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In reply to: Shamanic Journey Achronicles
Accounts of the Journey to the Lower Realm
Eric
I was at a steppe first, like I was meditating in the desert, then went through a forest entrance, and stayed under a tree. There were lots of sounds and animals life, flapping wings sounds, deers, ants, but the most vivid presence was that of snake, and I was a bit suspicious, but it came back very gently, inviting, and after I recognized it, it made me journey, travelling like a dragon or feathered multicolored snake to an ancient place.
The snake analogy with shedding old skin comes to mind, after accepting it, it makes a lot of sense.
I saw green and purple at times.
I felt a horse too but it was just a hooves’ sound.Flove
I went through the entrance to a cave. I asked my power animal to come. An ancient tortoise came up to me. I asked if this was my power animal but i felt such love for the tortoise that i felt that was my answer. We explored energetically what the tortoise wisdom i need is. I put my hand around the tortoise neck and we swam in the water.
I wanted to cry, I loved the tortoise energy so much. And the protection of the tortoise shell.
I saw a snake.
The horse was the first animal I felt, right as I went in the entrance. I stroked the horse as i went by.
I saw a unicorn too, [and ]was surprised by the unicorn.
I didn’t sense many creatures. just the horse, the snake and the unicorn.Jib
First I saw little white skulls, whistling like the shells of the guy in the video.
Then I become my shaman self and I have my magic cape. I find the entrance [to the lower realm,] which was kind of difficult at first as if there was some distracting energy.
I finally enter the lower realm and find my horse right away, he’s very excited and I ride with him for some time, just for the pleasure of being with an old friend.
Then I ask him to lead me to Abalone and show me whatever is interesting.
He leads me to see an old shaman, man or woman I don’t know.
The shaman makes me sit in his room and offers me tea, then tells me to relax and wait.
So I relax and I begin to project to Abalone as the Giant beanstalk, I begin to grow and grow and grow and have the city built on top of me. I am the whole island.
I have the impression that the beanstalk is in the center of Gazalbion or very close to it
Then I come back to the place and have the impression the Shaman wants to delay me, so I say thanks and ask my horse to show me the rest.
We go the the old Temple and I feel that there is something special there, once again he tells me to relax and just allow not look for things.
So I wait and feel that the time and space is weird that it flows around the stones in a particular way, like when you follow a certain path or corridor, you may go forward in time and another way lead you back in time. If you take a wrong turn you can end up in a loop.
Then the signal for the return begins, so I go back from where I come from and thank my horse.
It was cool and fun to be there again.
I projected at some point to check if everyone was ok, and felt like it was fine.
I saw a unicorn too.Tracy
That was interesting, about half way through a zebra started follwing me, well on my right. I saw all kinds of animals, but they were all doing their own thing or turned away, except for the zebra, until the change of tempo and then I was swept up in a flock of cranes I think (or herons or storks but I think cranes), but then the zebra was waiting at the top. I could feel his warm muzzle sort of on my right shoulder.
First was a field full of unicorns on the left but they were just grazing, then a bison head who turned away, then the group of deer I thought, but the zebra walked over to me grazing. Me and the zebra waited for goats to cross our path.
The feeling of being in amongst the cranes was amazing and the zebra fell back while that was happening, but then at the end he was waiting.
I was surprised by the unicorns cos I don’t even think about them usually.
There were lizards sucttlign around under the cranes.
A couple of times I strongly saw purple and green, and thought of Jib.<i> not really ask [the zebra if he was the power animal] in words, but his presence calmly walking beside me with the feeling of his muzzle on my shoulder was comforting.
When the cranes distracted me from him he fell back, but he was waiting at the top.
The cranes feeling was marvelous, really, they were all flapping gracefully all around me on the ascent. So cranes and zebra stand out the most.
[At some point] I started going down old stone steps, at first me and FP were kids holding hands, with jib and eric behind us, then I thought, wait, I’m supposed to be doing this alone.
The unicorns in the very beginning were in a castle courtyard type place but they ignored me.
Then a bison head who turned away these were in niches in the stone walls
I ended up in a stalactites type cave, but there were mostly old old stone steps with stone walls along the sides.
