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  • #3673
    TracyTracy
    Participant

      “Who else is coming? Don’t remind me, I can’t bear it,” Elizabeth said fretfully while Norbert opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish.

      “I have an idea!” she announced suddenly, standing up and crushing a mince pie that had rolled under her desk. “Gather round, come on, come on!”

      Arona Haki shuffled in with the dustpan and mop, as Finnley blew her nose loudly and wiped the tears from her eyes. Norbert stood silently, waiting.

      “It wouldn’t matter WHO came,” Liz paused for effect, “If none of us were here!”

      “But we are here, aren’t we,” remarked Finnley. Norbert and Haki murmured in agreement.

      “We are now!” replied Liz, “But we could be gone in an hour! We could go and visit my cousin ~ third cousin twice removed, actually ~ in Australia. They have an old inn and it’s sure to be half empty, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and,” she added triumphantly, “It will be lovely and warm there!”

      “Blisteringly hot, more like,” muttered Finnley, “And would they like unexpected visitors for Chri, er Kri, er, that date on the calendar?”

      “I’m sure they’d be delighted, “ replied Liz, crisply. “Not everyone is as curmudgeonly about Chri, er, Kri, er that date on the calendar as we are. And anyway,” she added, “If I write it into the story that they are delighted, then they will have no option but to be pleased to see us.”

      “If you bloody lot are coming to the Flying Fish Inn, I’m buggering off to Mars for the holidays” said Bert.

      Elizabeth spun round, saying sharply, “Bert! Get back to your own thread this instant! The bloody cheek of it, thread hopping like that, really!”

      #3669
      prUneprUne
      Participant

        Christmas has always been a strange tradition in our family.
        Maybe because first and foremost, Christmas is all about family. Besides the twins and their bond, sometimes I wonder what makes us a family at all.
        It doesn’t help that we can never get snow around this place, and dressing in red and white fluff is not going to make things suddenly magical.

        It was comical to see the exterminator come with a red bonnet, panting and all red himself, as if he were some genial Santa bringing gifts of death to our yonder’s rodents residents.
        He didn’t catch a rat, but got himself a fright. Thanks to Mater, when she erupted in the attic in her white hanuka honey cream face-lifter mask. I think that sneaky Finly got to her in the end.
        The mystery of the strange noises in the inn is not going soon, apparently.

        Bert and Aunt Idle got back from their trip in the evening. Apparently Bert had insisted to bring some sort of shrub to make a Christmas tree in the great hall (it’s not so great, but we call it that). Finly didn’t seem pleased too much with it. Raking leaves in summer, bringing pests inside… she didn’t have many kind things to say about it. So Mater sends her to cook a “festive dinner”, that’s what she said. I heard Finly mutter in her breath something about kiwi specials. I like kiwis. Hope she’ll make a pavlova… just, not with Mater’s face cream!

        It seems that giving small gestures of appreciation got the mood going. Aunt Idle is always very good at decorating with the oddest or simplest of things, like rolls of TP. Sometimes she would draw nice hieroglyphs in the layer of dust on the cabinets, it gives the furniture a special look. Mater always says it’s because she’s too lazy to do some cleaning consistently, but I think it’s because cleaning is not creative enough for her. Can’t believe I just said nice things about Aunt Idle. Christmas spirit must be contagious.

        Then, Devan came home with some pastries. It’s not often I see Devan these days, and usually he’s always brooding. I would too, if I had to come back home when I could just start my life away from there. Finly was all eyes on him all of a sudden. Seems nobody noticed, not even the twins, too busy being snarky while playing on their phones,… it looks like there is some strange game between these two, my brother and our Finly. I think Finly makes a lot of efforts to look younger with him, I can see when she fiddles with her hair. They would make good friends, and I’m sure Devan doesn’t mind the accent.

        As always, it’s not about how pretty the tree is, or how good the food is, or how big the gifts are… It’s more about being together, for better or for worse. And Dad, and Mum are always out of this almost nice picture, but somehow, it matters less today.

