Search Results for 'met'

Corrie:

I woke up this morning with an idea in my head, and I don’t know if I was dreaming about it or if it just popped in, in the brief moments between sleep and waking. I made a connection with the topic I was doing an anthropology report on, and something I’d forgotten. No, not forgotten, it wouldn’t be true to say I’d forgotten it as it was always there at the back of my mind niggling at me that there was more to it somehow, but I hadn’t made the connection so obviously with the current project.

My research was about disconnection, and the separation agenda of the American channeling dream. At first I felt driven to explore particular areas and then piece by piece the puzzle that had nagged at me for years ~ I say years, it felt like years, but maybe it wasn’t so long ~ started to fall into place.

At first when I woke up the idea of censorship was in my head and the idea to start a petition and public awareness campaign about certain channeled texts that were withheld from public viewing, despite repeated requests for them to be public along with all the other texts. But then it occurred to me that censorship and omission wasn’t always deliberate. I mean, not a conscious choice to keep information secret, but something else. Almost like a case of some information not being seen clearly through the filters, yet for some reason dismissed as not fitting, and pushed away, almost unconsciously, and suppressed.

The text was about disconnect mainly, and there was some stuff about Nazi’s although the part about animals was the part that had stuck in my head, probably because I felt more connected to animals than Nazi’s. There were more animals growing up here than Nazi’s after all, Nazi’s was only something I’d heard about. But then it occurred to me that I’d been hearing more and more about Neo Nazi’s, in Europe mainly, forming groups and having protests. So that got me wondering about that too.

Anyway, the disconnect part: it was the reaction on the American channeling forums to the Ferguson riots that started me on this project, and Aunt Idle was full of encouragement when I started to explain to her what I was noticing. She said she had noticed similar things in her remote viewing circle online. Everyone seems to think Aunt Idle is losing her marbles, but don’t you believe it. She seems vacant and scattered but that’s only because her mind is occupied elsewhere.

The gist of this suppressed text was extreme separation, but it was the part about using words to seem enlightened to hide extreme disconnect that seemed to fit my project.

I did have to chuckle though, I wondered if I was being a racist by calling Americans disconnected as if it was a racial characteristic. More of a cultural thing, I suppose, can one be called a culturalist as if it’s a bad thing? I don’t see how you can study anthropology without a certain degree of separating into cultural groups though, even if it is shift anthropology. I’ll think about that a bit more later.

Corrie:

I wasn’t snooping, I swear, and I wasn’t looking for anything either, it just popped up on my side bar on Spacenook and caught my eye. I mean, the title was so peculiar it kind of stood out ~ “Martian Pig Pruning” ~ so I clicked on the link, thinking it might be a diverting Pythonesque parody of all the aliens and other dimensional vibrations bollocks that seemed to be the latest #trendingtrash to swamp the newsfeeds, because sometimes you just have to laugh and find the funny side.

Flora came to her senses muttering something about a coachload of American tourists in Italy. Bert had been the first to arrive at the scene of the accident. Not one to flap in a crisis, he calmly picked up the injured woman and carried her to the sofa in the living room, instructing Prune to fetch the mop and clean the blood off the floor. By the time Bert had seen to the wound on Flora’s head, she was starting to come round, muttering gibberish and apparently confused.

“Where am I? Is this Florence or Rome? Am I late?” she asked, telling Bert she was perfectly alright now thank you, although she clearly wasn’t.

“No, you aint late, dear, it’s still quite early,” Bert replied soothingly.

“But I must get to the Vatican Library, I must be getting on now,” she said, trying to stand up.

Bert gently but firmly pushed her back down, saying, “Have a nice cup of tea first, plenty of time for that later.”

“What the dickens is going on now?” asked Mater. “What’s all this about Rome? Anyone seen my reading glasses?” she asked, peering around the room from the doorway.

Bert explained briefly, and asked Mater to sit with Flora while he went to make the tea.

Flora, rising late as was her custom, and feeling the relaxing glow of being on holiday, strolled leisurely out of her bedroom door in search of coffee. As she stepped into the corridor, one of the twins, not watching where she was going, collided with her surprisingly forcefully, knocking her to the ground. She knocked her head on the door frame, felt a rush of noise and the sweet metallic scent of blood before losing consciousness.