There was a crowd of people, well a small gathering, towards the bottom, but they were, er, faceless. Innocuous.
I am quite amazed at how great that was! and how many creatures actually popped up
and how the feeling was of the zebra and the cranes.
The zebra was stoic and steadfast and comforting, the cranes were exhilarating and uplifting.</i>In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
In an effort to shake off the troubling feelings that lingered long after she awoke, Mirabelle went to find Jack to tell him about her dream. She found him hunched over his computer, frowning.
“Ah, Mirabelle, pull up a chair and let me tell you about the strange dream I had last night.”
Intrigued, Mirabelle listened, saving her story until after he had finished relating his.
“There are too many coincidences for this to not mean something ~ something important. The parallels are everywhere! Look!” he said pointing to the screen.
“Crumbling cities, structures smashed to smithereens and clouds of dust, facades of houses blown off revealing ordinary objects and furnishings in hideous juxtapositions, and crazy angles. And look here” he said, “ nothing as far as the eye can see but rubble, but one wall left standing, almost intact, with the map still hanging on the wall.”
Jack turned to Lisa with a tear in his eye, and with a shaking voice he said, “I dreamed of a city like this last night, with all the facades blown off the constructs, and all the people were faceless as if they were wearing masks, but no! not like masks, there were empty holes where the faces had been, like bottomless black holes that made me dizzy to look at them.”
“But it was just a dream Jack” replied Mirabelle, wondering if she was reassuring Jack or herself. “It doesn’t mean anything, probably that cheese you had for supper.”
“Lisa was in the dream” Jack replied. “And Ivan, and Fanella.”
Mirabelle shivered. “They’ve been gone a long time, do you think something’s happened to them?” she paused and then added, “I had a disturbing dream too. It was my parrot, HuHu. He was calling me, oh! he was calling and calling, but I couldn’t see him in the fog, as I tried to follow the sound of his squalking in the swirling mist, I’d hear him behind me ~ no matter which way I turned he was always behind me, as if I was always facing the wrong way.”
“Well” said Jack, squaring his shoulders. “Faced with these two dreams, and with the delayed return of Lisa, Ivan and Fanella, I think we should face up to it and send a search party to the island. Now, enough of that long face, Mirabelle! Run along now and find Igor, and tell him to prepare for teleporting. He can go with you.”In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
About a week ago, in the reserved section of the Storehouse of Exoteric Artefacts of Karmalott, Obax Winken was pondering in silence for the last hours over the nature of one of them.
Any artefacts found down there, in the Fog Abyss, was tightly controlled by the P’hope. Nobody wanted an alien object to unbalance the delicate structure of mass beliefs by prematurely introducing abrupt changes coming from visitors, stranded travellers of other times and realities.
Obax, as an erudite versed in interpreting the meaning of these objects, was entrusted with the classification and gauging of the danger that those objects could cause to the belief construct.
If an object was deemed troublesome, it would be tentatively destroyed, or if that failed, stored in the forbidden section. But in most cases, objects left by travellers would disintegrate if just a thought projection, and those objects that came with them usually didn’t pose much threat.The one he was looking at looked like a strange mask, designed to be blown. He believed it was a cursed horn and couldn’t decide if it was in the interest of science to shelf it with its cursed energy, or remove the curse and release it to the masses for them to enjoy a swimming revolution…
“Lucius!” he called to his assistant. He was a bit deaf in one ear. LOGSBOTTOM! he called again.
“How would you call that strange trunk-like apparatus?”In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
The team of Magi from Karmalott wandered around aimlessly while waiting for the shower to start. Most of them were watching the sky, but one of them, Philichenko Potsummer the Third, was studying the ground in the vicinity of a malachite and rose quartz sundial. The sundial had a blue ribbon hanging from it, but Potsummer wasn’t interested in the ribbon.
“Sanso was here,” he announced, which got the other magi’s attention. “Sanso was here recently, and it looks like he was flattened by an elephant.”
“There aren’t any elephants on the island, though” a young trainee magi in purple pointed out.
