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“Interested in interacting with you?” replied Mc Tart, “I should co co! Like a bloody morgue around here lately.”

“Er, who is Co Co?” Neb inquired politely.

Mc Tart grinned impishly. “A new character? I meant to say, I should think so! Although whether or not Co Co should think so is another matter entirely.”

“What might be the worth of what Co Co should think?”

“Good question, Neb!”

{link: worth}

Young Neb entered the vast openness that is, with a faint whooshing sound.

whoooooooosh

“Hello?” squeaked Neb in a curious fashion. Neb, wearing a curious face, drowns in the quiet of his own presence.

“Is there anybosy out there?” asked Neb in a slightly less squeaky tone than his last vocal utterance.

Neb ponders his latest mote, and questions its validity.

“Well, I am just as curious as you are, and I am not entirely sure of this reality… if you are interested in interacting with me, and perhaps answering some of my questions, we may create a fantasy worth.. well it is what it is, isn’t it?” resounded Neb with a faint puff of cigar smoke trailing up and out of his mouth.

Neb ponders, and then begins to sleep.

[link: squeaky]

By the time the peeping peaslander had finally come round, more than a week later, the aliens had gone. Lilac sat up slowly, rubbing her head. Where am I? she frowned. WHERE AM I?

Blithe, affectionately known as Blinky, had to admit that the very idea of anyone licking Arona’s toes was too bizarre to comtemplate, notwithstanding she had been unable to get the image out of her head since she first heard the rumour.

There was no place like home, notwithstanding that home could be considered to be anywhere at all. Home in this case was Blithe’s patio one balmy September evening. Citronella candles flickered on the table, and coloured fairy lights strobed in strings along the facade of the house. A rosy glow emanated from the bedroom window and Blithe took a snapshot, noticing later the fly screen visible, overlayed onto the bedroom scene. Not only was the view of the bedroom limited by the width of the camera lens, it was also limited in the sense that the wire screen was obscuring almost half of what would have been visible if the photograph had been taken from the other side of the screen, or, with no screen at all in between the lens and the view of the room. However, despite having such a partial view of the whole, the remainder that was viewable was still identifiable as a bedroom.

Blithe wasn’t about to remove the screen however, because it was doing its job of screening, or filtering out, the unwanted insects. That wasn’t to say that she was denying the existance of those insects, or that they weren’t welcome on the other side of the screen, just that she was selectively screening the unwanted items from a particular scene. If, for example, the room was full of insects, Blithe might have been preoccupied with them, to the exclusion of whatever else she might have preferred to focus on within the bedroom. Out on the patio, however, the insects were, if not always entirely welcome, appreciated. The praying mantis and the dragonfly were welcome, and the butterflies and moths were always welcome, because Blithe had associated the energy of those insects with familiar welcome energies. The wasps, flies and ants were not translated in the same way, but were appreciated for entirely different reasons, being an aid to exploring such issues as irritation (and occasionally, pain). Blithe had to admit that despite the praying mantis and dragonfly being welcome, it would not be true to say that they were welcome in the bedroom, however.

There had been times when Blithe wished that the whole patio was enclosed in screens, but the trouble with screens was that they tended to filter out everything of a certain size, although perhaps that was more a beleif about physical screens than anything else. Was it possible to filter out flies and wasps, but allow dragnflies and butterflies? Possible surely, she thought, but perhaps not with physical wire screen devices and associated beleifs.

A few days previously Blithe had cleaned the mesh filter on her kitchen tap, unrestricting the flow. Coincidentally, her friend had also had a tap mesh restricted flow incident, and had removed the mesh filter altogether. Another friend had removed a window screen for cleaning, and had chosen not to replace it, as she was appreciating the allowance of much more light. And then another friend had mentioned a dream, of dragonflies under a screen that was covering a pool. She had lifted the screen in the dream, to allow the dragonflies to escape, and yet some of the dragonflies chose to stay under the screen.

Intrigued with the words screen and mesh, which meant the same thing in one respect, but not in others, Blithe investigated the definitions. To screen could be to filter out the unwanted, but to mesh was to weave together. But were they so different, really? A screen was also a blank place on which to project images ~ meshed and woven selectively screened and filtered images, perhaps.

