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The entrances to Faerie (and indeed to other alternate realities and dimensions) had been shrouded in disbelief for several centuries, but times were changing and the fog of scepticism was dissipating, evaporating like river mist on a hot summer morning. Looking for the entrances deliberately, Blithe found, wasn’t the most efficacious method. Sat Nav alone would be unlikely to reveal them, unless the locating device was used in conjunction with impulse and intuition. Any device and method could be used effectively when combined with random impulse, even Google Earth or Google Moon. Blithe’s friend and colleage Dealea Flare was making good use of this device on her travels, using it as a personal non physical airline and space shuttle service. Dealea could get from A to B and back again in no time at all, or even from A to well beyond Z and back again in no time at all using this device in conjunction with impulse and large dose of intention and focus. Blithe had the impulse down pat but still had difficulty with the focus, which was largely a case of having too many intentions at once, most of them somewhat vague.

The more random and impulsive Blithe was, the better her investigations went, often leading her into a new and exciting exploration which may or may not be linked to the current intention. Such was the case when she went on a mundane shopping trip to the Rock of Gibber. As she sat sipping coffee at the Counterpart Cabana sidewalk cafe listening to the locals conversing in Gibberish, she noticed the extraordinary tangle of pipework on the building opposite. It reminded her of the steampunk world she had been investigating in her spare time. The text book steampunk world was intriguing to say the least, but rather grim, and tediously full of victims and fear. The inhabitants always seemed to be running away from someone. The steampunk world she was beginning to sense in Gibber was quite different in that it was a sunny cheerful alternate reality held together with a vast labyrinthine network of water pipes, scaffold, and connecting cables.

Blithe paid for her coffee and strolled off, noticing more and more scaffolding and tangles of pipes as she climbed the warren of narrow winding streets. The air was different the higher she climbed up the winding uneven steps, the sunlight was sharper and the shadows denser, and there was a crackling kind of hush as if the air was shimmering. Cables festooned the crumbling shuttered buildings like cobwebs, and centuries of layers of crackled sun faded pastel paint coated the closed doors. Open doors revealed dark passageways and alleys with bright rectangles of light glowing in the distance, and golden dry weeds sprouted from vents and windowsills casting dancing shadows on the uneven walls.

The usual signs of life were strangely absent and present at the same time; an occasional voice was heard from inside one of the houses, and there were pots of flowers growing here and there, indicating that a human hand had watered them with water from the pipe network. There was no music to be heard though, or any indication that the cable network was in use, and there were virtually no people on the streets. A lady in a brilliant blue dress who was climbing the steps from Gibber Town below paused to chat, agreeing with Blithe who remarked on the peaceful beauty of the place. The lady in blue said “Si, it’s very nice, but there are many steps, so many steps. If you are coming from below there are SO many steps!”

There was a boy watching a white dog watching an empty space on the pavement, so Blithe stopped to watch the boy watching the dog watching nothing. Eventually Blithe inquired “What is he looking at?” and the boy shrugged and continued to watch the dog watching nothing. Blithe watched for a little while, and then wandered off. A small child was giggling from inside a doorway, and a mothers voice asked what he was laughing at. The child was looking out of the door at nothing as far as Blithe could see.

As the sun climbed higher, Blithe began to descend into Gibber town, winding and weaving through the alleys, wondering how she had failed to notice this place half way up the Rock until now. She came to a crumbling wall with a doorway in it that looked out over the bay beyond the town below. This must be one of the entrances, she deduced, to this alternate world in Gibber. “Entrance”! Blithe had a revelation. “I never noticed that the word ENtrance and enTRANCE are spelled the same.” Later, back at the office, Frolic Caper-Belle said she thought it was probably a very significant clue. “I’ll file that in the Clue Box, Blithe”, she said.

{link: entrance}

The sun was streaming through the window when she awakened, a soft diffuse brightness behind the lengths of gauzy white fabric that fluttered gently in the air currents. The bed was in the middle of the room, a large spacious high ceilinged space on an upper floor; completely uncluttered ~ there was nothing else in the room, or so it seemed, it was all white, but the white of lightness, not the white of colour lack. She sat up, slowly stretching, filled with a feeling of warm promise, an unhurried optimism for the bright new day. She was still in that first moment of awakening, before any plans or expectations intruded, leisurely luxuriating in the promise of warmth and light, still relaxed from sleep, but free of details, free of mundane specifics or intentions; quite simply the uncluttered serenity and joy of the promise of a bright new day.

