NOVEL 18
Bens
He looked out the window at the red light just in the bay. “Everyone knows your bar here is basically the center of Bena, Ben. Ha! Even your name begins Bena — hadn’t thought of that.”
Ben Wolf’s thought of it. “Nice of you to say.”
“Nice in the day here — with no one around,” returns Barry X. Vampire, the X added only this morning after his first beer. He explained to Ben that he’s keeping the Vampire last name, even though he’s giving up vampiring [sic?]. The “X”, then, refers to his *ex* vampire status. But keeping the Vampire last name might be handy if he ran into one of those nasty nests, like he use to be a part of when Bena was plain ol’ ugly Bennington. He turned to Ben at the time. “Remember those days?”
Ben Wolf remembered those days. Still the town starting with his name. Of course he remembers. He ran the show even more back then.
“Where will you go?” asked Ben back in the present, wishing Barry would not cover the tip jar with his arm. Oh well — no one here right now to tip; Barry certainly never does. All the vampires are nighty night during the day. Except for Barry, because he’s an ex and all. As of yesterday. Sold his coffin to some goofy joe named Pitch Darkly. Gotta place just in back of the cemetery now. Ben makes a mental note to walk back there sometime soon and check it out. Close to the Mother Place. Maybe too close.
“Thought you might help me with that, Ben,” answers Barry to Ben’s present question. “I like Corsica. I want to stay with the peaks and all. Like, you know, Mother’s Place is perched upon. He pivots in what he thinks is the correct direction toward the pivotal house.
“I told you not to mention that place in here. It gets the vampires all excited.” Then Ben, again, realizes it’s day. “Okay, okay, I suppose this *one* time it’s okay to talk about the Great Mother.”
“And peaks in general.”
(to be continued?)
on the border
We catch up with Barry X. Vampire in Urqhart, not far from Instabar on the Corsica continent atall. Like anyone who lives long enough, vampires obviously included, Barry has turned to novel writing to try to explain the inner life he sees mirrored in the outer life all around him. Recent killings in Instabar, actually, have planted the seeds for his next inspiration, centered on a *man* named Larch who was at the center of it all. In reading about the deaths in the local newspaper and then researching the man, Barry X. quickly found out that the lone pick in his profile was the Loch Ness Inn in a Scottish Highland related sim, with the description simply reading, “Old Country.” Sounds like his kind of place. He teleports over…
… only to find lego people living in a stone cottage on a hill overlooking the world famous lock. The inn must have moved, Barry deduced wrongly. He decides to ask one of the composite creatures if they knew of a Mr. Larch. “*The* Larch,” came one of their squeaky voices, and then Barry told them of the murders, which they didn’t know about, this Winfield 5 and his husband-wife Winnie. They said they warned him not to go back and stay here in the Old Country and that one of their “type” would do him in eventually — they saw it in the tea leaves and the cards and several other divining methods down through the years now. “‘Who will do him in?'” Winfield 5 asked dramatically when recreating the scene, painting it in vivid, clown-like colors. “‘One of *you* lot,’ it always said back in its various forms,” he relayed. “So Winnie and I racked our brains and gnashed our teeth about this down through the years, wondering why we — one of us; *both* of us — would have any reason to kill our good and kind and trusted friend Mr. Larch. But: now we have our answer.”
“Yes,” quickly added Winnie by his side, obviously sad at the death of his friend but still greatly relieved to know what the scrying messages were about after all this time.
Barry X. turns to take in the view and think about lego people and creatures in general. A lego monster killed Larch and the rest of his neighborhood watch gang attending that meeting held at DC Universe, he ruminates while watching what he thought might be the Loch Ness monster itself float by the ruins of the castle below him but which turned out to only be a line of porpoises. The meaning to his mystery, he realized, may turn out to be just as elusive.
What was the name of that castle down there? He couldn’t recall right off. It hit too close to home.
views
He finds out the rather shocking news. “The story begins in Urqhart,” he scribbles on the blank page back at home base. “Or is it Urq-U-hart.” Classic opening lines, he thinks while staring down. He’s beginning his own “Moby Prick.” Success at last!
