Search Results for 'lid'

Tina was working in a very unknown departement at the online payment company. Part of her job was to make sure the information provided by the customers were genuine and she only had to validate the payments in a mouse click.

That day however, she was feeling a bit mischievous and when she realized her mouse wasn’t functionning correctly, instead of asking for a new mouse, she continued with it a bit. At first it had been random transactions and she found it quite boring. But when one person was persistant enough to go again through the pain-in-the-ash process of paying online, she felt a tingly feeling in her chest. She clicked with her dysfunctionning mouse and invalidated the transaction again.

Several minutes later, she realized it was the same person again. Apparently a French guy. God, she hated France ! They eat frogs, frogod sake!
He was using another website to make his transaction. Obviously not knowing that all the payments were coming through the scrutiny of that secret service departement. She exulted and clicked again. She was so excited that her colleagues looked at her suspiciously when she made that hysterical laugh of hers.

Click! Click! Click!

She had even been hesitating to have a break lest he would present his transaction again and would pass through her vigilance.

“Tina ?”

Her boss! A moment of inattention and it was over! She felt a surge of disappointment flooding her when she realize the transaction had been taken by another of her colleagues… and validated.

How would they call this new blue planet? “XAIO353-57+” had been suggested by the High Klashtram Mothtar, but it would probably take at least one gyros before the Science council would unanimously agree.

Bashashish 20-13 was actually the communication attendant who’d discovered that promising planet, thus effectively defeating promises of uninteresting and failure-ridden work at the Cosmological Administration for Variable Explorations, where she’d been sent after unimpressive academic studies. The C.A.V.E. was one of those administrative hideouts producing nil but tedium, full of crannies which had not seen a cleaning ladybug (nor any clean ladybug for that matter) probably since its creation.
BashTT (short for Bashashish Twenty-Thirteen), after many of her cocoons left there at the institute, and as much boredom, started to play with some of the old equipment she’d found in a broom closet (needless to say, all brooms had been eaten long ago), and had found some unusual waves coming from a corner of the Sector 114116.

It took her more gyri to gather more solid evidence, tinkering with the planet’s waves in order to test whether the blue marble had intelligent life. So far, it had been mostly conclusive. She’d managed to connect to broadcasting waves and also to the transportation systems. She tinkered with the stream of data in order to go local, and by replacing another’s booking with her personal information, managed to book a few craft tickets for herself. This would be perfect for when she’d visit around the planet’s locations when she would arrive with the official delegation.
She was particularly fond of the Land of the Hobbit breathtaking sceneries, and wished she could get an appointment in Rivendell with the wizard they called Grand’Alf who seemed able to talk their mothty language.

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]

Shelly Dwelling, horrifed ~ naturally enough ~ at the mention of butter and parsley, was immensely relieved to see Frobisher the frog gliding along in his electric wheelchair. “Hop on, Shelly!” he whispered urgently “My wheelchair is super fast, I’ll get you out of this pickle in a jiffy!”

“Frobisher! Oh my godfrogs, it’s good to see you! What timing! But I can’t hop!”

“Well neither can I now, without my legs” he replied, “But you can climb up my wheel, can’t you?”

“Well ok, but don’t move, I’m on my way, this may take a while…”

“Hurry, Shelly! Hurry up! I can smell butter melting, there’s no time to lose!”

Unfortunately for Shelly who was a quarter of the way up the left wheel, Frobisher engaged his electric motor and sped off into the long grass. It would have been far too risky to wait.

“Hang on, Shelly! This will be the ride of your life!” he called, as Shelly spun round the giant Ferris Wheel.

“I suppose this is why your name is Frobisher Ferris” she replied through gritted teeth.

