I died. Right over there. Smashed in the face. Head gone. Then: return. I sit here. Waiting for The One.
Monthly Archives: February 2022
uninvited
We start again at the House on the Hill at the summit of one of those islands we just spoke about, the two stranger ones representing retirement itself. A figure both male and female, one locked inside the other. And behind him or her, in the kitchen. A ghost.
We can call it a rock.
We can call it a planet.
It is the same size as our Earth.
It is associated with the color blue (like our Earth).
But it is not Earth.
It is from somewhere else.
And we need to treat it with respect.
I’ll let the darker one sleep this time, she thinks from her couch of power as the awakened lighter one is released to the floor.
But an occident occurred as he dropped too far and spilled down the stairs instead. “Oh my God oh my GOD.”
We could say the neck was snapped but that wouldn’t be the half of it.
(to be continued?)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0031, 0603, Nautilus, Retirement Islands, Wild West
Happy Days
Sitting on the dough, the money of the place, he’s remembering a lot. Baker. Wendy. The rented room for the night above the citrus fruit shop. Then it happened *again*, the dream within a dream.
He’d forgotten about the Strange Isle, the Temple of Light exactly 200 meters above it in the air. So much has gone on in Our Second Lyfe now.
And now another strange island, considerably larger in scope, looms before him. Some will call it Retirement Island, especially after the 28th of this particular month of 2022 (February). Actually there’s another, similar sized island not far atall to the east that might be paired with it throughout eternity — probably is. They are definitely a part of the Wild West of Nautilus, although Lands End between it and Lower Austra is just to the south and east as well, a strong focus of this particular photo-novel, 31 in a series of — I won’t say 31 again. I don’t know how long it will last. I consider it a precious gift. 🙂 There are so many advantages of writing in this manner, in this way, in terms of character development over time — through many many photo-novels in some cases; the same with *location* development; and then the final one, the most illusive: THINGS (always capitalized). Concepts sometimes. Examples for it from the current photo-novel include SEED, THROUGH THE WALL, PHEH, 102, NODAL, *BLEH* (different from PHEH), POINT FOLLOWING, WAIT!, LETTER Q, CARDS, MORGAN/MORGAINE, GREEN RING, WHITE TREES, SUN ROSE, HAT REMOVAL, TILE MANIFESTO, NEW PHYSICS, PAST FUTURE, ENIGMA, GRASSHOPPERS, SILHOUETTES, PURPLE/BLACK LAKE BUNCH, OUTER PLANETS, RASPBERRY, and RAINBOW SPHERE. Complicated — illusive — like I said. But maybe the most important in the long haul, stitching together character and location to make a larger picture that can only be, for practical purposes, faintly seen and locally enforced. This is definitely a metaphor for life itself. We continue…
So you see, for example, the phrase “citrus fruit shop” has been used twice in photo-novel 31, although I haven’t included it as a thing — yet. A linking concept is All Orange, part thing part character so far. In the post “Sameness”, we see an orange, circular in design and thus representing the whole, paired with CARDS to form a deeper study. Notice that Alice’s caterpillar is on one of the cards — a “worm” — and wormholes were talked about earlier in the photo-novel. Then All Orange refers to something Wendy saw in this same citrus shop back in photo-novel 26 I believe, when she stayed in the same apartment as Man About Time and Alysha did later, except with Jeffrie Phillips. Why the same apartment? Why an orange referenced in each case?
We can actually turn to the ORACLE (yet another thing/concept but not listed/official yet — *large*) and find WALDROP (another character and thing combo, actually) linked with both Fife and Thelma Lou and understand that Man About Time, second in command to Jeffrie Phillips in Collagesity (still?), is kind of Barney Fife of the “Andy Griffith Show” to Jeffrie’s Andy Griffith. Thelma Lou, his true love, is turning into Alysha — again the citrus fruit shop setting clues us into this. But then we also know that Jeffrie Phillips himself is married to Alysha, but it seems to be in a parallel reality to MAT’s. Imagine this — I don’t think it ever happened in the show but imagine this: Andy — Sheriff Andy Taylor — and Barney, his faithful deputy and best friend for life, dating the same woman… but not just dating her, *married* to her. Both of ’em. And take a look back if you wish at all the symbols from that show we’ve run across in 31. Tailors Tillie and Tealy become Taylors (like Andy and his aunt Bee in the show). Tangentially, Mount Airy, the factual place that translates into Mayberry, the fictional setting for practically the entire show — a cultural archetype by now — is featured in other ways, like through the original Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker. But this just entered the story through a random picture found by Wheeler on the Omega continent. And the tesseract — don’t get me started about the tesseract. Iowa.
—–
I forgot to even mention Opie — Opp or Campbell O’Pine, grown up and beyond his toy “childhood” starting in photo-novel 8 to become a real, true to life man.
