Having my way with Ulysses

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.

Talk away till you’re black in the face.

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.

You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.

IX. Do not write under the empire of emotion. Let it die, then invoke it later. If you are able then to revive it as it was, you have arrived in art, in the middle of the road. 12:07 am

Scene: [As McIntosh begins his return descent through the trap door, decreasing luminosity of ruby light burns inwardly.  The muses enter en masse from the grid.]

God [On the god mic]  And now, the 9 new muses present the 10 new commandments!

The Muse of Commerce:  [Stabbing herself through the heart] You shall have no other gods before me.

The Muse of Operatic Music: [Chained inside a water tank]  Create no images of any thing that is above, on, or beneath the earth. And nothing underwater.

The Muse of Amor:  [Drinking prussic acid]  If you do make images, you shall not worship them or buy them. You love only me. I get jealous and I’ll come after you, your children, your grandchildren, and their kids.

The Muse of Publicity: [Sucking on a pastille of aconite] My name is under copyright protection. Don’t invoke me.

The Muse of Manufacture: [Snorting arsenic] Only one day of rest, people, not two.

The Muse of Liberty of Speech: [Opening her veins]  Don’t talk back to your parents.

The Muse of Gastronomy: [Refusing food]  Don’t kill.

The Muse of Plural Voting:  [Casting herself under Jagannath]  If you’re married, don’t sleep around.

The Muse of Private Hygiene:  [Casting herself from the top of the Space Needle]  No five finger discounts.

The Muse of Seaside Concert Entertainments:  [Casting herself into a wine vat]  Don’t talk about people behind their backs.

The Muse of Painless Obstetrics:  [Asphyxiating herself in a gas oven]  Don’t lust after married people.

The Muse of Astronomy for the People:  [Hanging herself with stylish violet garters]  Just don’t even look at what other people have.

The Veiled Sibyl: [Leaping from Windows]  And don’t read fiction published on the internet; there’s no future in it.

The brave woman had manfully helped. She had.

Luster and odors, and blossoms and flowers, All that is richest in gardens and bowers, teach us morality, speak of mortality, whisper that life is a swift unreality.10:46 pm

Scene: [After a job quite happily and well done, those who have passed on, who have gone before are happy too as they gaze down and smile upon the touching scene.]

St. Anne: No matter how many times I see it, no matter how often I am summoned to the miracle that is birth, I can’t get past how disgusting it all is.

St. Margaret: Amen.  And this one was a bleeder.  Where’s the universal husband?

Father Cronion: I saw him just a bit ago.  Finishing up a meal of baby fingers it looked like.

St. Margaret:  Was he?  Lord I’m hungry.  We’ve been at this job for days.

St. Anne: Well isn’t it just like the Universal Husband to be absent just at the God! Oh God you’re here!

God: Did I miss it?

St. Anne: Not at all , not at all. Sir, to you my hand!  A fine job you did here, well done.

God: None of that, none of that.  It was down to the three of you the birth went off as well as it did.  Looks a mess though.

St. Anne:  We’ll send in a crew.  Clean it up.  Margaret?

St. Margaret: I’ll make a call. We’ve been a bit behind schedule

Father Cronion: Time did slip away from us. But we pulled it off in the end, didn’t we ladies.  With of course Your intervention.

God:  It was hard work all around, but my good and faithful servants, we soldiered it out and just look, we gave birth to a fine little mite!  But yes, send in a crew to clean her up.  And flowers.  Lets get her some flowers, give her something to think about.

An omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect imperturbability.

And if any of the ecclesiastical persons to whom I have referred, object that they find it derogatory to the honour of the God whom they worship, to awaken the minds of the young to the infinite wonder and majesty of the works which they proclaim His, and to teach them those laws which must needs be His laws, and therefore of all things needful for man to know -- I can only recommend them to be let blood and put on low diet.10:45 pm

God: What’s for dinner, I’m starved!

Jesus:  The fire’s barely lit, you’ll have to wait for the coals to heat up.

God: Well hurry up before the meat goes bad.

Jesus: There’s plenty of time.  Let’s see.  Blood victims, blood victims. Let. Me. See. There’s a woman just gave birth.

God: Newly emaciated? I’ll pass.

Jesus: A corpulent professional gentleman.

God:  Too much cholesterol.  I’m supposed to be following a more Mediterranean diet.  Anybody from Sicily or thereabouts?

Jesus: A jaundiced politician and a chlorotic nun.  Oh wait, a nice baby about eleven days.

God: Veal?  Yummy, but isn’t that still a bit too controversial?

Jesus: No no, not at all. It’s much more humanely raised these days.  Besides, food is food.  It’s a beastly thing and nothing else. It simply doesn’t matter.

God: [With pluterperfect imperturbability] Well that sounds good then.  Have got to eat something to save my life.

Jesus: [In a moderate and measured tone]  At the risk of your life.