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

Whether or not Arachne was actually better at weaving than Athena is still a mystery, or perhaps it is a moot point and no mystery at all. Weaving is by no means a solitary endeavour, as Blithe found early one summer morning. The river mist was rising and the air itself was dancing in droplets. It was hard to determine if the droplets were falling or rising, or simply milling around on the air currents. Hard green oranges (clearly oranges had been named in winter, or they would likely have been called greens) were festooned with silver threads, linking orange to orange, orange to tree and tree to wire fence, and back again. It was debatable whether or not the individual spiders were aware of the grand overall design of the early morning web links of the orange groves, just as it was equally debatable whether or not the inhabitants of the various Gibber realities were aware of the network of waterpipes that connected the other inhabitants to themselves and each other, and to the other Gibber worlds. Individuals were individuals, whether they be spiders, or Gibblets, and individuals generally speaking were focused on their own part of the tapestry (and often those of their immediate neighbours). Spider 57 on the east fence might be positioned to catch the first rays of sunshine in the mornings, but Spider 486,971 over near the dung heap was in a better position to catch the afternoon flies. And so on, as somebody famous once said.

As Blithe prowled around the orchard capturing potential clues on her Clumera she inevitably became part of the laybrinthine web of sticky threads herself, as they attached themselves to her hair and clothing. All of the gaps between the solids in the field were joined together with spun filaments, just as the Gibblets were joined together with fun spillaments (although leaking waterpipes were sadly misinterpreted as not-fun all too often, despite that they could be used as an opportunity to view the connections of the Waterpunk more comprehensively.)

The individual spiders lacy parlours were framed in wire squares, several hundred, if not more, along the perimeter fences. Not every wire fence square was filled; there were many vacant lots between established residences ~ whether by practical design or mere happenstance, Blithe couldn’t say. Many of the individual webs were whole and perfect, like the windows of Lower Gibber whose inhabitants kept their lace curtains clean and neatly hung. Many of the webs on the wire fence were not perfect in the symetrical sense ~ some had gaping holes, and there were those that appeared to be unfinished, despite showing great potential. Others appeared to be abandoned, hanging in shreds, not unlike many of the residences in Upper Gibber.

The wire framed residences of the field (and likewise the peeling paint framed residences of Upper Gibber) that appeared to be defunct were not quite as they seemed, however. They were simply being viewed from a different timeframe. It was quite possible to view each wire or peeled paint framed en-trance side by side, notwithstanding that they were, so to speak, located in varying timeframes. All that was required was a more flexible viewpoint, and an ability to view more than one timeframe simultaneously. It was all a question of allowing an entrance to en-trance ~ which was, after all, its function.

{link: misty morning; 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}

Peanelope smiled serenely as she gazed at the heads of her loved ones.

“Oh Pixel,” she said, “Is that dust on your eyelid?”

Chuckling to herself she ran her dusting cloth over his face, relishing the control she now had over her dear ones. One of her greatest pleasures was rearranging them on the mantelpiece. Sometimes, if her mood was poor, or she had one of her many men friends visiting, she would make them face the wall. At dinner time she would place them around the table, each head propped up on a large pile of Pee’s precious encyclopeadias.

“More blubbit stew, Pee?” she asked.

Ann realized she was late for her Flimsy Unravelled Continuity Knowledge class. A couple of months late, in point of fact, as Worserversity classes had resumed two months previously.

“Where have you BEEN?” Lavender whispered as Ann slid as inconspicuously as possible into the seat beside her, while the professor at the front of the class was facing the blueboard.

“Do I know you?” asked Ann, with a puzzled expression. The girl beside her did look vaguely familiar.

“Oh how rude you are, Ann. Are you trying to be funny?”

“Oh no, not at all!” Ann’s eyes filled with tears.

Lavender frowned. It wasn’t like Ann to start blarting and blubbering in public. “What’s the matter?” she asked kindly.

“I’ve lost my memory!” exclaimed Ann. “I can’t remember a thing!”

“Oh, is that all,” replied Lavender dismissively. “I’d have thought you’d be used to that by now.”

“No, no, you don’t understand! I can’t remember anything at all now, it’s all gone, poof! Gone!” Ann wept and started to wring her hands.

“Well the first thing you need to do is stop that bloody snivelling and wipe your nose. Here” she said, handing Ann a tissue. “And the next thing you need to do is stop worrying about it, and just fake it until you get your memory back. Worrying about it won’t help, you must focus on the things you do remember.”

