Category Archives: NORTH

October 29, 2022 · 12:15 pm

Shelley’s castle (Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?)

“You are me and I am you. You have a (phallus) and so do I.”

“Not quite,” I said back to Franklin, green legs still in the distance.

There. That’s better.

“Like I was saying before the interruption, we’re the same *core* but different up here. It’s Our Second Lyfe, not My Second Lyfe.”

“Let’s go to the (Roost Never Sleeps) castle again and see,” Franklin requests. I had no choice but to follow her because of the, you know, being one thing. I was starting to question our differences as well. One of us could get *absorbed* — didn’t want that. But I knew it would be Franklin if so.

And, true enough, by the time we reached that more central castle across the way, she was gone. I looked down at my man pants. Was it actually *real* now? I had to see.

[delete picture]

No, just a better fit still. My hair had a tinge of green in it but that’s all. Arthur/Lemont would be *so* relieved if he were here witnessing this. But he’s somewhere off with Roberts — said they also had things to talk about. I suspect: more absorbing. Maybe. Perhaps it will be different in their case.

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October 29, 2022 · 10:32 am

preservation

My Lebettu Castle is still there in all its glory, seen here in a “Phototools — Still Life” environment. The library remains at its center, its core. However since I’ve been retired from same for *8* months now, it may be time to move on. I revisited the co-workers I was probably closest to a couple of weeks back and exchanged pleasantries and caught up with the latest. My old position had shifted into something new which helped the team, but also probably marked the end of a more interactive involvement with the overall campus in the way I fostered, a continuation from past practices. *Writing* is my job now, that and the accompanying art and photography. And also I view daily hiking as an extension of this, a needed opposite and balancing pole to virtual reality. It’s a good life. 🙂 I explore both.

Moving forward, I’m almost 1/2way done with the current Sunklands photo-novel, 35 in a series of “we”ll see”. Characters keep evolving. I am almost as much there as I am here.

I did not maintain contact with others outside my team. I was as much a part of campus as a whole as the library — theoretically. It was a perfect balance for a while, me acting as one man juggler. But it could not go on. I passed into retirement as naturally as about anyone could, thanks in part to the pandemic and the changes it wrought. It certainly contained echoes of actual death. I know better what to expect.

There have been other libraries in other times. Even now, in a virtual setting and obviously on a much smaller scale, I still have one, another echo. A friend died there.

I can still go inside the special part created by new-ish head Miss Ouri and read books, some of which are even my own.

Like this one.

There still exists a dividing point between Ordinary/Mundane and Special. It’s all in the pages.

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October 28, 2022 · 6:02 am

Franklin was shrunk down to size.

“We have a read on the shack, Control, over.” No answer.

“Repeat, we have a read on the shack, over.” No answer for a while again, then:

“Uh, copy that, Mission, do you see anyone down below? Over.”

Norris pauses himself now, partly out of spite. “Yes, we have green legs, repeat, green legs. Green as frogs, over.”

They could take her out now but it would mean sacrificing the pilot. Stan talked the possibility over with Tom. When will we get a better chance? rationalized the latter.

“Okay, Mission, we’re going to ask you to go straight in on her, repeat, straight – in – on – her. As in kamikaze, over.”

A longer pause. How much did Norris value his artificial life? Enough to break free of Control? He decided to sacrifice himself but go out on his own terms.

“Read that, Control. Going – straight – in.” And he did, except a little to the side, the left one I believe, hitting the boat. Or the right one, pulverizing the rose colored cottage. But not totally straight, thus most likely not wiping out Franklin under the Umbrella.

Roberts of course heard the crash from just over the rocks and came rushing, and Shelley and Lemont heard too from their beach just beyond and did the same. Collision in a different way. Two arcs of a story not yet met.

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October 27, 2022 · 8:34 am

00350312

“Thanks for coming to rescue me, *Lemont*.”

“You’re very welcome dearest. But you can *really* thank your Venus Cage necklace, or at least the photo of it.”

“Right. Didn’t remember anything about the Umbrella Club until I pulled it out of my purse and took a look. Angles aren’t right in the black and white photograph. Can’t figure out where it is taken on the body.”

“It’s not a body.”

“Yeah, I know that now. But just the studying, the trying to figure it out, changed me. I can never go back now. I remain under the Umbrella. Figuratively, of course, because here we’re out in the sun still. Where is our umbrella anyway?”