A preliminary name is “The Revolving Tire”, after this lone object in the yard next to his. It’s truly in Urqhart, even if he isn’t. But he must find a better writing desk to view the thing for inspiration. Can’t keep penning his Great American Novel at the kitchen table!
Cathy knocks on the door. Cathy Love Peace Hippie Child is a girl Barry met down at the local biker bar the first night in town. He needed her then, but now, since he’s started what he feels will be his groundbreaking novel, she may be more distraction than necessity.
Bed, she thinks while staring in and thinking of the first night as well. *Definitely* want more of that.
Barry rather reluctantly answers the door, thinking he can take her shopping with him for that desk.
presents
Dawn. March 8th, 2020. She wakes up in that bed again, Barry X.’s arms wrapped around her “tip jars”. Life is good. She remembers to set her watch ahead an hour. Fall back spring forward, she recites in her mind. Best to put the coffee on; surprise Barry X. with a fresh brew. That’s a woman’s duty: to rise before the man and get his day off to a good start. Not so-so, not even great perhaps. But good at the very least.
She reviewed events of the night before. Barry read her the first few pages of his new novel he’d written that day while she was at work, his GAN he called it. She was tired and probably didn’t appreciate it as much as she should. Thus another reason for the coffee, the breakfast. Let’s see, she thinks to herself while rummaging around his refrigerator purchased the day before that, along with a proper writing desk. No more writing his GAN on the kitchen table! he demanded. “All right, all right,” she tried to calm. “Don’t get your panties all in a wad.” It was an expression her mother use to use with her all the time, and now she throws it around indiscriminately to men and women alike. “Don’t get your panties all in a wad,” she said to Gadfly the cook that day when he demanded she pick his dishes up from the counter faster so the customers wouldn’t be served cold food. “Don’t get your panties in a wad!” she shouted at Horace the dog out back, incessantly barking during her only break of the day, a 15 minuter which turned into a 1/2 hour one when she then stepped into one of his special presents beside the door. “Arrrrgh!” she screamed. “ARRRGH!” she exclaimed even louder, then took off the soiled, high heel shoe and wobblingly made her way down the bank to the stream below, washing and washing it until the present was removed and the shiny black gloss of the void revealed again. Putting it back on at the top, she fumingly pointed at Horace all the way to the door, deftly avoiding what remained of the present. “Tumblestone!” she called to the busboy when re-entering the bar. “Clean up outside the back door. And *watch* where you step!” She then glared at Gadfly, at Jake the bartender, daring them to say anything about her break running over. They’d seen her in these moods before. Best to not have a dumpster fire again. Or worse.
She removes eggs from the refrigerator and looks around for a frying pan.
(to be continued?)
on the border 02
Anty Jim says he never saw SEAN pass through this place, and Arthur Kill’s informant sees everything, what with all those ants crawling all over his two eyes. Many eyes now! Kill considers for the first time that he planted Anty at the wrong Last Drop cafe. He just figured since it was in the center of Big Sink that this was the correct one. What better place to open the egg? he calculated. Start of a new religion. Beyond Second Life. Sunklands, center of.
But Anty, again, sees everything. SEAN was never here. He’d have to check the others. And he was so sure of this. He even booked vacation time next week he’ll have to absorb the cost of!
—–
When he returns home to [delete sim name] he checks this Veyot woman’s web feed for more Last Drop locations but finds something unexpected during the perusing.
“Barry X. Vampire,” he mutters. “As I breathe and stink.” His priorities suddenly shift. Barry would know where SEAN was. If I find Barry, he realizes, then I find the egg. Last I heard, I just missed him in Urqhart. Shame. He would have made a pretty head mounted on my trophy wall.
The phone rings. It was Axis again.
“Get there,” he monotoned on the opposite end, then *click*. Arthur Kill just stared at the receiver for a couple of minutes until he remembered to place it back in its carriage.
middle end 01
Barry X. Vampire never made it out of the original 9×9 square of sims that included his home town of Bena(ngatron). He was still in Fearzum, struggling to choose a direction for escape. “West, obviously,” he might mutter at some point. “Or is it South?” Little did he know until today that the correct way out was *centre*, right in the middle of it all. I’m almost positive of this.
