Having my way with Ulysses

Where the statue of the fish used to be.

Ask them whether on reflection they could see anything amusing in all that foul mouthed, foul minded derision and obscenity. To you, possibly it may appeal as art; you are probably (you see I don't know you) a young barbarian beglamoured by the excitements and enthusiasms that art stirs up in passionate material; but to me it is all hideously real.

Gala Event at Holy Mother Public Relations had us Praying for the End of Time.
by St. Francis DeSales

To mark the end of the thirteenth Ba’k’tun Holy Mother Public Relations Inc. hosted their first annual End of Existence Gala in the circular Star and Garter Ballroom: the dazzling center found everywhere in the Holy Mother PR Empyrean building whose circumference appears to be nowhere and why am I telling you about the room? I hate duplicity as I hate death, so I’m talking about crap nobody cares about because frankly I want to bury my real feelings about this shitshow of an event somewhere after the first couple of lines to ensure that our Holy Blessed and Most Exalted Mother Mary will have passed out before she gets to the sentence where I call her the booze soaked love child of Courtney Love and a pile of vomit. There, I said it. As I have prior experience covering the various travesties parties Holy Mother PR has thrown in the past to provide Mary with fresh drinking companions celebrate Mary’s glory I knew to race past the red carpet and find Her Shitfacedness our Holy Lush before she passes out in the men’s urinals. A pity too as I had only a glance at Jesus gingerly exiting his limo with his babyclothes up to one side. I was dying to find out was he circumcised but I had bigger fish to fry as apparently did the “ladies” of  the Tranquila Convent who catered this stinker of a party with what can only be an ironically inspired all seafood menu. Ghastly. Everything fried in butter: they love buttering themselves in and out, though to their credit they served a potent egg nog which Sister Mary Peter described as eggs beaten up with marsala. One taste of that and I knew why I was far too late to interview Mary. Though, with all the optimism of a rookie I pressed on, seeking her out in all her usual puking places: closets and behind statues, but I could not find Her Drunkenness anywhere and I stopped looking when I saw the out of order sign on the men’s lavatory door.  Alas, Mary was already face down in a pool of her own vomit and piss. I’d say they ought to dedicate the urinals in Her Holy Name but in that case they’d probably throw another one of these disastrous events to mark the occasion and I’d have to cover it.  I was late for Mary but I found myself just in time and unfortunately perfectly placed for the unveiling of Negative Destiny by new sculptor Martha. While some might try to make a cat cleanly by rubbing its nose in its own filth, Martha has tried the same treatment on The Annunciation, and Negative Destiny comes off as a rather fleshy cross between The Annunciation and The Incarnation. But with more slime. This mixed media piece is curious the way it’s made and I asked Martha what are all those veins and things but I won’t reveal her answer. Trust me, it is better not to know. Martha’s sculpture managed to renew my faith in the end of the world, and indeed to wish it had come before Martha had ever been born. I don’t want to say that it is bad, not at all. It succeeds gloriously in finding new ways to suck. O lord I wanted to shout out all sorts of things fuck or shit or anything at all just to distract myself and indeed to save some of the others: anything to tear my ruined eyes from that ugly quivering disgusting thing placed up there like any other statue in a museum, and the crap sculpture she had just unveiled. Martha ought to take a good look at herself but a mirror never gives you the expression. My advice to you Martha: check herself into the Tranquilla convent, they’ll take anybody.

Dead he wasn’t. Simply absconded somewhere.

Come back here and take what's coming to ya! I'll bite your legs off!
1:42 am

I thought you were dead you yellow bastard. Grrrr. You resurrected yourself, didn’t you? or killed yourself or was laying low or something. Left my person a bloody weeping mess and no clue how to get you back. Sit! Stay! And now you’re back like a murderer to the crime scene. You’re a lucky dog Lizzie didn’t set me at you directly you got back. I’m going to pee in your shoes. Maybe she will go back to the convent soon, you think of that AE?  We liked it there. But we’ll have to sound the lie of the land first, would be prudent: Sister Mary Peter hates us now. Too bad really. I liked the smell of him better than you, you stink like the dead. Woof! And not in a good way. And here you are like the bath nobody wanted, destroying everything warm and comfortable. Before you, Lizzie would take me running. And we’d play go get it! And, who’s a pretty puppy! Now I’m lucky to get out of her purse more than twice a day. Thanks AE. Just, thanks. Well kill my dog you better hide your cat. I’ll get you my pretty. Now go.

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.

Near her monthlies, I expect, makes them feel ticklish.

The Twofold form Hermaphroditic: and the Double-sexed; The Female-male & the Male-female, self-dividing stood Before him in their beauty, & in cruelties of holiness! Shining in darkness, glorious upon the deeps of Entuthon. 8:47 pm

Scene [Tranquilla convent, in the back garden.  The sisters are preparing to receive a novice for initiation into the order.  St. Agatha and Sister Mary Peter wait with ten fingers locked for her to arrive. ]

St. Agatha:  Sister Mary Peter, have you seen my breasts?

Sister Mary Peter:  You left them in the rectory Reverend Mother, shall I retrieve them for you?

