Sly Uses

That which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be.

Within my memory is fixed -- and now moves me -- your dear, you kind paternal image when, in the world above, from time to time you taught me how man makes himself eternal; and while I live, my gratitude for that must always be apparent in my words. 2:16 pm

Scene: [Around the ideal form of a table sit Cassandra, Caesar, Thoth, Lizzie Twigg, Brunetto Latini, Mother Dana, and Little John. The theatre is darkened and an appropriate number of candles are burning with an inward light alongside several vestals’ lamps. Peatsmoke rises from the trapdoor along with wafts of incense made from opoponax and violets. Rest suddenly possesses the discrete vaulted cell, rest of warm and brooding air.]

Lizzie Twigg: Right. Thank you all for coming.

Little John: [Drunk, a little dumb] When are we getting paid?

Cassandra: Why is he here? His breath is harming the vibrations. And are those birthday candles?

Lizzie Twigg: Yes, they seemed appropriate. Don’t mind Little John, I found him vomiting in the greenroom and we needed one more body. Seven is the perfect number for a séance and I am determined to get it right this time. So let’s get started. Æ is loose among the living, he’s only just managed to go undetected, though just barely. So far he has appeared in Scylla and Charybdis, but there is no telling where he’ll turn up next so we have to get him back. Thoth, am I speaking too quickly?

Thoth: No, I’m recording it all perfectly, thanks. Learned from Chitragupta.

Cassandra: We won’t get him back.

Lizzie Twigg: He’s coming back. Now, be prepared for paradoxes. He is alive but he is also dead. His body has regenerated and though he appears normal, he is greatly decayed. But from looking he is what he was; his moles still appear in their usual places, but he is a bit soft. Also, his molecules are shuttling to and fro much too rapidly. Mother Dana, we will need your help to repair him when we get him back.

Cassandra: We won’t get him back.

Caesar: You said that already.

Mother Dana: I can weave and unweave bodies and reconcile him to himself, but I’m not sure what to do about sharpening him up.

Lizzie Twigg: Well, we’ll cross that Rubicon when we come to it. First, there can be no reconciliation if there has not been a sundering. Should be simple after that.

Caesar: [Simply] You think it’s so easy.

Cassandra: [Easily] Down, boy. Life was hard for us all. No need to get worked up about it now you’re dead.

Caesar: [Deadly] Vixen. Whore. Who listens to you? Your kind sickens me.

Little John: [vomits under the table] Shagart! Shagart!

Lizzie Twigg: Bear with me people. When Æ resurrected he took my heart with him.

Thoth: What did it weigh?

Lizzie Twigg: And I want him back. Besides, I may see myself as I sit here now, but by reflection from that which then I shall be. And that future which casts its shadow before includes Æ.

Cassandra: But this is eternity, honey, there is no future. The future is the conjoined twin sister of the past. That which was, is. That which may come to be, is. It’s an all-at-onceness, sweet girl, nothing more.

Lizzie Twigg: Exactly. And he’s not here. My is, is missing an aeon.

Cassandra: I warn you, Lizzie, bring him back and he will crave the world of the living. But you won’t bring him back.

Brunetto Latini: Dear Twigg, when he returns you must reassure him that he will live on in his work. Glory gives the wise man a second life; that is to say, after his death the reputation which remains of his good work makes it seem as if he were still alive.

Cassandra: It won’t be enough.

Lizzie Twigg: [Tossing off a glass of brandy neat] Please, let’s get started. Where there is reconciliation, there must have been first a sundering.

Caesar: You said that already.

Never speaking

March 30th • Lestrygonians

1:50 pm

[Scene: Immortal lovely Venus, Juno, and Galatea, shapely goddesses with curves the world admires, stand naked together. All to see. They don’t care what man looks.]

Venus: Mortal!

Galatea: Quick, be statues.

Juno: Stop breathing Galatea. Why can’t you stop breathing?

Galatea: Hey, that’s not my fault. Blame Venus.

