Daily Random Quote

  • India Louise had been switching her own book with Cuthbert’s that night. And as she was exploring some of the stories told in his, he was having a peek into hers. Very quickly, he became aware of a whole new continent, in that World, across the Middle Seas. In that continent far North of the one where ... · ID #206 (continued)
    (next in 18h 38min…)

Latest Activity

Search Results for 'less'

Forums Search Search Results for 'less'

Viewing 20 results - 781 through 800 (of 1,053 total)
  • Author
    Search Results
  • #2627

    In reply to: Strings of Nines

    TracyTracy
    Participant

      The word flounder popped into Yolands head, and for want of the inspiration to do anything meaningful, or even useful, she googled flounder. She was astonished to find so many varieties of flounder, and recognized that she was counterparting with quite a number of them.

      :fish:

      There was the Crosseyed flounder that she felt an affinity for, at the end of an evening of trying to sort out her photos; Alcock’s narrow-body righteye flounder, which was what she felt like in a bed full of male dogs every night, and she could relate to the Antarctic armless flounder when she couldn’t keep track of the Antarctic thread. Barfin flounder reminded her of the green icon and her friend Finn; Bigmouth flounder ~ Yoland sighed, she definitely felt a connection to that often enough. Blotched flounder, well that sounded a bit like botched ~ there were many occasions when Yoland felt that everything she did was botched, half done and messy. Chain-mail wide-eyed flounder when she dabbled a bit in past lives, and the Disc flounder when she got her music in a muddle. The Dark flounders were the worst, when everything seemed to take on the tone of a horror movie, but they were often followed by a Deep flounder, which sometimes contained a few insights, more often than not promptly forgotten.

      :fish:

      Yoland sighed. Imagine counterparting with just about every flounder known to man! She decided she wasn’t the only one counterparting the European flounder, which was a releif, nor was she the only one counterparting the Fantail flounder, although at least it could be said that she wasn’t a complete fan of anyone in particular, dead or alive, she was a fantail of quite a number. There were long spells of resonating with the Finless flounder; Finn was always disappearing, or so it seemed to Yoland. Very rarely she felt an alignment with God’s flounder, thankfuly she wasn’t often prone to dwelling on God things.

      :fish:

      Ah, the Gray flounder, yes she’d had a bit of a flounder when Gray sent all those photos of the Beltane Dance, she’d had a flounder for sure in amongst all those. Looking back though, she’d had fun with the mummy and Ella Tindale in the Gulf flounder…

      :fish:

      Yoland had to laugh when she came across the Intermediate flounder. Yoland wondered if the majority of her foundering was counterparting with the Intermediate flounder and decided she was probably too intermediate to work it out objectively anyway. She often had a tussle with the Large tooth flounder, lordy, she was always floundering with dental issues. And the Largescale flounder, that really was the biggest ongoing flounder of them all, the sheer vastness of everything.

      :fish:

      Every now and again, less than previously though, Yoland had a Melbourne flounder on Saturday nights, and rather enjoyed it, but not as much as she enjoyed a good old New Zealand flounder.

      :fish:

      Another flounder Yoland always enjoyed was an Olive wide-eyed flounder, roaming around the ancient olive trees of Andalucia, wide eyed and awestruck with the beauty and history of the place. She also enjoyed a Peruvian flounder on occasion, too ~ she’d even had a dream recently about floundering around by the mysterious doorway of Amaru Muru. The next night she’d had a River flounder, dreaming of the river in the Grand Canyon.

      :fish:

      Sand flounders were the best of all though, Yoland recalled many happy flounderings in the world of sand and all its Subulmantium configurations. The trouble with the sand flounder was that it often morphed into the largescale flounder, and got quite out of hand.

      :fish:

      Yoland sighed, it had been ages since she’d felt connected to the Seven pelvic ray flounder, what with Dan working nights. She was beginning to feel like a Shelf flounder. However, at least thanks to her new diet of replacing meals with flans, chocolate mousses and ice cream, she was closely aligning now with the Slender flounder.

      :fish:

      The ongoing slug issue with the cat food was obviously because she was still strongly aligned with the Slime flounder. Notwithstanding, Yoland was rather pleased to note that despite her morose and petulant mood this morning, it had to be said that she often counterparted with the Smooth flounder; although that was easy to forget in moments of quiet desperation when the floundering got out of proportion.