Potsummer sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Logsbottom, “ Potsummer said to the trainee, “ Sanso left a message imprinted in the energy of the sundial, perhaps you would be so good as to retrieve the message and decipher it for us.”Lucius Logsbottom gulped, and nervously approached the crystal sundial, hoping that he would be able to read the message and translate it to the other magi’s satisfaction, but suddenly the shower started, and everyone turned their faces to the sky.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
Beside being a casino, the 888 pavilion had a particularity. It was one of those reverse buildings with a ground floor and all the other stories underground. Since the Great Reform of Feng Shui in 2088 by Feng Shui master Jeorge Huhu, who discovered that dead people weren’t actually living six feet under, it wasn’t considered bad Feng Shui any more to dig your home.
Obviously, for practical reasons, such building could not go too deep in a volcanic island. A column of light in the center assured the lighting of the eight floors by an expensive network of optical crystals. The opacity of the end crystals could be adjusted using polarized filters to create a dark atmosphere similar to the old-time prohibition casinos, or simulate daylight as in the volcanic pool on the bottom floor, which was affectionately referred to as Hell by the 888 pavilion’s employees.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
It hadn’t been easy to obtain Sadie a pay raise. The management always seemed to look for new ways to cut the costs wanted to give her an extra for the good job. Although this time, LP could put the golden balls and the rebirth of the network in the balance. They could have had enough to give the whole team a decent salary. Indeed, it wasn’t really fair that the young queens were not paid at all. Unless of course you counted props, wigs and fake eyelashes. Eventually, Linda got Sadie the extra and the raise she had asked for, and new contracts for the three young queens. She shall not forget the tears of joy in their eyes when she announced them they were part of the big Queer Network family. It had made her feel good and generous even if it was not her money she was giving.
Linda Pol wrapped her luscious lips around an authentic straw and sucked up voraciously the glowing rainbow cocktail. Mmmmm, this new Peas’cocktail is divine, she thought. After the buzz created by their last network and that mysterious quest of Saint Germain for Peasland, peas-thingies were everywhere. She put the glass back on the edge of the Jacuzzi and looked at the little magenta umbrella for a moment. She didn’t know what was the most pleasing, the bubbles gently massaging her back in the water, or the gorgeous scenery of the Merry Otter resort in Maui. Linda Pol hadn’t had good vacation in a long long time, and if she had been in vacation this place could totally be one of her first choices destinations.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t there for vacations or relaxation. She wasn’t there for exercise either. She had been asked to attend a conference and meet with one of those new Random Science scientists specialized in the ambergris tiles. As if it was a joke from the Universe, her name was Amber Graystone. But Linda Pol had long learned that there were no such thing as unusualness, you just hadn’t seen enough of the world.
A boy came to refill her cocktail. Girl, you spend too much time looking at young bums, she thought, ageing beliefs were everywhere. She was feeling drowsy with the bubbles and the alcohol, almost dreaming of whales and ambergris.
“… Graystone is taking her job too seriously”, said a man’s voice.
Linda Pol opened her eye, just enough so that her fake eyelashes could still hide she was awake. When she was young, her curiosity had put her in trouble more times than the number of her pair of shoes. She had developed strategies and an incredible butt recognition skill. It had helped her win many contests in her youth and avoid boring conversations later on.
The two men wore bath suits. Linda could clearly see that one of the butts was slack and lifeless. Almost avoiding the contact with the fabric. An American butt fed with hamburgers and soda. The rest of the silhouette seemed to naturally spread out from its central component.
The other one moved like a mustang, the shiny red lycra was only here to help you see more clearly the outline of the flesh, not hide it. The curve of the bottom of the spine indicated a Russian ancestry. She felt a rush of adrenaline. She loved how Russians rolled their Rs. They could do many things with a rolling tongue.
“You want me to take carrre of herrr ?” asked a voice carrying ice.
“No, just remind her to whom she owes her subsidies. And her results.”
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
After they’d jumped in the robot (which had shapeshifted into a sand buggy big enough for them), they had to cling tight to the railing of the light vehicle, as the robot was driving recklessly into a jungle of unexpected leaves and green vegetation tentacles.
It wasn’t long before they were back on the gorgeously rugged Hawai’ian beach, taken on an unexpected dune racing along the coast.
