Search Results for 'trees'

There was something familiar with the road. The trees, the warmth. It was a fine weather for the season. Almost 70°F. Janet Mendyourhall had a strong feeling of déjà vu. She was on her way to Sedona to attend the annual Glasnik meeting. The Threshold to 2013. Since she had been posted to the West Coast, she was to attend every psychic or ET manifestation in the area. And believe it or not, there was a lot of them. The Lightbearers, Glasnik, The Crimson Feathers, and all the less famous ones like Birgitt’s Wheel from Germany, the reincarnation of Von Bingen.

Janet was trying to go to those events with an open mind, which usually means that as a premise you didn’t believe what you were going to see. And she had seen a lot of crap and a few gems.

She realized the car needed gas, luckily she was not far from Cottonwood. That name triggered steamy memories and a blush on her face. She had always loved meeting that young boy, he had such a sense of service, and such a wonderful body. She turned left without even thinking of it. The sun was high in the sky and the light was playing through the trees, still green her mind registered.

When she arrived at the station, the boy was discussing with another woman in a red car. Her hands squizzed the wheel and her lips tightened. That feeling of déjà vu again.

While Yuhara and Sylvestrus were exploring Second Life worlds (Frolic Caper~Belle was still on an extended leave of absence), Blithe Gambol, although she didn’t entirely realize it at the time, was exploring First Life worlds on the Coast of Light.

Blithe and her partner Winn set off for the drum festival in the late afternoon heat, with the intention of reaching the Light Coast before sundown. The strong low sun flickered on and off as it hid behind trees and hills, and the hot dry wind whipped Blithes hair into her eyes, leaving the heavy heat of the Coast of the Sun behind and tranforming it into a light bone dry atmosphere that seemed to suck the air out of Blithe’s lungs. She filled the vacuum with smoke, listening to the words of the music playing ~ must be a reason why I’m king of my castle….king of my castle…it reminded her of Dealea’s story about King Author.

When they reached Vejer de la Frontera they made a wrong turning, although they were well aware that no turning is a wrong one. The new direction took them in a circle behind the Vejer promontory, through the umbrella pines along the coast. The sky was golden yellow behind the black sillouttes on one side, with a periwinkle sea on the other, rocky pale grey outcrops blushed with pink paddling in the gently lapping waves.

As they entered the village of Canos de Meca, they slowed to crawl behind the inching cars, as tanned people in brightly coloured clothes wove in and out of the traffic, and in and out of the exotic looking bars and restaurants. Blithe remembered the Second Life worlds she had been exploring earlier that day, and wondered if Second Life came with the smells of sardines barbequeing on the beach, or a warm breeze wafting past laden with snatches of laughter and conversation. Visually, certainly, Second Life would be hard presssed to beat the visual appeal of Canos de Meca at sunset on an August evening. There were plenty of opportunities to observe the people and the hostelries, as the traffic got progressively worse until it eventually came to a standstill. The narrow lanes were lined with parked cars, and throngs of people carrying coolers made their way to the sand dunes near the lighthouse.

Eventually, after several slow drives past looking for a miraculous parking space that didn’t appear, Blithe and Winn found a restaurant in between the coastal villages that was strangely empty of people. Even Winn, who was much less inclined towards fanciful imaginings than Blithe, remarked on how surreal the place was. It could have been anywhere in Spain, so strangely ordinary was its appearance in comparison to the Moorish beach hippy style of the villages. They ordered food, and relaxed in easy silence in the oasis of calm ordinariness. Blithe wondered if the place actually existed or if she had created it out of thin air, just for a respite and a parking place, and a clean unoccupied loo. Another First Life world, perhaps, constructed in the moment to meet the current requirements of ease.

At 11:11, after another two drives through the crawling cars and crowds, Winn turned the car around and headed for home. At 12:12 they reached the Coast of the Sun, shrouded in sea mist, and at 1:00am precisely, they arrived home. Later, as Blithe lay on the bed listening to the drums playing on the music machine, she closed her eyes and saw the sunset over the Atlantic, and felt the ocean breeze of the fan. She projected her attention to the dunes of Trafalgar ~ which, incidentally, didn’t take two hours, it was instant. In another instant, she was back in her bedroom, sipping agua con gas on the rocks and chatting to Winn. Seconds later, she was in a vibrant nightclub overlooking the beach, dancing in spirit between the jostling holidaymakers being served at the bar. She imagined that one or two of them noticed her energy.