{link ~ weaving}

While Yuhara and Sylvestrus were exploring Second Life worlds (Frolic Caper~Belle was still on an extended leave of absence), Blithe Gambol, although she didn’t entirely realize it at the time, was exploring First Life worlds on the Coast of Light.

Blithe and her partner Winn set off for the drum festival in the late afternoon heat, with the intention of reaching the Light Coast before sundown. The strong low sun flickered on and off as it hid behind trees and hills, and the hot dry wind whipped Blithes hair into her eyes, leaving the heavy heat of the Coast of the Sun behind and tranforming it into a light bone dry atmosphere that seemed to suck the air out of Blithe’s lungs. She filled the vacuum with smoke, listening to the words of the music playing ~ must be a reason why I’m king of my castle….king of my castle…it reminded her of Dealea’s story about King Author.

When they reached Vejer de la Frontera they made a wrong turning, although they were well aware that no turning is a wrong one. The new direction took them in a circle behind the Vejer promontory, through the umbrella pines along the coast. The sky was golden yellow behind the black sillouttes on one side, with a periwinkle sea on the other, rocky pale grey outcrops blushed with pink paddling in the gently lapping waves.

As they entered the village of Canos de Meca, they slowed to crawl behind the inching cars, as tanned people in brightly coloured clothes wove in and out of the traffic, and in and out of the exotic looking bars and restaurants. Blithe remembered the Second Life worlds she had been exploring earlier that day, and wondered if Second Life came with the smells of sardines barbequeing on the beach, or a warm breeze wafting past laden with snatches of laughter and conversation. Visually, certainly, Second Life would be hard presssed to beat the visual appeal of Canos de Meca at sunset on an August evening. There were plenty of opportunities to observe the people and the hostelries, as the traffic got progressively worse until it eventually came to a standstill. The narrow lanes were lined with parked cars, and throngs of people carrying coolers made their way to the sand dunes near the lighthouse.

Eventually, after several slow drives past looking for a miraculous parking space that didn’t appear, Blithe and Winn found a restaurant in between the coastal villages that was strangely empty of people. Even Winn, who was much less inclined towards fanciful imaginings than Blithe, remarked on how surreal the place was. It could have been anywhere in Spain, so strangely ordinary was its appearance in comparison to the Moorish beach hippy style of the villages. They ordered food, and relaxed in easy silence in the oasis of calm ordinariness. Blithe wondered if the place actually existed or if she had created it out of thin air, just for a respite and a parking place, and a clean unoccupied loo. Another First Life world, perhaps, constructed in the moment to meet the current requirements of ease.

At 11:11, after another two drives through the crawling cars and crowds, Winn turned the car around and headed for home. At 12:12 they reached the Coast of the Sun, shrouded in sea mist, and at 1:00am precisely, they arrived home. Later, as Blithe lay on the bed listening to the drums playing on the music machine, she closed her eyes and saw the sunset over the Atlantic, and felt the ocean breeze of the fan. She projected her attention to the dunes of Trafalgar ~ which, incidentally, didn’t take two hours, it was instant. In another instant, she was back in her bedroom, sipping agua con gas on the rocks and chatting to Winn. Seconds later, she was in a vibrant nightclub overlooking the beach, dancing in spirit between the jostling holidaymakers being served at the bar. She imagined that one or two of them noticed her energy.

Clearly, teleporting from one place to another had its benefits. The question of parking, for example, wouldn’t arise. But Blithe wouldn’t have wanted to miss the late afternoon drive to the Coast of Light, and the golden slanting lightbeams flickering between the cork oaks making their cork shorn trunks glow red, or the ocean appearing over the crest of a hill. And if she had arrived in an instant at the location she was intending to visit, then she would never have encountered the sunset from the particular angle of the approach via the wrong turn. Variety ~ and impulse, and the opportunities of the unexpected turns ~ was the weft of weaving First Life worlds ~ or was it the warp?

link: weaving worlds

The entrances to Faerie (and indeed to other alternate realities and dimensions) had been shrouded in disbelief for several centuries, but times were changing and the fog of scepticism was dissipating, evaporating like river mist on a hot summer morning. Looking for the entrances deliberately, Blithe found, wasn’t the most efficacious method. Sat Nav alone would be unlikely to reveal them, unless the locating device was used in conjunction with impulse and intuition. Any device and method could be used effectively when combined with random impulse, even Google Earth or Google Moon. Blithe’s friend and colleage Dealea Flare was making good use of this device on her travels, using it as a personal non physical airline and space shuttle service. Dealea could get from A to B and back again in no time at all, or even from A to well beyond Z and back again in no time at all using this device in conjunction with impulse and large dose of intention and focus. Blithe had the impulse down pat but still had difficulty with the focus, which was largely a case of having too many intentions at once, most of them somewhat vague.