        There’s a good thing about that Christmas spirit. It gives you the weirdest ideas. To be nice, I asked Mater if we should invite the guests to our festive dinner, and probably lifted by the mood, she said yes, of course. When I went to the closed door to invite the guy, I thought a random act of kindnes is a perfect occasion to learn more about our mysterious resident stranger… Maybe that’s what the adults mean in church when they say you should always be kind to each other.

        #3657
        ÉricÉric
        Keymaster

          “Thank you Mam’” Haki smeared the delicate handkerchief with crimson circles.
          “If you don’t mind me tellin’, he’s got a fine pair of assets, your fellow.”
          “EX-fellow, Haki, jeeze, contain yourself a bit!”

          #3656
          ÉricÉric
          Keymaster

            Haki, your nose is bleeding.”
            Liz felt a pang of guilt. It was an unlikely side effect of her bending the will of those around her and trying to mind-control her staff.
            Too much pressure… And didn’t help with the headaches either.

            #3636
            ÉricÉric
            Keymaster

              The Postshiftic traumanic drumneling groupcircle was helping a lot Godfrey with his new goals. He’d found there many like-minded individuals, working through their past trauma and healing psychic abuses with a good dose of mushrooms and drumming, and visits to the Spore Hit World.

              At first, hearing about the mushrooms, he was a bit anxious. Not so much about the hallucinogenic effects (he was rather impervious to them), but dreading that it would attract Elizabeth and detract from the catharsis.

              The other day, while he was walking in the street, and trying to stay in the Gnowme, he bumped into Finnley. He couldn’t recognize her at first. She usually hid her long flowing hair in some kerchief to do the chores, and hid her genius in plain sight.

              He couldn’t help but enquire about how things were going back at the Tattler Mansion, expecting a bit of disarray, but nothing like what she told him (in her usual scarcity of words).
              “A baby now? Seriously?”

              Liz didn’t strike him as the motherly type, looking by the way she treated her paper babies at least.

              “I heard she got herself a fine help, with a strong grip on things.”

              Godfrey sighed. It always started like that.

              #3630
              DevanDevan
              Participant

                I found Joe near the fallen bridge. He was sobbing. I approached silently and put my hand on his shoulder.
                “Are you alright, mate ?”
                “Yes I’m alright”, he snorted. “You remember when we used to play there ?”
                Of course I remembered, we called it the bridge to nowhere. I’ve never really understood why Bert had built that bloody bridge. Jasper told me after the blast that the old man also made sure nobody could use it again. That was no surprise. Old Bert was a tight as a duck’s ass when it came to his craft. That’s why he never could make it in his trade, if he didn’t like what you did of one of his creations he’d rather smash it up so that no one could use it afterward. Always the sneaky one.
                “I remember”, I said. “Your face looks like a Panda.”
                He snickered. “You know my father. He’s got a liking for China.” He laughed, but it felt forced. Anyway, I laughed with him. There was no point in bringing up the gloom, we needed fun.
                “Let’s take a dive!” I said. Hoping to change his mind. He tried to smile but cringed as his face must have hurt badly. When he removed his shirt, my heart sank as I saw the dark marks on his chest and back. No pushing him in the water.
                “Last one to reach the other side of nowhere!” he shouted before jumping in the cold water.
                “That would be you!” I roared. Naked in the wild, at least as close to the wild as you could have here, I felt like a lion, full of strength, dangerous.

                #3623
                ÉricÉric
                Keymaster

                  Finnley’s tirade stirred something in Godfrey.

                  He may not have completely given voice of the thought in his head, but it made him realize that the thought of quitting for something different had been here all along.
                  He liked Elizabeth well enough. To be honest, such caring for an ungrateful and volatile lady was borderline devotion, but still, it wasn’t about that.

                  I wanted to change the world, and Elizabeth vision of greatness and madness alike was, for a time, something he could fall in line behind and support with passion.

                  Through visionary books, to open the minds of the pleb to the realms of possibilities, ah! no matter how deliciously delirious and quaint such possibilities seemed. That was a grand epic in budding.

                  And then, after so many years of relentless editing, copy-writing, and of course maid after maid interviews, all there was left? Unbridled madness and tyranny from the well of grandiose ideas that Elizabeth had been, and to some extent still, was.