Venus: Mortal coming! Whisper!_{Try to look like the three graces.}

[A man and ready on his way to the yard pauses, drops something, bends down to look. See if she. He stands and before walking on he makes swift passes in the air with juggling fingers. Obviously in the craft.]

Venus: _{Is he gone?}

Juno: Yes. Why do they always look?

Galatea: Attention defecate disorder. They think we have no.

Venus: I’d like to surprise the next one. Give myself to him, a man with manly conscious. Lay with men lovers occasionally.

Juno: I’ll bet you would.

Galatea: I prefer mortals. But they do reek of food. And shit. Disgusting things they eat too, how did they ever think to eat things like snails, or oysters? Unsightly things like clots of phlegm. Stuff them in one hole and out the other behind. Like stoking an engine.

Venus: Oysters have an effect on the sexual.

Galatea: But how would they know that? The first one to say yum, that looks like I could eat it. Imagine! Disgusting.

St. Leger: Waugh! Waugh! Iiiiiichaaaaaaach!

Juno: What is he saying?

Galatea: I think he is calling us whores again. Shut up you two dimensional freak! I can’t stand the sight of him hanging there day after day. Eyes gouged out, no lips.

Venus: No tongue, lucky for us. Can you imagine having no tongue. How would you?

Juno: Stop. Please no vivid accounts Venus, you’ll get Leger even more agitated and then there will be no end to the howling.

Venus: He needs to get laid. And not by me.

Galatea: Me either.

Juno: Oh Gods no.

Those literary ethereal people.

March 25th • Lestrygonians

Lizzie Twigg is fundementially theosophagusted over the whorse proceedings. 1:33 pm

[Scene: Around the ideal form of a table sit Æ., Lizzie Twigg, the Reverend Dr. Salmon, Cassandra, and a Wizard. The stage is darkly lit and the theatre is neither over heated nor chilly but at a comfortable temperature as typically a séance releases an unusual amount of magnetism, thus the room generally becomes warmer than ordinary. The shades of the living like good ventilation too, so keep that in mind. On a side table a buffet brunch waits congealing for any hungry living soul which may come. Today’s menu includes nut steak, weggebobbles cooked in soda, fruit, two headed octopus, eyes of cow, and poached eyes on ghost.]

Æ: Those cow eyes are following me everywhere I go. Right. Let’s get started, shall we. Five of us today, not an ideal number. I would have prefered seven or something occult like 13, more symbolic.

Rev. Dr. Salmon: Take yourself in hand, Æ, you can’t have everything. Am I right Miss Twigg?

Lizzie Twigg: Not saying a word. Just taking it all in.

Cassandra: It is easier with one medium but we appear to have two. Well, as long as he remembers who is running the show, we can’t have the energies dividing. Now, the purpose of today’s séance is to attract a living spirit Æ might possess long enough for his astral body to re-enter the physical world.

Wizard: Metempsychosis?

Æ: No, resurrection. I’ll be needing my body which I understand will regenerate around me.

Rev. Dr. Salmon: Hold on a minute. That body was tinned long ago, you’ll smell like a bad egg, you can’t put an egg back into the shell, the genie is not going to fit back into the bottle, once you get it out it’s hard to get it back in.

Cassandra: Please, too many images scrambled. Let’s keep clear, yes?

Æ: My vegetative body will be attracted by my active astral body and through the vibration of molecules the phenomena of density and apparent weight will collect particles together along with an unseen mass of electrical and magnetic matter, and from that my physical body will form within the living world. Easy. Scientific.

Lizzie Twigg: I answered the wrong ad. I could have picked the other gentleman who wanted aid in literary work. Or even the riding companion one. That sounds pretty good now. I could use a good belt of booze.

Æ: Shall we venture now into the untrodden woods to carve the future ways?

Wizard: Æ, Æ beware of the day! For dark and despairing, my sight I may seal, but man cannot cover what God would reveal: ‘Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, and coming events cast their shadow before.

Lizzie Twigg: [Agitated, her stockings loose over her ankles. I detest that. Tasteless.] Yes! Remember, time put by a myriad fates that her day might dawn in glory; death made wide a million gates so to close her tragic story. I took it all in. Didn’t you pay attention to your own words? Why go back? Here, there, eternity, temporality. What difference does it make to us? We have left the day to day.