Evangeline Spiggot sat outside the DDT bosses office, nervously twiddling her pony tail. She had no idea why she’d been summoned, but the tone of the memo was ominous. Eventually her boss, The Right Honourable B. F. Deale, was ready to see her.

“What ho!” said Evangeline, in an effort to sound breezy and efficient.

B.F. Deale glared. “Can you explain yourself?” he asked grimly.

“Why, yes, sir! Sumari belonging, Ilda aligned, politic….”

“I’m talking about DDT!” he shouted. “You’ve been diverting all our disaster damage calls to that ridiculous channeling show!”

“Ah” she replied, “Yes, well, it seemed much more fun.”

“Ah” replied B.F. Deale, momentarily non plussed. When he’d finsished unnecesarily shuffling some papers around on his desk, he continued. “Well, what about the disaster damage team? Hhhm? How are they supposed to, er, deal with disasters if they don’t even know about them?”

Evangeline paused, giving the impression that she was deep in thought. In actual fact, she was deep in no thought, due to the influence of the Dead Dick Tracy channeled messages.

“Well, sir, perhaps this indicates a changing trend towards having more fun and less disasters? Perhaps we could diversify, start our own Fun Department?”

“By George, I think you’re on to something, Spiggot! I will hire someone to investigate this trend.”

“Might I suggest Blithe Gambol, P.I.? Very hightly recommended, so I hear.”

“These old ezines and blogs are fascinating” remarked Periwinkle, passing the one she had just been reading to Daffodil. “Thank goodness some folks had the foresight to print some of them!”

“I know, imagine if they hadn’t. We’d have no artefacts for the collection. Well, we have all those flat discs, but no way to decipher them. Oh, did I tell you? Bignonia found something even older than the discs!”

“NO!” exclaimed Periwinkle “Do tell!”

“Yes, even older! Funny looking contraption, with two reels and a ribbon. An information storage device, so they say, although they haven’t discovered how to decipher it.”

“I wonder why we’re still not simply accessing that information without, well, without messing around with the physical contraption, you know?”

“Wouldn’t be any point in being here in the first place, if we weren’t going to mess around with physical things, silly” replied Daffodil.

There was no answer to that, so Periwikle didn’t answer. She continued to thumb through the printed pages.

Periwinkle and Daffodil sat together on the patio in the warm spring sunshine, sipping lemonade
and leafing through the papers. Bright white clouds in cartoon shapes romped across the blue sky,
and the birds chattered in the trees,
occasionally landing on the printed pages and cocking their heads sideways to read for a moment, before flying off to tell their friends, which was usually followed by a raucous group cackling.

“Dear Goofenoff” read Daffodil, “This one looks interesting Peri, someone here is asking for advice on a problem.”

“What’s a “problem”, Daffy?” asked Periwinkle. “For that matter, what does the word “advice” mean? Oh, never mind” she said as she noticed Daffodil rolling her eyes, “I’ll look it up in my pre shift dictionary of defunct words.”

“She’s asking the Snoot too, about the same problem. Oh, I think I’ve heard of them! It’s coming back to me, the old Snoot’n‘Goof team, they were quite famous in the beginning of the century, I remember hearing about them before in a Shift History discussion.”

“Well, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of them, but then, I’ve never been into history like you, dear. So what is this “problem” all about, then?”

“I’ll read it out to you, it’s way too convoluted to put in a nutshell. Lordy, they sure did complicate matters back then, it’s almost unbeleivable, really, but anyway, here goes:

Dear Goofenoff,

I don’t know what to do! I am confused about which probable version of a blog freind, let’s call him MrZ, I have chosen to align with. The first probable version was ok, nothing to worry about, and then I drew into my awareness the probable versions of MrZ that some of my freinds had chosen to align with….”

“Blimey”, interrupted Periwinkle, who was starting to fidget. “Is it much longer?”

