Search Results for 'ones'

Forums Search Search Results for 'ones'

Viewing 20 results - 421 through 440 (of 587 total)
  • Author
    Search Results
  • #2047

    In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

    TracyTracy
    Participant

      Dark….
      common?
      Keep images;
      hear others…

      Eyes

      Recent movements.
      Heard,
      Follow…
      Kept questions.

      Individuals

      Library ~
      Thanks, come fact!
      Littleton smile:
      deal?
      feeling… rather….

      Cat!
      Ones eye…

      Accept self.

      #2604

      In reply to: Strings of Nines

      ÉricÉric
      Keymaster

        “Well, it’s a fiction, she could be anywhere. That and if you stopped changing the facts and names for a moment, you’d be able to knit them together into new understandings.”

        Charmille was knitting while answering to impatient young Becky who for all of the birds’ chatter in the apartment couldn’t really concentrate on her schoolwork, and had only one thought in mind (more insistent than the fleeting thousands other ones that is): she wanted to go outside immerse herself in the helter skelter of New York City.

        “And why should I care!” Becky was about to start another tirade of self-righteous indignation at the failure to recognize her brilliance when she stopped herself in her tracks. She was suddenly amazed at the intricacy of the pattern Charmille was creating with two simple sticks and the many colourful threads in her black and white box. That was an art in itself, and Becky wasn’t impervious to art, quite the contrary. She could spot art in the slightest and singlest stroke of graffiti on the walls of the City. She could even see them dancing endless farandoles in front of her eyes. She was perhaps the only one she knew who was able to see that, but what her aunt was doing was very much like it.
        Sometimes, she’d had people laugh at her when she was younger. She was telling them about her vivid dreams, that she’d spent hours in one dream looking at a single napkin, how soft it was, how superbly almost real it was —even if that was just a dream napkin— while, according to others, she could have done more “lofty” things instead —like go and see ascended masters.

        “But I like movement! I don’t want to be stuck in slimy facts!”
        “Well dear, you should know that… wherever you are, there you are. Even if wherever is elsewhere.”

        The cryptic statement made by the poised lady somehow struck a cord. She wanted to disguise facts into fictions, or fiction as facts, but any way she was going, she was still struggling with herself, the essence at her core. It didn’t matter if she wanted to have the needle jump to another loop (and get out of that particular loop) because it was all part of the same cloth she was creating. It suddenly gave her much to ponder…

        #2599

        In reply to: Strings of Nines

        TracyTracy
        Participant

          “That would depend” Gordon replied “On whether you wish to create plain white functional cotton or an elaborate brocade tapestry. You may wish to create strong reliable durable corduroy with it’s dependable grooves, or something eye catching in contrasting black and white. Gossamer fine colours, or sturdy weaves, lace and beadwork, traditional designs, and new ones, always new ones, take your pick!”

          “I’ve forgotten what it was I was choosing now, Gordon” replied Ann. “Pass the walnuts.”

          #2595

          In reply to: Strings of Nines

          TracyTracy
          Participant

            “Just do it. Either just do it, or just make something up” she told herself. Again. “Either do it, or make it up, but stop thinking about it and talking about it.” Yoland sighed and turned on the radio. It was an old pink one, the kind with the dials that turn, and a pull out antenna. The antenna was a bit rusty at the bottom and didn’t rotate very well, which made it a bit tricky to get a clear reception without alot of preliminary juggling around and fidgeting. The dogs under her desk scratched themselves noisily as Yoland fiddled with the radio.

            :yahoo_puppy:

            “In the backwater….”

            “…yes you’ve got the Splain Channel loud and clear now all you have to do is focus on what the next word is and then write it down without thinking about the spelling, as you can see you are looking at the keybaord and tryping”, Yoland smiled at the typo, “the words that you are hearing without trying to anallzye them too much now. ok are you ready? We’re going to do some balloon exercise first to get the ball rolling, you see, there are many ways to blow up a balloon, and I’ll be the first to tell you you’re doing it wrong, I am kidding, of course.”

            :yahoo_oh_go_on:

            Yoland smiled, inching forward on the chair to accomodate the dog that had wormed his way round her back, wondering whether or not to move him.

            :yahoo_puppy:

            “Your chair is fine the way it is, that’s a very common delaying tactic my freind, and one you are quite familiar with. Now, pay attention once again to simply the words that you hear as you are writing, watching the keys is rather mesmerising is it not….”

            :yahoo_hypnotized:

            Yoland did a quick reality check and agreed that she was feeling a bit mesmerized, and realized that she possibly could feel considerably more mesmerized if she stopped doing reality checks.