The more random and impulsive Blithe was, the better her investigations went, often leading her into a new and exciting exploration which may or may not be linked to the current intention. Such was the case when she went on a mundane shopping trip to the Rock of Gibber. As she sat sipping coffee at the Counterpart Cabana sidewalk cafe listening to the locals conversing in Gibberish, she noticed the extraordinary tangle of pipework on the building opposite. It reminded her of the steampunk world she had been investigating in her spare time. The text book steampunk world was intriguing to say the least, but rather grim, and tediously full of victims and fear. The inhabitants always seemed to be running away from someone. The steampunk world she was beginning to sense in Gibber was quite different in that it was a sunny cheerful alternate reality held together with a vast labyrinthine network of water pipes, scaffold, and connecting cables.

Blithe paid for her coffee and strolled off, noticing more and more scaffolding and tangles of pipes as she climbed the warren of narrow winding streets. The air was different the higher she climbed up the winding uneven steps, the sunlight was sharper and the shadows denser, and there was a crackling kind of hush as if the air was shimmering. Cables festooned the crumbling shuttered buildings like cobwebs, and centuries of layers of crackled sun faded pastel paint coated the closed doors. Open doors revealed dark passageways and alleys with bright rectangles of light glowing in the distance, and golden dry weeds sprouted from vents and windowsills casting dancing shadows on the uneven walls.

The usual signs of life were strangely absent and present at the same time; an occasional voice was heard from inside one of the houses, and there were pots of flowers growing here and there, indicating that a human hand had watered them with water from the pipe network. There was no music to be heard though, or any indication that the cable network was in use, and there were virtually no people on the streets. A lady in a brilliant blue dress who was climbing the steps from Gibber Town below paused to chat, agreeing with Blithe who remarked on the peaceful beauty of the place. The lady in blue said “Si, it’s very nice, but there are many steps, so many steps. If you are coming from below there are SO many steps!”

There was a boy watching a white dog watching an empty space on the pavement, so Blithe stopped to watch the boy watching the dog watching nothing. Eventually Blithe inquired “What is he looking at?” and the boy shrugged and continued to watch the dog watching nothing. Blithe watched for a little while, and then wandered off. A small child was giggling from inside a doorway, and a mothers voice asked what he was laughing at. The child was looking out of the door at nothing as far as Blithe could see.

As the sun climbed higher, Blithe began to descend into Gibber town, winding and weaving through the alleys, wondering how she had failed to notice this place half way up the Rock until now. She came to a crumbling wall with a doorway in it that looked out over the bay beyond the town below. This must be one of the entrances, she deduced, to this alternate world in Gibber. “Entrance”! Blithe had a revelation. “I never noticed that the word ENtrance and enTRANCE are spelled the same.” Later, back at the office, Frolic Caper-Belle said she thought it was probably a very significant clue. “I’ll file that in the Clue Box, Blithe”, she said.

{link: entrance}

It was hot, although not as hot as usual for the month of August on the southern slopes of the Serrania de Ronda. It had rained, the black clouds and thunder a welcome respite from the searing dry heat of an Andalucian summer, plumping up the blackberries and washing the dust from the leaves of the fig trees. Blithe Gambol hadn’t seen her old friend Granny Mosca for months, although she wasn’t quite sure what had kept her from visiting for so long. Blithe loved Granny Mosca’s cottage tucked away in the saddle behind the fat hill and there had been times when she’d visited often, just to drink in the magical air and feast her eyes on the beauty of the surroundings. Dry golden weeds scratched her legs as she made her way along the dirt path, and she was mindful of the fat black snake she’d once seen basking on the stone walls as she reached into the brambles to pluck blackberries and take photographs.