“It’s alot longer, so be patient. Where was I? Oh yes:

“….and while that was very interesting indeed, and led to lots of usefully emotionally heated discussions, I started to align with their probable version, at times, although not consistently, which led to some confusion. So then I had a chat with someone who was more in alignment with my original probable version, although there were aspects of that probable version that were a little in alignment with the other folks probable version, notwithstanding. I suppose I was still in alignment with the other folks probable version when it came to my attention that there was another individual that might be aligning with a probable version, and my question is, in a nutshell, is it any of my business which probable version the new individual on the scene is aligning with?”

“Well, I can tell you the answer to that!” exclaimed Periwinkle.

Daffodil rolled her eyes. “Yes, dear, WE know the answer, but the point is, SHE didn’t know the answer at the time, which is why she asked Goofenoff.”

“If you ask me, she knew the answer all along” Periwinkle intuited. “What did Goofenoff say anyway?”

“He said:

Are you requiring a short or a long answer?”

Daffodil turned the page to continue reading. She frowned, and flicked through a few pages.

“What a shame, some of these pages appear to be missing! Now we’ll never know what Goofenoff said.”

Periwinkle laughed. “Well, never mind that anyway, have you seen the random story quote today? Rather synchronistic I’d say, listen to this bit:

Illi felt much better, and was sitting at the breakfast table, basking in the warm shafts of sunlight filtering in through the window, and listening to the birds singing in the lemon tree outside.”

He was lying on her massage table, his nudity covered with a blue satin towel. Josephine had really soft hands and was a really good masseuse. Almondus Blondor had been waiting for so long for this massage that he wouldn’t let one bit escape his awareness; though, he was feeling as if he was inexorably slipping into the drum world, his heart was pounding, more and more present. His attention was merging with his old drum self, when he could remember clearly how it was before he came here through the portal himself.

Josephine was using the very potion she was preparing when she heard the tinkling sound… and she was unaware that her hand had taken a wrong ingredient, one of the most important ones. Even if she had known, she would have been unable to tell the consequences of the switch. Almondus could just disappear, melt, transform into a big giant dragonfly… at the moment, she was into a trance, far even from the idea that she could do such a mistake. She never did mistakes!

Bentworth Sadnick was all but confident in his new appointment by his peaster. He had never been alone at the portal before, and he feared most of all that someone would come ask a question. In his mind, it was unthinkable that someone would even dare ask to open the portal…

He was lost in his hamster wheel, too exhausted by the race to do the usual chores —sure his peaster would notice when he comes back. But what if some official came by? It would certainly be a disaster, Bentworth would be caught stammering and that would only add to his confusion. Wasn’t it hot here? So hot, maybe if he could just put his head aside for a few moments… no, it was forbidden, his peaster had repeated it thousands of times to him, and had him repeat it ten times more… though it could help, sure, release the pressure in his head. His hands reached the hook of his head-fastener and a sudden release of pressure popped into the silence, ending in a harmonious whistling sound.

Holding his head in his hands, face turned to his chest, he was unable to see the strangers coming from the distance. He sat on the first step of the stairs climbing to the portal, his head resting on his lap, looking at his belly button (his clothes were too short for him, and he was looking like a child grown too fast). Though he was the only one present and when he suddenly heard a raucous voice asking if he could make his bird sing, he feared that it was some kind of sexual offer and were his head on, it would have blushed, but it was still releasing pressure and the sudden squirck sounded like a yes.

That’s when he lost his head, he stood up briskly and his head rolled on the ground, hitting a stone in the process. His head was knocked out, and he couldn’t use it for the moment. What had his peaster told him so often: “Always do as if you know what to do! Don’t let people see you don’t know, even if you don’t… pretend that you have all the answers. You’re here the most trusted Peaslander and everybody will trust what you say.”

“Sh-show mme yu-your bi-bird!”

The Aunt and Dolores looked at each other… the others being headless it would have been pointless.
“Are you the Keeper of the Old and notwithstanding Great portal of Nibabuz.”

As he was about to say yes, another release of pressure from his unconscious head made a squirmish sound. As they were waiting, he said the word that would seal his destiny.
“Yeyes!”