“Flora! Miss Fenwick! Oh my god, Flora!” Corrie cried. After getting no reaction from the inert body and seeing the pool of blood spreading alarmingly, she sped off to find Aunt Idle.

As soon as Corrie was out of sight, Prune emerged from the broom cupboard opposite, saw the body on the floor, and ran in the opposite direction in search of Bert.

Corrie:

“Get away from that door Prune, you nosy parker!” It wasn’t the first time I’d caught her eavesdropping outside room 8.

“Begone, thine tawdry wench, spaketh not thus to thine majesty or I’ll have thee hung drawn and quartered!” she replied in a whisper as she slid past me and ran down the corridor.

It suddenly dawned on me that this funny speaking Prune had been doing lately was something she was picking up on from behind that door. I inched closer to the door, bending down to press my ear to the keyhole. I was slightly off balance when the door flew open suddenly, causing me to stagger right into the room. Caught red handed, I could feel the blush rising as my hand flew to my mouth. There sitting on the end of the bed was what can only be described as an Elizabethan wonder woman superhero.

I backed out of the room quickly, but not so fast that I didn’t see what was on the bed behind the woman. It was the flying fish that had gone missing from over the fireplace.

Aunt Idle:

Tattler, Trout and Trueman. Where had I seen that before? I squinted at what was left of the business card that Flora had been ripping up to use as roaches last night. I could make out tel: 88 , but the rest of the number was missing. There wasn’t much left of the card, no other writing left to see. But where had I seen that name before?

I shivered; there was a rising mist and it was damp and chilly on the veranda, gloomy as the sun hadn’t quite risen yet. I like it first thing, before anyone else is up. Bert’s usually up, but I never see him, he goes off out the back somewhere. I stood there for awhile watching the mist rise and wondered whether to go and fetch the camera.

And that’s when I remembered where I’d seen Tattler, Trout and Trueman. It was on that note that I’d hidden inside the camera manual.

Could it be a coincidence? Should I ask Flora where she got the card, whose card it was? Or did Flora have something to do with the note?

My hand flew to my mouth. Automatic reaction so you don’t suck any flies down with the sharp intake of breath.

“Got toothache, Aunt Idle?” asked Prune.

“Jesus Christ, Prune! You made me jump out of my skin! What are you doing up so early?”

“Who is that man your friend brought with her? Is he from the desert?”

“What man? She came on her own.”

“Well who’s that tall man in the blue robes then? He said his name was Sanso.”

“WHO?” I could almost hear myself say that in italics. “Where? Where did you see him?”
What did he say?”

I could see Prune was weighing this up, she wasn’t called shrewd prunes for nothing. I wasn’t at all surprised when she said “He told me not to tell you anything,” and ran back inside, slamming the door behind her.

Prune was only to too happy to take credit for the disappearance of the flying fish when Bert suggested it. It would give them more time to work out what was going on in room 8, before anyone else thought to suspect the enigmatic dust covered fellow of having a hand in it. Tell them you buried it in the woods, Bert told Prune, when she asked what she was to do if they asked her to bring the old fish back, and then say you can’t remember where you buried it. She was a good girl really, thought Bert, cooperative and resourceful when she wanted to be, if something captured her interest.

“I heard Mater calling Aunty a trollop,” announced Clove ceremoniously.

“What’s a trollop when its at home?” Corrie looked up with interest.

“A tart I think. Prune! get away from the door. I might not be able to see you but I can smell your stinky feet. Go have a bath or something.”

“Ye are the stinky tarty trollops” said Prune, feigning stately dignity as she poked her head around the door. “Dunna yer spake that way to her whose feet yer not fit to touch or nothing! Ye tarty trollops,” she added for good measure.

Mater:

I am concerned about Dido. The silly trollop has taken up drinking again—in front of the kids too. Mark my words, she will end up back in rehab if it goes on. Like last time. And then where will we all be? Those poor little mites without a father or mother and their Aunt fast turning into a crazy slush. There’s no telling her though. God knows I have tried in the past.

