Search Results for 'far'

“Oh bloody hell Tina, you daft tart” Becky said when she’d finished wiping pistachio green specks of sputum off her cheek. “You’re in the wrong place! Well, never mind, now you’re here, what rhymes with fish? Listen to this so far:

Sputum & Pistachio, Editors At Large
Lived on the river in an old blue barge
One liked rabbits and the other liked fish….”

Yoland decided to stick to fiction for awhile rather than the reporting of facts. She would even go so far as to disguise the facts to look like fiction, because fiction never got you into trouble, so she was inclined to think after the mornings rude awakening. If she simply said ‘I made it up’ in future, well, it seemed an easier way. Yoland decided to talk to herself for the forseeable future too, rather than to anyone else. She would make up characters to talk to, but it would all be made up, none of it would be the reporting of facts. She was through with facts, facts were too much trouble. Making it all up was easier.

While she was eating her marmite buttered toast, she opened the book at random that she had taken to bed with her the previous night, but hadn’t opened.

Once again, Yoland exclaimed “What a coincidence”, and wondered if coincidences would ever cease to be enchanting and fun. She doubted it, somehow. Each coincidence was always such a tiny tantalizing glimpse of so much more.

“…..you merely perceive a small portion of any given action,” Yoland read, “and when you cease to perceive it then it seems to you that the action itself ceases, and so an artificial boundary is erected.

“It has not occured to you, you see, to attempt to look OVER this boundary, so to speak, because you have taken it for granted that nothing exists on the other side. I am not here speaking necessarily of death, though this is the obvious instance of course. I am speaking of something much more subtle. I am speaking of ANY small seemingly insignificant action that you perform during an ordinary day, and HERE we are coming close.”

Yoland reckoned Seth was pretty close to what she’d been saying the previous night.

“You percieve only the most initial elements of such an action. It is as if you threw a ball, and could only follow the ball three inches away in space ~ then the ball would seem to vanish to you. The action would therefore seem completed. You would think it idiotic to imagine what happened to the ball when you could see it no longer, for habit would work in such a way that the disappearance of the ball would seem natural and normal, and a part of the nature of things.

“So, comparing the ball to an action, you perceive but the smallest portion of any given action, even one performed by yourself. It does not occur to you that there is more to perceive.”

Yoland was inclined to agree. Then she suddenly remembered that she was making it all up from now on, and went for a stroll around the Kasbah.

The Yoland that was making things up (as opposed to the Yoland that was reporting the facts) was going to stay in Chefchaouen for a few days. Chaouen, as it was known, was a mountain village in the Shift Mountains in Rococco, not far from the beaches of the Spreaditarainian, not far from the Ayemuirmann Stretch.

The Yoland that was reporting the facts wondered where this was going.

“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.

Mark knocked tentatively.

“Sheila?” he poked his head around the door.

“Sheila? … oh excuse me!” he apologised. “I was looking for Sheila. I thought she might still be here ..”

His voice trailed off as he looked at the woman standing before him. She looked so familiar and yet he couldn’t for the life of him place her.

Bugger! thought Phoebe. This is an entertaining turn of events. What is he doing back here?

As if to answer her unspoken question Mark explained that he had missed the flight to Noo Zooland, and knew that he was making an awful mistake he would regret for the rest of his life if he did not find Sheila and see if they had a chance together. Did Phoebe know where she had gone?

Phoebe smiled kindly at the anxious and visibly lovelorn Mark.

“I think you will find she hasn’t got far. Why don’t you wait here with my parrot, Vincentius, and I will go and see if I can find her for you.”

Mark looked expectantly around the room for Vincentius, but failed to see any sign of him. “Your parrot?” he queried.

Phoebe laughed. “Silly old me! What am I like eh? Of course, Vincentius has yet to make it through the portal. Don’t worry, he will be here soon.”

She chuckled to herself as she left the room.

Sheila, hang on a moment will you? There is something I need to tell you. Actually there is no easy way to say this so I am just going to have to blurt it out.

Go on then … said Jane carefully, thinking how pale and anxious Mark looked, and wondering if she should tell him her name was not Sheila. She resisted a sudden impulse to reach out and adjust the toupee which had fallen slightly forward on his forehead.

Although, as you will be aware, I am visibly attracted to you .. I am leaving tomorrow on a mission across the ditch to Noo Zooland.

Noo Zooland! Jane gasped. That godforsaken place!

Yes, unfortunately so. I have been asked to investigate an outbreak of the flu on a peanut farm. It is dangerous work Sheila, amongst the savages of Noo Zooland, and I don’t know how long I will be away for. The quarantine regulations are ridiculously strict. What else can you expect of a little backwater like Noo Zooland eh?

So this is goodbye? her voice trembled.

I am afraid so. At least for now. But I will never forget you, Sheila.