“But it’s all jumbled up and muddled in my head, I remember bits, you know? But I can’t fit them all together. I CAN’T FIT THEM ALL TOGETHER!”

“SHHH!” snapped Lavender. “Try not to draw any attention to yourself! I’ll help you, don’t worry.”

“You’re so kind” Ann smiled weakly. “What did you say your name was?”

“Lavender. My name is Lavender, and I’m going to help you remember. Just remember this, for now: what you can’t remember, don’t worry about, the important thing is to carry on. Just CARRY ON REGARDLESS, ok?”

“OK.” Ann sighed with releif. “What’s the Professor going on about?”

“The next assignment. We’re to read that cryptic old classic book Circle of Eights and try to decipher it.”

“Good greif! Nobody has ever managed to decipher that book!”

“You see?” said Lavender. “You can remember that! Well done, girl!”

The summer Holidays were nearly over, or the Hollow Days, as they were known to some. The last days of summer had been a bit hollow for Ann at any rate, rattling around inside her own head, not really knowing whether it was full or empty. Ann had spent most of the summer sleeping, and with virtually no dream recall, it seemed as if half of the summer was missing. Probably just as well, what with it being such an odd summer. She wondered if she would simply sleep through the shift, like Ned Young slept through the mutiny. Didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

“Normally” the Worserversity students started rolling back towards Poubelleville round about now, but the word “normally” was becoming obsolete. What was normal, what could be expected? Ann didn’t know. She packed her coloured pencils, her detachable hand and her wooden men, and fished out her homework assigments for the holidays that she had only just remembered.

Alliteration. Bugger bollocks and blast, blimey but what a bother, too bloody hot and bored.

That’s a bit bloody depressing, she muttered to herself, try another letter.

Sweltering summer of sweat and sand, sleeping and sleeping, sublime surruptitious snooze, sail away in the sunset swell, sunrise surrender, ships ahoy!

Fan the flames, far sighted fellows! There’s a flash in the funnel for fast falling fishermen. Far flung, fun fueled, oh fast fleeting fantasies, follow the folks with the flags! Flounder not, fresh fishies, for fun feels fantastic!

Ah, wallow in wisps of wordless wonderings, weather the winds of wandering whispers, while weighty wells of wishes work winsome wonders, woven with worn wool and worrisome white weathered windows. Whether we will, whether we won’t, who will win, what will work, will we watch it water the weeds….

“Any idea what this is all about?” Beattie asked, to nobody in particular. A crowd was gathering at the crossroad.

The crossroad reminded Bea of a movie she’d watched some years previously, called, coincidentally enough, Crossroads. A symbolic sort of place, although real enough, a junction seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There was a large oak tree looming above the intersection, but nothing else could be seen in any direction but endless expanses of fields. There was a wooden signpost, the old fashioned kind, with two slats of wood pinned crosswise in the middle to a leaning post, but the place names had long since weathered away.

It was an odd sort of place and not much traffic passed by. In fact, the only traffic to pass by the crossroad stopped and disengorged itself of passengers..

“Is that a word, Bea?” asked Leonora. “Disengorged?”

“Don’t butt in to the narrative part Leo, or the story won’t make any sense.” hisssed Beattie, “Wait until you’re supposed to speak as one of the characters.”

“Well alright, but I don’t suppose it will have much effect on the making sense aspect, either way. Do continue.”

To say it was a motley crew gathering would be an understatement.

“You got that right,” Leonora said, sotto voce, surupticiously scanning the assortment of individuals alighting from the rather nautical looking yellow cab. Bea glared at Leo. “I suppose I’ll have to include your interrupions as a part of the story now.”

“Good thinking, Batman!”

“Oh for Pete’s sake, Leo, don’t go mad with endless pointless remarks then, ok? Or I will delete you altogether, and that will be the end of it.”

“You can’t delete me. I exist as a character, therefore I am.”

“You might have a nasty accident though and slide off the page,” Bea replied warningly.

