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  • #3937
    F LoveF Love
    Participant

      Finnley, who you will surely recall had been on a brief excursion to Nowherehampton, wondered whether to ask what she had missed while away. She decided forlornly there was no point.

      It never makes any friggin’ sense.

      Sense was important to Finnley. Even if superficially a subject made no sense, she liked to believe there was an underlying meaning.

      That’s not true. What are you on about? Your brain is clearly addled. And possibly baduled as well.

      “Finnley! you are monopolising the thread again,” admonished Liz. “You are thinking too much and it is sabotaging the beautiful spontaneity of my story. Now, be a good dear and wipe that surly look off your face. You look so much prettier when you smile; you might even attract yourself a nice young man if you would make a bit more effort. Anyway, do cheer up—I want to hear about dear cousin Badul.”

      #3934
      ÉricÉric
      Keymaster

        “Why do you suffer pain? You have compressed yourself into a form and an identity, hence the suffering. You pursue spirituality from the same limited and conditioned standpoint and hence you cannot secure any foothold in these pursuits. In whatever subject you are absorbed, you deal with it from the standpoint of a personalized entity, and not as dynamic manifest consciousness…”

        “Hear that Liz’ ?” Godfrey beamed in delight “It was not Roberto or any bloody character, it was only your dynamic manifest consciousness!”
        “In other words, are you saying it was all my fault again, cheeky blithering fool?” Liz’ couldn’t contain her petulance.

        “I think you’re missing the point, dear,… but yes.” He added after a dramatic pause “or you can blame it on Cynchtia Dipity, or her twin sister, Serene.”

        #3931
        TracyTracy
        Participant

          Prune turned to look back at Quentin as she made her way home. He’d have been better off waiting for a new chapter in the refugee story, instead of blundering into that limbo with that daft smile on his face. What a silly monkey, she thought, scratching under her arms and making chimpanzee noises at the retreating figure. Look at him, scampering along gazing up into the treetops, instead of watching his step.

          A deep barking laugh behind her made her freeze, with her arms akimbo like teapot handles. Slowly she turned around, wondering why she hadn’t noticed anyone else on the track a moment before.

          “Who are you?” she asked bluntly. “I’m Prune, and he’s Quentin,” she pointed to the disappearing man, “And he’s on the run. There’s a reward for his capture, but I can’t catch him on my own.” Prune almost cackled and hid the smirk behind her forearm, pretending to wipe her nose on it. She wondered where the lies came from, sometimes. It wasn’t like she planned them ~ well, sometimes she did ~ but often they just came tumbling out. It wasn’t a complete lie, anyway: there was no reward, but he could be detained for deserting his new story, if anyone cared to report it.

          The man previously known as the Baron introduced himself as Mike O’Drooly. “I’m a story refugee,” he admitted.

          “Bloody hell, not another one,” replied Prune. Then she had an idea. “If you help me capture Quentin, you’ll get a much better character in the new story.”

          “I’ve nothing left to lose, child. And no idea what my story will be or what role I will play.” Perhaps it’s already started, he wondered.

          “Come on, then! If we don’t catch him quick we might all end up without a story.”

          #3930
          ÉricÉric
          Keymaster

            “The writer is as slow as my aunt Germaine” was all that came to Godfrey’s mind.
            His aunt Germaine was a notorious for her gaps of lucidity during the family reunion cards tournaments, which made playing with her much less ludic that it should have been.

            “Truly, what I meant” said Godfrey, carefully weighing the next words to assemble in a coherent sentence (he’d been chastised playfully by the new maid already, who would pretend to not understand a word of what he asked her to do) “is that I thought you where talking about winter, not writer. Alas, the writer is not coming.”

            Finnley would probably have had a fit of bright clarity with that one, he smiled at himself proudly.