      :fish:

      Smiling, Yoland remembered the dream of feet touching when she noticed there was a Sole flounder too. And how often the Spotted flounder popped up, she was always spotting clues. Well spotted! she would tell herself. Oh, and the Stone flounder, wasn’t that the truth! Yoland was aligning strongly with that lately, smoking more than ever, somehow striving for either inspiration, or perhaps oblivion.

      :fish:

      Oh well, I guess this is just a Summer flounder, it will pass, Yoland decided (who was secretly glad that she was nearing the end of the list of flounder names). And sure enough, the next on the list was the Three spotted flounder, surely a good sign! A probability change perhaps! As if to validate Yolands impression, she noticed the Tile-colored righteye flounder. There was even a Warthog flounder, which seemed to ring a bell with a recent entry to the Reality Play.

      :fish:

      Best of all was the Windowpane flounder, Yoland felt she would even go so far as to say that this was her new focus animal. Well, she thought, if I am making this all up, I can make that up too!

      :fish:

      Thankfully Yoland reached the end of the flounder list, rather pleased that it had ended on such an amusing and encouraging note.

      Being closely aligned with flounders wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

      :fish:

      #2626

      In reply to: Strings of Nines

      Yoland awoke feeling disgruntled. The uncomfortable dreams of feeling left out, left alone and bored beyone endurance lingered throughout the morning. In a peculiar melding of dream and reality, Dan had woken her requesting her assistance in his preparations for a days outing, which didn’t include Yoland. The dream details were already vague, but the feeling was strong, the feeling of being bored and alone ~ wasted somehow, as if all her lust for life was withering away on a back burner, evaporating, as she mooched through her days, accomplishing little (or so it seemed), endlessly frustrated with the clutter and disorganization that was her world, yearning for the life, LIFE that was full of LIFE, that she used to have. What had happened to her sense of adventure? Where had all her fun friends gone?

      “Eh Sha, emergency transmission required ‘ere pronto!” Gloria shouted to Sharon. “Yoland needs some inspiration, toot sweet, get yer arse in gear!”

      “Oh bloody ‘ell, Glor! Not a-bloody-gain! Not ‘er, she never bloody listens anyway, that one!” replied Sharon, disgruntled. “This isn’t as easy as I ‘spected it to be, getting the messages through, is it?”

      “Well, why don’t you look on it as a challenge?”

      “Pfft, more like ‘ard bloody work, if you ask me.”

      “Eh, you daft tart, you’re channeling HER! You’re sposed to be sending HER some words of inspiration, not the other bloody way round!” Gloria exclaimed. “Beats me how you ever got your ascension pass, how you got through I’ll never know.”

      “Oh they let any Tom Dick or Harry in these days, Glor, they relaxed the rules you know, well did away with the rules, and what happens when you do away with the rules? Floundering, that’s bloody what. Floundering.”

      “Is that a fish sync?”

      #2624

      In reply to: Strings of Nines

      The newly deceased Shar and Gor

      “Shouldn’t he say something less grim you think?”
      “I definitely agree my dear Shar”
      “Something like in-ceased, or up-ceased… We’re ascended after all!”
      “I’m not so sure it sounds better, but…”

      Well, them being up-ceased, involved a new challenge for the writer(s) of this story, as the two blusterously boisterous ladies were in a desperate move to attempt sending communication to the objective world —officially to discover the extent of their influence. Their new-found access to the collective subconscious made them all the more a trouble for the writer(s).

      Anyway, as we speak, Shar and Glor, were… or are actually trying to influence some characters and hence co-authors of this work of fiction to test their own ability to manipulate some of these individuals.

      So far the extent of their experiments had fared tepid results.

      “OK. Let’s try with these two. I’m beaming something down to them!”

      To which, moments and some non-physical sweating on Glor’s brow later, one of the two subjects of this experiment (the blond one) blurted out without knowing from where it came: “Spiggot on the spike freak, Lingenburg Dash

      “What the hell was that Glor?”
      “Good Lord, I don’t have any idea!”
      “What was it supposed to be then!?”
      “I just beamed them ‘Speaking now without mike – leap if you ain’t dead’!”
      “Good grief… Those two might as well be hopeless…”

      Of course, unbeknown to them, in other potential realities, what she really beamed to them was entirely different; something like ‘Speaking now – dead to the living – leap and bound if you catch’… Subsequently, Ann’s catch was in fact an indication of great disposition to tune into more than one probabilities at a time, the benefits of which were lost to the poor dabbling souls.