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.”

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.

Why go to the moon
To plant your greens
There’s plenty of room
Inside your spleen

Why travel so far
So long to deliver
There’s room in your heart
Or indeed in your liver

The room was quiet and the noise of the street seemed far away. Dhart was enjoying this moment after love when his partner was sleeping, he could observe her freely and think of the past few days events.

He was in town for a particular business concerning the mining of more of that particular green glass from the sky. He’d been told It would only take a few days but he’d been here for 2 weeks now and according to the Mayor of Duur Mistar, the priests of the Crimson Feather were blocking, preventing any more extraction from the mine. Their influence was strong enough to interfere even with a royal command, and Dhart wasn’t mandated by the Queen, so he could only hope they would eventually see their own interest in the matter and let the transaction occur.

He was silently waiting, standing on a branch of a big bingahloo tree on the edge of the village of Duur Mistar. He was one of the Scouts of Dhja and his duty was to travel through the realm of Amstar (pronounced [Am ⁱ shtar’]) and report back to the Queen any event usual or unusual. The Scouts were gifted with a special talent and they were trained since childhood to develop it and use it for the good of Dhja. They could read energy and notice the slightest change in any manifestation before it became physically manifest. Because of that, they were revered and feared by many.

In the realm of Amstar, the People of Dhja was feline and the different tribes were presenting as many differences as the races of our own felines. From the tribe of the Solar Bear was Dhurga, his fur was medium-length and cinnamon, similar to that of Abyssinian cats. He was slender and his movements graceful, one would barely notice his presence at that moment, as Scouts were able to manipulate their energy and adjust it according to their purpose, and he was here to observe and not to interfere.

He had felt a call for a few weeks. It was barely noticeable first and there were many possibilities to translate this. It could have been because of the small amount of energy, or it could have been because it was quite far from were he was at that moment. The later was more accurate and he had to travel many days before he could pinpoint a more precise direction and point in space and time.

Along with the ability to read energy was a constant conscious connection with any other Scout. They had no secret among their kin and neither was it necessary nor would it have been possible easily. He had checked with the other Scouts if they had felt the call also, but apparently very few of them were feeling it and fewer were interpreting it as a call. He’d been the first one to arrive at Duur Mistar, apparently the originating place of the call and he’d been waiting for the others since. They were not far away and there hadn’t been any change in the quality or in the intensity of the vibration, but there were signs that it could soon occur.

Yoland was inordinately pleased with her purchases, trifling though they were. She smiled at the little bottle of cherry red nail varnish, imagining how it would look on sun browned and callous free toes. Painted toe nails was one of life’s simple pleasure, she reckoned. Nothing fancy or expensive or uncomfortable, like her new brassiere, which had never the less given her spirits a bit of a lift, as well as her breasts, with its bright blue moulded foam shape. She wondered if she could suspend the brassiere and its contents from something other than her shoulders for once, but couldn’t see how it could be arranged and still allow a modicum of freedom of movement. Perhaps some of the new scientific discoveries that she was eagerly awaiting would include some kind of gravity and weight defying device, possibly helium filled foam support. Perhaps even in the future, anyone with a high squeaky voice would be described as a bra sucker. Or perhaps one day breasts worn on the waist would be fashionable. This thought made Yoland a bit uncomfortable, as she hadn’t really believed she was following fashion, but maybe she was after all.

Yoland wondered if she was verging on the ridiculous again, and decided that it didn’t matter if she was. There was something rather splendid, she was beginning to discover, about the mundane and the silly. Something serenely pleasurable about ~ well about everything she’d been taking for granted for so many years. The things she hadn’t really noticed much, while her mind was busy thinking and pondering, replaying old conversations, and imagining new ones, sometimes with others, but often with herself, inside the vast jumble of words that was her mind.

It was always a wonderful change of pace to go away on a trip, with its wealth of new conversations and words, events and symbols to ponder over later at her leisure, the many photographic snapshots providing reminders and clues and remembered laughs, but it was the renewed sense of appreciation for the mundane that was ultimately most refreshing about returning home.

The word home had baffled Yoland for many years. For most of her 51 years, if the truth be told. So many moves, so many houses, so many people ~ where, really, was home? She’d eventually compromised and called herself a citizen of the world, but she still found herself at times silently wailing “I want to go home”, but with the whole world as her home, it didn’t make a great deal of sense why she would still yearn for that elusive place called home.

Of all the words that swam in her head some of them seemed to keep bobbing up to the surface, attracting her attention from time to time. That was the funny thing about words, Yoland mused, not for the first time, You hear them and hear them and you understand what they mean, but only in theory. The suddenly something happens and you shout AHA, and then you can’t find any words to explain it! Repeating the words you’ve already heard a hundred times somehow doesn’t even come close to describing what it actually feels like to understand what those words mean. That kind of feeling always left her wondering if everyone else had known all along, except her.

