It tastes old, this wine. It tastes senescent. Like it’s the oldest wine that ever was. Like ashes. Like something burnt out, long ago.
It’s posthumous wine, for posthumous drinkers.
Last wine, from the last harvest. From the last vines. From the last vineyard.
Ingest the poison. Drink it more deeply than anyone. Drink it into your depths.
And then what?
I can taste ashes. I taste earth. Thick, heavy earth. With a side order of ashes.
There are only degrees of poison. And degrees of being poisoned. There are only varieties of lie. The lies we tell ourselves … The lies others tell us …
We wouldn’t know the truth. We wouldn’t be able to tell truth from lies. The truth would be entirely wasted on us, we who live by lies. Who have been fed nothing but lies.
We know the truth. We have an instinct. That’s what Livia always said.
Livia wanted to invert things. She wanted to exacerbate the tensions. To deepen them.
Strife – that’s what she wanted. A rift. An eruption. A violence. That would reveal everything anew …
Livia’s lightning. What so great about revealing things? What about changing them?
Communion’s about sharing a cup, sharing fate. Between equals. Between those brought together at the heart of empire. Around a table. And at that table, salvation is eaten and drunk, not just believed.
It sounds very cool.
Eaten and drunk. Did anyone bring any snacks?
What’s the final disgust lesson? What’s the final chapter in the book of disgust?
We have to find disgust itself disgusting – that’s what I think. Climb up the ladder of disgust and then throw it away. Disgust at disgust: that’s the goal. Like a negation of negation.
And then what – do we like everything, all of a sudden?
It’s about reaching absolute disgust. Like disgust in itself, incomparable, nothing but itself.
What if … what if the thirteenth bottle stands in for all the poison in the world? What if it’s, like, distilled world. Concentrated world. The essence of the world. What the world is and is and is. The whole world concentrated into a single bottle.
The thirteenth bottle. It’ll be your test. You’ll have to convert it. Change it into something else.
And then what?
I don’t know. Get superpowers. Head out onto the astral plane and defeat the Bug in solitary combat.
Drink it down and maybe you’ll become the true Leader. The Master of Loathing. The Chief of Disgust. The emperor of Horror. The Deepest Gnostic.
The wine makes us taste poison. We taste the poison of everything.
So it’s everything we’re tasting? Everything as it really is. Behind the veil of maya.
We’re tasting the poison of the universe. We’re tasting the horror of everything.
The thirteenth bottle. Livia’s final lesson.
How do you know it’s the thirteenth bottle?
It’s got a big thirteen written across it.
We were supposed to drink all the wines in order?
Were we supposed to drink this bottle last, that’s all I know.
Last?
It’s the pinnacle. It’s the culmination of a whole eschatology of wine. It’s the wine all the others have been leading up to. That will make all of them make sense. We’ve been ascending a wine ladder, don’t you see?
Or descending it. It feels like we’ve been going down, down, down …
Maybe there’s been a method – of sorts.
A method in our drinking?
Thirteen bottles is the end of the course of anti-poison. It’s a cure. A cure in doses.
It really isn’t.
Maybe the thirteenth bottle turns lies into truth. Maybe it’s the messianic wine.
It really won’t be.
Come on then, say the famous words. Drink this in remembrance of me, and all that. That’s what Jesus said, isn’t it: drink this in memory of me?
Not in memory, in remembrance. Which means that when we drink, Jesus comes back. Jesus is there.
So when we drink this … piss, Livia is really here?
Livia’s here, taking the piss.
Drink this in remembrance of me – that’s what Jesus said isn’t it?
So we should drink this in remembrance of Livia. And we should be her disciples.
Fuck that.
And one day, we’ll sit under the fig trees, and the mountains will drip sweet wine … Is that what’s supposed to happen?
This is my blood, poured out for many – that’s what Jesus said. That’s what communion wine is. I’m already being poured as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. That’s what he said at the Last Supper.
And communion is about participation in the life of the vine. It’s not just about following Jesus, doing what he did, as though he were some famous Stoic philosopher or whatever. It’s about sharing his blood, his body – his life.
And sharing his death.
Listen to death-boy.
So it’s about dying to this world. But there’s another world. Jesus promises to drink wine again in the Kingdom, right?
So how do we get to the other world?
We have to be reborn.
I’m a long fucking way from being reborn.
That’s what I used to say.
Are we supposed to be pouring Livia out as a libation, or whatever?
A disgusting libation.
Are we meant to be sharing the disgusting blood of Livia? Actually, I’m not sure I want to be sharing the disgusting blood of Livia.
Jesus turned water into wine. But Livia turned wine into whatever this is.
Vinegar?
It’s worse than vinegar.
Notes of original sin. Of cosmic curse. Of general damnation. Notes of all the circles of Hell.
I think it’s actually bubbling. Or frothing …
With sheer satanism, I reckon.
Notes of rabid dog’s spittle. Notes of cancer – can you taste cancer? Well, this is what cancer would taste like. Notes of paedophilia, probably. Of Jimmy Saville. All the disgusting things.
Work in Progress 