                  In fact, Godfrey had stifled his own creativity by falling in line behind the writing giantess. There were timid attempts at writing his own story, and only piles of old notebook to account for it.

                  Purpose, Truth, Action those were the magic words…

                  “Oh, bugger it Liz’. I quit.”

                  How’s that for action? Another thread would do me good. Like to see what life’s brewing on Mars.

                  #3606
                  TracyTracy
                  Participant

                    Finnley got a book out of her bag and started reading, rather rudely, Elizabeth thought.

                    Liz leaned over so that she could read over Finnley’s shoulder, in the absence of anyone to talk to as all the characters had been written out of the script.

                    “…full of misinformation and wrong opinions.” she read.

                    “Then sir, you may say so. The ruder you are, the more the editors will be delighted.”

                    (A point worth bearing in mind, Liz thought)

                    “But it is my own opinions which I wish to make better known, not other people’s.”

                    “Ah, but, sir, it is precisely by passing judgements upon other people’s work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one’s own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one’s theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does.”

                    “Hmm, you may be right. But, no. It would seem as if I were lending support to what ought never to have been published in the first place.”

                    When Elizabeth had had enough of reading, she wrote Godfrey back into the script.

                    #3600
                    DevanDevan
                    Participant

                      When I left the Inn this morning, Mater seemed upset. I regularly kisses her on her forehead before going to the gas station, as I know it pisses her off, but today she seemed lost in her thoughts and she called me Fred. I don’t like it when she does that, it gives me the impression she’s losing it. I wonder who’s going to hold that crumbling place when she’s gone. Certainly not Dido, she can’t focus her mind on a project for more than a few minutes, and it usually does not pass the stage of smokey ideas. I see clearly her game, she’s messing around with Mater for God knows what twisted reasons. They never seemed to appreciate each others much, and I’ve only known them for eighteen years. Looking at how it didn’t evolve much during that time, I bet it had been like that for quite some time. Family relationships are boring, and usually quite messy.

                      Take Joe for example, he’s crazy. His father is crazy, and his grand-father well he spent so much time in the mines that his family didn’t really miss him when one of the tunnels collapsed while he was inside. They never found the body. The Mining company gave the family a ridiculously small amount of money as an indemnification. Joe’s father lost it in some fracking wallaby race. Bad luck had stuck to him his whole life. Jasper once told me to avoid him. I would have, even if it was not for my dead brother’s warning.

                      Joe’s working at the gas station with me. He had been working there since he was sixteen when the school told his parents it was a waste of time [for them] to try and teach him anything valuable. His father beat him to keep up the appearances, but they were glad they could put him to work to bring in some more money.

                      Joe is nuts, but he’s not dumb. He just likes to experiment. He must have a good star watching upon him, unlike his father, because each time he manages to make something explode or break in a real bad way, but he always gets out without a scratch. He’s excited, he’s finished working on his last project. He wants us to borrow a gas tank and go to his place after work. I’ve rarely seen him so excited. We’ll have to put off the hockey with Callum.

                      #3599
                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        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.

                        #3594
                        ÉricÉric
                        Keymaster

                          Liz’, I’m sorry to interrupt,” remarked Godfrey, somewhat cautiously, “I know you’d rather forget about it, but shall I remind you that we are going to be irrevocably late for our appointment at the court, for the third time.”
                          “What nonsense is that again? And where did you appear from Godammfrey? I haven’t summoned you!”

                          Godfrey couldn’t help but raise his eyes and start a rolling motion, but insisted.
                          “The lawsuit, darling. This scandalous libel by that rat of a critic who accused you quite unambiguously of both plagiarism and ghostwriting. You surely do remember that?”

                          “I’m sorry Godfrey, can’t this be dealt with without my being there. I’m not paying you peanuts to just entertain me.”

                          Godfrey sighed. It was already the second time they missed the appointment, and the judge would certainly no see it in a good light. A little bit of publicity around this affair wasn’t bad of course, especially with such hilarious allegations. Everyone in town knew well enough Elizabeth’s take on both plagiarism (“it’s just slight teafing”) and ghostwriting (“channeling by another name, darling”), so it was very good publicity indeed.
                          But having sued the critic now, it would be a pity to lose to him. If only for the money. When did she become so careless about it? Having personnel did go a little to her head…

                          “If you’d pardon me” Elizabeth said after a eloquent burp, “all that tea have quite distended my bladder, and I would actually quite enjoy discovering the loo of the courthouse. When shall we go?”