Rev. Dr. Salmon: I say, it is feeling quite close in here.

Æ: We are doing this. I want to do this. I’ll get a different séance circle, but I am going back.

Lizzie Twigg: This isn’t what you thought it would be, is it Æ? There is nothing dreamy here, or cloudy, or symbolistic. You wanted the light of lights. You still do. You miss wanting what you didn’t get. So you retreat back into wanting. You want to be the head upon which the ends of the world have forgotten to come.

Cassandra: Please, you are disturbing the vibrations. Let us join hands and begin.

Lizzie Twigg: Fine. But why anybody would want to entrap themselves into the present moment amongst the unenlightened. This will never work.

Cassandra: Believe me, we will channel the living and Æ will go back.

Wizard: Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale.

Cassandra: Please. You don’t believe me? Tell me something I haven’t heard before. Ok. Moving on. We call on the living spirit of the one who has been hovering near. I feel you. I know you are here. Make a sign to us. One click for yes and two clicks for no.

Æ: Anything?

Cassandra: I heard something but it was more a mouse than a click.

Wizard: The war drum is muffled.

Cassandra: I call upon you, you know who you are, to draw near. Lean in honey, we can hear you breathing.

Lizzie Twigg: Look at Æ!

Wizard: Oh! mercy dispel yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell! Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs, and his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.

Cassandra: Oh holy Zeus I didn’t believe myself this time but look! Æ? Can you hear us Æ?

Æ: Click.

Lizzie Twigg: Where did he go? Oh Jesus Fucking Christ, I swear to stage manager, nothing good can come from this.

God: [from the booth on the god mic] Ok hold. Jesus, what in my name is going on down there? Where is Æ?

Jesus: I’m not sure. He’s gone. I think they resurrected him.

God: He can’t be resurrected. This is supposed to be a dress rehearsal, and people please stay on script and stick to the blocking. The light cues were a mess toward the end of that. Jesus, get Æ back and let’s go again from the top.

Jesus: I can’t get him back, he’s been resurrected. Like Lazarus, remember?

God: [On the god mic] How can I forget that debacle? Can still smell his stench.

Rev. Dr. Salmon: How was I? I felt a little off.

Cassandra: You were very convincing, believe me.

Rev. Dr. Salmon: I didn’t get to say my speech. The dreamy cloudy gull, waves o’er the waters dull.

Jesus: Um, God? Now that Æ is loose in the world, well, that’s going to throw a wrench into Scylla and Charybdis.

God: [on the god mic] Not our problem. Jesus Christ where’s the holy spirit? Why we are going with a director we can’t keep track of, only I know. Well, we don’t have time for this. Let’s recast Æ and move on. Is Arius busy? Did he get over his, well, issue? Maybe call his agent. Let it be done. Don’t forget we have casting for Circe coming up and tech for that will be a nightmare.

Wheels within wheels

March 23rd • Lestrygonians

pigeony linguish 1:26 pm

[Scene: Percy Apjohn (killed in action) and Pen …? Pen something. Of course it’s years ago. Percy Apjohn and Pen Something recent graduates of metempsychosis, have taken a nice supper of human leavings and are now engaged in a little after meal frolic. Must be thrilling from the air.]

Pen Something: Who will we do it on? I pick the fellow in black.

Percy Apjohn: Hold on, I think I knew that one. What was his name? Hard to remember anything after metemwhatever.

Pen Something: Really have to squint to see him. Yeah. I think I knew his wife.

Percy Apjohn: Mack something. We called him Mackerel. Mmm, could go for one of those.

Pen Something: Well, ready for the attack. You?

Percy Apjohn: Here goes. Here’s good luck!

They like buttering themselves in and out.

March 19th • Lestrygonians

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.

Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself?

March 12th • Aeolus

12:46 pm

[Scene: Atop Mount Pisgah in Madaba, Jordan, two men gaze to the west and the southwest and reminisce.]

