Search Results for 'aged'

“Great idea, Natartium!” encouraged Lilac. “Blow those blubbit buggers away!”

One thing led to another, as it tends to do, while Sanso sat meditating on the enigma of The Dead Cow. Random and seemingly disjointed images flashed through his mind, not unlike a random google had been back in the old days, the first being an odd word, Kogaionon . Accessing further information, Sanso discovered that it was an ancient Transylvaniun skull. The link between the dead cow and the skull was clear ~ it was a bone sync, they both had bones, there was no denying it. Encouraged, Sanso continued to meditate.

After some images of a battle at sea , presumably Trafalgar, Sanso intuitively felt, he heard the words “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Wise words, he thought, and appropriate too. He popped these snippets into his indigo clue bag and continued to meditate. An image of a strange creature, half fish and half lion appeared next, a Merlion, which quickly morphed into an entertaining old movie playing across the screen of his minds eye, so to speak, in which someone who reminded him of Becky arrived in Paris during a rainstorm with just the clothes on her back ~ and interesting clothes they were, too! Sanso was glued to the screen, in a manner of speaking, and watched with amusement as a whole new wardrobe was delivered to the puzzled woman, followed by her mysterious benefactor: Georges.

Well, fancy Georges turning up again like that! Sanso was delighted. Perhaps Georges could shed some light on the mystery of the Dead Cow Blocking the Cave Entrance.

Sanso returned to his meditation and found himself eavesdropping on a conversation.

— Well, and Sanso, and Georges then, are they dead or what? How come Dory can see them?
— These ones are special, they have mastered the crossing of the Worlds, and can move through them. They move differently though. Sanso comes from a lineage of an ancient tribe of Zion, and had learn from them how to activate some portals, but only through the physical world of Dory, in their own time. He is not yet aware that he can also move through time as well, or even through other Worlds — worlds that he has no conception of yet.
Georges is more consummate in that art. Their meeting is not coincidental. You will see that.
— Thank you Grandad, it’s becoming a bit less confusing.
— Just flow with the story my little one, don’t hold on too much, or you will find it too difficult, and you will stop to find fun in it.

“Their meeting is not coincidental” Sanso repeated to himself, popping it into his clue bag. “Well, I don’t know about Meanings, but at least I have a new bag of clues now!”

Ann realized she was late for her Flimsy Unravelled Continuity Knowledge class. A couple of months late, in point of fact, as Worserversity classes had resumed two months previously.

“Where have you BEEN?” Lavender whispered as Ann slid as inconspicuously as possible into the seat beside her, while the professor at the front of the class was facing the blueboard.

“Do I know you?” asked Ann, with a puzzled expression. The girl beside her did look vaguely familiar.

“Oh how rude you are, Ann. Are you trying to be funny?”

“Oh no, not at all!” Ann’s eyes filled with tears.

Lavender frowned. It wasn’t like Ann to start blarting and blubbering in public. “What’s the matter?” she asked kindly.

“I’ve lost my memory!” exclaimed Ann. “I can’t remember a thing!”

“Oh, is that all,” replied Lavender dismissively. “I’d have thought you’d be used to that by now.”

“No, no, you don’t understand! I can’t remember anything at all now, it’s all gone, poof! Gone!” Ann wept and started to wring her hands.

“Well the first thing you need to do is stop that bloody snivelling and wipe your nose. Here” she said, handing Ann a tissue. “And the next thing you need to do is stop worrying about it, and just fake it until you get your memory back. Worrying about it won’t help, you must focus on the things you do remember.”

“But it’s all jumbled up and muddled in my head, I remember bits, you know? But I can’t fit them all together. I CAN’T FIT THEM ALL TOGETHER!”

“SHHH!” snapped Lavender. “Try not to draw any attention to yourself! I’ll help you, don’t worry.”

“You’re so kind” Ann smiled weakly. “What did you say your name was?”

“Lavender. My name is Lavender, and I’m going to help you remember. Just remember this, for now: what you can’t remember, don’t worry about, the important thing is to carry on. Just CARRY ON REGARDLESS, ok?”

“OK.” Ann sighed with releif. “What’s the Professor going on about?”

“The next assignment. We’re to read that cryptic old classic book Circle of Eights and try to decipher it.”

“Good greif! Nobody has ever managed to decipher that book!”

“You see?” said Lavender. “You can remember that! Well done, girl!”

“That perhaps is your task” Virginia was whispering in Ann’s ear”…to find the relation between things that seem incompatible yet have a mysterious affinity, to absorb every experience that comes your way fearlessly and saturate it completely so that your poem is a whole, not a fragment; to re-think human life into poetry and so give us tragedy again and comedy by means of characters not spun out at length in the novelist’s way…”

“Did you catch that, Walter? ‘Not spun out in the traditional lengthy continous way’ she’s saying.”

“…but condensed and synthesized in the poet’s way—that is what we look to you to do now.”

“I didn’t know you channeled Virginia Woolf, Ann,” replied Walter. “Doesn’t mean she is necesarily right, though, notwithstanding.”

“I didn’t say she was ‘absolutely right’, Walter. I’m just pointing out what’s right for me.”

Walter popped another anchovy stuffed olive into his mouth.

Yann had been working on a transcription all the afternoon, only accompanied by some mysterious musicians using pneumatic drills not so far outside.

Though he had managed to make it flow quite easily most of the time, the attention and the tension required to make it possible were now getting on his nerves… he had one more pass through the audio to do. He was wanting to do it now in order to get it over, but he realized he was pushing his energy…

A weird thought… he would enjoy diving into a pond full of little fishes that would massage his skin.

he chuckled thinking of that, imagining that the fishes were some kind of imagery of his energy field.

