STEPHEN DEDALUS LIES.

A swarm of thoughts swirls upward from the catacombed crypt of his subconscious shedding their shrouds and shrieking the banshee's swoon son. Enormous piles of intricate foldings in the drapery droppings. A boggled bilious inevriated brain. It lies on an inlaid marble floor.

"Celtic stone, like milk poured out on glittering black. Fresh green from Carystus, adn many-colored Phrygian stone of rose and white, or deep red and silver; porphyry powdered with bright spots; emerald-green from Sparta, and Iassian marble with waving veins of blood-red and white; streaked red stone from Lydia, and crocus-colored marble from the hills of the Moors; the precious onyx like as if gold were shining through it, and the fresh green fromt he land of Atrax, in mingled contrast of shining surfaces."

Hagia Sophia. Holy Wisdom. Chokmah: Crown of Creation.

4. Sign of the Cross. The Hanged Man. Kether, Tipareth, Yesod.

--My Father can beat your Father at Dominoes.

Dominicans. Domini canes. God's dogs. An Inquisition.

--Back to facts. I'm Hungary. Buddhapest.

--Heel!

--Heil!

--Ho! Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I smells de bloods of an Irishman.

--Steeeeeeeeeeeeevieeeeeeeee.

--No! Away! Something behind me!

--Steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Paranausea. A comet of vomit erutps. Like my sisters' oatmeal facial. Oh, moment of existence.

Still in sleep and back to Byzantium, there is a noise in the narthex. Out of the artery and into the atrium. There are vendors in the square.

--Cigarettes! Ice cream! Figurines of the Virgin Mary! Condoms!

Between the buttresses and toward the trumeau. Aloft on the tympanum the Nazz in a majestic mandorla. Christ's Second Coming from Cosmic Cunning. Apocalyptic animals around the archivolts: Aquarius, Scorpio, Taurus, Leo.

--Thtephe, come thee.

The eyes of Herod. The woman in the moon. Rouged Ashtaroth, priest of Astarte. Blood, lust and light. Look into the mirror. 666. The Wildebeest. K.M.R.I.A. Plush purple pantaloons. Violet velvet. An orchid in the lapel and all is -- well, -- such hell in gaol. There's perverts there.

--So what if you weren't born a woman. You can still create. That's art. Eternally echoing and affirming the spirit of woman. Go forth and multiply. Come first to divide and conquer. Exile. Me your Mentor.

--I will not serve. No Paulus I.

--Nor will I. Come here, sweet boy. Look out for Number 1, our lowest common denominator. Your hat is just gorgeous, doll!

--No tragedies with Greek implications for me.

Pushing past the pansy and his unspeakable sissy sensuality; out of the grotideous groin vault; the nave is the next navigation. Approaching is Anthony, Saint of Lost Articles.

--You, Dedalus. I've been looking for you. Here, your marbles.

--Give them to Lord Elgin, sneers Stephen.

--And wait, your Faith.

--Begone!

Striding across the serpentine swirls of myriad mosaics meeting Moses behorned holding the Holy Diptych, his coat embroadered IHVH, I Have Venereal Hives.

--How's your wife? asks Stephe.

From the prtal, a faint lavender lisp lingers lilting:

"The dead are dancing with the dead,

The dust is whirling with the dust."

--"Why, whata msot particularly pure young man this pure young man must be!" purrs Patience.

Taking a twist, he turns toward Tim Finnegan, Mason, off the wall. he hoists a bundle o0f bricks ahigh, tethers tauth the line on a pylon's pike, but the knot unravels and is loos. He lunges and catches the cable but is jerked from gravity by a weight greater than his own. The Law of Diminished Returns. Careening fromthe caelu, the basket of bricks bashes him on its way to the earth. Pulled to the pulley, his phalanges are frangled by wheels within wheels. Its load dropped, the basket is borne upwards bashing again the falling Finnegan after his flight into the firmament. Down on the ground, and echo resounds, and he finally lets loose the rope. the basket is brought to the center of his thought -- too late. It comes down crahing into his craniu. He lies. To sleep perchance to dream. Fourteen angels sand around him, and it ain't no social call.

--Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously. For Moses, he knowses his toeses aren't roses, although he supposes them so to be. And where's his wife?

--Calling Number Sever! Mary with here lemniscate placates the feline father.

Enter Millicent of Mullingar.

--Oh, thrill me, silly Milly, you really kill me! A gypsy gibes and gyres.

Maria Goretti intervenes. Salamanders swarm in the sanctity of her seeping sanguine slashes, and she sings:

My mother sent me to the store;

She told me not to stay.

I fell in love with a cute little boy,

And I couldn't get away.

First he gave me peaches;

Next he gave me pears;

Then he gave me twenty-five cents,

And he kicked me up the stairs.

I gave him back his peaches;

I gave him back his pears;

I gave him back his twenty-five cents,

And I kicked him down the stairs.