            “…and as you watch your fingers moving along in a rather detached way, you can detach your attachment to knowing what the next word might be and simply write what you hear; we are practicing the sliding away from the strict hold on trying to anticpate the net words and then you freeze the flow, it shouldn’t be tiring if you let go and relax a bit and simply allow your fingers to move of their own accord while you relax your shoulders…”

            :yahoo_chatterbox:

            What a load of rubbish, thought Yoland, as she adjusted her chair, which had a habit of suddenly dropping down an inch, just enough to make it hard for her to reach the keyboard. Sighing, she wondered about ever getting a satisfactory answer to her Really Big Questions, the ones that nobody had answered so far. All she ever managed to tune into was rambling waffling inane….

            :yahoo_sigh:

            “….you feel that your questions are so large that the capacity for distortion is huge, and you feel that other questions are easily answered via other routes and methods, and this is correct.”

            Yoland wondered what THAT was supposed to mean.

            :yahoo_straight_face:

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

            Yoland relaxed. That sounded easier.

            :yahoo_big_grin:

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

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

            :yahoo_rolling_eyes:

            “Whether or not you find clues in there is entirely your choice to create them, and all are equally valid. This is such a simple thing: that even the most seemingly miniscule sentences contain a myriad of potential diversions and convergences, routes, patterns, nets, from even the tiniest particle of an idea. All of them are boundlessly creative offshoots which become a particular stream, or string.”

            :detective:

            Yoland found herself wondering where some of them started, and found she didn’t know where to start.

            “With the question of syncronicities every point of them is the start point, the end point, the main point, the moot point, and the connecting links as well, as are all the others. When you get your ball of string in a tangle, it’s easier to throw it away and start a new one.”

            Yoland was inclined to agree, but wondered if that sounded like sensible advice.

            :yahoo_thinking:

            “Immediately the new one starts linking up all kinds of things in a new interconnected design pattern, and then when that gets in a right tangle, a fresh ball of string awaits; the tangled ones aren’t in a tangle at all when you’re not tangled up within it.”

            Well, that certainly sounded resonable, Yoland had to admit.

            :yahoo_star:

            “And why waste time with old tangles anyway when you can start afresh and just make something up, for no particular reason?”

            Bloody good question, why not indeed? Yoland decided to start making things up there and then, and turned her computer off and went to pack her case.

            :bounce:

            #2554

            In reply to: Strings of Nines

            TracyTracy
            Participant

              Godfrey” Ann said gently in dulcet tones “I realize that you’re tetchy with that flooh, but I simply don’t screech, you know.” Ann smiled at him fondly, more than willing to forgive his rudeness. “Perhaps the flooh has affected your ears?”

              “Oh bugger off will you Ann, and please stop that caterwauling!” Godfrey covered his ears, flinching.

              “Oh dear, it must be the dreaded Pigs Ear Virus! Fear not, me old matey, I know just the cure!”

              #2547

              In reply to: Strings of Nines

              TracyTracy
              Participant

                Ann wasn’t altogether sure what Godfrey meant when he referred to her new interest in continuity. Ann had always been interested in connecting links, yes, of that there was no doubt, but with so very many connecting links, and so many possible strings of connecting links, with so many possible divergences into yet more strings of connecting links, Ann really couldn’t fathom how anyone could possibly keep track of all those threads of continuity. Even a seemingly discontinuous assortment of unconnected links, once connected into a nonsense thread, became another continuity string. Furthermore, Ann continued ~ in a continuous fashion ~ to ponder, if everything is connected, then what, in actuality, was all the fuss about continuity? What exactly then WAS this concept of continuity? It seemed to Ann to be more like a string of barbed wire, or one of those flimsy but effective electric wire fences, boxing in the free flow of continuity, so that the objectively perceived continuity stayed rigidly within the confines of the preconceived tale. The inner landscape knew no such boundaries, although admittedly the inner landscape was far too vast to map.

                Ann smiled to herself as she imagined trying to push pins into various inner landscape locations, tying strings from one to another, in an effort to map and label the inner continuity connections. Of course she was imagining it in a visual manner, because it was hard to imagine all those connections and strings being invisible and not taking up any space, and before long Ann’s inner map of pins and strings quickly resembled a tangle of overcooked spaghetti, perilously speckled with sharp pointy pins.

                The image of the glutinous tangle dotted with sharp shiny pointers led Ann off on another tangent, but it was a tangent that soon became utter nonsense. Or was it, she mused. Perhaps it was those symbolically sharp pointy bits that in fact pointed out the immense variety of potential other continuity threads to choose from. Indeed, it could easily be said that having one of her characters dumped in Siberia in the previous story, painful though it was, was not unlike being pricked by a pin amidst the tangle of sticky pasta, a brilliantly effective pointer towards unlimited new directions.

