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In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
They’re all as mad as hatters here, Heliptrope said to himself, as he looked in on the snoring pair before making his escape. It was a blessing in disguise when old Lavvie left me for Oleander.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Before long Harvey was snoring like a wart hog too. Lavender had promptly fallen asleep again after reprimanding Heliptrope in no uncertain terms for waking her up.
Well, I may as well go out, Heliptrope decided. I think I’ll wear my new eau de nil shirt.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Lavender stormed off to her bedroom, and threw herself on the bed. The flu was making her irritable, and she knew she was being snarky but couldn’t seem to stop herself. She sighed, and tried to relax. Within minutes she was fast asleep, snoring like a wart hog.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“I love it when you talk nonsense in that sexy voice, Tina!” said Sam, unexpectedly poking his head round the door. “Say something rude!”
Tina rolled her eyes again, and harumphed.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Sputum & Pistachio, Editors At Large
Lived on the river in an old blue barge
One liked rabbits and the other liked fish
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Becky was liking her dancing courses; there was this funny guy with an outrageously bright canary yellow shirt and a funny accent who taught them some Asian-based moves last time, and she’d been puzzled for awhile, frozen in her tracks and speechless for a moment (which didn’t often occur), as the guy was so weird and yet serious looking that she didn’t know if she should laugh hysterically at his preposterous wiggling butt moves, or keep serious like the others.
That’s where she noticed a girl in the class. Like her, she was lost in wonderment while all of the others where respectfully following the teacher’s movements with a polite straight face.As she was feeling bubbles of hysterical laughter desperately struggling to burst at the surface, she quickly exited the classroom, only to find that the other girl was there too.
“Ahaha, is he some sort of wacko or what?” Becky couldn’t help but laugh even if the other one seemed affected somehow, yet not indifferent to the humour of the situation.
“Bloody oath, yeah… Madder than Almad this one”
“You’re not from here are you?” Becky asked, noticing a delicious variation of British accent in the girl’s voice.
“No, from New Zealand. Name’s Tina, Tina Prout. Well you can forget the last name anyway, I’m going to change that.”
“Delighted, I’m Becky Vane. Would you fancy some vegemite on toast?”
“Sure, let’s get out of here quickly.”
“Toot toot! School’s out!… Mmm, looks like it’s ‘pissing down’ outside… Is that how you say in Kiwi?”In reply to: Strings of Nines
It all came as a surprise to them. At first, they didn’t want to believe the “others” telling them they were dead. Glor went there first, then Shar shortly after. Apparently some side effects of the beauty treatments they’d taken during their trip in the mysterious island of Tikfijikoo.
They started to believe it when they witnessed their own burial ceremonies. Was a bit strange at first, but soon they couldn’t help but gossip about their friends outfits and hairdos. Then all of a sudden, it was funny! They could go anywhere in the blink of an eye, spy on everyone, and get a good laugh together —and not with just any bloody disincarnate ascended being.— Shar?
— What Glor?
— What we’re going to do now?
— I think whatever they said about it, I quite liked the island. Perhaps we can pop-in there, have a good party with lemurs, especially now that everybody’s been deserting it.
— Oh yes, and let’s get find that doctor, scare him outta his wits force him make beauty treatments for us!
— Now that’s talking lady!
In reply to: Strings of Nines
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Lavender was not really sure she understood what Harvey was talking about.
Poor thing. Does he feel like a frog with no sense of purpose? she wondered. The injury to his nose had been devastating of course, yet Lavender firmly believed that there was purpose to all things.
If you don’t believe that, then the whole system falls down, she had said to Harvey, in her sympathetic AND adorable voice.