Atlantids engaged and caryatids with luxuriant Lindesfarne lacings in gilt and semiprecious stone carved into the capitals of the collonade of pophory pillars, variously veined.

A woman approaches holding a saucer of spheres. Her face is covered by a silver mask. The flesh taken away from behind.

--So you're the boy who broke his glasses, she says.

--But I didn't mean to do it. Honestly, I didn't.

--Here, try these, she soothes and extends the saucer to him.

--Oefs?

--No. Eyes, she says. This side of the nave is dedicated to me, the patron saint of visin. Take four.

--Ah, says Stephen. The Aisle of Lucy.

--Yes, Ricky Ricardo on congas.

--Arg, groans Stephen.

Again the ferrule on the floor. A scraping screech sparking across the swirling snow and sable of Stephen's soul.

--Steeeeeeeeeeeeevieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Atziluth.

Assiah.

Ash.

Agenbite of inwit.

Angst!

Stephen sidles to an imitation altar in an artificial alcove. A synapse. He thirsts. He takes the cup of wyrd to drink, and out comes a fish with his father's face florescently flashing. Tetzirah.

--Ecod! Dada! Blahblahwoofwoof.

Metamorphosis. Metempsychosis. The fish becomes Bloom.

--Holy Mackerel!

Stephen is pummelled by a potato.

--Holy Moly!

Stephen drops the cup, and the fish flies away. He follows. They circle the cleristory twice and head upwards to the top of the Superdome. Soaring through the streams of celestial brilliance, they pass through the oculus: the ortifice: the omphalos.

High in the slky, altitude is gained, and they catch the jetstream, which carries them over the continent. Auriga arrives; Waggoner's Star on its morning ride through the Milky Way. David's charioteet with his cherub cornet lets loose a looneytoon.

--Hey, it's Rudi Toot!

The fish follows.

Stephen soars on alone. Over Europe and its castles, cathedrals and prisons. Over England and its belfries, spires, and slums. In and out the chakras he goes. Seeking to forsake the sorrows of the soil, Stephen soars to the shining sun.

--You, I emulate. You, I admire. To you, I aspire. Hail lightbringing Lucifer! I will not serve!

Mocking, melting rays pierce his flesh and sear his skin. Rosy-fingered dawn grips his groin: "An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve."

--Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! It burns. Let up.

Let down. He falls thirty-two feet per second per second. The banshee's scream is heard again. Dedalus' sonic doom. He splashes into the putrid polution of Dublin Bay, the Chamber Pot of Commerce. On the shore, A.E. and the Order of the Golden Dawn invoke the yods of morn.

--Help! Help! I'm burning! I'm drowning!

Stephen Dedalus lies in a puddle of puke and urine on the floor.

Unhh. What's happened to me? Where am I? Like oatmeal on my face. Oh, these people's bed and sheets soaked. I've taken advantage of my asylum.

666.

Stephen gets up and surveys the scent. Ammonia stench of uria stings his nostrils as the gonococci grip his groin.

I've got to clean this up. Down to the kitchen for a towel.

A moist cool breeze and a faint glow ruffles the gauze of the curtains.

"And down the long and silent street,

The dawn, with silver-sandaled feet,

Crept like a frightened girl."

I wonder if they've all got it. Molly, and Milly and him, too. i know what he's done with my drawers. Have I infected a family?

Down the stairs to the kitchen, he haranged the whores and their disease.

--Curses! Hang them!

he mumbles, mutters and mopes under his breath. Agenbite of inwit. Orgyburn of insting. All from the harlet's house. And to think she wanted ten shillings the time I busted her lamp. Flatulate in old Bloom's face, not mine, floozy! You backbiting bitches!

--Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! Hotdam.

better not let Mulligan know about this, but he will because they're all together there at the hispital. I know his cracks: The Great Ortificer, Drippy Dick and all. How can I bear it? He'll call for a standing ovation. Uh. Him and his laughing gas!

I need that salve whatisit I saw it in a public urinal. No, a towel or something now. Into the kitchen, and I can find one. By the sink. No.

Drawers slide and slam.

What's this? Titbits? Strange thing in a woman's kitchen. Umm. Pages stuck together. Peter tracks. Spoor of the onehanded adulterer. Plays pocket pool on the strand, too. Narcissus or Goldmund?

Awww! To Blazes with it! I'll use the sheets. They've got to go, too. Guess I ought to burn them or something. Wonder if they'll smell it? Poldiy wouldn't notice it, but they will. How can i marry Milly now?

Up the stairs to the room above the kitchen he creeps.

Into the room and to the bed he goes and bundles up the dripping pile of sheets and smears the stench of stout and Bict's Cherry Wine, acroos the acrid alimentary rejects on the floor. Finally realizing he's failing in the task, he collapses to the floor in agenbite of inwit among the enormous piles of intricate foldings in the drapery droppings.

Why did I wet the bed? I've never done that before.

--Who made me?