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.

It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh.

The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night—nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience.10:41 pm

Scene: [In the house of Mary and Martha, Mary prepares for her wedding while Martha, ever the bridesmaid, ruminates under yards and yards of what do you call it gossamer veils bunched into the ideal form of a bridesmaid dress. O Martha, thou lost one, you’ll totally be able to wear it again (if you like looking like a fat red triangle!)]

Mary: I’m so so happy! I feel my soul soaring, wafting over regions of cycles of generations that have lived! Have you seen Lilith? She didn’t show up for her fitting.

Martha: [Muttering with the thunder of rebellion] That screech owl? She’s probably fucking Azazel in the bathroom. Wish I was with them.

Mary: O Martha! Martha Martha Martha! The wonder of it! The love I have for Jesus grows to heaven’s own what do you call it magnitude! I feel like I’m floating, flowing, simply swirling! Hey, do you think he’ll like these gold sandals with my dress?

Martha: Yeah. If he likes you to look like Hermes.

Mary: Oh Martha, everything will be so beautiful.  All the stars are aligned perfectly for us too!  He’s a Capricorn and I’m a Virgin.

Martha: [Moaning] Yeah right.

Mary: And I’m a Virgin, young dear and radiant, so we make such astrological sense together. We will have parallax minds and hearts!  Do you have to drink so much?  Such horrible gulpings, you’ll be drunk before the ceremony.  And I want everything to be perfect.  Together we will spin out our love into the infinite of space and of time! And just think Martha, our wedding will be the alpha and nothing, absolutely nothing will go wrong!

Martha: [Ominous, revengeful]  Nothing will go wrong. That’s a good idea, Mary.  For once you’re thinking with that horse’s head you’ve got wafting above all that simply swirling.  Nothing.  Nothing is everything, if done properly. Have you seen my phone?

The happy demise of all unhappy marriages.

Certaine Lordes came downe into thẽ nether houſe, and expreſſely declared cauſes, The marriage betwixt the King and the Lady Anne of Cleue, adiuged vnlawfull. for the which, the mariage was not to be taken lawfull: and in concluſion, the matter was by the conocation cleerely determined, that the King might lawfully marrie where he would, and ſo mighte ſhe. And thus were they clearely diuorſed, and by the Parliament it was enacted, that ſhee ſhoulde bee taken no more for Q. but called the Ladye Anne of Cleue10:10 pm

Scene: [In the house that Jack built, you know the one, where comes the fire that burns up the staff, that beat up the dog, that bit the cat, that ate up the goat — the one my father bought for two zuzim, in the house that Jack built.  In the house that Jack built (Conference Room C, Holy Mother Public Relations Inc.) Eve, Mary, Peter Piscator, Joseph the Joiner, and William Haley celebrate the sudden – at – the – moment – though – from – lingering – illness –  often – previously – expectorated – divorce of Adam and Eve.]

William Haley:  [Filling cups, some decline but Mary is front and center.  No surprise there.] Friends, let us raise a glass to this occasion of Eve and Adam’s postcreation.  Here’s to Eve who is like a flame of many colors of precious jewels, to Adam

Eve: Do we have to toast to Adam?

William Haley: To the vicar of Rome and of Bray, and to all our deceased friends who are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part.  And to

Mary: [Thirstily] Here here!

[All quaff from their mazers]

St Bernard:  The cake is delicious, Peter, did you make it yourself?

Peter Piscator:  No. No, no.  I got it for a song.  Just a penny pippin.

Joseph the Joiner:  Really?  It looks like it would have set you back at least $50.  Although I find it a bit subsubstantial.

Mary:  I find you a bit subsubstantial.

William Haley:  None of that Mary.  Tonight is for Eve’s happiness, which has wings and wheels.  Miseries are leaden legged and their whole employment is to clip the wings and to take off the wheels of our chariots.

Eve:  That’s beautiful, William.  Did you just come up with that now?

Peter Piscator:  No, no.  No.  That sounds like he stole it from what’s his name, that devoted rebel. You know, the enthusiastic hope-fostered visionary.

William Haley:  You are quite wrong sir, and you injure me in your so saying.  But I shall ignore you.  A blight never does good to a tree and if a blight kill not a tree but it still bear fruit let none say that the fruit was in consequence of the blight.

Mary:  Jeepers Chrysthanthemum.  Somebody cut that cake, will you.  Let’s get this party going.

Joseph the Joiner:  Let’s not Mary.  Last time you ended up in bed with a pigeon.

Mary:  That was a rumor started by Leo Taxil.  Please.  What’s it to you if I knew God or I didn’t know God or if I had a pregnancy without joy, a birth without pain, a body without blemish, a belly without bigness.  You want to know if I still have a hymen?  Come and look!

Joseph: With will will we withstand withsay.

Mary:  Oh for the love of Christmas somebody hand over the cake.