He uses his gift he’s had from childhood in seeing this centre in any sim he’s in. A red beam connecting ground and sky always indicates it — he *can’t escape.* It was inevitable that he grew to understand what this meant all along. Particularly frustrated at this day’s events and the inability to write, he’s drawn toward it. For calm. For peace. Maybe for even love. The love he misses from Cathy Love Peace Hippie Child, perhaps, left behind in Urqhart along with the nifty, many windowed house he liked so much, with the spinning tire outside that inspired the writing of his current novel, the newest working title being “Wheels Go Round”.
And what do wheels spin round? A centre. It was inevitable. Guided by the beam he starts to move away from a central western perimeter position. Due east — interesting again. What would he pass on this central line in?
For one, this fence sequestering a square of grassy green off from the rest of Fearzum-town. Not quite the past but getting there.
At its corner, he starts sensing the egg. Is this white object here an egg? It would be about the right volume, he ponders, if not the right shape. Is it in disguise?
Then he walks over to the other side and sees the “Multiscene” label and determines it probably isn’t. Onward and inward!
middle end 02
He picks up the central 128 line on the other side of the World Wide Heroes Institute Building from the “egg”.
He pauses to take in the scenery. Tall, futuristic buildings still block his view of the centre from here. From the past he was destined to enter all along. He continues…
… to quickly come on this centre, also along a wall separating off a parcel from the rest of Fearzum-town, like he just passed. But this was different. This *hole* also contained objects. Past objects, Ancient even.
He stands as close to the actual centre as he can get and looks inside.
Hold on. What’s *this*? He reads the description: “Etoile”. Star in French. What is a *star* doing in the middle of the past?
middle end 03
He’s gone as far as possible into the past from the future present. He can only peer inside. But this star — is it the key? Is it — the *egg*?
Barry X. Vampire suddenly realizes he shouldn’t have killed off Jeffrie Phillips in his new novel, and that Arthur Kill is now over his head in searching for the egg. Cathy Love Peace Hippie Child shouldn’t have been bumped off either. Arthur Kill should have remained on Staten Island. Marty should have never summoned him. The list goes on and on actually. He’ll have to destroy pages 32-64 as soon as he gets back to his campsite apartment. 1/2 of his novel suddenly vanished into thin air! But this star in front of him, illuminated by the red, is real. The star, this Etoile object, means something.
Peter, he understood, looking at a map in his head as well. Tracy Austin — Katy Kidd’s mother, who of course grows up to be Kate (The Real) McCoy. Tennis — a friend (88). “Lamb.” Peter, who seems to be the same as Axis even if he himself doesn’t realize it yet, is trapped in Fearzum — just like I am — because he is one with the Lamb, one with God perhaps. The Lord: The Lamb. Wheeler (Venus) has made it so. Marty has just made himself Starless and Bible Black, losing what is in front of me to behold. The star! “Etoile,” he repeats aloud.
He stares and stares until he becomes one with it.
NOVEL 19
section 02 02
Marty never got that dye, at least this night. Linda had moved into the treehouse next to the bar to save money — couldn’t afford even the one bedroom house across the road now due to sinking her money into all those Corona-V’s. The lush. Plus it was a shorter walk to the bar and a shorter stagger back home, she explained to hubbie Marty the next morning. I should also add that she used the bar’s bathroom for her business. “Maybe we should just move in together (again),” she suggested during her morning martini, temporarily forgetting about the deficiencies of Marty’s own bathroom. “Where’s *Marty’s* martini?” she started asking irritatingly after a couple of deep draws, which didn’t set the stage well.