“Stashed away for a rainy day,” he said.

She turned on her side. “And… I don’t think I desire to wear purple any more. That must go along with (the change). Or when I do it’s *my* choice. She shaked her index finger to reinforce her point. Shelley she was through and through, she thought.

But Lemont knew the situation could change. Good now for them. But George/The Musician was still out there somewhere.

And Roberts remained just around the corner.

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October 26, 2022 · 1:43 pm

gloryous night 02

“Something happened in Belliseria, Johnny, I mean *Arthur* — DAMN: **Lemont**.”

“Yes??” Much like Mr. Ubermodel at the time, he was all ears. Where has she been???

“Anyway, it was undone. The Orient, Johnny Arthur Lemont. Thing like that can happen there.”

“So… something *happened* in Belliseria and… *unhappened* in Omega?” He began thinking the obvious.

“Yes. I went a little — crazy.”

We’ll have to start over, he thought here. We’ll just have to move on and start over.

“Where are you *now*??” he said into the receiver in his house in Nautilus. *Their* house. If he can find her and bring her back and she’s okay after that.

She looked around. “Bus,” she managed. “Heading… um, don’t know what direction.”

“Can you see the Sun?” Lemont tried.

“No. Dark.” Void, she thought. Was she *there*? Had she been cursed through being so mean to Johnny?”

“Anyone with you now?”

She had to keep driving, but she glanced around the bus real quick. She wasn’t sure otherwise. “No,” she said after checking, returning her eyes to the road.

“Do you have another tracker on you besides the phone? Doesn’t seem to be working as such now — may be too far away. Maybe from that Umbrella Club you were at?”

Umbrella Club, she thought. She doesn’t recall an Umbrella Club. Then she remembered legs — removing them from the sun back into the shade. The torch-like sun. So hot. Did she have another tracker about her? She recalled… a photograph.

(to be continued)

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October 16, 2022 · 2:58 pm

thorns and roses

“Okay, Liz is your kid. I get it. Whether factually or fictionally — doesn’t matter.”

“I am Arthur Kill,” states actor Lemont Sanford beside her, also staring at the “Break the chain” statue by Eva, “but I am also me. We made love in both ways.”

“How do I approach *Liz* with this is what I’m wondering?”

“Tell her we have a common aunt that convinced you to go with me over George — The Musician if you will.”

“Oh, he will,” replies Shelley to this. “I’m kind of sick of the ambiguity.”

“Then tell him.”

“No,” she stands firm. “I’m done with it. The wedding is off. We will get married instead. Just like in the film.”

“What film?”

“Stop it, you know what film.”

“The film of our life?”

She sighs. “We have the same aunt. We are already married in a way, future moved to present. We have a child, 1/2 black and 1/2 white, just like us. *No* ambiguities. We are a couple, a team. I, I mean, *they* brought you back to play Kill van Kull, the sophisticated twin cousin of Arthur. You did swell — too much so, as character became reality, bringing Esther in the picture as well.”

“Act I, scene 7. How could I forget.”

“Cut back to the Inky Man from the Boulder Scene still hiding in the rocks, head in the sand — *cringing* (recoiling) instead of Fred. But it *wasn’t* Chaplin. Instead…”

“Keaton, Buster Keaton,” Arthur, I mean, Lemont finished the thought.

“They were heading for the church. I know where this is now!”

“Let’s go,” he deadpanned. No ambiguities any more. The Cross has spoken.

In this “joke” above, Buster recoils after realizing the potential bride he approached from behind is actually an African-American. Although this joke is overtly racial (one of the few in Keaton’s oeuvre), modern audiences may not realize that at the time it would have been illegal for Buster to marry this woman.

“I’ve watched it over and over,” Shelley says about the scene. “This is overt, *period*; this is a line drawn in the sand. No going back! Save the boulder sequence the rest is trite garbage.”

Lemont Sanford mostly agreed. They’d have to edit, they settled. He had a new role. Let’s begin again; technicolor; picket fences.

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October 16, 2022 · 5:35 am

00350211: staying on Nautilus instead…

“Shoo, cat. I’m not actually a bird.

“Hey, watch it! You nipped me you little booger. I’m *not* a *bird* (!). Not really, although, come to think of it, I might taste like chicken.”

—–

A star once more, a pink to match the green in the middle of The Cross which made me dance and drove the toys away, right and left (she thinks).