            #3928
            TracyTracy
            Participant

              “Godfrey, shouldn’t you DO something about that? The characters are wandering all over the place, on the wrong threads, wandering right out of stories, whether they’ve been written out or not. They’re all just doing whatever they damn well want, it’s getting ridiculous!”

              Obligingly Godfrey cackled loudly, in what Liz presumed was a game attempt to restore some order in the threads (mistakenly assuming momentarily that they were in Caketown) .

              “Are they all turning into anarchists?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

              “Don’t be daft, Godfrey, you can have characters that are anarchists, but you can’t have anarchists that are characters, where will it end? Who will be in control, and lead the story?”

              “The writer will have to follow the lead of the characters, then, and support their moves with filler and back story.”

              Elizabeth felt faint. “What are you suggesting?” she whispered, filled with dread and uncertainty.

              #3927
              TracyTracy
              Participant

                “There hath he lain for ages,” Mater read the strip of paper, “And will lie Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep..” Buggered if I know what that’s supposed to mean, she muttered, continuing to read the daily oracle clue: “Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die…..”

                Mater had become increasingly irritated as the morning limped on, with no sign of Prune. Nobody had seen her since just before 3:00am when Idle got up for the loo and saw her skulking in the hallway. Didn’t occur to the silly fool to wonder at the time why the girl was fully dressed at that hour though.

                The oracle sounded ominous. Mater wondered if it was anything to do with the limbo of lost characters. She quickly said 22 Hail Saint Floverly prayers, and settled down to wait. If Prune had accidentally wandered into the lost characters limbo, battening upon seaworms would be the least of their problems.

                #3926
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  “Will someone answer that!” Liz parroted the other fat dealer. “Whose the leader of door answering these days anyway? All leaders and no fecking staff, now!”

                  Glancing towards the open window, where a shrill noise seemed to emanate from that had immediately set Liz’s teeth on edge, she noticed him. Could it really be him? After all these years! Was it really Roberto?

                  The door bell pealed again, distracting Liz, and when she looked back, the man had disappeared. Did I imagine that? she wondered.

                  Roberto, rubber duck in hand, walked around the outside wall to see who was making such a racket on the door bell.

                  “Madre mia! Los Guardianos !” he whispered, aghast. What were they doing here, of all places? Roberto crept back around the house, hoping he hadn’t been seen.

                  #3912
                  TracyTracy
                  Participant

                    “As I was saying,” continued Liz, “Oh, unless you want to explain something first, Finnley?”

                    “I’m trying to tell you I am a Leader Personality, and it doesn’t fit my character assignation, which is why I am flitting about the place snickering,” the confused hitherto supportive cleaner replied.

                    #3911
                    ÉricÉric
                    Keymaster

                      Finnley came back hopefully in time with her five guardian angels to listen to that last comment from Liz.

                      Only two of them had decided to stay after she’d explained her boss wanted to mold them in salt-free concrete for body parts.

                      #3909
                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        Ignoring the peculiar behaviour of Finnley, who seemed to be having a strange turn (Flove only knew what had happened to her during her absence), Liz continued with her explanation.

                        “It’s the new exercise in the Mandala of Ascensions group. There are Leader Personalities, and there are Supporter Personalities ~ and let me be perfectly clear, there are no in betweens or other categories in this particular exercise. Members of the group must choose one category only.”

                        Liz paused to light a cigarette, and turn down the background chatter emanating from the puerile radio show, which was distracting her from her train of thought.

                        #3908
                        F LoveF Love
                        Participant

                          “Oh haha I can’t keep up with myself!” laughed Finnley in a most uncharacteristic and slightly manic manner. After offering to explain once more, although nobody could remember what she was explaining, she retreated for a second time.

                          #3906
                          F LoveF Love
                          Participant

                            “I am enjoying our time together but If you will allow me to explain,” said Finnley.

                            She then disappeared.

                            #3905
                            TracyTracy
                            Participant

                              “Explain yourself you wanton harlot,” Finnley muttered under her breath, and then louder: “Shift Leader Personalities? What are they?”