William Haley:  For as man liveth not by bread alone, Mary, I shall live although I should want bread.  Who is that hiding under that table?

St. Bernard:  Mary! Mary!  You are the mother of the word incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me

Mary:  St. Bernard.  He’s become the creature of my creature.

Eve:  Creepy.  Let’s get rid of him.

William Haley:  We can’t get rid of him.  Time’s ruins build eternity’s mansions.  He like us all is the word made flesh.  Get rid of the flesh and he’ll become word for all eternity connected to us all as by navelcord to navelcord entwining back to Eve.

Mary:  Well now I don’t want cake anymore.

Eve:  Who invited that guy?

What of those Godpossibled souls that we nightly impossibilise?

Then̄e quene Igrayne waxid dayly gretter & gretter so it befel after within half a yere as kyng Vther lay by his quene he asked hir by the feith she ouȝt to hym whos was the child within her body. Thēne she sore abasshed to yeue ansuer.10:05 pm

Scene: [An impromptu meeting at the shrine of St. Foutinus.  A statue of St. Foutinus stands erect in an impressively sized bathtub allowing a variety of palmers and bedesmen to pour their wine offerings over his genitalia while those unable to be delivered of their spleen of lustihead leave wax images of their withered members in hopes a redress God grant.  Doesn’t hurt to try.]

Averroes: [Holding a small lump of wax]  What are you doing here?

Moses Maimonides: [The wounds on his face infected in places, pus oozing past stitches] I’m not speaking to you yet.  Hlo Lilith.  Are you allowed to swim in there?

Lilith: [Naked.  Floating on her back in St. Foutinus’ tub.]  Not really.  But Foutinus and I have a little understanding, don’t we darling.

St. Foutinus:  Screech owl!  Night hag!

Lilith:  He’s a little stiff at the moment.  What are you doing here.  Oh, I see.  Sorry.  Averroes, didn’t you have enough wax?

Averroes:  Never you mind! You should get out of there, you could get pregnant that way.

Lilith:  Oh honey, if that’s what you think no wonder you can’t get it up.

Moses Maimonides:  Idiot.

Averroes:  I though you weren’t speaking to me.  Besides it’s true.  St. Ultan bathes in cold water on windy days, just to avoid it.  He’s got enough mouths to feed.

Moses Maimonides:  You just told Lilith she could get pregnant.  Dumbass.  Don’t you know who she is?  She is the inception of termination.  She is the eraser of mistakes.  She is the darkness at the end of the tunnel, the reliever of stomach bloat and frequent urination, the great evacuator.  She’s what’s between a woman and her doctor.  She takes care of it.  She is the saver of the mother’s life!  Might as well tell her the wind will get her pregnant.

Lilith:  Oh is Zephyrus here?  He blows both ways you know.

Moses Maimonides:  [After a pregnant pause] Does he?

Averroes:  [Dissembling, as his wont was] My apologies Lilith, but what are you doing bathing in there?  That vinegar cures barrenness!

St Foutinus:  Vampire! I smell your reek of moonflower!

Lilith:  Just making my monthly contribution, drum up a little business.  Benefits everybody you know.  She who stealeth from the poor, lendeth to the Lord.

Averroes:  Who was it who said that?

The surface of a downward tending lutulent reality.

As the year ended omens of impending misfortune were widely rumored -- unprecedentedly frequent lightning; a comet (atoned for by Nero, as usual, by aristocratic blood); two-headed offspring of men and beasts, thrown into the streets or discovered among the offerings to those deities to whom pregnant victims are sacrificed.10:00 pm

Scene:  [In the Deshil Holles Eamus theatre.  The stage is lit by one bright quickening wombfruit hanging expectantly from the downstage grid.  God has canceled a rehearsal for his one deity show, and drifts in a southerly direction]

God:  It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, Jesus, I just think that other circumstances being equal, the measure of how far forward humanity may have progressed has little to do with my command or promise or whatever you’d like to call it to Adam and Eve.

Jesus:  [Dancing clockwise around God]  Its’ just that, if we don’t include it, then we leave the second act undeveloped, and by the time you start act three if it be absent when fortunately present nevertheless, there would be no more odious offense at all not to can be!

God:  [Now dancing counterclockwise around Jesus]  Listen.  This is a sensitive topic for me.  I gave them eternity! They received eternity, they were God’s mortals, and what did they want?  Generation.  So fine.  Go forth.  Multiply.  Whatever.  And look what happened.  Barbarity.

Jesus:  [slowing] And hospitals.

God:  [quickening] More barbarity.

Jesus:  You really should do something to fix it, or at least address it.

God:  [Completing his ninth circumabigation of Jesus]  What can I do?  No.  If they don’t tremble lest what had been conceived in the past be parturient of an overly proliferant future; lest they not feel the pains of it have been begun already, then basta!  Enough!  They got themselves into trouble; they’re on their own.