Search Results for 'ann'

Franlise was pondering the distorted image she knew Ann had of her. Of course Ann was perhaps not the best judge of character. Her seven failed marriages bore testament to that indisputable fact.

It is a bloody good thing, she mused, that I am so confident of my own inner loveliness. All these disparaging remarks could really begin to get me down otherwise.

Casting an admiring sideways glance at herself in the large, and somewhat dusty, mirror hanging from the wall in Ann’s office, she hurried off for her 3pm meeting with the Fellowship.

With an amused chuckle, Ann remarked to Franlise “Chapters, whatever next! Poor old Godfrey’s getting his strings in a twist.”

“I think he might be picking up on Chapter Focuses, Ann” replied the cleaner.

Ann looked at Franlise in surprise. “Good gracious me, Franlise, what an extraordinary thing for you to say!”

“Why?”

“Well, I didn’t think you were into any of that stuff.”

“I’m not!”

“Well why did you say it then?”

“I didn’t; you wrote that I said it, but I didn’t say a word.”

“You just can’t get the staff these days” sighed Ann.

_{Ann sighed, feeling tired and disillusioned at the unexpected changes. It felt like too much effort to start afresh, as if the disruptions and changes everywhere were permeating her own private sanctuary, and stray random thoughts now had no easy path towards release, that they would be bogged down and hampered with new details, and new explanations.}

“How things have changed” Franlise remarked drily, reading the previous months entries. “I don’t know about ‘no easy path’, Ann, there’s a rush hour expressway of random stray thoughts gushing forth, don’t you think you should rein yourself in a bit?”

“I don’t see much evidence of a bog of explanations, either, or hampers of details.”

:yahoo_nerd:“I dont know how you can read that paper, Franlise, really I don’t.” Ann said sniffily.

“Oh I like to keep up with what’s going on, it’s interesting, it’s the end of an era you know, fascinating really,” her cleaner replied.

“Yeah, you’re right, it is interesting,” Ann had to admit that Franlise was right. It WAS interesting, and newpapers like The Old Reality Harbinger wouldn’t be around for much longer. She made a mental note to buy some to put away in case they became valuable artifacts in the future.

“Well interesting it may be, but only in small doses. I prefer The Simultaneous Times, myself.”

“The Daily Mirror’s my favourite” replied Franlise.

“You can’t make a silk purse out of a pigs ear flu, Ann.” Franlise remarked as she perused the headlines in the Old Reality Harbinger newspaper.

“Or maybe you can! hhmm” replied Ann. “Maybe the gathered snot of the victims is spun into the finest silk, an amazingly versatile new fabric called snilk”

Franlise rolled her eyes, but Ann didn’t notice.

“One of the qualities” Ann went on “that the snilk had was to replicate anything gathered within its folds, so purses were made out of snilk, proving that it WAS indeed possible to make a snilk purse out of a pigs ear flu.”

“Godfrey” Ann said gently in dulcet tones “I realize that you’re tetchy with that flooh, but I simply don’t screech, you know.” Ann smiled at him fondly, more than willing to forgive his rudeness. “Perhaps the flooh has affected your ears?”

“Oh bugger off will you Ann, and please stop that caterwauling!” Godfrey covered his ears, flinching.

“Oh dear, it must be the dreaded Pigs Ear Virus! Fear not, me old matey, I know just the cure!”

“Godfrey, she’s doing it on purpose now, what am I going to do with her?”

Godfrey turned and frowned at Ann, pausing in the doorway. “Who’s doing what, Ann?” he sighed.

“Oh never mind Godfrey, bugger off if you can’t be bothered” Ann said crossly, and then added “You know exactly what I’m talking about, it’s Franlise, she’s making spelling mistakes on purpose and I’ll get the blame!”

“Ann,” said Godfrey with exaggerated patience, “You of all people should be the last person to worry about a spelling mistake.”

“My OWN spelling mistakes are acceptable, Godfrey, they contain clues…”

Pig Littleton raised an eyebrow. “And why wouldn’t Franlise’s contain clues too? Have you forgotten that you’re the one creating Franlise in the first place?”

“Oh” said Ann, momentatily non-plussed.

Bitch, muttered Ann to herself after Franlise left the room. How could any one person be endowed with such outward beautiy and inward loveliness in such an unsubtle way?