      But this point notwithstanding, as they were speaking, another potential just appeared at the horizon. A woman named Yoland, with an improbable ability to express strings of thoughts inspired from above (anywhere that ‘above’ might be) without much distortion.

      “Have to tread carefully with that one, Glor”
      “Yes, I reckon dear…”
      “We could even manage to fully channel her body, she seems a perfect candidate!” Sharon would have rubbed her hands with glee if she’d had hands still.
      “Innit a bore though that she would ask for such grand truths…”
      “Not to worry, we’ll invent them as we walk. I’ve even got an idea for session one with her: the great cluster of Mamarose of energy essential oils.”

      #2623

      In reply to: Strings of Nines

      TracyTracy
      Participant

        Ann opened the letter from Morgana and read:

        “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.”

        “Good God” said Ann, momentarily nonplussed.

        #2621

        In reply to: Strings of Nines

        ÉricÉric
        Keymaster

          “Well, you’re not going to make Franlise believe you outdid yourself in Continuity Course by stringing a slew of comments all made by yourself in less than an hour darling” Godfrey said Ann, wishing he would have briefed her more about being an infallible agent-double for the Fellowship

          “And there are risks you know” he said lowering his voice “if they unmask you, they may do something dreadful, perhaps even go as far as a character annihilation…”
          “Sometimes I fear you take our reality just too lightly” Godfrey continued with a misery look on his face. “If you really want to bring down the Fellowship, you got to be more cautious to first understand how they work.”

          Godfrey didn’t know why, but it suddenly felt as though all the subtleties of the dangers involved in this mission somewhat (if not completely) eluded the befuddled Ann.

          #2616

          In reply to: Strings of Nines

          TracyTracy
          Participant

            “It’s the 57th Creative Challenge theme, so I have to do it,” Ann remarked to her editor. “Obviously”, she added.

            “What do you mean, obviously?” asked her editor (Ann had forgotten his new name in the second book, and toyed breifly with the idea of making up a new one ~ perhaps Rumbold the Pale?)

            “Well, I would have thought that was obvious, Godfrey!” Ann replied tartly, secretly delighted that she’d remembered the old boy’s name. Notwithstanding, Ann continued to make little ‘cuh’ and ‘tut’ noises, and rolled her eyes a bit, until Godfrey eventually replied.

            “Spiggot on the spike freak, Lingenburg Dash”.

            “I beg your pardon?” Ann looked at Godfrey in astonishment. “Holy Moly, I said that earlier myself, whatever does it mean?”

            “I haven’t got a clue, dear,” he replied. “Just popped into my head, you know, how it does…” His voice trailed off as he stared into space.

            “I’ll google it.” As Ann started the search, she realized she’d completely forgotten that she was doing the 57th Creative Challenge entry. “Blimey O Riley, what am I LIKE” she said to herself, with a wry grin ~ she wasn’t altogether sure what wry meant, but somehow she felt it was wry ~ “Now what was the theme again?”

            “Misery Loves Company” Godfrey piped up. “And dare I say, it’s rather obvious what has occurred here.”

            “What do you mean, obvious?” retorted Ann, somewhat snarkily, although nowhere near as snarkily as Lavender might have said it.

            Godfrey resisted the urge to respoond with a few little ‘cuh’s’ and ‘tut’s’, and chose to simply smile enigmatically.

            Ann scowled at her old freind and said “If you don’t spell it out, you maddening old coot, I’ll write you out of this story. I’ll delete you.”

            “You can write me out of YOUR story if you wish, but I may continue to write YOU into MY story.”

            “Oh Gawd, WHAT?” Ann said to herself. “Where did that come from?”

            “Ann, let me explain.”

            “You sound just like Elias, Godfrey!”

            “Ha! Ha! Ha!”

            “Ahahahahahahah”

            “Now shut up and pay attention”

            “Elias would never say that”

            “That’s YOU saying that, Ann, to yourself,” said Godfrey.

            YOU said that Godfrey, it’s right here in black and white!” retorted Ann.

            “It’s never black and white, Ann, and it’s only here in black and white as ME saying it because YOU wrote it.”

            “Well there’s no answer to that” replied Ann. She went to put the kettle on.

            Ann returned to her computer with a steaming mug of tea.

            “Now, shall we get back to the point, Ann?” inquired Godfrey, with a wry grin.