What system is that? asked Harvey gloomily, wishing he had a voice like Lavenders. Since the accident there had been a distinct nasal twang to his voice. He thought miserably of how quickly W.A.R.P.E.D. had released him from his contract following a complaint from Sha and Glor after he had dropped the four poster bed. The additional weight of dear Lavender had just been a little too much, even for HIS nose. Not only that, he had he lost his weightlifting vocation and his good looks were also severely compromised. The surgeons had not been overly optimistic that his nose would ever completely recover.
well you weren’t really THAT good looking, said the softly voiced Lavender, hoping to cheer Harvey up.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Believe it or not, it suddenly seems like the shifting symphony makes more sense than the ninth (and Beethoven doesn’t make you dumb), if you see my drift…”
“I could, if you’d stop talking in riddles” Lavender told Harvey with but the slightest hint of exasperation in her otherwise perfectly adorable soft and beautiful voice.“I don’t even know what I’m talking about actually, it’s like I’m channeling some deranged poet”
“Yeah, that or being taken over by aliens …”
“You know, I miss a sense of continuity… When I can’t follow the leaping frog in at least a pattern that makes sense, I gradually loose all interest. At least if I know the frog is going that way to look for tasty maggots, or that other way to lay a few eggs, or that other way to mate with psychotropic toads, I can hop or fly along… “
Lavender smiled a lovely smile.“There it’s like a frog without purpose; it’s running in all directions, keep changing colours like a chameleon, and no matter how I try, I can’t figure the simplest pattern.”
“Maybe you should ask your super computer floogle ?”
“Yeah… it would tell me that figures without a pattern are called irrational or even transcendent… Not that it would help me in the least. Usually, when you can’t find a pattern, it’s because you don’t use the proper decomposition.”
“You want to dissect the poor frog?”
“No… Not even sure why I bother with the frog at all… It can do what it wants in the pond after all…”In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Well, it’s a fiction, she could be anywhere. That and if you stopped changing the facts and names for a moment, you’d be able to knit them together into new understandings.”
Charmille was knitting while answering to impatient young Becky who for all of the birds’ chatter in the apartment couldn’t really concentrate on her schoolwork, and had only one thought in mind (more insistent than the fleeting thousands other ones that is): she wanted to go outside immerse herself in the helter skelter of New York City.
“And why should I care!” Becky was about to start another tirade of self-righteous indignation at the failure to recognize her brilliance when she stopped herself in her tracks. She was suddenly amazed at the intricacy of the pattern Charmille was creating with two simple sticks and the many colourful threads in her black and white box. That was an art in itself, and Becky wasn’t impervious to art, quite the contrary. She could spot art in the slightest and singlest stroke of graffiti on the walls of the City. She could even see them dancing endless farandoles in front of her eyes. She was perhaps the only one she knew who was able to see that, but what her aunt was doing was very much like it.
Sometimes, she’d had people laugh at her when she was younger. She was telling them about her vivid dreams, that she’d spent hours in one dream looking at a single napkin, how soft it was, how superbly almost real it was —even if that was just a dream napkin— while, according to others, she could have done more “lofty” things instead —like go and see ascended masters.“But I like movement! I don’t want to be stuck in slimy facts!”
“Well dear, you should know that… wherever you are, there you are. Even if wherever is elsewhere.”The cryptic statement made by the poised lady somehow struck a cord. She wanted to disguise facts into fictions, or fiction as facts, but any way she was going, she was still struggling with herself, the essence at her core. It didn’t matter if she wanted to have the needle jump to another loop (and get out of that particular loop) because it was all part of the same cloth she was creating. It suddenly gave her much to ponder…
In reply to: Strings of Nines
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.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Sha had been more enduring than Glo, that was hardly a surprise, but as much as it pained him to say, he had to proclaim their official death. Obituaries wasn’t his forte, and the fact they were plants notwithstanding, it wasn’t making things much easier.