Perhaps I will call my next chapter “The Subtlety of the Tarty Cleaner”. Not really having any idea what this meant, the thought still managed to lift Ann’s spirits considerably. She felt particularly vindicated when she saw the title of the the great philospher Leemoon’s latest book:

Belabouring Fools of the Continuity Paradigm

Exactly! stupid tarty belabouring fool of a cleaner!

Taatje van Snoot was an eccentric character of indeterminate age. That she had been born Dutch was obvious, but when, nobody could tell. Nobody could remember when she hadn’t been an integral part of the Amsterdam scenery, even the most ancient citizens recalled Taatje being around. Nobody knew her well, it seemed, but everyone knew of her existence, everyone saw her from time to time. She never seemed to age, and she didn’t appear to work, for she was never seen doing anything in a routine manner. Sometimes, for example, she would be spotted drinking coffee every morning at the same place; the following week or years therafter, she’d be elsewhere, never visiting that cafe again. Taatje was a bit of a mystery, but a well loved one. She was jolly, always smiling, as she bustled about the city doing whatever she did, polite and charming, delightfully vague, and always endearingly dressed in a random selection of fancy dress outfits and carnival costumes.

“Franlise, your words gave hope where once there was despair” Ann said to her cleaning lady. “Thank you.”

“Oh don’t mention it, Ann” Franlise replied modestly.

“You are so humble, Franlise, as well as outwardly beautiful” replied Ann. “And inwardly lovely” she added.

Ann wasn’t altogether sure what Godfrey meant when he referred to her new interest in continuity. Ann had always been interested in connecting links, yes, of that there was no doubt, but with so very many connecting links, and so many possible strings of connecting links, with so many possible divergences into yet more strings of connecting links, Ann really couldn’t fathom how anyone could possibly keep track of all those threads of continuity. Even a seemingly discontinuous assortment of unconnected links, once connected into a nonsense thread, became another continuity string. Furthermore, Ann continued ~ in a continuous fashion ~ to ponder, if everything is connected, then what, in actuality, was all the fuss about continuity? What exactly then WAS this concept of continuity? It seemed to Ann to be more like a string of barbed wire, or one of those flimsy but effective electric wire fences, boxing in the free flow of continuity, so that the objectively perceived continuity stayed rigidly within the confines of the preconceived tale. The inner landscape knew no such boundaries, although admittedly the inner landscape was far too vast to map.

Ann smiled to herself as she imagined trying to push pins into various inner landscape locations, tying strings from one to another, in an effort to map and label the inner continuity connections. Of course she was imagining it in a visual manner, because it was hard to imagine all those connections and strings being invisible and not taking up any space, and before long Ann’s inner map of pins and strings quickly resembled a tangle of overcooked spaghetti, perilously speckled with sharp pointy pins.

The image of the glutinous tangle dotted with sharp shiny pointers led Ann off on another tangent, but it was a tangent that soon became utter nonsense. Or was it, she mused. Perhaps it was those symbolically sharp pointy bits that in fact pointed out the immense variety of potential other continuity threads to choose from. Indeed, it could easily be said that having one of her characters dumped in Siberia in the previous story, painful though it was, was not unlike being pricked by a pin amidst the tangle of sticky pasta, a brilliantly effective pointer towards unlimited new directions.

Whichever way she looked at it (and Ann was aware that she might have gone down a side string) she simply couldn’t comprehend how anyone on this side of the veil could possibly even begin to understand the ramifications of the concept of continuity at all. Or how there could ever conceivably be a lack of it.

What was really intriguing Ann at this particular juncture of the experimental exploration of the story was the concept of the World View Library. This wasn’t unconnected to the continuity issue, far from it, it was all tied in (Ann sniggered at the unintentional pun) and connected. There were any infinite amount of potential continuity threads leading from, say, one persons desire or intent, to a particular world view in the library.

AHA shouted Ann, who at that moment had an ‘aha’ moment. Pfft, it’s gone, she sighed moments later.