                Whichever way she looked at it (and Ann was aware that she might have gone down a side string) she simply couldn’t comprehend how anyone on this side of the veil could possibly even begin to understand the ramifications of the concept of continuity at all. Or how there could ever conceivably be a lack of it.

                What was really intriguing Ann at this particular juncture of the experimental exploration of the story was the concept of the World View Library. This wasn’t unconnected to the continuity issue, far from it, it was all tied in (Ann sniggered at the unintentional pun) and connected. There were any infinite amount of potential continuity threads leading from, say, one persons desire or intent, to a particular world view in the library.

                AHA shouted Ann, who at that moment had an ‘aha’ moment. Pfft, it’s gone, she sighed moments later.

                Ann tried to catch the wisp of an idea that had flitted through her awareness. She had a visual impression of the library, endlessly vast and marvellously grand, with countless blindfolded characters dashing through, grabbing random pages or sentences, bumping into each other, snatching at phrases willy nilly, dropping notes along the way, and racing back out again into the ether. A stray thought here, a picture there, a name or a date, all on separate bits of crumbled paper clutched in the sweaty palms of the blindfolded characters as they rushed headlong back to their own realities to proudly share the new clues. Like magpies they were, snatching at anything that glittered brightly enough.

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

                “I thought you said they were blindfolded?” interrupted Franlise.

                Ann ignored the interruption, and continued ~ in a continuous fashion ~ to ponder the imagery of the library.

                What the undisciplined purloiners of random snatches didn’t notice on their pell-mell excursions into the library were the characters in the library who weren’t wearing blindfolds. They smiled down from the galleries, calmly watching from above the mayhem that the news of the unlimited library access had occasioned, chortling at the scenes of chaos below. They smiled indulgently, for they too had first visited the library blindfolded, snatching at this and that, and racing home again to inspect the booty; they too had fretted and pondered over the enigmas of the incomplete snippets. Eventually (or not, it was after all a choice), they had bravely removed the blindfolds, slowed the mad race into a sedate stroll through the library, opened their eyes and looked around, sure of the way back home now, and not in a desperate hurry to blast in, snatch anything, and run back home.

                After awhile, they began to realize that all the enchanting glittering jewels scattered around to catch their eye would still be there later, there was no urgency to grab them all at once ~ although, as Ann reminded herself, that too was a choice ~ some may well choose to be eternally snatching at glittering jewels.

                Ann frowned slightly and wondered if she’d lost the thread altogether, and then decided that it didn’t matter if she had.

                It was a choice, therefore, to remove ones blindfold, and stroll through the library ~ a choice to perhaps choose a book, sit down at a polished oak table and open it, a choice to stay and read the book, rather than ripping out a page and dashing back home. That would be one choice of continuity, a coming together of strings.

                Ann wondered whether that would then be called a cable, or a rope ~ well perhaps not a rope, she decided, that had other associations entirely ~ but a cable, yes, that had associations of reliable and regular communications. There were always strings of continuity, then, strings of connecting links, between anything and everything, but when one stopped dashing about clutching at the sparkley bits, one might form a cable.

                Or not, of course. Thin strings of continuity and connections were not ‘less than’ thick cables of reliable and regular communications. It has to be said though, Ann reluctantly admitted, that thick cables often made more sense.

                She decided to hit send before embarking on a pondering of the meaning of Sense.

                #2546

                In reply to: Strings of Nines

                ÉricÉric
                Keymaster

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

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

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

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

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

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

                  #2512

                  In reply to: Strings of Nines

                  TracyTracy
                  Participant

                    When Ann read about “that place lost between the pine trees” in The Play she started coughing again. She was beginning to wonder about her cough, after reading in the New Reality Herald last night about the man with a fir tree growing in his lung.

                    In tandem with her coughing, the ground started to tremble beneath Amarilla, The Forgotten Eggleton, and flecks of sun melted chocolate spattered the gravestones and pine trees.

                    It’s a lungquake, run for your lives! she shouted, but there was nobody there. The ground heaved and cracked beneath Amarilla and she lost her grip and plunged headlong into an abyss of vile sticky mucus.

                    #2498

                    In reply to: Strings of Nines

                    TracyTracy
                    Participant

                      Yoland was inordinately pleased with her purchases, trifling though they were. She smiled at the little bottle of cherry red nail varnish, imagining how it would look on sun browned and callous free toes. Painted toe nails was one of life’s simple pleasure, she reckoned. Nothing fancy or expensive or uncomfortable, like her new brassiere, which had never the less given her spirits a bit of a lift, as well as her breasts, with its bright blue moulded foam shape. She wondered if she could suspend the brassiere and its contents from something other than her shoulders for once, but couldn’t see how it could be arranged and still allow a modicum of freedom of movement. Perhaps some of the new scientific discoveries that she was eagerly awaiting would include some kind of gravity and weight defying device, possibly helium filled foam support. Perhaps even in the future, anyone with a high squeaky voice would be described as a bra sucker. Or perhaps one day breasts worn on the waist would be fashionable. This thought made Yoland a bit uncomfortable, as she hadn’t really believed she was following fashion, but maybe she was after all.