At least, the ginger root had made new leaves like the tiny palm tree. He was starting to believe plants didn’t want to be around.In reply to: Strings of Nines
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.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“ As we have stated previously, these terms are quite limiting for explanation purposes. The terminology is not incorrect, by any means. It is only expressing a much, much smaller impression to you than, in actuality, these terms represent. If your interpretation of these terms is too literal, you may find yourself accepting concepts which have only been explained to you partially; for our explanation of concepts is only a minute portion of the entirety of any idea, or concept, or “doctrine.” Only playing, my friend! These concepts must be taken in at this present time, within your present understanding, to the intellect; and the intellect must be allowed to trigger the intuition, allowing a full circle of thought, so to speak; this full circle being a continuous flow of information to assimilation, to actualization, to creation ” — Patel
Not AGAIN!! shouted Becky. For the past week every time she tried to open her blog page, it always opened on this old post of Patels. Usually, by a circuitous route, she did eventually manage to arrive on her most recent post…..but not today! That monkey Patel wouldn’t let Becky look at any other post but this.
Funny coincidence really that she’d watched the cartoon last night called Madagascar, starrring Patel himself as King of the Lemurs. Becky had to laugh. A rave party of dancing lemurs on ecstasy!
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Yoland. “Fancy landing on that Patel quote again today!”
Yoland knew Patel was around when the frying sausages had popped and spit fat at her. She had lost count of the amount of times that Patel had popped in with this quote. More strings and circles….and lemurs, too! At the lunch party the previous day, Yoland had been discussing evolution, and the missing link, and the next day a lemur-like skeleton was being heralded in the newspapers as the missing link.
Patel, as the missing link ~ Yoland had to laugh.
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: Strings of Nines
“Light will come, can you see it?” Yurick smiled as he was taking note of the latest random quote at the exact same moment his new boss was telling him “for once I’m not asking you to work from the depths of the mine” referring to his past few days of relatively uninspiring work mining for information in unformed sheets of data.
Light indeed was shining from the window in his back, reflecting the blue-sky vista on the shining screen of the laptop. Perhaps it was his friend Finn’s way of reminding him to spread to his colleagues the riches from the ore body of quotes of the illustrious Chinese philosopher Liu Meng.
He wasn’t too sure though they would be too receptive. Time would tell. At least he’d noticed an Abyssinian cat figurine on top of one of his collegues’ computer. The cats were visibly coming soon.In reply to: Strings of Nines
Franlise read the message from the Fellowship with mixed emotions.
The Fellowship congratulates and thanks you for your continuity work on the script. We acknowledge the extreme difficulties you contend with as you face erratic forces resistant to any form of continuity and seeking only to create meaningless threads. The Fellowship also advises the script will be even further improved if you could sexy it up a bit.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
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.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Don’t be silly Phoebe” a voice whispered in Jane’s ear in between a few copious sneezing.
Jane didn’t really know why, but suddenly the whole scene about Mark leaving her became essentially a farce. She could feel some sort of burlesque in that whole event that would have been difficult to explain. As though she would never have really cared for the man, or any other man in the world to provide for herself.
She was starting to feel different. She could feel a strong assurance building up, and even her body started to feel different.
Still, she couldn’t tell who she was; there was still that dark hazy cloud the shadow of which was cast over her memories, but it wasn’t from her memories that this sudden surge of power was coming. It was coming from deeper inside; the very core of her being, and it was making her different.She reached for the pocket mirror in her bag to apply a fresh layer of make-up on her plump cheeks and blue eyes.
She didn’t notice the differences right away. One sometimes gets caught in the repetitiveness of usual and mundane actions and really forgets to see. And of course, the mirror’s size and angle was preventing her to see anything but her eyes if she didn’t think to use it differently. But her eyes were now different; not deep blue as before but a subtle shade of ash blue with hints of violet.
And then… She noticed the wrinkles. The plump cheeks had left place to a thinner face. Strangely, she found it even prettier.
And as she expressed this appreciation of her new features, she noticed that her blond mane was now a little more greyish.She knew it wasn’t aging, and no she wasn’t delusional. She didn’t remember her name, but apparently she knew how to shape-shift.
Would it make her quest to remember her identity more difficult? She couldn’t have told, but she knew that something in her never forgot a single bit of her whole self.
That new self she was now who felt more like her real self than “Jane” needed a more adequate name.
Phoebe definitely had a ring to it that seemed appropriate.