                          #3592
                          prUneprUne
                          Participant

                            I don’t know what possessed Mater, but I like the new version of her.
                            She’s a true inspiration. The way she commandeers, how she pays attention to the little things. If she wasn’t so wrinkled, I’d want to become her.
                            She doesn’t seem to need anyone in her life, maybe that’s why she’s so strong.

                            I don’t know how this all happened, but we now seem to do well enough. We have one paying guest (he seems to pay on time too, I don’t know where he gets that kind of money around that place), and it seems we can afford some manservant. Well, that’s something Aunt Idle would call that nice lady, surely not Mater. She was very kind to her.
                            Hope she doesn’t get funny ideas like she should become some sort of Mary Poppins or the like.

                            The way Mater was sad after her piggy passed, I realized having a dog is a huge commitment. I told Battista I lied and I was sorry, but we couldn’t have the puppy. I knew she wouldn’t mind, she likes to keep dogs around.

                            Instead, I thought I could start breeding guinea pigs; they don’t live too long. Everybody thought stealing the fish was just a prank, but I wanted to pawn it to kick-start my business. The sad truth is that it isn’t worth a dime.
                            Luckily, Bert who noticed me, said he would help.
                            I wonder why the only persons I can relate to are more than ten times my age… Sometimes I’m like an alien in my own family.

                            #3584
                            F LoveF Love
                            Participant

                              It was Mater who decided they needed to get some cleaning help. She commandeered Clove to do some research on the internet and eventually found a woman from New Zealand, Finly, who was offering her cleaning services in exchange for room and board.

                              “Bloody kiwis,” said Bert when he heard. “The place is riddled with them. Bloody come and take our jobs. Haven’t we got more than enough of them here already? I am having a hard enough time avoiding that Flora, going on about her spiritual bloody awakening.”

                              “If you can find anyone local who would be willing to do the cleaning in exchange for a place to stay, I will be glad to consider them,” retorted Mater sternly. “But in the meantime this place is fast becoming a pig-sty and Dido is too busy smoking and drinking to see it.”

                              Naturally Mater got her way and a few days later Bert, still grumbling, agreed to go and pick Finly up from the airport. Mater assembled the family in the main living room.

                              “Now remember, the main thing is to be courteous. God only knows why she agreed to come to this backwater of a place, but we don’t want to put her off.”

                              ”Don’t we indeed?” smirked Aunt Idle.

                              “Yeah exactly, it is friggin’ weird I reckon. Why would she come here?” asked Clove, privately deciding she had better run a more thorough background check on Finly.

                              “I thought Finly was a boy’s name,” said Coriander. “That would be cool. A boy cleaner. I hope he’s hot. He can clean topless”

                              Aunt Idle, who had already been into the gin even though it wasn’t yet 10am, put her hand over her mouth and started to giggle.

                              “It can be a girl or a boy’s name and someone called Coriander is in no position to throw stones. And mind your language, Clove.” responded Mater tartly.

                              Clove rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Well as long as she doesn’t try and boss me around, it might be quite fun to have a slave to clean up after me.”

                              Prune had been keeping an eye on the window. “Shush, she’s here!” she shouted excitedly.

                              #3565
                              matermater
                              Participant

                                Mater:

                                I am picking some grass for the guinea pigs. Delicate wee things; they don’t handle the heat well and I have moved them to the shelter of the shed. The wind has come up strong and I am enjoying the cooling it brings with it. The long grass bends away from me as though seeking safety from the scissors I hold in my hand. For a moment the wind subsides and I can feel how the sun is burning my neck so I take refuge in the shade of a tree.

                                Thinking time.

                                I heard Prune crying out last night in her sleep. She had already fallen back asleep when I went to check on her. It crossed my mind when she cried out that she may have seen the ghost too. I asked her about it in the morning but she did not seem to recall her nightmare.