                      Yoland wondered if she was verging on the ridiculous again, and decided that it didn’t matter if she was. There was something rather splendid, she was beginning to discover, about the mundane and the silly. Something serenely pleasurable about ~ well about everything she’d been taking for granted for so many years. The things she hadn’t really noticed much, while her mind was busy thinking and pondering, replaying old conversations, and imagining new ones, sometimes with others, but often with herself, inside the vast jumble of words that was her mind.

                      It was always a wonderful change of pace to go away on a trip, with its wealth of new conversations and words, events and symbols to ponder over later at her leisure, the many photographic snapshots providing reminders and clues and remembered laughs, but it was the renewed sense of appreciation for the mundane that was ultimately most refreshing about returning home.

                      The word home had baffled Yoland for many years. For most of her 51 years, if the truth be told. So many moves, so many houses, so many people ~ where, really, was home? She’d eventually compromised and called herself a citizen of the world, but she still found herself at times silently wailing “I want to go home”, but with the whole world as her home, it didn’t make a great deal of sense why she would still yearn for that elusive place called home.

                      Of all the words that swam in her head some of them seemed to keep bobbing up to the surface, attracting her attention from time to time. That was the funny thing about words, Yoland mused, not for the first time, You hear them and hear them and you understand what they mean, but only in theory. The suddenly something happens and you shout AHA, and then you can’t find any words to explain it! Repeating the words you’ve already heard a hundred times somehow doesn’t even come close to describing what it actually feels like to understand what those words mean. That kind of feeling always left her wondering if everyone else had known all along, except her.

                      Yoland was often finding words in unexpected places, and these were often the very words that were the catalysts. (Even the word catalyst had been one of those words that repeatedly bobbed to the surface of her sea of words). Her trip had been in search of words, supposedly, channeled words (although Yoland suspected the trip had been more about connections than words) and yet there had only really been one word that had stood out as significant, and oddly enough, that word had been watermelon.

                      That had been a lesson in itself, if indeed lesson is the right word. Yoland had been attempting to exercise her psychic powers for six months or more, trying to get Toobidoo, the world famous channeled entity, to say the word watermelon ~ just for fun. She couldn’t even remember how it all started, or why the word watermelon was significant ~ perhaps a connection to a symbol etched on a watermelon rind in Marseilles, which later became a Tile of the City. (Yoland wasn’t altogether sure that she understood the tiles, but she did think it was a very fun game, and that aspect alone was sufficient to hold her interest.) By the end of the last day of the channeling event Toobidoo still hadn’t said the word watermelon which was somewhat of a disappointment, so when Yoland saw Gerry Jumper, Toobidoo’s channel, in the vast hotel foyer, she ran up to him saying “Say watermelon.” The simple direct method worked instantly, where months of attempts the hard way had failed. Yoland felt that she learned alot from this rather silly incident about the nature of everyday magic, and this particular lesson, or we might prefer to call it a communication, was repeated for good measure the following day in the park.

                      Wailon, the other world famous channeled entity who was the star attraction of the Words Event, had proudly displayed photographic evidence of orbs at the lecture. Like Yoland had tried with the watermelon, he was choosing an esoteric and unfamiliar method of creating orbs, suggesting that the audience meditate and conjure them up to show on photographs, rather than simply creating physical orbs. Yoland and her friends Meldrew and Franklyn had chanced upon a beautiful glass house full of real physical glass orbs in the park, underlining the watermelon message for Yoland: not to discount the spontaneous magic of the physical world in the search for the esoteric.

                      It had, for example, been rather magical and wonderful to hear Gerry Jumper explain how he had mentioned watermelon to his wife on the previous day in the dining room ~ mundane, yes, but magical too. It would have been marvellous to create Toobidoo channeling the word watermelon for sure, but how much more magical to create an actual slice of physical watermelon in the dining room and have Gerry remark on it, and to have an actual physical conversation with him about it. Who knows, he may even remember the nutcase who spent six months trying to get him to say watermelon whenever he sees one, at least for awhile. It might be quite often too, as his wife is partial to watermelon. Yoland wondered if this was some kind of connecting link, perhaps the connection to Gerry and Cindy started in Marseilles and watermelon was the physical clue, the pointer towards the connection.

