Having my way with Ulysses

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.

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.

Beehives, soupladles, stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline,

We accept reality so readily -- perhaps because we sense that nothing is real. I asked Argos how much of the Odyssey he knew. He found using Greek difficult; I had to repeat the question. Very little, he replied. Less than the meagerest rhapsode. It has been eleven hundred years since last I wrote it. 5:54 pm

[Scene:  The Star and Garter Ballroom, Empyrean Building, Holy Mother Public Relations.  The party planning committee including Saints Martha, Agatha, Patricia, Augustine, Genevieve, Wenburgh, Cecilia, and the Holy Mother herself, Blessed Virgin, Queen of the Heavens, CEO Holy Mother Public Relations, etc. are preparing for the imminent arrival of what will be possibly most likely perhaps God willing a new saint: Saint (maybe) Ahasuerus.]

Mary [Frazzled] Jesus H Christ, where are Anne and Margaret?  They were supposed to be here a half hour ago with the welcome banners!

Jesus [Appearing suddenly as if from nowhere]:  Mom?

Mary: Holy Christ you scared the bejesus out of me!  What did I tell you about popping in unannounced like that?  I completely forgot what I was doing!  What do you want?

Jesus:  Sorry  Mom, I thought I heard you calling me.

Mary:  Well, you didn’t.  Go back to your father, it’s his week to have you.  Oh, but first, I need you to make some wine.  God I need a drink.  I tried to get some beer out of Amand, but it’s too late in the day to catch him sober.  Best I can hope is he doesn’t vomit on the guest of honor.

Jesus:  Who is it this time?

Mary:  Ahasuerus.

Jesus:  That guy?  I thought he was supposed to wander the earth until I returned.

Mary:  Well, there’s a chance he’s coming today, dead or not, unless it’s some sort of mistake.  He’s got some tunnel visioned meat head after him who’s getting ready to crack his head open with a biscuit tin, but that’s if he has the depth perception for it.  Personally I don’t want him here, I could do without yet another one of these enormous parties.  I’ve got Agatha and Patricia fighting over command of the kitchen and that sour bitch Martha complaining about both of them.  Look, here she comes.

Jesus:  Speak of the devil.

Martha:  Hey Jesus.  Mary, I could really use some help in there.  Why am I always the one stuck in the kitchen doing everything?  Patricia is beyond useless and I’d give my left breast to get Agatha to shut up about the Glencree dinner already.

Mary:  What are Margaret and Anne doing?  Aren’t they in there with you?

Martha:  Mina Purefoy went into labor and called on both of them.  They’ll be with her for days.

Mary:  Both?  Well get Aquinas then, where the hell is he?

Martha:  That fat ass?  He’s in the kitchen, but he’s eating everything in sight: loaves, hogs, stags’ horns, hawks, eyes on a dish, unicorns.  I have Wenburgh  in there resurrecting what she can, but I still have to cook it all over again.  And how do you resurrect a seed cake?

Jesus:  Yeah, that’s not easy.

Mary:  Well, Genevieve is working on the look of the room, I’ve got Fiacre on flowers and Cecilia is handling music.  You can have Amand, but he’s shitfaced drunk.

Martha:  Yeah, great.  Thanks.  Might as well give me a swarm of locusts or a rain of frogs for all the good he’ll do me.

Jesus:  Maybe we can delay Ahasaures’ arrival somehow?  You don’t want him here anyway, do you Mom?

Mary:  Oh Christ no.

Martha:  Really?  Oh that would be great.  I hear he’s bad news anyway.  Uses his wife to help him cheat at cards.  Son of a grifter too, who defrauded a bunch of people with unsecured loans before he killed himself.

Fiacre: [Carrying an enormous bunch of aconite]  Oooh, who are we talking about, Ahasuerus?  I heard that he won buckets of money on a horse race, and then refused to buy a round at the bar.  What a cheap ass.  Cute as a shit house rat too.

Mary:  All right, think.  What do we do to buy some time?

Jesus:  Who’s the one going to throw the biscuit tin?  We can mess with his aim.

Martha:  Good idea.  Maybe we can blind him?

Mary:  Well I can’t spare Genevieve, she’s up to her tits in work getting this place decorated.

Jesus:  What about Nicholas and Anthony?  Nick can steal his glasses and Anthony can hide them.

Mary:  That might do it.  Jesus, you find them and get them on it asap.  Martha, get your ass back into the kitchen.  I’ll see if your sister can help.

Martha:  Fat chance.

Jesus:  No. She doesn’t need to be here.

Martha:  See.

Mary:  And Jesus, get back to your father after you find Tony and Nick.  I can’t have him bitching to the lawyers again about me violating his visitation rights.  Costs me a fortune every time.

They like buttering themselves in and out.

How chimant in effect! Alla tingaling pealabells! So a many of churches one cannot pray own's prayers. 'Tis holyyear's day! Juin jully we may! Agithetta and Tranquilla shall demure umclaused but Marlborough-the-Less, Greatchrist and Holy Protector shall have open virgilances. 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.