                              “Well,” Liz started to explain, but was rudely interrupted.

                              “For fucks sake get a movealong.”

                              Aghast, Liz looked at Finnley. “It’s not like you to be quite this rude!”

                              “I will have to teach you how to do it,” the cleaner replied, somewhat enigmatically.

                              #3897

                              Seeing Dido eating her curry cookies would turn Mater’s stomach, so she went up to her room.

                              Good riddance she thought, one less guest to worry about.
                              Not that she usually thought that way, but every time the guests leaved, there was a huge weight lifted from her back, and a strong desire of “never again”.
                              The cleaning wasn’t that much worry, it helped clear her thoughts (while Haki was doing it), but the endless worrying, that was the killer.

                              After a painful ascension of the broken steps, she put her walking stick on the wall, and started some breathing exercises. The vinegary smell of all the pickling that the twins had fun experimenting with was searing at her lungs. The breathing exercise helped, even if all the mumbo jumbo about transcendant presence was all rubbish.

                              It was time for her morning oracle. Many years ago, when she was still a young and innocent flower, she would cut bits and pieces of sentences at random from old discarded magazines. Books would have been sacrilegious at the time, but now she wouldn’t care for such things and Prune would often scream when she’d find some of her books missing key plot points. Many times, Mater would tell her the plots were full of holes anyway, so why bother; Prune’d better exercise her own imagination instead of complaining. Little bossy brat. She reminded her so much of her younger self.

                              So she opened her wooden box full of strips of paper. Since many years, Mater had acquired a taste for more expensive and tasty morsels of philosophy and not rubbish literature, so the box smelt a bit of old parchment. Nonetheless, she wasn’t adverse to a modicum of risqué bits from tattered magazines either. Like a blend of fine teas, she somehow had found a very nice mix, and oftentimes the oracle would reveal such fine things, that she’d taken to meditate on it at least once a day. Even if she wouldn’t call it meditate, that was for those good-for-nothing willy-nilly hippies.

                              There it was. She turned each bit one by one, to reveal the haiku-like message of the day.

                              “Bugger!” the words flew without thinking through her parched lips.

                              looked forgotten rat due idea half
                              getting floverley comment somehow
                              prune hardly wondered eyes great
                              inn run days dark quentin simulation

                              That silly Prune, she’d completely forgotten to check on her. She was glad the handwritten names she’d added in the box would pop up so appropriately.

                              She would pray to Saint Floverley of the Dunes, a local icon who was synchretized from old pagan rituals and still invoked for those incapable of dancing.
                              With her forking arthritis, she would need her grace much.

                              #3892

                              In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                              Domba didn’t know why he’d attract those strange beings of light who tried to cajole him into following their glib tongued advice.
                              Domba was no fool, he’d learnt young that nobody gets interested in Domba unless someone wants to play tricks on him.
                              His life was a prison, that much he knew. The light guys could well be the jailers themselves for all he knew. He didn’t care about that, or any of their business with power. Power of knowledge, for all the good it did, didn’t seem to have guided the human race to better ends. And compassion was for foolisher than himself.

                              For now, he did have fun a little with the one who called herself Dispe, for her spirit seemed benign enough, a fountain of wonderment and joy in contrast with the way he’d learnt to see the world. He couldn’t really understand all about her wild rants, but if anything, he was curious about her views, and how she sustained them, like as a child, he was endlessly amazed at the resilience and resourcefulness of ants.

                              Maybe she was a queen ant, and he was just that stupid worker she was having fun with.

                              The wild nature overgrown in the miles of no-man’s land around his place had so much to teach. Persistance, endurance, and a boundless love of life itself. It was as though nature’s own rhythm was overlaid and hidden by the man-made time and routines. Whereas, if you were to look under, the slow stubborn and everlasting pace of nature’s growth was vibrating underneath, encouraging whoever willing to listen to slow down to its tune, and taste its encompassing love of life.
                              He often wondered how long before men would come and try to pour concrete over the land, and raise scrapers of metal and blown-sand. His only solace was to think that in his madness, man couldn’t completely obliterate nature, that it would always be waiting patiently.