Large.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0031, 0602, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus
Back in Collagesity…
… the Blue *Thorn* walks into a pizza establishment, only to discover the irony of his main bane. He *himself* is this mysterious Monroe Ray who borrowed his antique red Chevy and perhaps drove it into the levy but definitely, at any rate, got himself lost… then killed. Smashed in the face by Casey One Hole in the 256 defined Red Room, one a-hole of a guy as we know. Thus the cybernetics. “Don’t die, don’t die,” said the one armed doctor, hovering above him like a white masked angel. And so he didn’t but being brought back to life in this way, in this manner, cost him. Recruitment into Pot-D; tough boss Buster Damm over him now. “Damn!” he often cursed at his situation.
He sat in Collagesity’s newest business for half an hour, waiting on the pizza he’d ordered just before climbing the beige hill to the village within the village, a microcosm. He’d figure it out soon enough. The pizza was made by himself at the same time and it sat there on the counter, waiting for him to open the lid and solve the puzzle. More would come of this.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0031, 0601, Collagesity Fordham, Lower Austra^, Nautilus
retirement
It’s time to lay under the blue and white umbrella again.
Ahh. This is the life!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0031, 0517, Nautilus, Retirement Islands, Wild West
Alysha
She’d transformed, just like he did earlier. “Okay, you can open your eyes,” she bids.
He sees the stunning blueness of the thing. He sees the roses. He knows what’s going on. “But… *I’m* the Blue Rose,” he sputters, sitting up more in an effort to directly confront the thing. “That’s *my* angle.”
“Not any more,” she shot back. Indeed once a thing has been done and done successfully, it’s hard to walk back. Besides, we need to double up the Blue Power in order to keep West Virginia viable as a northern balance to Virginia. It’s just that damn important.
Time to unwrap the present, as she promised earlier. Jeffrey Phillips will come around, probably sooner than later. She just needs to pick a time to tell him about MAT. The new relationship is real enough, despite it also being a dream.
Later she showed him 5 more transformations directly related to the first. It was a revealing night.
“And *this* is how we had the black child,” she explained at the beginning of the 4th.
By the time of the 5th, Jeffrey Phillips had determined he would definitely be the Blue Thorn from now on and give up the Rose part. He didn’t deserve this woman. But she definitely deserved him and considerably more, she might think here on her own behalf.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0031, 0516, Lands End, Nautilus
front and back (covered)
I was back to the beginning point. They were staring at each other across a space I knew represented 2. The missing letter! Now to divide it in 2 and make two one’s about it.
The protective stone that is also an eye magically appeared in the middle. Everything was going to be all right (secret kept).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0031, 0515, Iowa, Long Islands, Nautilus, Wild West
00310514
She practiced her melting exercise atop a magazine vending machine in seedier Eastside, as she’s started to call it, still pondering the missing letter. It wasn’t 3 days ago from now. Yet.
She thought of the barrier between here and Far or Furtherer East, another one or two of her concocted terms. Even more seedier, she’s gathered. Seed itself.
Indeed this is where she’d find the missing letter.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0031, 0514, Long Islands, Nautilus, Wild West
where’s the point? 02
The water system of the town was *barely* serviceable — toilets slow to flush, water flow weak overall — but *someone* kept up all this infrastructure to a degree. She wondered about the 10! on the door of the stall she just exited, and how it could be connected to this 102 group she was assigned to investigate, linkable through 101 (10! > 101 > 102). Or perhaps the exclamation point stands for 2 somehow instead of 1, bypassing the needed link. She’d heard things in the middle of the night, scurrying from below, from the other side of the walls, even from above. Although the place appeared totally empty and deserted, someone was here. Her witch training gave her more clues. A *soul* was present: intelligent, secretive, perhaps ultraly so, and, finally, *powerful*. It could be Mid-Hazel disguising herself for one of those lessons, Esmerelda pondered here for not the first time. That might fit — why she can’t penetrate the soul further and read its thoughts, etc.
She was also told 102 represents a missing letter, which she’d narrowed down, again using her witchy powers, to either S, E, or W. If W, we’re all in a heap full of trouble. But I, the omniscient author in the moment, happen to know it’s S. Esmerelda would find out the same day before tomorrow before tomorrow.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0031, 0513, Long Islands, Nautilus, Wild West
where’s the point?
She waited in an Alley, knowing this was the place. If only she could remove her hat but knew she couldn’t. Coven rules. *Especially* in a town like this. She must also avoid the facelight — green: she is green, like another famous witch from the Wicked West. Where she was, in fact, the opposite of the Mild or at least Milder East. Wicked Wild West.
Back home:
She wanted to buy a black cat but there wasn’t any around. Ruffles, a tuxedo, would have to do, pheh. *Pheh*.
She tossed and turned all night on her small and uncomfortable bed in her tiny apartment, worrying about the new assignment.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0031, 0512, Long Islands, Nautilus, Wild West
Sunklands 