I can only hope she will settle down when that kiwi friend arrives—Flora someone. Though I don’t hold out much hope really. I have not met a kiwi with a half a brain in their head yet. And that awful accent! I don’t need this aggravation at my age.

Calm down, remember what Jiemba told you.

I have not told you yet about my visit to Jiemba, have I? There has been so much going on here, what with the fish going missing and that odd guest staying in Room 8 and Dido’s antics, it nearly slipped my mind.

It was Prune who hid the fish, of course. Sensitive wee thing — she has always had a particularly strong dislike of the awful old relic and I can’t say I blame her. Dido went ape when Prune eventually confessed, but secretly I found it rather amusing.

I digress, yet again.

In the end it was Bert who helped me more than Jiemba. The dear man waited out in the truck for me while I kept my appointment with Jiemba. And he held my secret safe from the others. I am grateful to him for that. It felt nice to have someone who would do that for me. On the trip back home he opened up and told me stories about the town. Apparently in its heyday it even had an ice-cream factory; I hadn’t heard that before. Nor some of the other stories he told me. There are not many left around here with the knowledge Bert has. I feel I may even pluck up courage to tell him what I have seen at the Inn. Perhaps he may have some thoughts on it.

But not just yet.

Jiemba gave me some salve made from native bush bark for my aches and pains. It seems he is more modern than his father—things change I guess. I wanted to ask him about the ghost, but what with the dogs and kids running around outside and the heat and the baby screaming in the house somewhere, I could not bring myself to do it. But one thing he said to me has stuck.

“Live from your heart”.

It was the way he said it. Very intense. He went quiet and stared at the floor for a long time while I tried not to fidget. As though he was communing with some spirit world I could not see. Though I would dearly love to. I have thought about those words since then, trying to figure out what they mean.

I’m not sure I can even find my heart, let alone live from it.

Corrie:

Aunt Idle had passed out in the armchair drinking her sherry last night when I went to show her what me and Clove found online when we were googling map stuff, mumbling she was and dribbling a bit. Prune said something peculiar, but when pressed she wouldn’t explain what she meant. Something about Aunt Idle speaking in the same funny accent as Grace, though gawd knows who Grace is, Prune wouldn’t say. Secretive little bugger, our Prune.

After breakfast Aunt Idle asked how our home schooling was going this week, so I told her we’d been exploring geographical anomalies and rare maps. She had an impressed look on her face; that is, until we showed her the link we’d found about the mysterious box full of maps and diagrams. That’s when her hand flew to her mouth, just like the other day when she saw us carrying that map covered mannequin up the drive.

“1977! Oh my god!” she exclaimed, and then “Tampa! Florida! of course!” and then infuriatingly, wouldn’t explain what she meant.

Aunt Idle:

Those maps got me remembering all kinds of things, not that I was fretting about the note because I wasn’t, but once I’d quit flapping about the note, all kinds of things started popping into my mind.

Odd little cameo memories, more often than not a mundane scene that somehow stuck in my head. Like that cafe with the mad hatter mural, mediocre little place, and I cant even remember where it was, but that number on the mural was just wrong, somehow. It’s as clear as a bell in my memory now, but not a thing before or after it, or when it was, other than somewhere in New Zealand.

I kept getting a whistling in my left ear as I was recalling things, like when I remembered that beach on the Costa del Sol, with a timebridgers sticker in the beach bar. I can still see that Italian man walking out of the sea with an octopus.

I can still see the breeze flapping the pages of a magazine lying on a bench in Balzac’s garden in Paris, something about a red suitcase, but I can’t recall what exactly.

A motel in a truckstop village in California…the sherry was making me drowsy. I almost felt like I was there again for a moment.

Conjure up a bowler hat, he said, while you’re out today. I forgot all about it (how often I thank my lucky stars for having a bad memory, I much prefer a surprise) and saw a delightful hurdy gurdy man wearing a bowler hat (In June! I do recall it was June). My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, he was playing. I’m sure to have forgotten that, but I made a video recording.

