Baker Blinker studies the duplicate Temple of TILE from the corner of her would-be, 7 Stones house. Karoz is wrong, she thinks.
Stashed away in a corner of 7 Stones, yes. No comparison with the great site in Chilbo, true.
She looks up at the “floating” Edwardston Station Gallery with its “Art 10×10”, along with the curving top of the Power Tower Gallery containing “Gilatona Lis”.
But more is at stake here.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0016, 0413, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus
“In this diptych, Richard Pryor, rescued by Superman from rock, i.e., ignorance or *wildness*, is a prior, as in a more primitive, past life version. I say this as a strong, black woman in the present, mind you.”
“Of course.”
“Shake’s straw is colored oppositely and bends the opposite way as Superman’s powerful, rescuing arm. He is a Master, but not in a good way. Like in the past. Like in the South.”
“I see.”
“*Now*, Baker Bloch. What has this to do with *Neptune*, the unseen, the unspoken even? West is east. Yellow eyes…”
“Hucka Doobie,” admitted Baker Bloch. “My heart’s really not into this tonight. Can we go somewhere else and talk? I feel like all these collages are closing in on me tonight. There’s too much there.”
“Too much information, eh? Okay. We can simplify. Where do you want to go?”
—–
“The alleyway behind the travel agency,” Hucka Doobie answers herself.
“Karoz ain’t coming back Hucka,” started Baker Bloch again, sad this evening. About Karoz. About Baker Blinker along with him. The anima to his animus, after all. Virtually speaking.
“Well — then let him stay in Chilbo. You can still have 7 Stones.”
“*I* can’t have both.”
“Then, let’s say, create a duplicate. A duplicate temple to mirror his own.”
“That’s already been done.”
“Oh.”
“Wheeler owns the land. She could swap her (2048 parcel) in 7 Stones for this (1780 in Chilbo).”
“Maybe you should talk to her about this as well.” Hucka Doobie looks around at the alley. Seedy. “And what of NWES? That is a second, big factor now in simply staying on Jeogeot; not returning to Nautilus fully. I’ll go with whatever you decide. I’ll stay with you whatever.”
“Thank you, Hucka. Nice to know.”
—-
The next day, they returned to the collage. “Flying Superman rescuing the Pryor — prior — then, is not the Master but the Liberator, in his true, white fashion. He recognizes the inversion in color: Aquaman, seen to his north. An understanding is made of both the sky *and* the seas. This is Neptune. This is the ability to see.”
“Icy planets.”
“I *see* planets, yes. First Uranus, if you look just right. Then Neptune if you look just right with a telescope. It all telescopes out.”
“Ending with Pluto.”
“Not any more.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0016, 0412, Jeogeot, NWES Island
“What is this suppose to be again, Karoz?”
“It’s called ‘Dance #12,’ and it’s beautiful. I love everything about Chilbo, Baker Bloch,” the alien green being reinforced. “I feel like I am home here.”
“So you’ve said.” Baker didn’t think he was going to budge Karoz’s feelings today. Nor any day perhaps. Maybe this *was* home to him. But what of 7 Stones, then, and the duplicate temple there? It’s time to start pondering — the end?
“Let’s go see it once more,” Karoz requested to his old friend. They’ve been together for over 10 years now, Real Life time. And all those stepping stone years perhaps lead to this moment, this decision. To stay in Chilbo forever or attempt to reintegrate he and his wife Baker Blinker back into a self contained village populated only by alts. Collagesity I mean there, and, now, its replacement, 7 Stones, a chip off the old block.
—–
“Marvelous, eh? Like it was suppose to be there. All along.”
Baker admitted to himself that the temple looked good up there on its perch, overlooking the town. “You know they didn’t want us here, Karoz,” explained his friend, his family. “They thought the collages — too derivative.”
“That’s just your fears.”
“No, I think it’s true. Fleep wanted me here; tried to encourage me. But forces behind the scene persuaded her otherwise, or just overruled her. Perhaps on this and a lot of other matters as well. You have power struggles in a town like this, not solely ruled by alts and their characters.”