St. Agatha:  No, no.  No.  Nuisance they are anyway, really, although I do feel like I lose a charm every time I take them off.  Still, we have a new novice coming and it would be a waste of this whitewashed face and cool coif not to long to appear, well, complete.

Sister Mary Peter: It is a natural craving, Reverend Mother, but you’re looking splendid.  Dressed up to the nines.

St. Agatha.  Never mind, no time.  I can see her coming with my dexter optic!  O look who it is for the love of God! I thought they were dumping Martha on us and instead it’s Lizzie Twigg!  How are you at all?  What have you been doing with yourself? [kiss] and delighted to [kiss] see you!

Lizzie Twigg:  Hello Agatha.  I would have been here sooner but there was all that barbed wire.

St. Agatha:  We do like to cloister ourselves here!  But never mind never mind.  No hurry, my dear sister soul.  I’m just so happy you’re not Martha!  So vindictive for what she can’t get.  Oh my child!  So, here you are, giving up your desire to aid gentlemen in literary work.

Lizzie Twigg:  Yes, I’m done with men.  I loved an Aeon and that ended badly.  Felt like I was drowning half the time.  Now I want to dedicate myself to somebody more, I don’t know, along the straight and narrow.  Linear minded.  Gets us from then to when.

St. Agatha:  Well as a fellow bride of Christ you will have that, even the calendar starts with him, to some end point.  So, let’s have a look at you.  Nice well-filled hose, though they are a bit down around the ankle.

Sister Mary Peter:  Voice like a pick axe, no good for the choir.  Are you lame?

Lizzie Twigg:  No.  My boots are a bit tight though.

St. Agatha:  You might have a high arched instep.

Lizzie Twigg: Um.  I have a question.  I’ve heard things about the sisters here.  That some of you get a bit, well, odd.  I’ve heard about some sisters licking pennies all the time, and wanting to smell rock oil, and all kinds of.  Is this, is this true?

St. Agatha: It’s only the virgins who go mad in the end.  I take it you’re?

Lizzie Twigg: Not. No.

St. Agatha.  I thought not.  You have that I’m all clean come dirty me look.  Now, when was the start of your last menstrual period?  Must have been within the past couple of days.

Lizzie Twigg:  Today.  And it’s awful.  Feels a ton weight.  How did you know?

St Agatha:  The plants are withering.  And the fiddle strings have all snapped.

Sister Mary Peter:  The milk is turning too.

St. Agatha:  Sister Mary Peter, go get St. Patricia, she can coagulate Miss Twigg’s blood.  Now Miss Twigg, we’ll stop your menstruation for now, but you’ll have to get into step with the rest of us.  We all bleed together according to the moon.

Lizzie Twigg:  I’m sorry.  I mean, I don’t mean to be rude or question is it all a fake or anything but, none of you look like, well, like the menstruating type.  No offense.  How many women?

St. Agatha:  Listen sister, we feel it ourselves too, ok, all of us together.  We can be a pack of devils when it’s coming on, I can tell you, especially Sister Mary Peter!

Lizzie Twigg:  She’s a hot little devil all the same.  We were girlfriends at school you know.

St. Agatha:  Oh were you?  And how do you find her now?

Lizzie Twigg:  Well back then she was yours for the asking!  And not to pick holes in her appearance or anything, but she does have fewer teeth than before.

St. Agatha:  Never you mind that now.  We all have bodies, we all have curves inside our deshabillé, but if you are to undertake a novitiate with us you’ll find within our walls sanctity and corporeality intermingle.  Bring your agenbite of inwit, but don’t forget your frillies for Raoul, honey, He likes them both.  Now come with me child, that’s a lovely shirt shining beneath your what? But we must get on with dressing each other for the sacrifice.

Random crumbs

Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after-effects of influenza than anything else. It is as though all one's blood had been pumped out and luke-warm water substituted. Complete inertia is my chief memory of hunger.Burned myself.  Not bad though, I won’t say anything.  I don’t want to add to their troubles.  That’s if I could.  All they feel all they see all they are is hungry.  There’s nothing else.  Hunger is eating us and we are becoming hunger.  Katey and Boody will be here any second and they’ll want to eat.  It’s a mistake to want food when you are hungry.  Better not to think of it and feel blessed when it comes.  Thank God for Sister Mary Patrick.  Viperous temptations.  And fasting.  Don’t eat of the fruit.  Don’t eat of anything.  Nothing into the mouth.  We can feel human without curtains, but lack of food reduces us to rag dolls.  Barang!  Limp and weak.  It took all I had to walk to Sister Mary Peter.  If I could take a vow of poverty too, I’d be better off.  We all would be, I could save us eventually, but I worry about the start of it.  Are you saved?  Elijah is coming! All are washed in the blood of the lamb. The vow of chastity I’ve already taken.  I am mother and wife with no husband.  I sent Dilly to find father before he drinks everything we have.  She has her shoulders in her ears and Stephen in her eyes.  Wants to see Paris and write poetry.  She’s hungry for it: another mistake.  It breaks her heart when we sell the books, but McGuinness’s wouldn’t give anything for them today.  Try again somewhere else and stave off feeling our salvation sailing away.