All these locations were holes in the maps, those ripped up maps the girls brought home from the Brundy place, just after I got that note. I was beginning to see a pattern to the connecting links between the letters ripped out of the map locations, and the wording in the note (which was made of ripped out letters from place names on a map, and glued onto the paper, as anyone who is reading this will no doubt recall). The pattern in the discovery of connecting links was that the pattern is constantly changing, rendering moot the need to decipher a plot in advance of the actual discovery of spontaneous development of the shifting patterns of discovery, and deliverance of the decipherable delegation of the delighted, promptly at noon.

Aunt Idle:

After all the fuss had died down about the missing Mater, I lost interest in the map and the strange note. It was as if the distraction interrupted my train of thought (some might say another of Idle’s hamster wheels, or another ludicrous tangent), so I gave the maps back to the girls and the mysterious note was mostly forgotten. If it meant anything, well, sooner or later it would become clear.

Truth be told, it wasn’t just the fuss about Mater that distracted me, it was the phone call from my old friend in New Zealand. Flora Fenwick was making another of her arty party videos, wanted to come over to check out some of the empty properties for filming. I’d seen all her arty farty party videos online, and we’d been friends for years via Spacenook, but we’d never met in person.

The timing was perfect.

Corrie:

“Why have you locked your door, Aunt Idle?” I asked, after waiting rather a long time for her to open it. She looked a bit flushed, so I looked around to see if she had another feller in there but she didn’t, not unless he was hiding in the closet. She didn’t usually hide her lovers from us though, and anyway, I had more important things on my mind.

“Mater’s still missing and it’s been dark for an hour already, what should we do?”

Aunt Idle just stared at me with her mouth open and didn’t say anything.

“We can’t just go to bed, what if something’s happened to her? Nobody even knows where she went!”

“Mater’s missing, is that what you’re telling me?” she asked, just as if it was the first she’d heard about it. “Have you checked her room? Did she leave a note or a clue or anything? For heaven’s sake, Corrie, why on earth didn’t you tell me sooner! Go and fetch Prune, well wake her up then!” she added as I protested that she’d gone to bed ages ago. “Prune always seems to know things. And where’s Bert? Has he seen her?”

“I’m trying to tell you, Auntie, that nobody knows!”

Bert watched Clove disappear down the hall, and crept out from his hiding place behind the door of the room opposite room 8. He’d positioned himself to get a look at the new guest; something about Prune’s description of him had set of alarm bells in his mind and he wanted to see the new guest for himself.
Silent as a cat, he crept over and pressed his ear to the strangers door. Nothing but the sounds of cutlery scraping plate. Bert waited.
Time limped along but Bert stayed put with his ear pressed to the door. Eventually, he heard it. That humming noise. He remembered it, although he didn’t know what it was, didn’t know what to make of it.
He’d been ten years old when he heard it the first time, ten years old when a dust covered man in a broad brimmed hat had appeared in town. Dang, the guy hadn’t aged in all these years. He was sure it was the same fella, he’d known it the minute he saw him through the crack of the door, but especially now he’d heard that humming.

The knock on the bedroom door awakened Crispin Cornwall.
“Yes? Who is it?”
“It’s Clove, I’ve brought your supper, sir.”
Crispin eased his limbs into action and shuffled over to the door. As soon as he’d been shown to his room in the early hours of the morning, he’s lain down on the bed and slept like a baby, not stirring until the knock on the door. It had been seventeen weeks since he’d last slept, not that he needed sleep in the usual sense, but sometimes even the Great Travelers needed a complete break with the physical. Dragon’s teeth, he said to himself, it made a body stiff though, all those hours of inactivity.
“It’s beans on toast, Aunt Idle said you weren’t fussy,” the girl said, politely enough, though she looked him up and down. “The laundry and shower room is down the hall, thataway, sir.”
Crispin took the plate off the girl, the corner of his lip curling up in amusement. “Look like I need a wash, do I?”
“Sorry sir, didn’t mean to be rude, it’s just that most guests ask for a shower when they get here, dust on the road and all. Will there be anything else you want? Pot of tea? Bottle of wine?”
But Crispin Cornwall had already closed the door. Clove heard the lock click. Rude filthy old fart, she thought to herself.