            “I must look up that word later”, Ann mused. “I seem to be inordinately fond of the word wry tonight, I wonder why. I Wonder Wry…”

            ANN!” Godfrey shouted. “Back to the point!”

            Ann looked pained. “What point?”

            “The point of this story, and the obvious occurence therein.”

            “Welp, you’ve lost me there, Gordon, there was a point?”

            “Oh My God, this could go on all night” Gordon was wringing his hands.

            “Good God Gordon, didn’t see you come in!” exclaimed Godfrey.

            Ann was giggling helplessly. She was rather pleased with the way she covered her faux pas over the editors name.

            “‘Ann was giggling helplessly’; you see Ann, there is your clue!” Godfrey said excitedly, as he read aloud what Ann had just written.

            “OH! NOW I get it! D’oh! Nonsense loves company! Giggling loves company! No wonder I couldn’t stay focused on misery!”

            #2262

            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.

            #2259

            And please just stop barging in here unannounced! Unless you are back to explain the “Eau de Nil” remark, called out Lavender from her bedroom where she a moment ago she had been snoring like a wart hog.

            #2608

            In reply to: Strings of Nines

            ÉricÉric
            Keymaster

              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?”

              #2604

              In reply to: Strings of Nines

              ÉricÉric
              Keymaster

                “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…

                #2595

                In reply to: Strings of Nines

                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  “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.

                  :yahoo_puppy:

                  “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.”

                  :yahoo_oh_go_on:

                  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.

                  :yahoo_puppy:

                  “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….”

                  :yahoo_hypnotized:

                  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…”

                  :yahoo_chatterbox:

                  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….

                  :yahoo_sigh:

                  “….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.

                  :yahoo_straight_face:

                  “Ok we can forget questions then and I will tell you a story.”

                  Yoland relaxed. That sounded easier.

                  :yahoo_big_grin:

                  “Once upon a time there was a beer fisherman from the planet of Oxbloodshire.”

                  Oh here we go, she thought. What’s coming next…

                  :yahoo_rolling_eyes:

                  “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.”

                  :detective:

                  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.

                  :yahoo_thinking:

                  “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.

                  :yahoo_star:

                  “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.

                  :bounce:

                  #2593

                  In reply to: Strings of Nines

                  ÉricÉric
                  Keymaster

                    When Franlise reemerged from the building, it was almost dark, and Godfrey was starting to think that after his twenty-seventh drink, he might as well come back home unless he wanted to sleep on the counter.
                    Curiously he noticed, she wasn’t heading towards home, but she was going to the subway, en route to the red district.

                    That inner lovely Franlise could compromise herself in such a dreadful place was beyond his understanding… well, probably after the twenty first drink, most of reality was now far beyond understanding anyway.
                    Perhaps she was doing some research work?

                    #2590

                    In reply to: Strings of Nines

                    F LoveF Love
                    Participant

                      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.

                      #2578

                      In reply to: Strings of Nines

                      Jane had been found unconscious in a small creek in Australia, with little on her but a few wet dollars, scribbled papers in a plastic bag, and a bank account number that was later found to be in the Cayman Islands. Her real name wasn’t probably Jane at all, but of course amnesiac people had to be called something, and that or Sheila…

                      :crystal-skull: During her recovery at the hospital, she’d had flashes of unsettling things that the doctors had told her were certainly repressed memories. Somehow people around her seemed to believe that forgetting everything was a blessing, but to her it seemed it was her bane for a long long time.

                      #2564

                      In reply to: Strings of Nines

                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        Yoland woke up feeling lighter somehow. The sun was shining, the young puppy, Phunn, scampered about without a care in the world as she perused the morning mail. The random daily Circle of Eight’s quote once again delighted her, synchronizing with her recent meditation.

                        “Fiona woke suddenly from a dream. In her dream she had been communicating with her online friends, through drawings and messages. She had been trying so hard to convey something, and the more she tried to say it, the more distant they felt to her.

                        She had woken feeling saddened. Her energy was greatly disturbed, and, unable to get back to sleep straight away, she meditated. She felt herself connect with the energy of a Snowy Owl, who invited her wordlessly to ask her questions. The Owl’s eyes seemed to have such a depth of wisdom and kindness, and no sooner had her thoughts begun to ask their questions, than she would feel the Owl’s answer merge with her own knowing.