Ann tried to catch the wisp of an idea that had flitted through her awareness. She had a visual impression of the library, endlessly vast and marvellously grand, with countless blindfolded characters dashing through, grabbing random pages or sentences, bumping into each other, snatching at phrases willy nilly, dropping notes along the way, and racing back out again into the ether. A stray thought here, a picture there, a name or a date, all on separate bits of crumbled paper clutched in the sweaty palms of the blindfolded characters as they rushed headlong back to their own realities to proudly share the new clues. Like magpies they were, snatching at anything that glittered brightly enough.

“I thought you said they were blindfolded?” interrupted Franlise.

Ann ignored the interruption, and continued ~ in a continuous fashion ~ to ponder the imagery of the library.

What the undisciplined purloiners of random snatches didn’t notice on their pell-mell excursions into the library were the characters in the library who weren’t wearing blindfolds. They smiled down from the galleries, calmly watching from above the mayhem that the news of the unlimited library access had occasioned, chortling at the scenes of chaos below. They smiled indulgently, for they too had first visited the library blindfolded, snatching at this and that, and racing home again to inspect the booty; they too had fretted and pondered over the enigmas of the incomplete snippets. Eventually (or not, it was after all a choice), they had bravely removed the blindfolds, slowed the mad race into a sedate stroll through the library, opened their eyes and looked around, sure of the way back home now, and not in a desperate hurry to blast in, snatch anything, and run back home.

After awhile, they began to realize that all the enchanting glittering jewels scattered around to catch their eye would still be there later, there was no urgency to grab them all at once ~ although, as Ann reminded herself, that too was a choice ~ some may well choose to be eternally snatching at glittering jewels.

Ann frowned slightly and wondered if she’d lost the thread altogether, and then decided that it didn’t matter if she had.

It was a choice, therefore, to remove ones blindfold, and stroll through the library ~ a choice to perhaps choose a book, sit down at a polished oak table and open it, a choice to stay and read the book, rather than ripping out a page and dashing back home. That would be one choice of continuity, a coming together of strings.

Ann wondered whether that would then be called a cable, or a rope ~ well perhaps not a rope, she decided, that had other associations entirely ~ but a cable, yes, that had associations of reliable and regular communications. There were always strings of continuity, then, strings of connecting links, between anything and everything, but when one stopped dashing about clutching at the sparkley bits, one might form a cable.

Or not, of course. Thin strings of continuity and connections were not ‘less than’ thick cables of reliable and regular communications. It has to be said though, Ann reluctantly admitted, that thick cables often made more sense.

She decided to hit send before embarking on a pondering of the meaning of Sense.

Franlise felt a change of energy and wondered if Dhurga was practising araiki movements. She certainly hoped so as she knew they were powerful movements and would help him express his intention. And when Dhurga expressed his intention and followed the flow of energy, the physical reality would match naturally and he would be provided for.

And Franlise firmly believed what was good for one was good for many.

She chuckled to herself upon overhearing Ann’s conversation with Godfrey in Noo Zooland. She had offered to proof Ann’s writings in order to give her easy access to the writings. It seemed prudent to leave the odd typo in order to allay suspicion .. after all she was only a cleaner.

Franlise had an outward beauty which matched the sweet loveliness of her inner being. Yes, she was a vision of pure loveliness, and many gallant knight had attempted to woo her away from her cleaning job. But Franlise knew that it was here, amongst the filth and dust of Ann’s office, that her true work was done. By day a cleaner, by night she toiled endlessly weaving Anne’s words into works of beauty. Words which would then go out into the world and give solace to many a despondent and lonely reader. To know that her words gave hope where once there was despair was all the thanks that Franlise needed.

Of course no one must know it was Franlise who was the true author. The Fellowship had insisted when they gave Franlise her mission that her part be kept hidden. Being humble, as well as outwardly beautiful and inwardly lovely, Franlise was happy to obey the wishes of the Fellowship in this matter. Besides, she knew that if Ann were to find out the truth, the pour deranged creature would probably be driven to place of complete madness.

Franlise shuddered at the thought.

Franlise smiled gently to herself when she read Anne’s latest offerings. She was well used to making sense of the distorted and twisted words poor Ann worked so hard upon. Many might call them utter rubbish, but Franlise was a kindly soul, who was content to be seen as a cleaner by those who cared to look no further, and it would not be in her sweet nature to dismiss the works of another as “utter rubbish”, however bizarre those works may be.