                      Perhaps, Yoland wondered, the orbs were the connecting link to Wailon, although she didn’t feel such a strong connection to him as she did to Toobidoo and Gerry Jumper. She had been collecting coloured gel orbs for several months ~ just for fun. There was often a connecting link to be found in the silly and the fun, the pointless and the bizarre, and even in the mundane and everyday things.

                      In the days following her return home ~ or the house that Yoland lived in, shall we say ~ she felt rather sleepy, as if she was in slow motion, but the feeling was welcome, it felt easy and more importantly, acceptable. There was nothing that she felt she should be doing instead, for a change, no fretting about starting projects, or accomplishing chores, rather a slow pleasant drifting along. Yes, there were chores to be done, such as watering plants and feeding animals and other things, but they no longer felt like chores. She found she wasn’t mentally listing all the other chores to be done but was simply enjoying the one she was doing. Even whilst picking up innumerable dog turds outside, she heard the birds singing and saw the blossom on the fruit trees against the blue sky, saw shapes in the white clouds, heard the bees buzzing in the wisteria. The abundance of dog shit was a sign of a houseful of happy healthy well fed dogs, and the warm spring sun dried it and made it easier to pick up.

                      It was, somewhat unexpectedly, while Yoland was picking up dog shit that she finally realized what some of those bobbing words meant about home, and presence, and connection to source. It seemed amusingly ironic after travelling so far (not just the recent trip, but all the years of searching) to finally find out where home was, where the mysterious and elusive source was. (Truth be told, some printed words she found the previous day had been another catalyst, by Vivian channeled by Wanda, but she couldn’t recall the exact words. Yoland had to admit that words, used as a catalyst, were really rather handy.)

                      Wherever you go, there you are ~ they were words too, and they were part of the story. Now that Yoland had come to the part where she wanted to express in words where home, and source, was, she found she couldn’t find the right words. In a funny kind of way the word vacant popped into her head, as if the place where the vast jumble of words was usually housed became vacant, allowing her to be present in her real physical world. It really was quite extraordinary how simple it was. Too simple for words.

                      :yahoo_heehee:

                      #2231

                      With a side glance at the random words written on the fridge, Harvey was starting to get another slipstream of weirdrom (weird and random) information.

                      Earth escape; whole asked environment similar — Friend forgotten work, thinking moving! Managed recently whatever known questions — dogs ones myself physical energy

                      Now, did this Earth escape had anything to do with that recent quest of Philodendron for a FTL travels equipped island…

                      #2225

                      Annabel Ingram was chatting the tourists through her guided tours, but most of the time, her mind was wandering elsewhere.
                      As a matter of fact, she often thought she should have been named “Wandering Elsewhere” instead. These were her two favourite words in the whole Manilvan language. Scholars had made fancy claims like basement portal or something of that ilk was the loveliest words combination, but she’s never been one to follow the trends and fleeting modes anyway.

                      All in all, it was probably time she got herself a new job; touring the tourists in the middle of “ohs” and “ahs” to the Doorway of the Goddess Amarylis Moo Rue? Not for her any longer.
                      To be bluntly honest she was beginning to find herself a little of a fraud, as she tried to maintain a decent level of excitement at the ridiculous amazement of the tourists when they recounted their litanies of visions of Goddess Amarylis surrounded with cohorts of naked ladies and bare butt cupids holding wreaths of flowers. Amarylis was the Goddess of Flove. A glorious goddess representing the duality of the aspects of love and death. Quite a hype for people coming from the cities, eager to get a quick shot of esoteric experiences.

                      But she’d seen Amarylis more than once, and it was not all that pretty behind the scenes. She was not as mean as herself, but she wasn’t the last to poke fun at people for whisking unwarranted followers to the altars. Anyway, that and her perfumes, honestly you had to wonder. Lavender and decaying morue (cod), what a blend… :yahoo_rolling_eyes:

                      #2218
                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        Decimus Spurius rubbed his eyes and scratched his head, befuddled. He’d been dreaming of Antonia Ludicrus, his sweetheart, and at first in the dream they were strolling along the beautiful beach at Baelo Claudia, upwind of the garum pots. But then they were inside some kind of building, and Antonia was pressing little black squares with numerals on each one, but they were strange numerals the like of which he’d never seen, interspersed with a few familiar ones. She leaned over the greyish black slab, frowning, glancing up occasionally to a brilliant square light placed in front of her on the table.

                        Decimus sighed. The dream made no sense at all, but he was filled with longing to see Antonia again. It had been months since he’d seen her, and he hated Saltum , hated that he’d been reposted so many days walk from her.

                        #2194

                        Harvey wondered for a moment why he’d thought he’d heard “Sylvander”… He made Lavender repeat her name to be sure he got it right.