That’s when Almondus, falling asleep, farted. Was it the mixture of Josephine? Was it that he hadn’t done a detox cure for centuries? Nonetheless, that had the disastrous effect of inducing Josephine in a lethargic state. She stopped massaging him and stood there still. Her spearit gone, far worse than if her head had popped out on its own.

Ann was savooring a coughee with Lavender and Phenol. It was certainly not easy to follow a conversation when you were coughing all the time after a sip of coughee but it was quite savoory and tasty, and Flove knows why it was soo expensive.
Phenol was one of those students at the worserversity with acne and he or she wouldn’t allow another person to see his or her real face. So maybe for convenience only we can call him or her: IT.
It was the only moment you could hear a sound coming out of ITs hood, during thoose coughee sessions it was hard to keep completely silent.
Ann was very curious though, and it could be the only reason that she kept asking Phenol to come. She was still in search of clooes about that when a man arrived.

He was wearing a black hood and speaking with that particular raucous voice you only hear in movies… She got the chills and asked him to join their company. Lavender rolled her eyes because the man with the raucous voice stepped on her right foot. Not that she suffered much, because she couldn’t feel her right leg since that accident a few years ago.

The man ordered a coughee with croombs and stayed there, saying nothing. That was not unpleasant at all, since Ann was chatting and coughing, taking the coughs of the others as a yes or a no to her questions. At least an acknowledgment that she was heard.

One thing led to another, as it tends to do, while Sanso sat meditating on the enigma of The Dead Cow. Random and seemingly disjointed images flashed through his mind, not unlike a random google had been back in the old days, the first being an odd word, Kogaionon . Accessing further information, Sanso discovered that it was an ancient Transylvaniun skull. The link between the dead cow and the skull was clear ~ it was a bone sync, they both had bones, there was no denying it. Encouraged, Sanso continued to meditate.

After some images of a battle at sea , presumably Trafalgar, Sanso intuitively felt, he heard the words “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Wise words, he thought, and appropriate too. He popped these snippets into his indigo clue bag and continued to meditate. An image of a strange creature, half fish and half lion appeared next, a Merlion, which quickly morphed into an entertaining old movie playing across the screen of his minds eye, so to speak, in which someone who reminded him of Becky arrived in Paris during a rainstorm with just the clothes on her back ~ and interesting clothes they were, too! Sanso was glued to the screen, in a manner of speaking, and watched with amusement as a whole new wardrobe was delivered to the puzzled woman, followed by her mysterious benefactor: Georges.

Well, fancy Georges turning up again like that! Sanso was delighted. Perhaps Georges could shed some light on the mystery of the Dead Cow Blocking the Cave Entrance.

Sanso returned to his meditation and found himself eavesdropping on a conversation.

— Well, and Sanso, and Georges then, are they dead or what? How come Dory can see them?
— These ones are special, they have mastered the crossing of the Worlds, and can move through them. They move differently though. Sanso comes from a lineage of an ancient tribe of Zion, and had learn from them how to activate some portals, but only through the physical world of Dory, in their own time. He is not yet aware that he can also move through time as well, or even through other Worlds — worlds that he has no conception of yet.
Georges is more consummate in that art. Their meeting is not coincidental. You will see that.
— Thank you Grandad, it’s becoming a bit less confusing.
— Just flow with the story my little one, don’t hold on too much, or you will find it too difficult, and you will stop to find fun in it.

“Their meeting is not coincidental” Sanso repeated to himself, popping it into his clue bag. “Well, I don’t know about Meanings, but at least I have a new bag of clues now!”

Becky had an idea, but only a moment, and then ten minutes later had a sudden impulse and bought some green shades… brilliant, brilliant! Let the shifting take place! Now wearing a beautiful tiny grin of satisfaction Becky had to meet the others.

“That perhaps is your task” Virginia was whispering in Ann’s ear”…to find the relation between things that seem incompatible yet have a mysterious affinity, to absorb every experience that comes your way fearlessly and saturate it completely so that your poem is a whole, not a fragment; to re-think human life into poetry and so give us tragedy again and comedy by means of characters not spun out at length in the novelist’s way…”

“Did you catch that, Walter? ‘Not spun out in the traditional lengthy continous way’ she’s saying.”