The queens looked exhilarated, but Sadie was a bit overwhelmed, especially after what the Techromancer had told her.The wetsuits fitting session passed in a blur, as the breathable elastic material was made to adapt to their bodies. Really, the only thing left to choose would have been color, but it was able to change itself at will, with very little shades it couldn’t replicate to perfection, even the Bollywood shine and twinkle that was all the craze in the 2019s.
“But we’re in the 2222s now!”, Maurana had voiced her disapproval of her choice of glittery fashion. Little did Sadie care about it. Her mission seemed to stretch to sidetracks and unneeded distractions on her path to Great Happiness.
All four of them clad in their fancy bathsuits and looking more like hippy frogs than sassy mermaids, they followed the robot on the miles-long deck that led to the horizon.
After half an hour of walking on the narrow bridge, they were at a good distance from the coast and Terry started to pant and breathe heavily in her green sardine scales costume.
“Stop! I got to catch my breathe, how long it’s going to be now? We were promised a soirée! Not a walk on the wild side!”The robot, rolled back a few steps, and turned briskly.
“Actually, Sir, this is a perfect spot for your whale training”And before they realized, the robot had opened the deck under their feet, plunging all of them in the ocean screaming.
Thanks to her excellent training and natural sharp reflexes, Sadie was the first to realize a few things.
- They were all alive
- They were able to breathe underwater
- Their suit enabled them to talk and understand each other in what sounded like whale-speech.
- A looming shape was quickly closing on them, looking dangerously like that of a giant toothy white shark.
- Her mind was a mysterious thing.
Why? Simply because the previous thought was coinciding with another one which was saying unequivocally that she still hadn’t found a proper dragqueen’s name for herself, and yet another one, even more funny than all others, saying in between bursts of infectious laughter that her last words could well be whale speech, and would make a hell of an epitaph.
She floated for a time moment stretched into an eternity, weighing all the rippling probabilities and wondered what her next move would be, as she was in the void of creation, hovering under a vortex of thoughts, with a sea of twinkling stars beckoning her further down the ocean’s clear bottomless depths.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
The lard had run out and the descent was swift. Pseu deftly manipulated a few strategic updrafts to keep the balloon out of the water, causing the occupants to alternately shriek with fright and cross themselves fervently. HuHu the parrot was nowhere to be seen, and there was no sign of ghost galleon Santa Rosa.
The ghostly image of Marguerite Isabeau the 14th century mystic, appeared in Igor’s mind, and her scarlet lips seemed to whisper to him. “You let me down, young man, and now I shall let you down, down down down to the bottom of the ocean, to punish you for leaving me waiting in the chapel yard……”.
“HuHu! HuHu!” called Mirabelle anxiously.
“This is no laughing matter!” said Adeline sternly.
While Mirabelle was rolling her eyes, she spotted the parrot, silouetted in the orb of the sinking sun. “Over there!” she cried, and Pseu responded with a final gust of such force that the six passengers toppled right out of the balloons basket into the sea.
“Bugger!” exclaimed Pseu. “Bugger that!”In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
The youngest maid, Adeline, quickly placed one of the rat like toys at the bottom of the large basket of laundry she had come to collect.
The Queen has so many; she will not even notice this small one. And there are two of them. What does an old woman like the Queen want with toys? she reasoned.
It was Adeline’s small brother’s birthday tomorrow and there would be no fine party for him. She knew he would love this strange toy.The few measly coins she received each week for slaving over her mistress left nothing for luxuries. It was barely enough to survive. Although she knew she should be grateful she was not on the streets like so many others. She noticed a small tear in the seam of the toy. All the better! If she were found out she could say she was taking it to mend. She knew if she were not believed there would be a heavy price to pay.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
Anna’s voice and young face trailed off as the Queen emerged from her dream. Confused for a moment, she tried to get rid off the undefinable guilt she always felt when dreaming about her late sister. You simply didn’t speak about Anna. And you couldn’t take pleasure in childish dreams.
Her guilt soon transformed into a mild irritation and she frowned as she remembered the cavagnol game of the previous night. She had lost again. The amount didn’t really matter, it was more about the principle. She always lost. But she took a momentary pleasure in thinking that Jeanne-Antoinette also lost most of her bets.