Clearly, teleporting from one place to another had its benefits. The question of parking, for example, wouldn’t arise. But Blithe wouldn’t have wanted to miss the late afternoon drive to the Coast of Light, and the golden slanting lightbeams flickering between the cork oaks making their cork shorn trunks glow red, or the ocean appearing over the crest of a hill. And if she had arrived in an instant at the location she was intending to visit, then she would never have encountered the sunset from the particular angle of the approach via the wrong turn. Variety ~ and impulse, and the opportunities of the unexpected turns ~ was the weft of weaving First Life worlds ~ or was it the warp?

link: weaving worlds

It was hot, although not as hot as usual for the month of August on the southern slopes of the Serrania de Ronda. It had rained, the black clouds and thunder a welcome respite from the searing dry heat of an Andalucian summer, plumping up the blackberries and washing the dust from the leaves of the fig trees. Blithe Gambol hadn’t seen her old friend Granny Mosca for months, although she wasn’t quite sure what had kept her from visiting for so long. Blithe loved Granny Mosca’s cottage tucked away in the saddle behind the fat hill and there had been times when she’d visited often, just to drink in the magical air and feast her eyes on the beauty of the surroundings. Dry golden weeds scratched her legs as she made her way along the dirt path, and she was mindful of the fat black snake she’d once seen basking on the stone walls as she reached into the brambles to pluck blackberries and take photographs.

Rounding a corner in the path she gasped at the incongrous and alarming sight of a bright yellow bulldozer just meters from Granny Mosca’s cottage. The bulldozer was flattening a large area of prickly pear cactuses. Unfortunately for the cactuses, it was fruiting time, and Blithe wondered if Granny Mosca had first picked the fruits and suspected that she had, those that she could reach. Nothing that could be eaten was left unpicked ~ Blithe remembered the many sacks of almonds that Granny had given her over the years, very few of which she had bothered to shell and eat.

The bulldozer was making an entranceway to the tiny derelict cottage that was situated next to Granny Mosca’s house. Granny had asked Blithe if she wanted to buy it, and she had wanted to buy it eventually, but the purchase of a derelict building hadn’t been a priority at the time. Now it looked as if she was too late, that someone else had bought it, perhaps to use as a holiday home. Horrified, Blithe called out for Granny, who was often in the goat shed or away across the hidden saddle valley cutting weeds to feed the poultry, but there was no sign of her. Two alien looking turkeys gobbled in response, and the black and white chained dog barked menacingly.

As Blithe retraced her steps along the dirt path it occured to her that whoever was planning to use the derelict cottage might be a very interesting person, someone she might be very pleased to make the acquaintance of in due course. After all, she had noticed that the holiday guests staying at the casitas on the other side of the fat hill were all sympathetic to the magical nature of the location, many of them arriving from a previous visit to a particularly interesting location in the Alpujarras ~ a convergence of ley lines. When questioned as to why they chose the fat hill casitas, they simply said they liked the countryside. Either they weren’t telling, or they were simply unaware objectively of the connection of the locations. Blithe could sense the connections though, both the locations, and that the people choosing to vacation at the fat hill were connected to it.

For one hundred and forty seven thousand years, Blithe had had an energy presence at the fat hill, although it was half a century of her current focus before she remembered it. She had felt protective of it, when she finally remembered it, as if she had a kind of responsibility to it. This place can look after itself quite well on its own, she reminded herself. The fat hill had watched while Franco’s Capitan looted the Roman relics, and watched as Blithe stumbled upon the remains of Roman and Iberian cities, and the fat hill had laughed when Blithe first tried to find the entrance to the interior and got stuck in thorn bushes. Later, the fat hill had smiled benignly when Granny Mosca led her to the entrance ~ without a thorn bush in sight. The cave entrance had been blocked with boulders then. Blithe had given some thought to an excavation, wondering how to achieve it without attracting the attention of the locals, but now she wondered if one day, when the time was right, she would find the entrance clear, as if by magic. Magic, after all, was by no means impossible.

{link: feast for the birds}

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

“Well, perhaps this will inspire you again to write in the story, Ann” remarked Sally, Ann’s twin sister. Sally always hit the nail on the head.