Manetho: This view transfigures the soul. Do you have a light?

Moses: Use the bush. Yes, soultransfiguring. I never lived there you know. I came this close.

Manetho: Frustrating.

Moses: Yup.

Manetho: [bends over the flames, his unglazed linen collar appears behind his bent head soiled by his withering hair. He rises and the men smoke together, their smokes ascending in frail stalks that flower with their speech] Handy, that. Yes, so close. And for what dear Moses? Why did you Jews not accept our culture, our religion, our language. We were the greatest, the biggest, the baddest of them all. What were you? Not much. No wealth, no country, no nothing. Primitives. Babies. We had ages of history, polity, priesthoods, literature. It boggles, your choice, it boggles the mind.

Moses: I died here. No I didn’t enter the land I was promised. I died instead, a sudden-at-the-moment-though-from-lingering-illness-often-previously-expectorated-demise.

Manetho: And with a great future behind you. You must feel such regret. All this way, intoxicated by an obscure idol. And just one, imagine! We had Isis! We had Ammon Ra! Not to mention Osiris, Horus, Anubis, Seth, Nut, Thoth. I could go on. As above so below. How can you Jews create a civilization with just one deity? And we had more. We were strong with armies and with ships. We had trade. You were weak, plagued with daylabourers. The world trembled at our name; they heard your name and said who?

Moses: And then what? As much as you rose you were destroyed, over and again. You rose and you decayed. We could have stayed and bowed our will and our spirit, and we could have prayed to your armies and deities. Yes we might have stayed by the fleshpots tasting the salt bread. And then? And then?

Manetho: [belches] Then assimilation into Egyptian life. You realize that even those things which are subject to decay are good. Nothing can be corrupted if it were not in some way good. And yet that which is corrupt is still good, for if a thing were deprived of all good, it would not exist at all.

Moses: Ah, curse you! That’s Saint Augustine. And he is talking about the creations of the obscure idol we chose instead of your life, your will. And that God of obscurity, that soultransfiguring God led us in a pillar of smoke, like these we create together, but singular and beautiful, swirling and undulating shapeless shapes. We followed that pillar of cloud by day and left our house of bondage. I spoke with the ineffable. Have you any idea of that? The eternal spoke to me on mountaintops. On this one, here. This very place.

Manetho: You Jews became outlaws.

Moses: We were given the law, and we shine even now with the light of inspiration. Had we stayed we would have been enslaved. You did us evil, you Egyptians, and you tortured us, saddling us with punishing work. Our God, the Pure One who dwells on high, raised up a community, a people beyond counting. And let me ask you this, Manetho, whose name is more remembered: mine, or any in your lists of kings?

Manetho: Ok. Ok. Next year in Jerusalem.

Moses: You’d better believe it.

Manetho: I do take exception to your last point. What has ever been greater than Egyptian civilization or lasted so long? And what people today are so kind, so beautiful. But Moses, remember please, all things that rise must fall and then must rise and then must fall and then rise again and fall again. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today. We all have our day.

Moses: We all have our day.

His blood wooed by grace of language and gesture

March 10th • Aeolus

For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress. Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace. And all must love the human form, In heathen, turk or jew; Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell There God is dwelling too. 12:40 pm

[Scene: A courtroom in Denmark ornately furnished and decorated with four stone effigies in frozen music, the human forms of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love. Mercy has a heart carved on her sleeve, Pity a human face, Love the human form divine, and Peace is wearing a strapless black velvet Atelier Versace gown worthy of the red carpet with Neil Lane jewels and a Jaime Mascaro clutch. We approve of the two diamond clips arranged on a draped section but Peace looks like the dress of unfortunate fabric choice is wearing her, and that leg jutting out unnaturally gives the effect of one trying too hard.]

Judge Seymour Bushe: Will council for the prosecution please approach the bench.

Moses: Your Honor?

Judge Seymour Bushe: I’ve had enough of you dropping the ball. I must repeat, that we do not wish to hear about anything soultransfigured or soultransfiguring or any other bloody thing that might become of the soul. Stick with the law, the lex talionis if you must, but be aware that the defense is using the law of evidence. And he has balls of stone. Call the damn witness and let’s get on with it.