A red statue created as mate and partner to the blue on the other side of the star-man. Are these toys as well (she ponders)? No (she decides).

—–

I had thoughtful Blue Bird sit at a handy bar while I continued to remotely look around the artsy place set on a high beige ridge of the North, the same Nautilus continent region featured in every other post of this here photo-novel so far, save 3. Staring at her from this angle, I realized that she was also part cat as well as part bird, offering up an alternate explanation for the black cat’s nipping back there, like attracting like. Love nip it was in this scenario, not a hunger bite. Blue Bird considers this as I explain it to her, but rejects it as a partial answer. “We have enough 1/2 and 1/2s in these photo-novels, 35 in a series of 35 so far. Time to go for the all or nothings more don’t you think?”

She was a woman, I was in a gallery dedicated to the efforts and sufferings of women, what could I do? I had to shore things up a bit here; follow her advice put to me kindly instead of harshly, picket fence instead of barb wire. She could have gone with the latter, which would have been more subconsious. Instead: alert and awake, making choices that others would also be pleased with. It satisfied her, I could tell. A suggestion is just that if so framed. I did not have to heed the guidance, although I most likely would have been wise to do so. I ramble…

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October 15, 2022 · 4:43 pm

blue place

“My aunt.” “No, *my* aunt.”

She/he went from the cross…

… to The Cross.

Page’s convincing portrayal of the “church lady” image of Aunt Esther was in marked contrast to the “blue” material of her stand-up act and record albums.

“What can I say, that’s my aunt.” “No it’s *not* (pause) Okay, yes it is. But…” “But what?”

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October 15, 2022 · 7:01 am

00350209

“I really like your giraffe, George. So soft — just like our kiss, tee hee. Say you rode in on it?”

“No, I never said that.” George also enjoyed the kiss but he remembers more a gap, a lack. Something had happened and he can’t quite figure out what. A confusing day, actually. First the thing about the dads and then this.

“So you flew in on that bird thingy you’re sitting on, right?”

“Also incorrect.” How *did* George, I mean, The Musician, get here? And was this an actual rehearsal for their wedding? Or were they just checking out the location, perhaps not even convinced yet this is the right place for their super important event?

“I mean, you look like you’re 1/2 bird yourself mounted on the thing like you are, a *bird* yourself.” She tried to laugh but found the utterances couldn’t quite reach her lips, her still warm lips, but cooling quickly, the memory of the softness fading.

“Oz,” he then said, remembering. 1/2 man 1/2 bird indeed. He flew in from his imagination. We’ll go there soon, but first the couple need to pay a little trip to Dr. Rabbid Baumbeer via his Rabbid Rabbits group. The Musician (George) explained it was necessary because of the gap he felt, which Shelley was also now experiencing. They had to resolve that before the wedding fer sure. The Musician was convinced that the doctor could fix their issues, family stuff as well.

They spent half the night arguing who Aunt Bernice belonged to, his side of the family or hers. This could not continue; something had to be done.

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October 15, 2022 · 3:50 am

00350208

“Isn’t it beautiful, George?”

“Musician here,” requests George, who goes by that around other people generally. “Until we’re properly married anyway and tied the knot between us.”

“Oh George,” she said, and kissed him in front of the vanilla layer cake also tied with a knot, anticipating the big event. There’s no doubt they like each other a whole lot, probably a whole whole lot. But do they love each other? Now is the time to find out if ever.

“Now your turn, George.”

“Your turn, *Musician*, what? Your father is standing right over there.”

“My father has been dead for 10 years. That’s *your* father. Newt, remember?”

“Newt, right.” He remembered. He thought.

“And he’s been calling you George for I don’t know how long. Probably since we started dating. *Anyways*, kiss me again. Put on that new hud you got and let me have it. Newt’s too busy trying out the tea to pay attention. Plant a good one right on the kisser.”

Wait… that *was* her father. He said this to her as she puckered in front of him, making her think as well.

“Oh George,” she decided, “let’s not argue about relatives right here, right now. Let’s focus on us. Whatever family issues remain to be solved, we’ll be the stable point in the middle of it all — that’s the important thing. ” She then made the first move herself right when Newt — whoever’s father he was — put his own thing to his lips, synchronicity noted.

And let’s go with Shelley’s father. Too much lead up text to change if I don’t. It’ll work out.

(to be continued of course)

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