“Why don’t you just get on with it, Bea? Might shut me up, you never know…”. Leo smirked and put her ridiculously large sunglasses on, despite the swirling fog..

“Oh I thought it was sunny” said Leonora, taking her sunglasses back off again. “You hadn’t mentioned weather.” She put her sunglasses back on again anyway, the better to secretly examine the others assembled at the crossroads.

“Why don’t you go and introduce yourself to them and see if anyone knows why we’re here, Leo, while I get on with the story.”

“Who will write what they say, though?”

“I’ll add it later, just bugger off and see if anyone knows who sent us that mysterious invitation.”

“Right Ho, sport, I’m on the bobbins and lace case” replied Leo. Bea shuddered a bit at the mixture of identities bleeding through Leonora’s persona. “Och aye the noo!”

Dear god, thought Beattie, I wish I’d never started this.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

“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.

Yoland decided to have another go at the Pink Radio Exercise with a few online freinds.

(I’m procrastinating over turning this damn radio on…) she typed.

~ special effects from Franz E ~
(that’s what I just heard and we didn’t say START yet)

(Later)

(I’m procrastinating over turning this damn radio on…)

~ you see you weren’t listening. I said special effects from Franz E and you stopped listening immediately. ~ (well I was writing it down) ~
~ (mans voice) …..weather, and you don’t know whether or not to listen, do you… I didnt think so, off you go ~ (then a football match can you beleive it, can’t get off the football station) ~ and this is the whether station again, whether or not we want to listen ~ (mind wanders) ~ and the whether is changable ~ (mans voice sounds amused)

(Its channel 46 FWIW, I just asked him. And his name is either Roy or Gilroy. Gilroy.)

~ Gilroy Spadhammer ~ (now he’s laughing)

(ok lets see if I can move off the whether and football channels…..)

~ the whether is stabilizing ~ GOAL! ~ song: we’re all going on a summer holiday ~ Wakefield Pressman (solemn male voice)~

Yoland was sidetracked then by Teleport Moll’s sudden appearance, and forgot all about Wakefield Pressman.

Arthur Bickerswell-Snodley had been delighted to receive Ann’s invitation to stay with her at Little Big Hopeswell for the May Day weekend. He hadn’t seen Ann for 570 years, although they had remained in contact through the years, at first by old fashioned handwritten letters, and later by email —as well, of course, by telepathic means and out of body rendezvous— but this was to be an actual physical visit.

Arthur travelled by train to Chipping Else Hampton, where Jibblington, Ann’s chauffeur and general dogsbody, met him in the old jalopy, a rather grand old Silver Ghost Rolls.
Jibblington, it must be stated, worked part time for Ann, as did the enigmatic cleaning lady, Franlise — both were merely aspects of much larger personalities elsewhere engaged in myriad pursuits. Jibblington was a much of a mystery to Ann as dear Franlise was, not to mention old Godfrey Pig Littleton. Godrey’s flooh, in point of fact, had been the catalyst behind Ann’s invitation to Arthur.

While Jibblington and Bickerswell-Snodley glided along the country lanes, cushioned and buoyant in the silver car’s plush, if a trifle vulgar, crimson upholstery, Ann tutted in exasperation as Godfrey pestered her to finish her latest entry to the Play.

“I haven’t finished it yet, Godfrey, sheesh!” she exclaimed. “OK, OK!” Godfrey was rather rudely drumming his fingers on her desk. “Here, you can read what I’ve written so far.”

I told you it is my feeling that in a sense these communications took place one afternoon while I was half dozing.

They could make no sense to me then. The use of unconscious knowledge could not then take place. I do not know the state of your wife’s consciousness, or of your own, at that time in my own past. In any case, your own conscious knowledge of such events apparently had to wait until certain intersections happened.

Awareness of these communications conceivably could have taken place at any time, but certain levels of comprehension had to touch all of our personalities before such communications jelled, or became strong enough to make sense in both of our worlds.