Moses: Your honor, I believe the ball dropped five minutes ago. I call King Hamlet of Denmark.

Demosthenes: Objection. King Hamlet of Denmark is dead.

Moses: He is a ghost, your honor, and though he comes in a questionable shape, he has full use of his voice and it is imperative to the proof of King Claudius’ guilt that we lend a serious hearing to what he shall unfold.

Judge Seymour Bushe: Proceed.

Moses: Your Majesty, you deserve to live, deserve to live. Please tell the court how King Claudius achieved your murder.

Demosthenes: Objection, your Honor, the question assumes facts not in evidence.

Judge Seymour Bushe: Sustained. Moses, you must prove King Claudius’ guilt, not assume it.

Moses: Your Majesty, please explain to the court your experience of the night you died.

The Ghost of King Hamlet of Denmark: List, list, O List! Murder! Murder most foul, strange and unnatural. That incestuous, that adulterate beast, with Witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts that have the power so to seduce! — won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.

Demosthenes: Objection, your Honor. There is no evidence before this court that the witness knew of any adultery on the part of King Claudius or the Queen during his lifetime. As there is no evidence that the witness had no personal knowledge of what he testifies to know, I move to have his words stricken.

Judge Seymour Bushe: Sustained. Mr. Ghost, please keep to the facts as you experienced them.

The Ghost of King Hamlet of Denmark: Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, my custom always of the afternoon, upon my secure hour Claudius stole with juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, and in the porches of mine ear did pour the leprous distilment.

Demosthenes: Objection, your Honor, that’s hearsay, which I move be stricken from the record. If the witness was asleep, he could have no personal knowledge of anything occurring in his orchard.

Moses: Your Honor, as a ghost His Highness is in a unique position to act as witness to his own murder. He exists in eternity now and thus partakes of all eternity. He has access to the holy book into which all things are inscribed! I pray thee, do not blot his words out of thy book now being written.

Demosthenes: [after a pause, a false lull, quite ordinary really] If I may, your Honor, it is painful for children to be orphaned of a father. Yes, but it is a beautiful thing to be the heir of a father’s fame. And of this pain we shall find the deity to be the cause, to whom mortal creatures must yield. As such I move the court to dismiss the complaint in this action for the reason that the complaint fails to allege sufficient facts which, if true, establish probable cause to believe that King Claudius committed any offense alleged by the prosecution.

Judge Seymour Bushe: [takes out his matchbook thoughtfully and lights a cigar] As I must determine the whole aftercourse of the defendant’s life, the court will recess to consider the motion. Good Christ who do I have to fuck to get a better gig? I could have left this job long ago, only for . . . but no matter. Ah well, do not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

In the Star and Garter: reflect, ponder, excogitate, reply.

March 5th • Aeolus

Kyrie eleison 12:26 pm

Virgin Mary: (On the God mic) Welcome everybody, thank you all so much for coming today to the Star and Garter ballroom here in the Empyrean building. We’ll get started in a few moments and as you can see we don’t have an equal number of men and women, so if you find yourself waiting, please form an orderly cue here near the front and we will direct you where to go next. Please write your names clearly on your name tags and make sure they are visible. You will only have eight minutes for each date so please make your time count. No time to be shy folks, really put yourselves out there. So. Right. We’d like to ask the women to choose a table, whichever one you want, it doesn’t matter, and the men will rotate from table to table when you hear the bell. Please do not linger as there will be time during the mixer for follow-up conversations and you will not want to take time away from your next date. Are you ready? (off mic) Joseph, did you prep Helen?

Joseph: As well as I could boss, but she doesn’t seem cooperative.

Virgin Mary: Stuck up bitch. Nothing but problems since we took her on. Well, we need to find her a man she won’t want to run away from, even if she didn’t actually run in the first place. And that blind date with Adam Kadmon went nowhere.

Joseph: Not each other’s type.