With a sigh, she looked at the big ornate windows. Someone had opened the heavy velvet curtains while she was still asleep, and it certainly didn’t help keep the air warm in that time of year. Nonetheless, she enjoyed seeing the sky when she woke up, even in winter time when it was still dark or like today, when the colours of dawn preceded the Sun. She couldn’t believe she had slept so long.
It always was a too brief moment alone. As if summonned by magic, three maids entered the room silently, two of them holding her morning dress, that they carefully deposited on a chair, and the other holding the copper basin of fresh water for the Queen’s quick morning ablution. The maid put it on top of the sauteuse chest made of rose wood and carved beautifully. One of her daughters once told her that she swore the chest in her bedroom was alive and would jump on her bed at night to play with her.
One thought leading to another, she looked at her collection of stuffed toy, unconsciously counting them and checking if they were all in order. She had two cabinets made of rose wood especially for her “friends” as she used to call them. She had begun to buy them after she almost died giving birth so long ago. At first it was just a simple gift from the King. She first thought it to be a lion, but apparently it was one of those Asian dogs. The finish was crude, it had small beady eyes and the curly tail didn’t hold very long on its bottom, but she developed a liking for it. And after a few weeks, she felt it needed a friend, so she had a lion made as a companion for her asian dog.
Her ladies-in-waiting, began to bring her new ones, little dogs (she had a liking for them), zebras, fluffy cats and dwarf goats, she even had an owl and two rabbits, one white and one cerulean blue.Her eyes almost missed the twin ferrets, offered to her by Saint Germain after a gambling party. He had said they would bring her luck. She didn’t really liked them, they were scrawny and heavy, certainly weighted with lead.
It was time to get up, she had her weekly Polish concert to organize. One of her small pleasures.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
They arrived to the tunnel, it was almost dawn. Sanso spotted a ghostly flicker near the entrance. The cave network was guarded by a kind of protective spirits who checked your mission order so they could establish the right connection between the way in and the way out.
Sanso felt a twinge of irritation as he recognized the ghostly figure.“Rifraf”, said Sanso as affable as he could manage.
“Stop”, said Rifraf with a tone cold enough to freeze your spine. “You know the procedure”, he added with his hand stretched in front of him.
Sanso looked into his rough leather bag to find the mission order. He could swear that the objects and papers had moved on their own while he wasn’t looking. It was a mess. He looked carefully at the paper he found and handed it to the guard. Rifraf seemed to have slowed his movement on purpose. He looked at the document. He looked at it again, looked at Sanso briefly, and at the document again.
“This document is incomplete, you can’t pass”, said the spirit.
Sanso looked at the mission order and realized that he had handed the copy. The original had two curly fleurons on the top and on the bottom. That’s why he didn’t like this one, he was a bit too rigid about the protocole.
Where was this … document ? Sanso looked in his bag frantically as Rifraf was beginning to disappear. Here it was. “Hold on”, he said to the ghost. he checked quicky if there was no other typo or missing element. Everything was there. He just hoped Rifraf would say nothing about the grease stains.The guard snorted and nodded, as if reluctantly. He waved his hand and blue torches began to light up, showing the way.
“Follow the blue lights”, said Rifraf and he disappeared.
Sanso felt the warmth flowing back in his bones. When Sadie looked out the window, he was feeling much better. “What is taking so long ?”, she asked with a frown.
“Administration”, he said with a grin.She answered with an eye-roll and her head disappeared in the coach. The sun was rising.
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
“How do you feel now?”
“Not so bad, considering I just survived a slug indigestion…”
Ernie and Jett were giving sad glances at their nearly empty glasses of Bourgogne red wine. Ernie’s plate of snails au beurre persillé was barely touched, and Jett who was eyeing at it for a while now as he was sucking on his empty shells decided now was a good time to grab it and switch it with his own empty one while continuing to rant loudly in the French restaurant with his mouth full.
“You see, that’s why I don’t like those bloody Chinese greasy spoons, especially after a surge. You never know what you’re goin’ to get. Me in’ haffin’ none of it sea bloody bottom-feeders cucumber…”Ernie was still looking a bit pale, except for the occasional patches of purple hematomata, that the doctor mentioned would disappear once the body manages to expel the impossible to digest slug.