Rounding a corner in the path she gasped at the incongrous and alarming sight of a bright yellow bulldozer just meters from Granny Mosca’s cottage. The bulldozer was flattening a large area of prickly pear cactuses. Unfortunately for the cactuses, it was fruiting time, and Blithe wondered if Granny Mosca had first picked the fruits and suspected that she had, those that she could reach. Nothing that could be eaten was left unpicked ~ Blithe remembered the many sacks of almonds that Granny had given her over the years, very few of which she had bothered to shell and eat.

The bulldozer was making an entranceway to the tiny derelict cottage that was situated next to Granny Mosca’s house. Granny had asked Blithe if she wanted to buy it, and she had wanted to buy it eventually, but the purchase of a derelict building hadn’t been a priority at the time. Now it looked as if she was too late, that someone else had bought it, perhaps to use as a holiday home. Horrified, Blithe called out for Granny, who was often in the goat shed or away across the hidden saddle valley cutting weeds to feed the poultry, but there was no sign of her. Two alien looking turkeys gobbled in response, and the black and white chained dog barked menacingly.

As Blithe retraced her steps along the dirt path it occured to her that whoever was planning to use the derelict cottage might be a very interesting person, someone she might be very pleased to make the acquaintance of in due course. After all, she had noticed that the holiday guests staying at the casitas on the other side of the fat hill were all sympathetic to the magical nature of the location, many of them arriving from a previous visit to a particularly interesting location in the Alpujarras ~ a convergence of ley lines. When questioned as to why they chose the fat hill casitas, they simply said they liked the countryside. Either they weren’t telling, or they were simply unaware objectively of the connection of the locations. Blithe could sense the connections though, both the locations, and that the people choosing to vacation at the fat hill were connected to it.

For one hundred and forty seven thousand years, Blithe had had an energy presence at the fat hill, although it was half a century of her current focus before she remembered it. She had felt protective of it, when she finally remembered it, as if she had a kind of responsibility to it. This place can look after itself quite well on its own, she reminded herself. The fat hill had watched while Franco’s Capitan looted the Roman relics, and watched as Blithe stumbled upon the remains of Roman and Iberian cities, and the fat hill had laughed when Blithe first tried to find the entrance to the interior and got stuck in thorn bushes. Later, the fat hill had smiled benignly when Granny Mosca led her to the entrance ~ without a thorn bush in sight. The cave entrance had been blocked with boulders then. Blithe had given some thought to an excavation, wondering how to achieve it without attracting the attention of the locals, but now she wondered if one day, when the time was right, she would find the entrance clear, as if by magic. Magic, after all, was by no means impossible.

{link: feast for the birds}

Yann had been in a box for quite some time, and the feeling was really not one of comfort. He wondered about the reasons for a moment but it seemed his mind was more on his new acquisitions, the bee hive and the sunflowers, they were quite busy and buzzy of course, but it was giving him a sense of warmth and of comfort he’s been lacking for so long.

He’s seen his sister the other day and she’d told him that she’d been on a revolution lately, she’d been throwing books away, something hardly possible to think of before, as books represented knowledge and were mostly revered in her family. That had made him think of his own rampages when he was young and the high respect and almost awe that he’d had about them before. But well it suddenly ended one day when he’d bought a book about biogeology… reading that book was one of the most wonderful experiences he’d had, very empowering actually. The content of the book was quite inept in itself, if you’d ask him, and he was so upset and angry that he’d bought that book that it gave him the guts to tear it apart and express those feeling of rage he’d been holding. He’d felt forced to adore books and show some respect for too long. Well that was old memories and now Yann was more in tune with what he wanted to read or not and also was more accepting of the myriad of opinions and ways of expressing them too.

He was looking for more creativity in his life and the hive was reminding him of that, a constant activity and buzzing, no question, but action… and that strong feeling of warmth and honey.

Quintin has planted some lavender too and a bush which name was like the word choice in French… very symbolic maybe, and also connected to his past. The very fact that he could allow his friend to plant that bush in their garden was a good reflection that he’s been more accepting of all the connections and that they existed and didn’t need to bear a strong influence on his actions now.

[link:buzz,bees,leaves,book]

Ann felt rather put out.