“I understand that.” Karoz gazed up the hill, inspired. “But we can change that. We don’t emphasize the collages. We emphasize the philosophy *behind* the collages.”
Was it as simple as that? the male Baker pondered. And where was Baker Blinker today? What was *her* current ruling on the subject? Baker Bloch guessed that she’s going along with Karoz, as usual in the end. She bends her will to his. At least about all this TILE stuff: temples, colleges, etc.
“Okay, let’s go see what you’ve got so far, Karoz.” I through Baker Bloch have accepted the idea of letting go.
“*Swell,” and he dashed up the green, green slope with this. Like a man of 30 instead of the 60 he is.
I admittedly had a hard time keeping up.
The Wild Wild West they called it in the Far East, but most of the wilds was hidden. You’d need a powerful telescope and also know exactly the right location to spot. And the Red Umbrella predicted it all. Again.
Far East was different, they proudly declared. No wilds, no crime much atall in comparison. But the murder of Dr. Rabbid Baumbeer, child of grieving Rabbit 01 and Rabbit 02 over in Braynard’s Place, changed all that. Red, red rats were found to infest their incomplete sewers and subways (etc.) as well. Red from feasting on blood this time, red from the tainted water left behind.
Golden Jim from Gaston was here to investigate and, hopefully, put a stop sign to all that new redness over in the east. He knew exactly which one to choose.
—–
“Where’s your chief?” asked Ms. Tanner to the staff psychiatrist the next day at the police station.
“Oh, he *claims* he’s on vacation over at NWES on the mainland, but my guess is he’s snooping around for a new case.
“NWES?” Nipsie Tanner declared in surprise. “That’s where *I’m* from.”
“Well I’ll be,” offered back Jack “Jiff” Danielsonlanderscroft, knowing more than he’s letting on.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0016, 0410, collages 2d, Gaston+, Jeogeot, NWES Island, Red Umbrella
“So where would you like to go Ms. Tanner?”
Nipsie Tanner looked around the room. “Oh (*sigh*), I don’t know. Just away from — here.” She points. “How about that middle one over there.”
“Middle one it is.” George V. Norris gives her a ticket to ride.
—–
“Welcome, dad-i-o.”
—–
Aah. This is the *life*, she thinks later by the “Black Side” pool. Tomorrow I will go check out the local police station; see how it measures up.
She couldn’t help mixing business with pleasure.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0016, 0409, Gaston+, Jeogeot, NWES Island
“Look Gramma. A bunny rabbit!”
“Nice, Toddles. Are you ready to go to the next museum? Grampa wants to buy him some guys at that record store next door.”
“Guys?” Toddles turns her head briefly to stare at her mother’s mother.
“Gunn(s) I meant there.” Alice Farrowheart wondered about the mistake, though. She had studied Sigmund Fraud in college and didn’t think all of his theories were bunk. Like tongue slips.
Toddles swings carefree toward Sam Parr Collage 09 again, arms restless. “Why is his *brains* leaking into that rabbit?”
Alice walks toward the collage to study more of what the child was talking about. Indeed, the “brains” of the green figure in the collage seemed to be leaking into the “rabbit”, and from not one but two directions: from the west and also from the south. And what was this landscape? The Heartland? Looked like The Heartland.
The next morning, Alice Farrowheart read about the death of young Dr. Rabbid Baumbeer in the NWES Gazette and wondered about the synchronicity with the likewise rabbit spied by her granddaughter in the Red Umbrella Gallery. She’d also studied Carl Young in collage in the same course. Did she think: collage?
She went back to the Red Umbrella in the afternoon. And the afternoon after that. And then a final time on the 3rd of November, when she decided to phone the local police department about the matter. Synchronicity can perhaps solve crimes!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0016, 0408, Black Ice, collages 2d, Jeogeot, NWES Island, Red Umbrella
They all looked away from Rabbit 01 after he’d finished his statement, toward the evil city that had taken another child. A child psychiatrist in this case. *Functional* wee one; even worse.
