if Calliope is immortality and replacing your eyeballs with pool balls is “fullbodied union” with immortality, then the pool balls are little bits of Calliope. (are they her eyeballs? hence the adult Calliope’s black eye sockets?) BUT

1. the pool balls are also pieces of the Skaia that collapsed into a black hole; is Calliope Skaia? (probably not too far-fetched) AND/OR, is Calliope every black hole? (what implications does it have that the entrance to Caliborn’s Dark Carnival is his own sister’s gaping maw? is this the fratriphagy that represents the alternate Calliope’s victorious predomination?)

2. the pool balls are also Caliborn’s seed. do the cherubs share the same genetic material because they’re the same person, or should the pool balls be seen more like the fruit of their union? all jokes about English acting the way he does out of a constant, inescapable randiness, the “enigmatic forces […] perme8ting all those endowed with immortality” are primarily associated with cherubs in the process of mating and laying. (does Caliborn accepting pieces of Calliope into his body in order to reach his final, sexually mature form have mpreg undertones? is English grotesquely pregnant with meaning […] all gestating at least 8 gooey octuplets thrashing around in an undulating belly full of mind slime?)