“How jolly rude to disappear like that.” she muttered

The truth was she had been feeling a tad out of sorts lately, plodding along, day in and day out, doing the same old things. She was finding Lavender rather dreary too, partly because she never seemed to be there when Ann called round. So the idea of helping the exotic, headless stranger with his mysterious request for “pea sauce” assistance had felt rather exciting. Ann loved nothing better than a good adventure.

And now the bugger had disappeared!

Saucerer read creative Walter Magpie:
Supposed Dream:
Latest pee; leave, making ancient continuity world random, stuck…..:www:

Sanso had been channeling singers for centuries as he wandered in and out of caves and labyrinths, experimenting with echos and energy deposits. He’d been particulary drawn to the melodious tones of Vincentius of late.

“We walk, Ia’eh and Minkah, Desher and I,” Elizabeth read the email from Hypatia, “ towards the dark ridge of stone where the books lie hidden, awaiting the day they should be found again…..When Cleopatra ruled, the books numbered 400,000…and this, I think, is true. By the time of Theon of Alexandria, an age in which the books were no loner in the Great Library of the Palace of the Ptolemies, which was also no longer, but housed instead the “daughter” library of the Serapeum, they numbered 360,000. Those lost to the Bishop of Theophilus amounted to a tenth of these. But no matter if full half were lost, that Minkah brought out from Alexandria so many amazed me then; it amazes me still. He not only carried them here, but brought back an account of where each cave was sited, and which jars were placed in which cave.”

“Godfrey, didn’t we know a Minky once, who was a sort of a servant?”

“We did indeed, Liz, you were the one who inserted him into the story, surely you remember?”

“Well, the name rings a bell, Godfrey, but where did we meet him?”

Godfrey snapped his fingers and as if by magic, an excerpt from the Reality Play appeared:

“Just then a funny little man with a huge cheeky grin appeared and held out a tray. Smoothies! Coconut and berry smoothies, and pink cakes, croissants”

“Croissants!” interrupted Elizabeth.

“… and oranges, and a box of cadbury’s chocolates…”

“Don’t remind me about Cadbury’s” groaned Elizabeth. “I simply can’t bear it that they’ve blinked into another dimension”

Godfrey continued: “ Dory slurped and munched and gobbled and slurped some more, and underneath where the chocolate was, she saw a brochure.
On the front cover was a picture of a cave. OOHH A CAVE! Dory loved caves! Let’s go to the cave today, Minky! she said to the funny fellow with the impish grin. Minky winked.”

“He was going to take Dory to the caves!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Why didn’t I finish that story thread!”

“There’s no need to wring your hands like that, Liz” said Godfrey soothingly. “You can continue it now!”

Phurt knew there was something strange, her previous memory was that she was dead and now she seemed to be perfectly alive and alert.
The environment was strange, though. It was all full of little balls and she could see many headless people. Compared to them, her size was quite ridiculous and she prefered not to make her presence known for the moment. She will have time later for her projects of conquest of the world. But is what world was she?

All at her thinking, she didn’t see the creature coming and she almost died again out of fear when it began to breath in the air around. Maybe it was some kind of hoovering creature. She began to feel the vibrations as the dog (who has his head on for a change) began barking to notify his master that he has found the strangest little creature aroud. The master of the dog was a child of New Peasland and when he saw that strange little creature that he had never seen before, he called for his mother, who in turn didn’t know the little creature at all, and she asked her neighbor what it could be, but the neighbor didn’t know as well, so the went together to the mayor who in turn didn’t know what to think of it, but he was sure it had not been spotted before by a mayor of New Peasland, he would be the first, and he asked the kid to entrust him with his find and that he would tell him soon about it, thank you!

All alone in her matchbox, Phurt started to relax, the last few event had been frightening and she couldn’t do anything to escape her assailants, but the eventually let her alone, even if it was in some kind of jail.

MOUAAHAHAHAHAH, she laughed of her little spider laugh, which resembled more to a little squircking sound than to a laugh, especially in the New Peasland dimension. She had laughed because the walls of her prisons seemed quite tender and it would not demand her too much effort to get out. But for now, she was exhausted and needed some rest. It was not everyday that you found yourself alive again.