I do not believe that I was aware of these communications either when they first happened. I would have had no way to evaluate or understand them. I assume that the same is true on your parts. At the same time, in a manner of speaking, the communications are enriched as my knowledge of my world when I was alive blends with your present knowledge of your world in your time.

It is as if the three of us all wrote portions of a letter, the words fitting together meticulously, and yet forming a fine puzzle that had to work itself out as we each made our moves in our own realities. It is one thing to send a letter from one portion of the planet to another, as in your mail system — but it is something else when the three individuals involved are constantly changing their alignment, position, and probable activities.

It is like trying to send a letter to a certain address while the mailbox keeps appearing or disappearing, or changing its position entirely, for all three of us are a portion of that one communication, while the position of our consciousness constantly alters.

It is a wonder that such communications take place at all considering the changing coordinates that constantly apply. The communications could all have remained in the dream state on all of our parts, but we were all determined to bring them into some kind of actuality in the same way that the idea of a painting is changed into the physical painting itself.

“Godfrey, that’s got me thinking, you know. Seem to have a bit of an idea brewing, old bean,” Ann said with an enigmatic smile.

“What are you on about now, Ann?” he replied. “Why don’t you tell me what that book is you’re reading, you can’t quote books without mentioning the name of them, so you may as well tell me now.”

“I was wondering how to slide it in, Godfrey” she replied with a snort. “It’s The World View of Rembrandt, by Jane Roberts.”

Back in January, her friend Ronda had asked her if she wanted to come with her to a seminar in Madrid, one of these loonatics seminar. She wasn’t interested herself in that kind of gathering of freaky people and she wouldn’t have accepted if Ronda hadn’t offered to pay for her expenses.

That was the perfect occasion and the perfect time, with the crisis her little enterprise was sinking rapidly and money had never been so scarce. Those would be the perfect holidays, even if she would have to spend some time among some loonatics.

So in March here they went in Madrid. The hotel was simply gorgeous and as they told the biggest in Europe.

It was perfect again.

Not that the rooms were big, though they were quite expensive, but there were so many sculptures and paintings, so many trinkets in the lobby and in the lounge… and there was a pool!!! She could see herself flirting with one of those rich loonatics, always ready to spend money on glass pyramids that had properly been tachyonised

That’s where her life changed and that she realized she needed STRUCTURE in her life.

It happened during one of these meditations by a certain T’Eggy, a still active porn star, the favorite of Marvin Scrozzezi… and she was also doing seminars!!!
When she saw her, Patricia thought her face was familiar, and that’s when she saw the groupies in the first row, all of them wearing the leopard superstrings that had been made mass spread by her performance in the latest Marvin Scrozzezi. Patricia had one of them, but the superstring hadn’t resist her generous forms or she would have bring it to the party… well that’s another story.

T’Eggy was stressing the need of structure that they all needed in their lives and she made her points listened and watched with a few scenes of her recent and not so recent movies. Everybody was charmed and she made them laugh with her story about when she played the millionaire waiting for Bill the milkman…

Ronda was not really interested by T’Eggy and a bit shameful of her adoration of T’Eggy, Patricia had to sneak out during the break and she bought a few books, amidst which “The Pelvic Respiration” or “Release your Stress in a Gang Bang”. She also bought a few vials of the special Dr. B. Cream which said “Rejuvenate your Vagina”… apparently made with some blue spiders silk and venom. She went quickly in her room and hid her purchases in her suitcase before returning for the Channeled Music of the Chinese Swamps Monastery and the Channeling of the Big ErectoMagnetic Stick called Fryzon.

Patricia didn’t listen to all of that, she was already imagining all the ways she could structure her new life with the pelvic meditation.

“Ok so now we have time travelling absinthe vampires, who suck the pee out of the time travelling absinthium salesmen?” Becky laughed. “Or would that be the reindeer pee salesmen? Otherwise known as Santa Clauses ahahah.” The idea was starting to sound strangely plausible. “Santa Claus is really a time travelling reindeer pee salesman from the gnome dimension ~ we were getting it so distorted because of our beliefs!”

Al rolled his eyes and passed her a map of the Carpathian Mountains.