“Hmmm” responded Ann. “I can’t see the wood for the trees sometimes.”

“Well, that’s a tree synchronicity, there you go! Do you want to write about the trees?”

“Hhhmm, maybe…”

Found this tonight, and was amazed as some of the designs synched with drawings I made recently (the cathedral is strikingly similar to one of them).

Also, Jib introduced a house in the trees in the park of the City, and here there is one … amazing…

“Oh no! Last night’s frost has killed all the blibilong plants!” exclaimed Snettie, shivering in the unnatural cold. “Honestly, this global freezing is spoiling everything. If blibilong plants can’t stand this cold, then nothing will grow here anymore, and I am sick to death of eating leopard seal with no greens.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. What I wouldn’t give for a nice fresh sun warmed bobbit fruit. All the smikkerts have migrated north as well, I haven’t seen one for months” replied Snooter. “I don’t know if I can stick around here for much longer myself.”

“But this is our home, Snooter!” Snettie started to cry, her tears freezing on her cheeks. We’re Sprealians, we’ve always lived here. Where will we go?”

Snooter hugged Snettie. “I suppose we’ll have to go north, like the rest of them.”

Snooter and Snettie gazed around at the deserted city. Alabash had been built around the shores of Lake Flom, in the mild and temperate regions of central Spreal (later, much later, Spreal was referred to as Gondwana, but Snooter and Snettie didn’t know that. And they certainly didn’t know that the remains of their civilization was to disappear under masses of ice for so long that all memory of them was long forgotten, and that anyone mad enough to suggest that they once existed would be considered a bit of a nutter).

“Snettie, I think the time has come” Snooter said solemnly. “I think we have to go north. There’s only old Spagwan left here now besides us, and his daughter Illiofilly. We’ll never survive here with just four of us, even if it didn’t get any colder, and it is getting colder, every day. Why, the first four floors of all our buildings are iced up now for heaven’s sake. What happens when the ice reaches the top floors? Then what?”

“We’ll all be dead by then, Snooter” Snettie sighed “By rights we should probably be dead now. When we run out of furniture to burn to keep warm, then what? All the trees are dead and buried in ice.”

“We’ll come back though, when it warms up again. This can’t last forever, and when it’s over, we’ll come back.” Snooter said optimistically.

“How long do you think it’ll be?” Snettie asked her husband.

“Oh, not long, a few years at most. Don’t worry, you’ll be back home before you know it, but for now, let’s go and find some warmth and some decent food, eh?”

“Ok, but first I want to leave something, some message or clue or something, in case anyone comes back here before we do, so they know we’re coming back”

7:33:59 AM 8-19-08 ∞1da Geolocation Time.

days of sleeping slip by. the light on the peaks soft, golden in the cool dawn. a shiver. the water would be cold but thirst is a motivating factor. movement would mean warmth. birds flitting from branch to branch…

stones to perch on. river jade at my finger tips. the babble of a quickly flowing stream. scooping with one hand to drink from a clear pool, the musky scent of cedar and low water.

across the wide stream, a river. actually. no. the amount of water between a stream and a river. a young buck, head bent low also drinking. antlers. how are years marked again? two prongs on each side. is that two years after reaching mating age? or four. no matter. eyes latch across rapidly flowing water. we watch each other. both still, both quiet. both recognizing in each other another survival being of dreams.

dream memory extending into long ago. no. longer than that. the rules to colonizing a planet. simple universal rules. one band of survival beings with a limited number of nuclear families from any survival being group that wishes to expand into livable planets. set down in one place – with nothing. no food. no implements. not even clothes. if they survive they colonize. if not. well. the universe is full of tried and failed experimentation. The pulse of all that is drawn into a black hole. drawn in and back out through tunnels of light that are trapped within the black hole…

the fact that more than one form of survival being can attempt to colonize one planet at any given time is both an advantage and a disadvantage. they become resource for each other as well as competition – resource and competition, as is all that is within and upon the planet.

still that cave, that First Cave. on the tip of the continent in the southern hemisphere… blue ocean view… a beginning that is long ago. how long ago? 160,000 planet years? 200,000 thousand planet years? late arrivals as we are, this is where our colonization is now. Digging to find those memories and what is left of that initial arrival…

walking up this valley on the other side of a continent, an ocean away from First Cave… funny how time advances forward and backward in both directions – in all directions – and remains the same. This now is the same now as that now and remains the same in both directions as it passes around each of us.