                              He wondered how those light beings failed to see how even them weren’t as apart from it as they thought they were. Or maybe they knew deep up.

                              He’d noticed a bird coming many times too. That bird had an agenda, and too clean feathers to not be either a spy, or some heavenly messenger.

                              #3891
                              ÉricÉric
                              Keymaster

                                Liz had taken well to her new prescription drugs.
                                In appearance, it had seemed to have drained out the inexhaustible source of inspiration that let her write novels after novels. Or maybe that was just due to the absence of Finnleys to take care of the editing.

                                In the meantime, Godfrey had worked hard to nurture her back to whatever state she called sanity and suited her best, and gently coax her to resume her former passion.

                                “Godfrey, let me retire from writing, it’s too passé.” she was pouring concrete into the silicon molds to make new saint statues. Over the years, she’d accumulated quite a few of those saints and martyrs that she collected (or stole) from derelict places of cult during her travels. She liked to paint them back to life with gaudy colours, mimicking some sort of Mexican style. Sometimes she would dress them, and ask Finnley to sew them clothes and little hats.

                                Strangely, getting her out of the hospice had made her want to populate the whole house with concrete clones of those statues. Maybe to fill a void of inspiration ?
                                Nevertheless, Godfrey was amazed at her capacity to innovate. Her writing momentum was certainly at a low, but did she channel her creativity in many ways.
                                The last batch of Christian martyr statues painted in the many outfits of David Bowie were a testament to that.

                                #3890

                                In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                                ÉricÉric
                                Keymaster

                                  Readjusting to Earth had not been as easy as John had thought.
                                  At the beginning, everything seemed overwhelmingly bright and noisy. The huge blue sky was a wonder to behold, but his eyes couldn’t look at it for long time periods.

                                  Within a few days, the shock was wearing out, and the gradual realization started to settle, that there was no going back to that place where they were. That moment in space and time was so eerily starting to dissolve in his memory, feeling more and more like a distant fairytale, some story of the past, nothing more than an illusion.
                                  Yet, it was that place where all his experiences were had. Where he had forged his character, had played, laughed, dreamt, feared, loved.
                                  It all was almost meaningless. People were looking already at making movies and more distorted illusions of it for pure entertainment.

                                  So, readjusting himself wasn’t going to be easy, if at all possible.

                                  They’d released them in the end, not without giving them new identities. Seemed to be a fad these days, not only for protection of international security secrets, but also as a way to escape your irrevocable internet trail. Everything that was documented since your birth, since before you could even give your consent, and realize what was done. More and more were those who wanted a fresh start. What better solution to recycle a bunch of Mars stranded migrants into the fray of life itself.

                                  #3886

                                  In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                                  “…..salt free inquisition born of effete privilege…”

                                  Dispersee shook her head and cackled to herself while reading Stinks Mc Fruckler’s (a double agent posing as a descended trickster) report.

                                  “These dupes, so arrogant in their idiocy have become an incredibly powerful voice which effects us all, this being why I rail against them, they are the new repulsive face of self righteous sanctimonious evangelism, a salt free inquisition born of effete privilege, modern day ill informed witch-burners intent on removing choice, blocking scientific advances….”

                                  Stinks may well get lynched for that one, she thought with a fond smile. Nobody expects to get away with criticizing the salt free inquisition. It was a position only a former salt smuggler would understand, as Dispersee well knew. “Salt of the Earth” was a well known turn of phrase (though not nearly as amusing as “salt free inquisition born of effete privilege” as turns of phrase go), but few took to heart the actual meaning. It was to be a good few years yet before the Return of the Salt to the turbulent planet, and salt, for the meantime, was still public enemy number one in the collective mind.