Corrie:

It was the look on Aunt Idle’s face when she saw them that scared me. There’s something strange going on, and not just everyone acting weird, that’s pretty normal around here, but this was a different kind of weird.

When Aunt Idle nearly suffocated me with that big hug while she was trying to hide that piece of paper, I didn’t think anything of it. Probably hiding another bill I thought, not wanting us to worry about the debts piling up. Mater wandering off like that was pretty strange, but old people do daft things. I knew all about it because I’d been reading up on dementia. They imagine things and often feel persecuted, claim someone stole their old tea set, things like that, forgetting they gave it away 30 years ago, stuff like that. So I wasn’t worried about either of them acting strange when Clove and I decided to go treasure hunting in the old Brundy house, we just decided to out and explore just for the hell of it, for something to do.

The Brundy house was set apart from the rest of the abandoned houses, down a long track through the woods, nice and shady in the trees without the sun glaring down on our heads. Me and Clove had been there years ago but we were little then, and scared to go inside, so we’d just peeked in the windows and scared each other with ghost and murderer stories until we heard a bang inside and then ran like hell until we couldn’t breathe. Probably just a rat knocking something over, but we never went back. We weren’t scared to, it was further to walk to the Brundy place and there were so many other abandoned houses to play in that were closer to home.

We weren’t scared to go inside this time. It was a big place, quite grand it must have been back in the day, big entrance hallway with an awesome staircase like in Gone With the Wind where Scarlett fell down the stairs, but the stair carpet was all in shreds and some of the steps banisters were broken, but the steps looked sound enough so up we went, for some reason drawn up there first before exploring the ground floor rooms.

Clove turned left at the top of the stairs and I turned right and went into the first bedroom. My hand flew to my mouth. I wonder why we do that, put a hand over our mouth when we’re surprised, well that’s what I did when I saw the cat mummy on the bed. I didn’t scream or anything, not like Clove did a minute later from the other side of the house. It wasn’t a mummy with bandages like an Egyptian one, it was just totally desiccated like a little skeleton covered in bleached leather. It was a fascinating thing to see really but the minute I heard Clove scream I ran out of the room and down the landing. It’s not like Clove to scream. Well who screams in real life, the only time I ever heard screaming was in a movie. People usually say what the fuck or oh my god, they don’t scream. But Clove screamed when she saw the room full of mannequins because to be fair it did look like a room full of ghosts or zombies in the half light from the shuttered windows. She was laughing by the time I reached her, a bit hysterically, and we clutched each other as we went over to open the shutters to get a better look. It was pretty creepy, even if they were only mannequins.

They were kind of awesome in the light, all covered in maps, there were 22 of them, we counted them, a whole damn room full of map covered mannequins in various poses, men, women and kid sized. Really clever the way the maps were stuck all over them, looked like arteries and veins, and real cool the way Riga joined up with Boston, and Shanghai with Lisbon, like as if you really could just travel down a vein from Tokyo to Bogota, or cross a butt cheek to get from Mumbai to Casablanca.

We hadn’t noticed at first that we’d been shuffling through a load of paper on the floor. The floor was covered in ripped up maps, must have been hundreds of maps all torn up and strewn all over the floor.

“There’s enough maps left over to do one of our own, Corrie” Clove said, reading my mind. “Let’s take some home and stick them all over something.”

“We haven’t got a mannequin at home though” I replied, but I was thinking, why not take a mannequin home with us, and some maps, and decide what to do with them later.

So that’s what we did. We gathered up the biggest fragments of map off the floor and rolled them all up and used my hair elastic to hold them together, and carried a mannequin all the way home. The sun was going down so we had to hurry a bit down the track. Clove didn’t help when she said we must look like we’re carrying a dead body with rigor mortis, that made us collapse laughing, dropping the mannequin on its head. Once we got the giggles it was hard to stop, and it made our legs weak from laughing.

We got home just as the last of the evening light disappeared, hauled the mannequin up the porch steps, where Aunt Idle was standing with her hand over her mouth. Well, that was to be expected, naturally she’d be wondering what we were carrying if she was watching us come up the drive carrying a body. It was later, when we unfolded the maps, that the look on her face freaked me out.