“Should have had that blessed surgery, would have been faster” he moaned.
“Are you kiddin’? Look, don’t want to be gross or anythin’ but last time I had things expelled too fast, it wasn’t a pretty sight!”
“Oh stop it again with your oily shit fish, that’s a blessin’ disgusting memory I would merrily forget!”.
“L’addition!” Ernie had had enough of Jett’s snail munching. It was time to get to their next assignment. Even if the occupational medicine doctor had tried to deter him resuming work too quickly, it was better that than dragging around an empty house in flip-flops and pajamas.
The good thing was that the Disaster Damage Team was never short of assignments. Most of the time they were working in locksteps with the Surge Team, clearing the aftershocks, so they didn’t have to fear about boredom.In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Captain Yang Lang, or Goat as they called him, had reluctantly anchored the Aqua Luna at the Long Poon port to resupply for the next month. The Aqua Luna was his pride, an old pirate ship improved with modern tech, with sails bright vermilion, and polished deck of teck wood, smelling of the forests and brine. Years earlier, he’d vowed to stay off land as much as possible, and use her to remain away from the current lunacy that sprayed over the lands. But strange tides and surges on the ocean had warned him that it seemed to spray further than he’d expected.
To get to the bottom of it, he was having an appointment at the basement of an old derelict building, on the first floor of which artists had setup an organization named the Long Poon House of Stories; funnily, the basement was full of other kinds of stories. It had served as a training facility back when the Brits had dominion over the seas. It was now recycled into an archive facility for the Surge Team. You usually wouldn’t notice that, but if you paid attention, the bag of sponges sold at the Sinese medicine store full of dried animals, dogs legs and whatnots was unmistakable.In reply to: Strings of Nines
Actually, the mindful reader would be glad to know that Waakaawaakawaawaawaawaawaawaawahuhun (or Wakawah-thirtyfour’n) wasn’t quite as safe as its almost twin city Wookoowookawoowoowoowoowoowoohoohoon (or Wookoowooh-thirty-fiv’n), both lying actually quite close for a bird, or a dragon, anchored at the bottom and at each of the sides of the same mountain.
While the former’s only attraction was the Kangrawaakaas’ Stadium with its weekly games of morbidly obese people hurling in the mud, the latter was known for its ski resorts and snow trance delixtacies in makeshift melloow yelloow yurts. Of course, W35N benefited from the better sunlight exposure, which made every dweller in the W34N hamlet fiercely jealous of its being favoured by all tourists passing by, while they (they thought) should be instead commanded for their bravery and perseverance.
And while Arona had her toes meticulously licked in blissful oblivion, little did Vincentius know what trouble was ahead were he to ask a W34N’er if he was in W35N…
In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
“Do leaves really talk?” she wondered as the smoke of the herb tea dissipated off the kitchen’s mirror credence. “Let’s see about that,” she continued, carrying the tray with the cup of tea and the scones to the computer room, from where a few oink sounds were beckoning her.
Probably her friends asking for a chat, some random rubbish or the last juicy news about the president’s wife who happened to be visiting in the area. In truth, she wouldn’t have even known, had it not be for her foreign friends. The local neighbours really couldn’t give a fig. That was figuratively speaking of course. The fig trees were already full of green fruits, that if odds were good wouldn’t turn up as half-sodden half-rotten food for snails on the cobblestone pathway this year.She added a zest of fresh lemon to the tea. She liked it bitter. The leaves were starting to settle at the bottom of the cup while she lit up a cigarette, throwing a cursory glance at the tens of messages waiting for her to peruse. Which was more interesting? She could figure out wavy things as feeble and changing as her cigarette’s smoke in between the leaves patterns, as well as in between the lines of haphazard messages from all the contacts. But those she loved the most were the pages she leafed through her books.
Yesterday, she started to do something purely daft, as she liked — a sort of challenge, if you will; or perhaps, a strong repressed desire. Sometimes it takes you years to do things you were thinking about when you were but a child. The moment you allow yourself the pleasure to indulge and overcome the resilient beliefs that it’s something forbidden or insidiously wrong is all the sweeter.