                                  Dispersee closed the report and turned her attention to her own.

                                  Despite her demonstration with the pool (complete with illustrations), throwing spoons haphazardly into the murky pool with no regard for the hidden fishes and broken chairs in the depths of the dirty water, despite the resulting swarm of earthquakes, only a handful of individuals understood the point she had been trying to demonstrate with regard to what was known in new age circles as “pooling” ~ not to be confused with team flow, which was something else entirely. (The fact that she had not understood what she was illustrating at the time, merely following a strange impulse, was neither here nor there ~ the point was quite obvious in retrospect, which was all that mattered).

                                  Pooling had become almost as popular as the Salter lynchings, and the unfortunate common denominator was “best intentions” ~ best intentions, vaguely pasted hearts, and no real understanding or questioning of the contents of the pool they were all diving into. The Pool Lemmings dived in one after another without washing off their associations, weighed down with their constructs and baggage, splashing the foul slime outside the pool where it seeped into the common water table, tainting the entire neighbourhood. The best intentions sank to the depths, perhaps to be fished out by an especially skilled fisherman of best intentions, but likely not. It was the clingy slippery algae of the associations that really thrived, and they attached themselves and flowed back out of the pool. Really it was a mess. Even her practical demonstrations of non return valves and two way valves had gone over their heads (as had the contaminated water).

                                  The second part of her demonstrations had been to illustrate the importance, and indeed the beauty, of bubbles ~ dewdrops suspended along webs ~ connected via gossamer thin but extremely strong networks, perfect reflective bubbles that kept their shape and individual purpose, rather than forming a dank puddle of slime in the overflowing muddy ditch. Admittedly Dispersee has not been aware of what she was demonstrating at the time, she was just following another strange impulse.

                                  She decided to finish her report tomorrow, and await todays strange impulse for further information.

                                  #3884
                                  ÉricÉric
                                  Keymaster

                                    After a few days, Quentin had had enough already of the food. Pickles, pickles, and more pickles. Pickled cabbage, green or red, gherkins and all sorts and sizes of pickled cucumbers, pickled onions and eggs… There was only variety in the type of thing that weird hostel family was able to think of pickling. Even his beard started to smell of pickles. It was slowing driving him nuts.

                                    That, and the strange random cackling at all hours of day and night, which he’d hoped to leave behind after being a refugee from that dreaded town. It had started again. And it seemed to come from the huge framed pea above the mantelpiece. He smirked at the thought that the only reason that pea was framed was that they didn’t find any fitting jar to pickle it.

                                    He was still waiting for an appointment with Aunt Idle, who apparently had forgotten him altogether. That was no small wonder, as he passed in front of her door with the half-unscrewed sign on her door that said “management”, he could smell she was into another kind of pickling altogether. With moonshine rather than with apple cider vinegar.

                                    #3882

                                    In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                                    The fine-angel balanced sheet and innergy bud-jets forecasts were his least favorite part of the now. Master Medlik had learned a long now ago that when they reappeared in his presence, it only meant a resurgence of certain beliefs. Master Finn Min Hoot would say mawkishly that it had to do with his tendency to believe in and cling to control.
                                    Notwithdangling, those blessed sheets had to be handed over to Tittartoness, the Lady of Tetratron who was in charge of the Heavenly Fine Angels.

                                    It didn’t help that everyone seemed to be procrastinating to hand over their forecasts. Desiree seemed more interested recently in plastercasts for Old Deities, and unwittingly triggering Earth disasters, while stripping old satanic temples of their idols. At least, Master John had done a few tries, and could blame it on the extreme cosmic weather of late, and his busy jiggong schedule. As for the elusive Floverley, the peak season of energy hosting up above surely meant a lot of aura cleaning.

                                    So, he was on his own, and had to just take a leap of faith. He jotted down a string of random numbers, and sent it without even looking. Ahah! he explaimed jubilantly, how’s that for going with the flow!

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