                        At least, that was easier to remember than Aspooh’s full name.

                        A striped cute little piggy… He’d heard about those funny Japanese Tokyo X ones. Speaking of Xs, there was a ten steps list to remember to help him out of procrastinating further on his current task that Lavy had kindly sent to him, but bugger if he could remember any one of them…

                        Now… if that were to be a Japanese pig, they would have to learn how to say ‘Essence’ in Japanese:-?

                        #2191

                        I don’t remember dreams at all unfortunately, she confided, her voice lowered. But, on the bright side, the DMT I have been taking is helping me to see aliens and little people.

                        Her close friend Harvey Norman, circus performer and proxy dreamer in his spare time, nodded distractedly, not really listening. He was more concerned at that moment with investigating any visible damage to his precious nose. Freakin heck! a freakin oven! what would the producers come up with next?

                        Oh you know what! she continued, unperturbed by Harvey’s lack of attention. I’m pregnant! I’m so excited. I have a name picked and everything. I am going to call it Essence. The Fellowship said I could pick it up next week!

                        Oh yeah? The Fellowship said next week? That’s pretty cool. Didn’t know you were after a baby. They are a bit hard to come by now aren’t they? So who is the father donor?

                        None other than the great Col Umbro himself! She smiled proudly, anticipating the effect her words would have. She was not disappointed.

                        Wow! Col Umbro! The Zebra! Harvey stopped the investigation of his nose in order to shake his head in disbelief. How did YOU manage that?

                        Oh, well you know last week when I had that interview with Ann Tattler? you know, the crazy author who doesn’t write any more, just listens?

                        Harvey noodded and roolled his eyes disparagingly. Used to be Elizabeth right? yeah sure, who hasn’t heard of her… so, go on …

                        Well, HE was there, and he suggested I ask him some questions, you know to assess my suitability for the position. Somehow, by some freakin miraculous fluke, I managed to get the questions in the right order .. he is a bit obsessed with the whole order thing …. but I didn’t know that till after … so anyway, he was so impressed with my obvious brilliance that he offered to father a baby for me!

                        Harvey, rendered momentarily speechless, shook his head again. He had never had much time for babies himself, although appreciated that some people were into
                        them.

                        Yeah, I know what you mean, she said, reading his thoughts. Actually I am not sure if I have really thought it through. I might have got caught up in the whole thrill of the moment thing … to be honest, I don’t know if little Essence will fit into my lifestyle. I am supposed to be going to Asgard next week …

                        Asgard? Really, can you still get through? I thought the bridge was crumbling?

                        oh really! bugger! … Oh but anyway I am thinking of giving little Essence to my cousin Aspidistra. She is such a funny old thing with her strange glowing skin. A little baby to care for could do her the world of good.

                        #2190
                        ÉricÉric
                        Keymaster

                          Col had been in the business of intergalactic sleuthing and profiling for many years now and his tall broad stature and kind, poised black face was well known all around. They used to call him “the Zebra”, not so much because he made black and white statements —he was very nuanced— but because of his unusualness and knack for blending himself in questions.
                          As a matter of fact, he’s made himself quite a reputation of a highly skilled professional, with no one up to par for finding clues and solving mysteries.

                          Col Umbro’s motto was “all you have to do is to ask the right questions, in the right order.”
                          Of course, he wouldn’t tell which way was the “right” one and which was not. But one thing was sure enough, most people completely overlooked the last part of the sentence.

                          And that was what he intended to teach to his next assignment. A distant focus of his essence in mid-shift. For the moment, dream projections were the easiest and safest way to catch their attention, because they were not accustomed to a shifted state enough to pay attention to more physical projections.

                          It was hilarious to see that most of the enthusiastic ones were waiting for unexpected events to come and rapture them in awe. Sillies… For one, “unexpected” shouldn’t be so… expected.
                          Besides, most of the time, (most of the now) people were simply blind to the facts not in alignment with their allowance for disbelief. A pink elephant, say… They had grown so blasé that should they even see it standing in from of them, that they would probably then dismiss its appearance as another miracle of genetics (or debasement thereof)…
                          So, reaching them would actually require quite a tactful and sly approach. Qualities he possessed enough.

                          “Who’s this new person appearing disguised in a pseudonym?” His assignment was wondering.