And she was tasting it like a sour sweet, with a touch of forbidden and the zest of excitement. Or more like horseradish. Ooh, does she live the green stuff too. Prickly at first, going up to your nose, and living you crying but begging for more. She makes a note to buy some next week (note that she’ll probably forget).
So what did she do? She took some of her precious books and started to tear up and cut through the pages. A blasphemy almost, for someone like her who revered books. Of course, at first she only took the bad ones, the romantic rubbish and the dog-eared now useless kitchen books, but then realized, what would be the point of gathering new information by assembling random pages cut off from a variety of books, if it wasn’t made from quality ingredients. Well, it surely stands to reason, even though her culinary reason had been on voyage the last twenty years as far as she knew. Anyway. Those leafs were starting to talk better than any bloody tea leaves could.
[link: talking leaves]
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Sadly, Phurt’s couldn’t make any cobwebs other than all wireless —kind of defeated the purpose, when you gave it thought.
Reception and connection weren’t any of the new dwelling’s forte for now.So she wrapped herself in a cozy dark corner of her new cave, tucked in a blanket of great warmth and subtle mucous design, and her nine eyelids being closed one after the other (from right to left, and top to bottom), started to dream of delicate and headless sheep.
Topic: Probably Real
She woke up at noon and it was 100 degrees, or 37 degrees, whichever you prefer, but whichever way you look at it, it was not a good temperature to wake up to. Everything was pointing in the direction of going solo, playing the game on her own for awhile, or at least until she was in a regular habit of giving herself priority, giving more attention to her own creative pursuits, and less time to the futile attempts to keep group projects going. She supposed for a moment that making a start whilst hot, tired, discouraged and confused was not the most ideal mood for a start, but at least it was a start. She wasn’t even entirely sure what it was she was actually starting, but suspected that it didn’t much matter, in the grand scheme (or lack thereof) of things.
She’d had a moment of inspiration when she started reading a book. She’d only read a few pages and had no idea how the book would turn out, but the format was interesting. Julie had had an idea, simmering on a back burner for years, to write a book. It always seemed to want to be an autobiographical book, and that’s where she always came unstuck because she couldn’t see the point of that, not that she was overly concerned about whether anyone would want to read it or not, but she often came unstuck when she wondered about how all the characters in the book might feel about it, which is why that moment of inspiration in the bathroom the other day seemed like such a good idea.
She could write a book about a probability party, perhaps called ‘Probably Real’, (maybe with the subtitle ‘Probably Not’.) There would be an occasion, the details of which she hadn’t worked out yet, in which various (not all, she soon realized!) of her probable selves met ~ such as in the Atkinson book, in some quiet desolate place with no interruptions (obviously somewhere with no internet connection, although there was always the danger of picking up a freak broadband WiFi), where they had all the time in the world to tell their tales, compare notes as it were.
Which was where the fiction idea came in ~ of course! Just call it fiction! Would just one of the probable selves be telling the truth, relating the only true version of Julie’s life? And if so, which one was the real probable self? All the characters in the book would have probable selves and probable lives; which of them was the real probable self, the official version? No-one would ever know.
Of course, anyone versed in the metaphysical mechanics of probabilities and such would realize that all probable versions are real, at the same time as all being, in a certain sense, fiction ~ made up. The only question was, would that be too unlimiting to contain within the confines of one book, but time (so to speak) would tell.
Procrastination had set in, as usual, not that that is a bad thing, and things pretty much carried on as usual for a few days. Julie noticed the puppy tugging at a particular magazine from the bottom of the magazine rack over the course of those few days, and eventually the magazine was rather pointedly poking out from the bottom of the pile, it’s title clearly showing: a booklet on How To Write FICTION, with FICTION in big letters.
Never the less, the procrastination continued, although the clue was duly noted. It hadn’t been the first time a Writing A Book incident had occured.