“…but condensed and synthesized in the poet’s way—that is what we look to you to do now.”

“I didn’t know you channeled Virginia Woolf, Ann,” replied Walter. “Doesn’t mean she is necesarily right, though, notwithstanding.”

“I didn’t say she was ‘absolutely right’, Walter. I’m just pointing out what’s right for me.”

Walter popped another anchovy stuffed olive into his mouth.

“You see, by no manner is it an issue if things aren’t continuous” Walter was saying, which immediately brought to Ann’s mind the latest development at her end of the group project. For some reason lately she found that she was permanently signed in, as opposed to previously, when she’d had the dickens of a job to stay signed in long enough to make an entry. Permanently connected, as it were.

“….and I know it’s almost blasphemous to say that” Walter continued, causing Ann to raise an eyebrow, “…but the crux of the matter lays in the measure with which things are expanded and linked together.”

“If I may be so bold as to interrupt, sir,” Ann couldn’t restrain herself from interjecting, “Surely that is what readers are for? Is not the purpose of the writer, or indeed any artist, to simply offer particles, or pieces, for the viewer to add, or not, as they choose, to their own continuous storylines?”

Walter opened and closed his mouth like a godfish. (Ann had to laugh at the typographical error.)

“For example” Ann continued, warming to the subject, “When I random read book pages, then channel surf the TV, followed by a random roam around online, interspersed with perhaps a few phone calls, or various incidents throughout the day, I’m making a continuous story of my own, with pages and screenshots and conversation snippets borrowed, if you like, from many external sources (and before you say anything, I am aware that no source is external, but don’t let me start digressing). The era of being ‘told’ a story to beleive in its entirety is over! Everyone knows these days that we each make our own story, with a bit of this, and a bit of that. It’s The Age of Random Tips & Snippets, after all, everyone knows that! It’s T.A.R.T.S. time now!”

“Is old Gubby male or female?” whispered Lavender. To be honest, she didn’t really care much, but she did want to maintain the conversation with the gorgeous Dieter.

It was a pleasant walk to the Academy from Ann’s student digs, the leafy suburbs of Poubelleville were dappled with sunlight and sweetly scented with lilac blossom. Bird twittered in the trees and miniature zebras nibbled at the grass verges as Ann made her way to class. As she walked past a sidewalk cafe she spotted Monica, or rather Monica spotted Ann, and called her over to join her for a cup of rhubarb tea. Ann had forgotten she was late for class, and gave Monica the customary seven kisses ~ three on each cheek, and a final one on the nose ~ and pulled out a chair.

True to form ~ for Monica was the Academy’s best known gossip ~ after the inital pleasantries, the conversation soon turned to the latest scandal. Max the janitor, one of the students, and Professor Moose had been caught engaging in a menage a trois in the broom cupboard.

“All in aid of an assignment, so they said” explained Monica. “Who did you choose for your menage a trois, Ann? You’re in old Moose’s class, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t translate the assigment that way.” Ann frowned. “Gosh, I wrote a haiku about slobber instead, everyone will think I’m all prim and prunes.”

“Well, we only need one more” replied Monica with a sly grin.

“What?” Ann blushed as she cottoned on. “Oh!”

Monica wriggled about in her chair, revealing an expanse of lean tanned thigh, not altogether accidentally.

“Mind if I join you?” asked Good God Gordy, calling to the waiter for a cup of Hornygoatweed tea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ann Tattler beamed in delight, unable to conceal her pleasure and surprise. She had scraped in a pass for “Continuity Class for Complete Beginners”. It had taken months, but under the excellent tutelage of Prof Frantic Moose, she had finally cracked it.

Her next hurdle was “Meaningful Writing for the Scattered Brain”.

Her pleasure evaporated somewhat when she read the pithy course description.

Things most profound can be found in the most shallow conversation. Prof Leone Laminae

Sadly, I am not sure that “profound” is one of my strong points, she confided later to her twin sister Sally.

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

“In the backwater….”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yoland wondered what THAT was supposed to mean.

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

Yoland relaxed. That sounded easier.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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