the sun trickling across the tips of trees lower and lower into the valley. another half an hour and it will be in my face.

might as well eat breakfast while I walk. thimble berries, currents, oh! yarrow. i could make tea. – if I made fire. If I had fire… or i could make yarrow tea because i have sun. . .

at peace within because i know i am returning to the High Portal Cave on the mountain, near the timberline. the central entrance, near the ancient pine. The safe harbor of the High Portal Cave, the entrance to a multitude of passageways, interconnecting chambers and stunning connecting points that open beyond this time and beyond this continent – before and after this continent. probably, through the right passage way opening beyond this planet. I don’t know that, it makes sense that it does. I believe I will find out in my memory or in my future. i remember some of these things and places. not all of them. i remember entering, finding the stone trough of water with the wooden drinking bowl on the damp ledge. i remember passageways that lead to incredible places and times. why return now? without knowing i know. this is the way it is because this is the way it will become.

warm sun on my chest. warm from walking. birds, quiet as i approach, resume their constant foraging as i pass. along the shore the constant sound of the river stream like the white noise of the universe, beautiful and ever present so that if i am not mindful i no longer hear it.

a walking stick. ok, a broken branch caught between boulders. still green enough to be strong, almost as thick as my forearm with little taper and altho it is not straight, it is a head taller than i am – perfect. a walking stick. a walking staff. i work it loose from the rocks. strange markings… the hand of an intelligent being – a gift then.

do images become visible on these pages or only the thoughts and sights from within my mind, i wonder. i try to remember not to believe all that i think… if i wonder… then do i attempt to find out? yes, often enough, yes. and why is short hair exciting, new, a sign of adventuring? changes. oh. perhaps. or perhaps it’s a way of changing breath. I smile. I walk on.

Images floated across the dark screen of Elizabeth’s closed eyes as she lay on the bed. She was aware of the trees rustling in the breeze outside her window, and the soft breathing of the miniature giraffes curled up by her feet. The afternoon heat was intense, heavy and soporific.

An island, strewn with debris; fallen trees and unidentifiable mangled wreckage of a stainless steel tubuler kind; splotches of blue everywhere dried and cracked into oddly shaped human-like-alien forms, and the telltale battered paint can with the word Azure showing, unscathed.

Darkness, damp smells, grey stones and spiders webs, slippery underfoot, bone coldness, and then a glimpse of lime green maidenhair ferns, a shaft of light and the sound of gurgling water….

Water sounds becoming surging tides, roaring pushing sucking head spinning weighty and then silence and the tinkling of windchimes….

A dog barks in the distance, waking the miniature giraffes. Big brown eyes atop slender necks gaze at Elizabeth as her eyes flutter open and then close again.

Last orders gentlemen PLEASE! and a jostle of bodies in the smoke and laughter and babble of voices. A crush of humans across a long wooden barrier for large glass vessels full of foam topped amber liquids. A hush. Silence falls as a glass box perched high in a corner begins to speak. Elizabeth can see the head and shoulders and the serious face, she can see the lips moving, but the silence is total and she can’t hear the words being spoken. The Big Hush, she heard herself think.

Hurdy Gurdy music and a merry go round…..grinning white horses up and down and round and round …..

Elizabeth drifted off to sleep.

12:54:07 AM 8-10-08 1da Geolocation Time.

wait. an entire day disappears. no matter the stars and crickets go on just the same. no waiting. on this journey there are places, wind and the night. stepping through the darkness I move slowly into the moonless night.

the driftwood shelter far away. thirst becoming noticeable. the clear water is enough for now.

rain begins to slash down. large drops that soak to the skin in a few moments. a hard driving rain at the front of the storm. leaves thrash about as if to escape from the earth bound trees.

Stumbling into the brush, i press close to the trunk of a tall redwood and sink down. the dust of the day remains here. even the crickets seek shelter. The shivering slows. i begin to relax, slipping into a dream.

an island. far away. the last moments of sun warm on my skin. a rabbit the shade of pink clouds against the fading light. the cave far away from my dream as i drift deeper into sleep.