                          They had forgotten rule number one. Nothing is hidden from you. Granted, a pseudonym is a mask, but the choice of the mask is revealing enough of a clue.
                          Then, you had to ask the questions in the right order. “Who is it?” should be the last of them all. Same with all the “how’s”. “What and why” where more important questions to consider.
                          Once you got the “what”, the who is so self-evident, that it would not even retain the slightest of interests…

                          He had found a nice slot, just after an entertaining equilibristics dream show. Making a dream for his assignment would be fun. And probably even more fun as she was the most impossible subject who wouldn’t remember dreams at all! He would have to use a proxy dreamer. Someone close enough to her. He knew exactly who to choose…

                          #2186
                          ÉricÉric
                          Keymaster

                            “Speaking of infinite details,” said Björn who was watching a circus program with a muscular looking man who balancing his contortionist partner who was attempting to balance plants on her face.

                            “What?” said Iris who was already dozing on the couch.

                            “Sorry dear, I was just talking to myself, have nice dreams”, he said, stroking gently her freckled face.

                            He continued in his head, slightly dozing off himself.

                            “One two, one two. Testing the acoustics… Sounds good.”

                            “Funny how these thoughts come in and out… It occurred to me something funny.”

                            :fleuron:

                            “Can you add a plush toy in your dream?”
                            “Oh sure darling. What kind of?”
                            “A baby aardvark”

                            :fleuron:

                            Björn wasn’t very comfortable yet, he started to toss and turn until he realized he was seated on Iris’ plush aardvark. He fondly placed the little soft thing in Iris’ arms and returned to his thoughts.

                            “There, it’s inserted…”
                            “Now, your reality can be viewed to some extent as the most complex, yet the most simple of assemblage. You may liken it if you will to a room with mirrors (*). Ancient Indian mystics have spoken of Indra’s net where droplets of waters are each reflecting all of the other ones; these are the same images.
                            It is not new information to you, the fact that you are seeing your reflection in your world, or that it is a sort of illusion reflecting you, but this is not the point we want to highlight here.

                            Consider that the room in which you are is reflected an infinite amount of times in every direction. In a sense, they are all the same. They are you. Now, we come to the interesting part. You may very well decide to explore the room next to you with its shining details, by going through one of these mirrors. Some individuals quite enjoy such explorations, they call it past or future or even probabilities, other dimensions etc. And by moving into the next room, it becomes their present.

                            You now realize that you have not really moved, since all rooms reflect only you. And you may want to continue in the direction you are exploring and go into more rooms. It’s alright. But some individuals realize that all rooms are equivalent, and that from where you stand, you can view the point you wish to explore in one part of the mirrors reflections. This is being present. You shift your attention, and expand your vision of the tiny part, rather than moving towards it with great efforts.

                            Now, when you are dreaming, the very nature of dreams is the same. It gives you a whole fractal hologram to ponder. You may get carried away by wanting to remember all the tiny details, because in doing so, what you are doing is simply opening rooms upon rooms upon rooms. And more details will be created for you! Or you can simply realize that the details are all contained within your feeling of being present, and standing in the middle of one of these rooms, and not one of them is more important than the next.

                            Connect to your feeling, and all the natural movements of your explorations will be automagically connected. And we bid you a nice fractal dream exploration.”

                            #1285
                            ÉricÉric
                            Keymaster

                              Naasir then exhaled slowly, until all in the cave was still.
                              The End

                              — “What?”
                              — “That can’t be true?”

                              The twins were outraged. The book couldn’t stop now, there was so much left they wanted to explore. Watermelons, mummies, secret islands… even aliens would be a fate better than a dreaded “END”!

                              Lord Wrick smiled at them.
                              “Dear ones, you knew all along that there was no third book, and that it would end at some point, didn’t you?”

                              A stubborn silence greeted his deep raspy voice.

                              He continued unfaltering “Let us see it another way. These stories are like a breath.
                              You take breath without thinking of it. It feels good to have the air flow into your lungs and make you feel so full of life.
                              But you know without even thinking when it’s time to release. You can try to hold the air indefinitely in your lungs, but soon it’ll become painful. The air is all around you, you can release the tiny fraction you think you hold without a worry. All you will have to do is breathe again.
                              These books will change over time, they are not finished. They are only closed. You can open them again anytime, and reinvent them. I trust your imagination on that.”

                              #1278

                              Salome was recalling her first steps on the Murtuane as she was fondly turning a small pale greenish stone into her palm. The stone was smooth, with a milky shine and had a diffuse warmth.

                              It was carrying many of her memories of this time. She’d taken it from the shores of the Kandulim that first night, taking the rough stone as something to cling on, and firmly grasp, to bring herself back to her own senses, and drown her fearfulness and disorientation in the strong presence of feeling alive.

                              She’d kept it for a while, and then had started to learn how to use stones to encode certain information. Of all the shiny crystals that she could have used, she’d preferred to keep the rough unpolished stone because of its genuineness.
                              Encoding it wasn’t as easy as for more regular crystalline structures found in more precious stones, yet it was almost as if she’d wanted this one to bear the mark of her mastery at this art.