It was easy, in this case, to remember that date, because it was right around the time of the 1999/2000 milenium party, right around the time when that particular roller coaster had derailed. While unpacking the boxes of books and putting them on the shelves of yet another rented house ~ a particularly garish and tasteless monstrosity, a drug baron’s dream of unfunctional largeness with hideous coloured glass windows (it’s the sheer randomness of the colours that’s so awful, G had remarked) ~ a book flew off the shelf, quite literally, and landed alone in the middle of the floor some distance away from the bookshelf.
Becoming A Writer was the name of the book, and the funny thing was that she had been thinking of writing a book but didn’t know where to start, and had been toying with the idea of buying a book on writing a book. So she read the book and started writing, a little bit every day, following the books advice to just start writing, even if it’s just ‘I can’t think of what to write’. There was plenty to write about as it turned out, but circumstances changed, another sudden move of house ensued, another rollercoaster ride, and the writing stopped for awhile.
But back to the book, Becoming A Writer. For a long time, Julie had no recollection of buying that book, and wondered by what magic had it appeared at her feet. Many years later she perhaps would have simply accepted the magic, and would have known that she created the book in that moment. But at the time she didn’t, and in due course constructed a memory of buying the book some years previously at a car boot sale somewhere along the coast road.
(We did buy the book, piped up PSJ2, and I actually read it, unlike you, as soon as I bought it. My 5th book is about to be published, a lightweight comedy/detective series about the Costa del Crime)
PSJ2’s interjection reminded PSJ1 (Good grief, we’ll have to think of a solution to the probable self names, she noted) that she had in fact started writing a book about the Costa del Crime, called Peregrino’s, or perhaps that was the name she’d given to the bar, the central hub, of the book. Of course, that was in the days when bars had been her central hub; she doubted very much if she would choose a bar as the central hub of a book now. She hadn’t got very far with the book, and had burned it when PSA1 got busted, just in case. What to do first, bury the (probable, it must be remembered) pump action shotgun, or burn the book. She had buried the gun, under cover of darkness, in the back garden, wrapping it in plastic bags and blankets, making it look for all the world like the body of a dead child. It was dark, it was raining, and there weren’t many neighbours out there in the orange groves, and she could do no more than hope for the best that she hadn’t been seen.
No doubt there was a probable self who did choose to create being seen, but if so she hadn’t arrived at the probability party (yet, at any rate) with her tale.
That it had been a major probability junction was certain. Not just the gun burying incident, which had turned out to be no more than merely incidental, but the events leading up to it.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“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.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Jeeze, the little brats have stopped me from getting me beauty sleep looking for the darn eggletons! Shar was seating outside sipping her cup of tea while conversing with her old friend Glor.
I was about to tell you the same Shar!… i need my beauty kip. Yer niece and nephew… Holly Molly…
Niece and nephew… what you on about? The nephewer the merrier if you ask me
As if we not got enough with them prescription drugs from the bathroom cabinet stopping us from sleeping!
Want to see them comin’ near our beds those!
Oh no, not our beds! Glor recoiled in horror.
Stupid drugs… Better for ‘em not come close when I’m ‘ere, or we’ll have to learn how to sleep standing!
Wouldn’t like to see your hump sleeping standing!
Not hump,… haunch, silly! Wouldn’t be so good anyway covered with blankets… Shar lost her trail of thought in remembrance of her past bedroom encounters.
A sudden crack in the nearby potting shed raised the ample bottom of the one named Glor in alarm.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Jeeze, the little brats have almost ruined all our naggin plants looking for the darn eggletons!” Shar was seating outside sipping her cup of tea while conversing with her old friend Glor.
“I was about to tell you the same Shar!… Yer niece and nephew… Holly Molly…”
“Niece and nephew… The nephewer the merrier if you ask me”
“As if we not got enough with the does from the forest comin’ for food in our plantations!”
“Want to see them comin’ near our crops those!”
“Oh no, not our crops!” Glor recoiled in horror.
“Stupid does… Better for ‘em not come close when I’m ‘ere, or we’ll have to learn how to cook haunch!”
“Wouldn’t have your hump for dinner!”
“Not hump,… haunch, silly! Wouldn’t be so good anyway stuffed with lead pellets…” Shar lost her trail of thought in remembrance of her past hunting skills.A sudden crack in the nearby potting shed raised the ample bottom of the one named Glor in alarm.