Marty didn’t want this. He had the freedom now to do what he wanted, see who he wanted to see. He was still married true, but…
—–
Barry X. Vampire paused here in his writing. So Marty is still married to Linda, he thought, but they’re kind of estranged, even though they live in the same sim. And Marty is pining for former bar employee Cathy Love Peace Hippie Child, the one who stepped in the doo out back and is also unable to give Marty his old doo (hair) back. He tapped the No. 2 Kendal pencil lightly against the two manuscript pages he had typed tonight. And where was he? we must ask (to continue setting the stage). In the Centre of It All? But that’s where we’ve seen Olive of “Olive Green Pink” fame. Is Barry’s book *that* book? Oh… something is happening in the present in Urqhart as Marty and Linda begin stirring about. She’s in place for the Big Reveal — better head back.
—–
“Just over there,” she explains further while pointing through the slats of the upper deck’s fence.
“A ball park?” exclaimed Marty in disbelieve. “Out in the middle of *nowhere*?” So this is the big change he was warned about. By Barry (Barry?).
switch
“I’ve got to figure out where I *am* in this story, Inspector-Chef Petty. Am I in Storybrook? Or — here?” The answer was obvious. He was here. He draws back out of the media feed in his adopted house in Greater Urqhart.
The butler came to him from behind with an offer of tea, which would have been his 6th drink of the day to add to 2 iced expresso beverages, 2 hot coffees, and 1 other tea, a blend of caffeinated and decaffeinated Earl Grey, mix in some Orange and Spice for pizzazz. Just like the one being offered.
“No thank you, Alberta, not right now.” Then Barry spoke again to the butler over his shoulder. “Say, you’re from Corsica originally, aren’t you Alberta?”
“Yes sir. The western part, or, more correctly, the southwestern part. I originate from a place called Butler as well. I am a butler and my place of origin is Butler but it is all coincidence.” He spoke methodically, something like a robot but not quite. There was still warmth in his voice. And the overtone trill of an insect.
Wannabe famous novelist Barry X. Vampire knew there were no coincidences, at least not in His Second Lyfe, by experience. He began to query more. It was thus here that he learned of his alternate existence on the border between Golen Hill and Golen Bay, with the same butler, with the same media feed, with Inspector-Chef Petty still by his side reading “Floydadada” or the “Necronomicon” or whatever the current book rage was, red one be damned. He will *not* pick up the red one and read, no sir-rie. But then he did — just found the book in his hands all of a sudden. Inspector-Chef Petty begins to red. A red door appears behind him — her, a portal…
“It is known for its great belts,” continued the butler, as if nothing had happened, no movement or teleportation occurred. “Black Diamond style. The word Belt is incorporated into the word Butler, after all. Think about it sir. Think long and hard about it. I will leave the great belt with you to decide.
Decide *what*? Barry X. Vampire ruminated as the butler left the object on the table before retreating back downstairs somewhere. “*Somewhere*, he then realizes, seeing the portal for what it is. Amazon — Basin. *Comet.*
The door opens.
Barry? Come in, Barry.
She was just finishing up Movement 3 of the Platinum Prune suite of songs, popular in Corsica Prime these days. Her hands lift from the keyboard after an ending chord of complex expression.
“There. 3 of 5 done. Or is it 6? Jeffrie, be a dear and pull up the big fat map of the continent for all to see where we are presently.”
Listening Jeffrie on a nearby couch complied.
“*4* of 5,” exclaimed Audrey, looking beyond the facade of Our Second Life into the frame of it all. “Lordly I must have been on the wrong movement after all. We’re at Drane Hill!”
She peered remotely beyond the juxtaposed black and white statues outside toward the hill above the cabin they rented last night, all out in the air and exposed and without any attached Big Inside at all, unlike the story with Storybrook and its Kraken Hill. Marsha “Pink” Krakow and her family, kin and extended, should be arriving soon to breathe in the fresh air of a new location, feet grounded again.
And I suspect wannabe famous novelist Barry X. Vampire is around as well, given the red beam and all.
Barry X. Vampire
I have a chance to return, finish my novel. “The Spinning Tire.” “The Revolving Wheel.” Still working on it. Still working on the text. I should talk to Buddy about it, the butler.
—–
“Wait, you’re Alberta.”
“Correct, sir. Did you enjoy the Great Belt?”
“Umm.”
“Did I tell you I am a butler and my original home was Butler? In Pennsylvania of the US of A.”