“Now we’re having trouble in the Far East, even,” says Chief Nipsie Tanner, half to herself. “Better think about opening another police department over there in the boondocks.”
“Yes, Ms. Tanner,” everyone around dutifully recites, making her even more irritated. She must get away from the herd sometime soon again. Escape to the hills. Escape this — costume.
“A sewer,” speaks Tanner again, picturing it in her mind. So close to heaven yet so far.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0016, 0407, Apple's Orchard, Jeogeot, Neptune, NWES Island
“Now I’m going to turn around,” Dr. Baumbeer declared, “and let’s see if you’ve chosen the correct chairs.”
He turns around. “Very good, all. Honestly, I thought that Gill here may be confused about the red and blue chairs, since he is both red and blue. But his *hair* is yellow, and he has correctly deduced, or you gals have helped him deduce, that that is his defining color, since it covers *both* hemispheres. And Blue Berry Girl, that naturally leaves you with the blue chair, and, likewise, you (he points to the east chair), Lu Ellen, with the red. Thank you all.”
“You’re welcome,” all mutter to one degree or another. Enthusiasm wasn’t their strongest suit tonight. Each had another motivation for being here.
“So now I’ll assume my own chair, which is the west one, the green one.” He sits down in the appropriate chair. The meeting to find True Center can come to order now.
“Now Gill, let’s start with you. How did you come to Black Dragon and what is your motivation for being here?” But Gill Alex continues to lock stares with Blue Berry Girl across the way and doesn’t answer.
“Okay, moving on then, I suppose, let’s see what you, Lu Ellen, has to say about that topic.
“I’m here to kill someone,” she spoke plainly, laying all the cards down on the table. As one, both Gill Alex and Blue Berry Girl rotate and stare at her the doctor instead.
“W-who would that be, dearest?” continued Baumbeer, starting to sweat due to all the staring.
“*You*.” Ka-POW!! POW POW!! *POP* POW!!
Meeting adjourned.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0016, 0406, Apple's Orchard, Jeogeot, NWES Island
“There is some hope here in the upper part of Black Dragon.”
“Black Drake,” she corrected.
“Right. But, see? More black than green here, black equaling rented or ‘in use’.”
“Especially around Black Drake Square,” she offered, taking a better gander.
“Black Dragon,” I corrected in turn.
“Sure. So. You’re saying this is one of those neighborhoods that could work for further stories.”
“Well, we have Rock Ramby and partner Vain and Artery Boy in the neighborhood already. He goes by Gill Alex now, in honor of his red and blue splitness.”
“I get that,” she responded. “No one else will, but I get it.”
“Like the RR (in Wazob).”
“Got it.”
“And then, let’s see, there’s the Red Umbrella of course, then Spunky’s, a local, popular eating and drinking joint.”
“Popular, local drinking and eating establishment,” she agrees.
“Then another gallery across the way from the Red Umbrella. And then, as we speak, there’s a dude over there who’s rented the place next door to it. And then, as soon as I rented the building for *our* gallery, someone almost immediately rented the building next door. See, Hucka Doobie? It’s infectious. Everything happens in clusters.”
“Like a gumball machine. The black is clustering together amongst the green. In Black.”
“And *then*, there’s Apple’s Orchard.”
“Applewood, yes.”
A new Black Dragon record store with gunn(s).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0016, 0405, Black Ice, Jeogeot, NWES Island
She was having that dream where she was looking everywhere for the correct script. Under the coke machine? Not there.
Heading down from here.
Sewers, eww! The underbelly of society itself. The discarded, the disorganized. They can go to Sh-t Hell for all she cares. Up again.
And up again.
Doors open. Her mother giving birth to her. Top of the head appears. No red hair atall. She quickly hits close.
She was looking for her father to speak to him in heaven, for surely that’s where he is. Being a martyr to the cause and all. But there was no door to heaven on this elevator. Only the red place.
She had missed the portal. At the end of the sewer where you have to wade through the most sh-t to get to. The highest is found in the lowest.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0016, 0404, Apple's Orchard, Jeogeot, NWES Island
Sunklands 