                        She felt herself being able to say without words what she had tried so hard in her dream to convey, and understanding there was no need for any effort, she felt greatly comforted, and peaceful sleep swept over her again.”

                        Yoland had sent an email to her freind KX about her meditation, as her freind had unexpectedly popped up in it, in a wonderful pastel watercolour world:

                        The elevator stopped with a shudder and the doors slammed open. The landscape looked a bit too airy fairy for me (not real enough, haha!) and I nearly got back in the elevator. It was all aqua blue and pastel and floaty, like a watercolour world. Then I saw you, waving your arms around, painting the air with trails of pastel colours with your fingertips. You were smiling and wearing a pale blue shirt. You wrapped me round with spirals of colours from your fingertips and then I flew upwards into the dark blue. You tossed me a paper toilet roll to use as a silver cord, which I tossed back to you after a bit cos it felt a bit silly, and then you sent a burst of colours as an acknowledgement

                        KX had responded:

                        “Yoland!!That is very very cool! I’ve been “out there”! I’ll bet you I was changing the toilet paper roll at the moment you were in the Watercolor World ! Meanwhile so many things are coming together for me in how to create and how to hold my attention where I want it… Imagination is a key ~ Love you! I will beam over in a minute. KX”

                        Smiling, Yoland checked the latest blog updates. Sahila had posted some Possum photos, and the first thing that Yoland saw was the white owl in the fork of the tree behind the possum.

                        :creating_magic:

                        #2562

                        In reply to: Strings of Nines

                        TracyTracy
                        Participant

                          Yoland felt tired and deflated somehow. Weary, perhaps that was it, weary of the way she always felt when the animals were sick or dying. It was all very well to look at it logically, that with so many animals with such relatively short natural life spans that there would always be some coming, some going, but it was the way it made her feel that was so tiring. Responsible, as if she could have done more, or guilty that they were reflecting her energy somehow. It was all very well to say that the animals were creating their own reality, that would be easy enough to accept in some cases such as old age and diseases, but Yoland almost wished she’d never learned that they reflect her own energy, that always made her feel even more responsible than she already did.

                          The black cat was dying. Yoland had made up her mind to take her to the vets that morning. That was another dilemma she’d faced often enough, too ~ would the animal prefer to die naturally at home? Or was it in too much pain, and would it prefer to end it quickly? How could she know? Yoland supposed she did always know, in the end, which was to be the choice, but there was always the agonizing period of time beforehand when she wondered which decision to make. But the black cat had disappeared and she couldn’t find her to take her to the vets after all.

                          When she’d made the decision to take the black cat to the vet that morning, Dean accidentally knocked a photograph of her first dog, Joe, off the wall. He was the first of her dogs to go, and a good age for a big dog, fourteen years old, and Yoland had known all along that he would die at home, and sure enough, he had. One day Yoland knew he was close to the end, and less than 24 hours later, he lay on his bed, and just gradually stopped breathing. Yoland hadn’t even been quite sure of the moment in which he went, as she held his head, she asked Dean, Do you think he’s dead? Dean replied, If he’s not breathing he is. It was a silly question, really, of course Yoland knew that if you weren’t breathing you were dead. As deaths go, it was peaceful and easy. They took him in the car to a place in the woods and buried him, somewhere where the ground was soft enough to dig; it was high summer and the ground was hard and dry. It wasn’t until Joe was covered with earth that Yoland cried.

                          Yoland cried again as she remembered Joe, and then she wondered if perhaps his photograph falling off the wall that morning was a message ~ perhaps a message that the black cat was choosing to die at home too, her own little niche somewhere, wherever that might be, wherever the roof cats slept. Maybe Joe was reassuring her that he’d be there when the black cat got there, in that field of flowers where the animals played while they waited for us to join them.

                          It was a comforting thought. Yoland reached for the tissues.

                          :heart:

                          #2549

                          In reply to: Strings of Nines

                          TracyTracy
                          Participant

                            Zhaana was 18 years old and outwardly beautiful as well as inwardly lovely. Nine years had passed since she’d last seen Sanso on that extraordinary excursion into The Elsepace Arrangement, or so it would appear. That is to say, Zhaana had no recollection of what might have occured during those nine years, and the general accepted medical opinion was that Zhaana had suffered amnesia. She was found wandering the streets of Amsterdam in the spring of 2009, wearing about her outwardly beautiful body a few outgrown shreds of dusty indigo fabric. Fortunately the weather was mild, and when passersby did a double take, it was due to her looks and not her unsuitable garments.