“I wonder how high
Is an ostriches eye…”

“Yes” replied Flipswitch, somewhat obscurely.

Ann was encouraged to continue, notwithstanding the enigmatic response from the professor.

“Ellen Melon went to town
To shop her felon hubby…”

“And he said, Lovely Jubbly!
I have no time
to make this rhyme,
I’m fishing with a zebra.”

Now, now Lavvie dear, you know I detest hugging. Grandma Heliotrope extricated herself from Lavender’s embrace. It is so bohemian. If you wish to show me affection then a smile will suffice. A cup of hot vegemite would not go amiss either. Then I have an important message from the Fellowship for you. Sadly, you really have managed to get yourself in a pickle this time my dear Lavvie.

“Just do it. Either just do it, or just make something up” she told herself. Again. “Either do it, or make it up, but stop thinking about it and talking about it.” Yoland sighed and turned on the radio. It was an old pink one, the kind with the dials that turn, and a pull out antenna. The antenna was a bit rusty at the bottom and didn’t rotate very well, which made it a bit tricky to get a clear reception without alot of preliminary juggling around and fidgeting. The dogs under her desk scratched themselves noisily as Yoland fiddled with the radio.

“In the backwater….”

“…yes you’ve got the Splain Channel loud and clear now all you have to do is focus on what the next word is and then write it down without thinking about the spelling, as you can see you are looking at the keybaord and tryping”, Yoland smiled at the typo, “the words that you are hearing without trying to anallzye them too much now. ok are you ready? We’re going to do some balloon exercise first to get the ball rolling, you see, there are many ways to blow up a balloon, and I’ll be the first to tell you you’re doing it wrong, I am kidding, of course.”

Yoland smiled, inching forward on the chair to accomodate the dog that had wormed his way round her back, wondering whether or not to move him.

“Your chair is fine the way it is, that’s a very common delaying tactic my freind, and one you are quite familiar with. Now, pay attention once again to simply the words that you hear as you are writing, watching the keys is rather mesmerising is it not….”

Yoland did a quick reality check and agreed that she was feeling a bit mesmerized, and realized that she possibly could feel considerably more mesmerized if she stopped doing reality checks.

“…and as you watch your fingers moving along in a rather detached way, you can detach your attachment to knowing what the next word might be and simply write what you hear; we are practicing the sliding away from the strict hold on trying to anticpate the net words and then you freeze the flow, it shouldn’t be tiring if you let go and relax a bit and simply allow your fingers to move of their own accord while you relax your shoulders…”

What a load of rubbish, thought Yoland, as she adjusted her chair, which had a habit of suddenly dropping down an inch, just enough to make it hard for her to reach the keyboard. Sighing, she wondered about ever getting a satisfactory answer to her Really Big Questions, the ones that nobody had answered so far. All she ever managed to tune into was rambling waffling inane….

“….you feel that your questions are so large that the capacity for distortion is huge, and you feel that other questions are easily answered via other routes and methods, and this is correct.”

Yoland wondered what THAT was supposed to mean.

“Ok we can forget questions then and I will tell you a story.”

Yoland relaxed. That sounded easier.

“Once upon a time there was a beer fisherman from the planet of Oxbloodshire.”

Oh here we go, she thought. What’s coming next…

“Whether or not you find clues in there is entirely your choice to create them, and all are equally valid. This is such a simple thing: that even the most seemingly miniscule sentences contain a myriad of potential diversions and convergences, routes, patterns, nets, from even the tiniest particle of an idea. All of them are boundlessly creative offshoots which become a particular stream, or string.”

Yoland found herself wondering where some of them started, and found she didn’t know where to start.

“With the question of syncronicities every point of them is the start point, the end point, the main point, the moot point, and the connecting links as well, as are all the others. When you get your ball of string in a tangle, it’s easier to throw it away and start a new one.”

Yoland was inclined to agree, but wondered if that sounded like sensible advice.

“Immediately the new one starts linking up all kinds of things in a new interconnected design pattern, and then when that gets in a right tangle, a fresh ball of string awaits; the tangled ones aren’t in a tangle at all when you’re not tangled up within it.”

Well, that certainly sounded resonable, Yoland had to admit.

“And why waste time with old tangles anyway when you can start afresh and just make something up, for no particular reason?”

Bloody good question, why not indeed? Yoland decided to start making things up there and then, and turned her computer off and went to pack her case.

Arthur Bickerswell-Snodley had been delighted to receive Ann’s invitation to stay with her at Little Big Hopeswell for the May Day weekend. He hadn’t seen Ann for 570 years, although they had remained in contact through the years, at first by old fashioned handwritten letters, and later by email —as well, of course, by telepathic means and out of body rendezvous— but this was to be an actual physical visit.

Arthur travelled by train to Chipping Else Hampton, where Jibblington, Ann’s chauffeur and general dogsbody, met him in the old jalopy, a rather grand old Silver Ghost Rolls.
Jibblington, it must be stated, worked part time for Ann, as did the enigmatic cleaning lady, Franlise — both were merely aspects of much larger personalities elsewhere engaged in myriad pursuits. Jibblington was a much of a mystery to Ann as dear Franlise was, not to mention old Godfrey Pig Littleton. Godrey’s flooh, in point of fact, had been the catalyst behind Ann’s invitation to Arthur.

While Jibblington and Bickerswell-Snodley glided along the country lanes, cushioned and buoyant in the silver car’s plush, if a trifle vulgar, crimson upholstery, Ann tutted in exasperation as Godfrey pestered her to finish her latest entry to the Play.

“I haven’t finished it yet, Godfrey, sheesh!” she exclaimed. “OK, OK!” Godfrey was rather rudely drumming his fingers on her desk. “Here, you can read what I’ve written so far.”