Jacob; and lo! the Rachel which I coveted is brought to me. 10:39 pm

My father had a mirror, it was the most astonishing thing this mirror. My father had a mirror he kept behind a picture of my mother. The picture made no sense because it was blurry and ordinary. Her mouth was open. She could never shut up long enough to smile for a picture. Anyway. it’s the kind of picture you’d delete or not develop or whatever it was they did. Develop and leave in the envelope with the negatives. Anyway, he had it in a thick frame but if you turned it over and pushed the little metal clips to one side and pop the back off, there was a little mirror in there. I didn’t get it. What’s a mirror doing in there? He saw me see him messing with that picture and I knew something was up with it. I figured something was in there. But I was hoping for money or a note or something. Treasure map. A woman’s phone number. Something. Made no sense.

Once when was sitting behind a chair, hiding and pretending to write in my notebook, he either forgot I was there or didn’t notice, and I saw him do it. I saw him close up. He was smoking that pipe of his and then he did it so fast. Picked up the picture of my mother and popped the back off of it. He pulled out something that fit in his hand I didn’t see. And then and then he breathed smoke into his hand. He exhaled into his hand. And for an instant (fiat!) light filled the room. Then that feeling, the vibe of it. I’ll never forget it. I’ll remember it forever. It was like passing from life into eternity. I can’t explain it. But there behind my chair I knew within me the precise age of my soul so immense, but also I knew my soul to be something shriveled, something that dwindled to a tiny speck within the mist. It was horrible. Before all that murky bright could clear away, I got the hell out of there. I was young, and I was utterly blown away.

So I tried it myself. I said I was young. By myself. I got the pipe and my mother’s picture and I looked her straight in the mouth. And then I lit up. I took a lots of short fast puffs and held it in too long while I twisted the metal clips to the side. Then, out it popped: a little mirror. I didn’t pause. Ok, yes I did pause. I coughed up a lung. But I wasn’t scared of anything apart from being caught. So I stared myself in the mouth, and I took another hit. Held it in, not so long this time. Then I exhaled right into my mouth exhaling. Hold. Back. I’m tripping balls. Entwined in the nethermost brightness I was looking at mirrors within mirrors within mirrors and in one of them it was raining and I was with a girl in the rain pinned up to a wall. And in another mirror I was holding a baby and the baby was still. Still and cooling. In another I was typing. I was at a desk typing. And there was my father holding a mirror looking at me, watching the letters appear as I typed them. Under his nose as I type them. He isn’t looking at me; he’s watching the screen. He’s witnessing the letters appear one after the other, left to right and together he and I have a feeling. We have together an obscure feeling that some good has happened to us.

Wander years of dreams return

July 21st • Nausicaa

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.

Think you’re escaping and run into yourself.

July 17th • Nausicaa

8:55 pm

Getting dark now. From within: windows turning into mirrors; from without: mirrors turning into windows. Can be shocking to be within and turn the light on, suddenly see yourself as others see you. From without, we get the gradual, surroundings disappearing, and what you’re doing in there, well, darling little wretch, I see your I see all. Baby your longest way round is the shortest way home. Think you’re escaping? You’ve run into yourself. Naughty darling. Now let’s lie on our back and watch until three stars apparate, maybe we’ll see something new. It’s the new I want. Nothing’s new under the sun; let’s see what charades the moon will play. Or a comet, Rip Van-Winkling toward us: coming back after twenty years asleep. We’ll kiss our shoulder and take a return voyage around our own little world.

A star I see. Venus?

July 15th • Nausicaa

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?