                            When Taatje van Snoot saw the girl wandering aimlessly along the canal her left ear popped, indicating that she should pay attention. Taatje had been reading Lisp, the popular new magazine for new energy people with word issues, while sitting on a bench beneath the burgeoning green foliage, enjoying the warm spring sunshine. As the strange girl with the bemused and curious expression wandered past, Taatje rolled Lisp up and shoved it in her capacious carpet bag, and followed.

                            :detective:

                            #2547

                            In reply to: Strings of Nines

                            TracyTracy
                            Participant

                              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.

                              :magpie: :magpie: :magpie: :magpie: :magpie: :magpie:

                              “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.

                              #2546

                              In reply to: Strings of Nines

                              ÉricÉric
                              Keymaster

                                These past few months away from home had been the occasion for a great deal of introspection.
                                For one, indulging fully into that somewhat frowned upon habit of his, regarding peanuts, had allowed him to gain a great deal of understanding and acceptance as well. Now his daily ration had dramatically decreased and he didn’t fancy as much as he used to the little round things.

                                Another thing that Godfrey had noticed was the reorganisation that had taken place in all aspects of his life, and to be perfectly honest, his life was still a bit messy in places, but he was slowly getting there. How could a publisher publish anything of common interest without a bit of presentation, henceforth order?

                                Ann wasn’t too keen on the “O” word —especially when doubled— and surprisingly it always managed to give good results so far. So perhaps now he was settling down, and she was getting her own flamboyant creative juices all ablaze, they would manage to get somewhere. Or anywhere, for that matter.
                                A Tramway to Elsewhere was Ann’s debut novel, and had made her known to Godfrey. It was a brilliant short story about three tourists lost in a huge hotel in Europe, and trying to get an easy escape to Anywhere. And by some uncanny and hilarious succession of events, they were led nowhere but to Elsewhere.

                                Now, something else was giving him a strange feeling. He didn’t know if that was because of the lack of peanut oil in his bloodstream (or the accompanying whiskeys for what was worth), but he was starting to get slightly paranoid.
                                He didn’t know where he’d got the idea, but he started to suspect the cleaning lady to not just be a cleaning lady. She was doing her best to keep a low profile, but somehow she wasn’t that good an actress. A thing that started his suspicion was that name… Franlise, eerily reminiscent of the obnoxious yet efficient Finnley in Noo York. Elizabeth had told him they’d suspected her for a long time to have inserted some paragraphs in Elizabeth’s novels, especially the most torrid parts that would have made a pimp blush like a nun. What had saved the cleaning lady was that in addition to being rather forgiving, Elizabeth suffered from frequent strokes of forgetfulness and bipolarity which made the investigation difficult if not moot altogether.

                                But there, Godfrey was rather surprised at Ann’s sudden interest in continuity. He’d known of a covert organization known in the milieu as the Fellowship of Unification and Continuity in Knowledge.
                                Over the years, the hearsay had amounted to just a few deranged people, but recently there had been an increase in mentions of such nature in reports of the Guild of Authors. Strangely, there was less and less books that were published which had not an impeccable sense of continuity.
                                In a way, it had been perceived at first in literary circles as a blessing for the authors who had not to contend with fans and geeks of all kind who were hunting down each and every detail to prove or disprove unsaid theories. But Godfrey was starting to see some not so perfect points in that. It would be like wanting to string together all the eyelets of your shoes even if they do not belong to the same shoe (or the same pair of shoes). Soon, you’d be embarrassed to find a way to walk without looking like a penguin.

                                Anyway, though all allegations made as to the existence of such secret organization had been mostly derailed as utter nonsense, he couldn’t help but find some inexplicable appeal to them as sound explanations for all the glitches he kept noticing.
                                He would carefooly spy on Franlise.

                                #2540

                                In reply to: Strings of Nines

                                F LoveF Love
                                Participant

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

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

                                  Franlise shuddered at the thought.

                                Viewing 20 results - 781 through 800 (of 1,053 total)

                                Daily Random Quote

                                • India Louise had been switching her own book with Cuthbert’s that night. And as she was exploring some of the stories told in his, he was having a peek into hers. Very quickly, he became aware of a whole new continent, in that World, across the Middle Seas. In that continent far North of the one where ... · ID #206 (continued)
                                  (next in 18h 38min…)

                                Recent Replies

                                WordCloud says