Virgin Mary: No. He wants more of a viper. Ok here we go. (On the God mic). All right everybody, relax, have a good time, and remember with only eight minutes there is no reason to have anything but a fun conversation. Stay on neutral subjects, in other words don’t talk about sex, and remember that our policy is no sex before monogamy. Ok, Bell!

Bell: Heigho! Heigho!

Garrett Deasy: Hello pretty lady.

Helen: Hi. So, what should we?

Garret Deasy: I brought a writing sample in case you.

Helen: You want me to read this?

Garret Deasy: Maybe later.

Helen: There’s a bit torn off.

Garret Deasy: Metaphor for my life, I’ve been a bit short taken.

Helen: So have you ever been married?

Garret Deasy: Still am. The bloodiest old tartar God ever made. She once threw soup in a waiter’s face.

Helen: Great. What’s that on your face?

Garret Deasy: Foot and mouth disease.

Bell: Heigho! Heigho!

Helen: Thank God. Hi.

Vampire: Hello. You are a creature beautiful. Want to put your mouth to my mouth?

Helen: Not really. Sheesh, age preceeds creepy. Let’s not talk.

Vampire: Yes, yes. Your foot, allow me to put it in my mouth. You look like the sort who could bring sin into the world, ships to the seas. Um. I don’t want to be rude or anything, but aren’t you going to say anything?

Helen: Nope.

Bell: Heigho! Heigho!

Helen: This is already looking like a lost cause. Hello, I’m Helen.

Napoleon: Napoleon.

Helen: Well, when you sit down you pretty much disappear, don’t you. So what do you do?

Napoleon: I am an Emperor, undefeated. You?

Helen: Kyrios! Lord! That is impressive at least. I think the last guy was a cloacamaker, woof he stank!

Napoleon: Nature has endowed me with a virile and decisive character.

Helen: And your other, endowments? Judging from your stature I think it fair of me to wonder.

Napoleon: Hasn’t it been eight minutes yet?

Bell: Heigho! Heigho!

Helen: Oh lord what now. Hi I’m Helen. What’s wrong with your head?

Pyrrhus: (sniffing, wearing a bandage wrapped around his head with dried blood showing through the gauze) Got brained with a brick. Saw it coming too.

Helen: You ok?

Pyrrhus: Yes. No. I’m sorry, I’m not very good at this. I’m just feeling so, I don’t know, so overwhelmed. I think it is some sort of existential crisis.

Helen: Oh honey, please don’t worry about it. You’ll be ok.

Pyrrhus: You are so sweet. I guess I was a bit misled in the past and now I feel like everything is a battle and I always fall.

Helen: Oh poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!

Pyrrhus: My analyst says I shouldn’t just dump this all out when I first meet somebody, I should highlight the radiance of my intellect, the language of my mind. But I don’t know. I think I’m a lost cause.

Helen: Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus, I am loyal to lost causes! I’ve never been loyal to the successful. Success for me is the death of the intellect and the imagination.

Pyrrhus: You mean it?

Helen: I do.

Pyrrhus: You are a rose! A rose of Castile!

Helen: Of where?

Bell: Liliata rutilantium. Turma circumdet, Iubilantium te virginum.

Virgin Mary: [On the God mic] Ok, nice speed dating people! We’ll take a short break, have a brief mixer, then do another round. That was great everybody! I feel so optimistic for all of you!

Joseph: You do?

Virgin Mary: Oh lord no. This was supposed to help Helen’s image and who does she like? Boohoo Pyrrhus. Well, time is money. Let’s get on with this travesty and have done with it. These are disappointed people, but we mustn’t make a mockery of their disappointment. And Joseph?

Joseph: Yes Holy Mother?

Virgin Mary: I am not your mother; I wish you wouldn’t call me that. Joseph, find Jesus. We’ll be needing lots more wine.

We mustn’t be led away by words, by sounds of words

March 4th • Aeolus

12:23 pm

[Scene: On a hill in the levant ages ago, two friends unaware they ought to be anything but, sit in a smoke filled tent contemplating the future.]