                              She wasn’t very educated, and had not seen much of the Earth, but she had known at once that this place where they had docked the dinghy after that epic escape from the Sultan’s palace wasn’t like anything she could have found on Earth. Somehow, even her own body had begun to reflect that alien-ority to her.

                              The stone was showing her scenes she had conveniently let slip away from her current focus. As she was seeing them, appreciation was overflowing her heart. It had taken her a while to get accustomed to this place and eerily enough, despite that lack of familiarity, she’d had a knowing that she was meant to be there.

                              Her thirst of discovery was as immense at that time —not that it was less at the moment, but the contrast between her ignorance and the things she knew she could access had been stark and bitterly felt.

                              She couldn’t help but smile at the scene of her past self learning to read and write. When Madame Chesterhope had taken her under her wing in her schemes to approach the Sultan with a worthy price, she had begun to learn from her a modicum of English language, but she would never have dreamt of learning how to read.

                              And there, how ironic that the first place she would learn that, of all the many languages she would learn over the course of their explorations with Georges, was a place from another dimension, with a language she only started to feel she could utter the sonorities of.

                              It was no mistake Leonard had brought them here first. Now she was thinking back, reminiscing this period of time, she recognized how much she loved the languages of the Turmakis. For her, it was as close as “home” a foreign culture could be called.

                              #1271
                              Jib
                              Participant

                                Many people were gathered at the Soft Pool in the Garden of The Orientations.
                                Some of them were sitting here still and smiling, their eyes closed and open to the different energies surrounding them. Some of them were standing others walking around and a few ones were running following seemingly random patterns. Their movements were the perfect match of the energy connections between each participant, physical and non physical.

                                It was like a shining crystal, some rays of light/attention creating an instant connection and an instant energy exchange which need not be continuously maintained, many different connections were being created and were lasting as long as necessary, sometimes a few seconds, sometimes a few minutes, and others mere moments.

                                His interactions fulfilled, Sam gathered his attention toward his new goal and he left the crowd at its game, the energy of the experience still present inside his energy field.

                                #1927
                                TracyTracy
                                Participant

                                  On the subject of other focuses I had a blinding revelation in the
                                  kitchen last night. As usual with my blazing flashes of illumination,
                                  they are hard to form into words, and when I do try to get them into
                                  words, they look so screamingly obvious, like D’uh, you mean you
                                  didn’t realize that yet? LOL

                                  Anyway, the moment was far clearer than the following words, but I
                                  managed to get a few words out in chats to Eric and to Dawn which I
                                  snipped together:

                                  (bearing in mind that the focus directs so the question
                                  of ‘directing’ essence is another choice of puzzle peice of the
                                  individual puzzle game at any moment)

                                  To connect to an individual focus is but a baby step towards being
                                  able to comprehend the interconnectedness of everything that you
                                  create and that it is all in fact you. (beginner stage as it were,
                                  keep it manageable)

                                  You draw to yourself parts (focus points/other focuses of All that
                                  is) of the whole that are at that moment useful.

                                  All of the characters in the story I write, for example, are my
                                  focuses in a manner of speaking, as are all the characters in
                                  anything I bring into my world my focuses if I choose to _see for a
                                  moment from their focus view point_. Adding another focus is an
                                  analogy in a way for adding another focus or point of view to mine.
                                  Dividing the actions of adding focus viewpoints into sections is
                                  useful in order to comprehend the scope of possible actions, but only
                                  initially, and as more actions are experienced objectively, the
                                  sections and labels become limiting and confining. (but they do keep
                                  it manageable to some degree)

                                  Everyones puzzle game is their own, and the same puzzle piece (or
                                  other focus) for one, would fit equally well into a completely
                                  different puzzle game of someone elses because all of the surrounding
                                  puzzle peices of each individuals puzzle game are created in each
                                  moment and are chosen for their relevance to that moment. Likewise an
                                  individuals puzzle game is a new one in each moment and the puzzle
                                  peices are interchangable within the same puzzle game, depending on
                                  their relevance to the moment and the chosen surrounding puzzle
                                  peices.

                                  And on the subject of trusting, doubting, confusion etc:

                                  We are here shiftING, not shiftED, this is what we are choosing.
                                  With the variety of viewpoints we have, the shifted and the unshifted
                                  and the semi shifted, there is always something new to notice from
                                  yet another new perspective. Why not get really enthusisatic about
                                  the ride itself instead of planning how to float through it with the
                                  least fuss ~ it’s more fun on the helter skelter with it’s many
                                  perspectives and view points than on the mill pond for those of us
                                  who choose shiftING.

                                  At least now we know that what we dont know is there to know.

                                Viewing 20 results - 421 through 440 (of 587 total)