Yoland was often finding words in unexpected places, and these were often the very words that were the catalysts. (Even the word catalyst had been one of those words that repeatedly bobbed to the surface of her sea of words). Her trip had been in search of words, supposedly, channeled words (although Yoland suspected the trip had been more about connections than words) and yet there had only really been one word that had stood out as significant, and oddly enough, that word had been watermelon.

That had been a lesson in itself, if indeed lesson is the right word. Yoland had been attempting to exercise her psychic powers for six months or more, trying to get Toobidoo, the world famous channeled entity, to say the word watermelon ~ just for fun. She couldn’t even remember how it all started, or why the word watermelon was significant ~ perhaps a connection to a symbol etched on a watermelon rind in Marseilles, which later became a Tile of the City. (Yoland wasn’t altogether sure that she understood the tiles, but she did think it was a very fun game, and that aspect alone was sufficient to hold her interest.) By the end of the last day of the channeling event Toobidoo still hadn’t said the word watermelon which was somewhat of a disappointment, so when Yoland saw Gerry Jumper, Toobidoo’s channel, in the vast hotel foyer, she ran up to him saying “Say watermelon.” The simple direct method worked instantly, where months of attempts the hard way had failed. Yoland felt that she learned alot from this rather silly incident about the nature of everyday magic, and this particular lesson, or we might prefer to call it a communication, was repeated for good measure the following day in the park.

Wailon, the other world famous channeled entity who was the star attraction of the Words Event, had proudly displayed photographic evidence of orbs at the lecture. Like Yoland had tried with the watermelon, he was choosing an esoteric and unfamiliar method of creating orbs, suggesting that the audience meditate and conjure them up to show on photographs, rather than simply creating physical orbs. Yoland and her friends Meldrew and Franklyn had chanced upon a beautiful glass house full of real physical glass orbs in the park, underlining the watermelon message for Yoland: not to discount the spontaneous magic of the physical world in the search for the esoteric.

It had, for example, been rather magical and wonderful to hear Gerry Jumper explain how he had mentioned watermelon to his wife on the previous day in the dining room ~ mundane, yes, but magical too. It would have been marvellous to create Toobidoo channeling the word watermelon for sure, but how much more magical to create an actual slice of physical watermelon in the dining room and have Gerry remark on it, and to have an actual physical conversation with him about it. Who knows, he may even remember the nutcase who spent six months trying to get him to say watermelon whenever he sees one, at least for awhile. It might be quite often too, as his wife is partial to watermelon. Yoland wondered if this was some kind of connecting link, perhaps the connection to Gerry and Cindy started in Marseilles and watermelon was the physical clue, the pointer towards the connection.

Perhaps, Yoland wondered, the orbs were the connecting link to Wailon, although she didn’t feel such a strong connection to him as she did to Toobidoo and Gerry Jumper. She had been collecting coloured gel orbs for several months ~ just for fun. There was often a connecting link to be found in the silly and the fun, the pointless and the bizarre, and even in the mundane and everyday things.

In the days following her return home ~ or the house that Yoland lived in, shall we say ~ she felt rather sleepy, as if she was in slow motion, but the feeling was welcome, it felt easy and more importantly, acceptable. There was nothing that she felt she should be doing instead, for a change, no fretting about starting projects, or accomplishing chores, rather a slow pleasant drifting along. Yes, there were chores to be done, such as watering plants and feeding animals and other things, but they no longer felt like chores. She found she wasn’t mentally listing all the other chores to be done but was simply enjoying the one she was doing. Even whilst picking up innumerable dog turds outside, she heard the birds singing and saw the blossom on the fruit trees against the blue sky, saw shapes in the white clouds, heard the bees buzzing in the wisteria. The abundance of dog shit was a sign of a houseful of happy healthy well fed dogs, and the warm spring sun dried it and made it easier to pick up.

It was, somewhat unexpectedly, while Yoland was picking up dog shit that she finally realized what some of those bobbing words meant about home, and presence, and connection to source. It seemed amusingly ironic after travelling so far (not just the recent trip, but all the years of searching) to finally find out where home was, where the mysterious and elusive source was. (Truth be told, some printed words she found the previous day had been another catalyst, by Vivian channeled by Wanda, but she couldn’t recall the exact words. Yoland had to admit that words, used as a catalyst, were really rather handy.)

Wherever you go, there you are ~ they were words too, and they were part of the story. Now that Yoland had come to the part where she wanted to express in words where home, and source, was, she found she couldn’t find the right words. In a funny kind of way the word vacant popped into her head, as if the place where the vast jumble of words was usually housed became vacant, allowing her to be present in her real physical world. It really was quite extraordinary how simple it was. Too simple for words.