                                “I slept liketh a log but I thanketh thou for thy kindness in asking dearest Mater,” she said to me.

                                ”Enough of that cheek!” I told her, but was privately relieved she was okay.

                                Anyway, It has been twice now. I wake and there he is, over by the antique oak chest in the corner of my room. At first I can’t move or call out. And by the time I can he has gone. When I say “gone”, I don’t mean he walks out the door. He just sort of fades away. He has his back to me so I can’t tell you what his face is like. All I can tell you is that he is tall and he has on a blue robe, in a silky fabric, almost like a dressing gown with a tie in the middle.

                                There, I have told you now. You may be thinking it is just a silly old woman’s dream. But you don’t get to my age without having plenty of dreams, and this was nothing like any dream I have ever had.

                                #3559
                                matermater
                                Participant

                                  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.

                                  #3557
                                  TracyTracy
                                  Participant

                                    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.

                                    #3552
                                    TracyTracy
                                    Participant

                                      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!”

                                      #3550
                                      TracyTracy
                                      Participant

                                        Corrie:

                                        Funny how things pop up. While Clove was taking supper to the guy in room 8, I signed into Spacenook and the first thing on my perusefeed was an article about maps.

                                        “Cartographies can be altered endlessly to reflect different priorities, hierarchies, experiences, points of view, and destinations.”

                                        How syncy is that. There was another sync like that yesterday, after the kitten fell off the barn roof. I was just posting a photo of the kitten on Spacenook and glanced at the sidebar and there was an ad for a catnip garden memories of dead cats group thing there. I wonder if that dream I had of our old dog Lilly the other day was because the kitten was a remanifestation of her? Lilly’s name was supposed to be Delilah, that’s what it said on her papers, Delilah, but nobody ever called her that. We always called her Lilly.

                                        Anyway, they come and they go, we’ve had hundreds of cats wander through this town, but they always come back. I saw a rat the other day and it reminded me of Boozer, the old sheepdog we had when we were little.

                                        Funny thing was, yesterday morning I’d posted this poem by Mary Oliver:

                                        “…. Tell me, what else should I have done?
                                        Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
                                        Tell me, what is it you plan to do
                                        With your one wild and precious life?”

                                        Made me feel a bit better when I read it again later, because I did wonder if I’d got there quicker when I heard it crying, when it must have been halfway done falling and stuck on a branch, it might not have ended up the way it did. It must have been meant to be that way I suppose. Well, she’ll be back. They always come back sooner or later.

                                        Sighing, I refocused on the article.

                                        “Maps produce new realities much as they seek to document current ones. Maps are always a going-beyond the space-time of the present.”

                                        No mention of a room full of map covered mannequins in the Brundy place though.

                                        #3549
                                        TracyTracy
                                        Participant

                                          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.

                                          #3546
                                          TracyTracy
                                          Participant

                                            Aunt Idle:

                                            The twins and Prune were going on about Mater again but I wasn’t listening, I was just wishing they’d hurry up and finish supper ~ I’m trying to think, Think! Look at the maps and piece it all together, clear my mind and try and work it out.

                                            “Give it a rest will you, and eat!” The kids were exasperating, always going on about Mater.

                                            “She’s MISSING, Aunt Idle!”

                                            “What?” I said absentmindedly. “Don’t be silly, she’s probably on the loo, she’ll be down in a minute.”

                                            “You haven’t been listening, have you?” asked Prune. “Mater’s been kidnapped.”

                                            “She’s DISAPPEARED, we don’t know if she’s been kidnapped or murdered yet, Prune. Don’t exaggerate.”

                                            “Maybe she was tied up in the cellar at the Brundy place and you never noticed, Clove.”

                                            Bert glance up sharply and frowned at the mention of the Brundy place, it caught my eye, but I didn’t give it any thought at the time.

                                            “Oh shut up, all of you! You’ve given me a headache, I’m going to lie down. Prune, you can do the washing up tonight. Corrie and Clove, you can cook for the dust covered man in room 8, he’s not fussy what you feed him, but he wants to eat in his room.”

                                            That should keep them all occupied for an hour and give me time to look at those maps. That’s what I thought, anyway.

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