The Roman: Ah we are far from Rome. Imperial, imperious, imperative, imperium.

The Jew: Imperil, imperish, impermissible, impermanent. You Romans may think we are the fat in the fire but your civilization hasn’t got the chance of a snowball in hell.

The Roman: You don’t believe in hell. Here, throw some more of that on the fire, would you? Thanks.

The Jew: Vast, Vastative, Vatinian, Vile, Vility, Villian.

The Roman: Vassal, Vastate, Vaste, Vastity, Vasectomy.

The Jew: Breathe deeply. What do you see. Look there. Is it just the smoke or are you seeing it too?

The Roman: I see something. Wait, yes.

The Jew: Yes, it is more clear. I feel giddy, lightheaded, but yes I can see. This is the place. We have found it. It is meet to be here. This is the place to settle and build a future. From here we shall multiply and prosper. Let us build an altar to Jehovah.

The Roman: Yes. Yes. It is meet to be here. Let us construct a toilet. And let the plumbing of this great work signal to the world the grandeur that is eternal Rome.

The Jew: Weren’t you going to take that job, that position in Judea, Pontius? Prelate was it?

The Roman: It would be such a bore; nothing interesting ever happens in Judea. But they do have toilets. Perhaps I will. Let’s breathe some more of this smoke, I’m feeling peaceful.

Beneath a reign of uncouth stars.

February 22nd • Proteus

11:46 am

[A slight whispering wind blows through the theatre and we hear the sound of an incoming tide. The veil of the temple rises revealing a circle of people lying on their backs staring up at the sky.]

Cassiopeia: [gazing at herself in a hand mirror] The stars are beautiful at this time of day, don’t you agree? Though not as beautiful as me of course.

Pan: Of course, baby. Now come over here and sit on my lap. My energies are rising.

Cassiopeia: None so beautiful as me.

Shadow: [rolling over, bending himself toward the rocks, turning his back to the sun] Darkly they are there behind this light. Darkness shining in the brightness.

Proteus: [in the shape of a long stick, curved at the end, no knots] We are here to look at birds people, not stars. Now pay attention before I change my mind, I’m getting tired. Did you hear that rook? That means it will soon rain.

Pan: This is Seattle, everything means it will soon rain. Look, a dog! It will soon rain. Look, a wave! It will soon rain. Please. So, Virgin, your hand is so gentle. Love the longlashed eyes, baby, want to trust me a little?

Cassiopeia: She, she, she. What is she to compare to me?

That Virgin: [pointing] That cloud looks like a book. See it up there? Oooh, now it looks like letters. U. P.

Pan: [visibly aroused] A lady of letters! I am lonely here, touch me.

Proteus: [in the form of our souls] Goodness! Look at that manshape ineluctable! I’ll sit on your lap. Cling to you a little, a woman to her lover.

Pan: [in his flutiest voice] The more the more!

Shadow: [flatly] Come back to us Proteus, I see shadows of birds on a white field.

Pan: [Flutier] Don’t listen Proteus, come, cling, then come. Now where the blue hell are you?

Proteus: [In the form of a mirror] That’s better. Feel a bit shamewounded. Now where were we. Oh yes. Those birds, Shadow, are magpies and there are one, two, seven of them. A secret. And my stars, look, an owl! And it is nearly noon, no wonder I am so tired. Let’s see, owl, a revelation at night. Also a bitter mystery. A mysterious secret will be revealed at night. Also, it will soon rain.

Cassiopeia: [rubbing lotions into her skin] Proteus, you’ve never looked so flat, yet in you I see distance. Near, far, east, me. Oh there I am. Me. Oh Proteus, you are so beautiful. Oh, I feel something! What is that word known to all men?

That Virgin: What is that word? I want to feel it too. Point over here Proteus, show me what Cassiopeia sees.

Proteus: [In the form of Berkeley] You see nothing. You think you see. Everything is flat, and you only think you see distances. Those stars unbeheld behind this light? Their distance is only an element of your idea of them.

Pan: [masturbating gently] I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.

Shadow: [in the form of my form] Not for all the word.