“Yes, I think you mentioned it. But what about *Urqhart*? We’re in Greater Urqhart, true. But if I choose to buy that land, or *retain* that land, we’ll be right in the heart of things. Green, Alberta. The land is so green. It feels like home to me. I’m not sure about Baker Bloch, though. I think he’d like to downsize and keep things in Fordham over on that arid Nautilus ridge. Obviously I’d like the opposite — seems like it. What — how do you weigh in, Alberta? You’re a trusted friend, and you know the area. What about that dried up body of water over there, Sox Pond and Indian Lake combined? Seems like that’s enough to keep me — us — in the area and away from Nautilus.”
“I think sir, considering all the possible pathways, that there is no true wrong decision at this point. And NWES —”
“Ah yes. NWES. Export of bits and pieces of Collagesity into that still growing, massive burg. Fast becoming the Tokyo of Mainland, Our Second Lyfe it is.”
“Marty is there,” suggested Alberta. “But also Marty is *here*.”
—–
You can start with the house; build out from that.”
elephants
“Well. That looks like it for Collagesity in Nautilus, Hucka Doobie. Can’t upgrade beyond a 8192 here any more. Only way to expand is to move to Urqhart.”
“Or thereabouts,” amended Hucka. “Not *quite* in Urqhart.”
“Close enough,” responds the male Baker, perhaps soon to be sole owner of this downsized Collagesity if things swing back the other way. Wheeler Wilson will be out on her high heels. I wonder what that would do to the somewhat diminished town moving forward? Will Carrcassonnee fully return? *Can* she? With perhaps help from relative newcomer and fellow one eyed monster Frank, for example? Trouble is, there might not be a Temple of TILE to house them, if so.
Bottom line: I have an 11924 in Urqhart or thereabouts to play around with or else sell again in the next several weeks, probably for at least the same amount I bought it. Only thing risked, really, is increase of tier for the month. But like the RL wife said, it’s all for art. Why not? Not much of a risk at all in the bigger picture.
But the sale could be the 8192 in Nautilus. Here.
In my estimation, Hucka Doobie is plotting to eradicate Wheeler from the picture: push the fusion of Collagesity and NWES City and the at least partial absorption of the former into the latter, kind of like what was planned for Collagesity and VHC City several years back in the story of photo-novel 4. We’ll see if Baker Bloch/Barry X. Vampire listens close enough.
“The story of Mainland remains downsizing,” she continues in her urgings. “NWES City is an anomaly in that way. We *must* latch onto that energy. The signs are there.”
“Oesso signs,” replies Baker Bloch, also thinking of the newest collage set in NWES City and its perpetual window. To what, though?
Star?
I think it might be swinging.
lanes
“Selma says Go!”
“You shouldn’t be digging too deep in these hills, Marty. There’s Indian relics that you don’t want to be uncovering.” He indicates the heavily bulldozed, grassy green knoll behind the famous singer/composer.
“Cursed, yeah. I know all about that.”
“The fame,” guessed Barry X. Vampire from his swing, smoking a Marlboro tonight for a particular reason. Marlborough.
“Star,” Marty furthered. “Like Marsha ‘Pink’ Krakow wanted to be. I sent Arthur Kill over to Storybrook to kill all that. But then I had a change of heart. Let her be a star if she chooses. It’s her life to live. I will be hidden darkly in the Beech Grove if she needs me, like New Orleans. I still have a key.”
“Head Inside”
“To success,” Barry finished again.
“To *failure*,” Marty corrected. “Obscurity. It’s what Vain people like us fear the most. To die in Vain when we could have died in Washington D.C.”
“Capitol idea,” came the reply this time.
“Capitol *Records* idea,” and then in Marty’s newish Urqhart garden they played his first non-Capitol hit “Coming Up,” knowing it would inspire Lemon to come back to music one last time. Despite the immense weight of fame and also Yoko Ona. Who we should probably talk to next; get her side of the story.
Pipersville
“Of course, Albert. She *belts* out tunes like no one and she does this at The Diamond owned by a Black (man). We must get in touch with this Jim A.; see what he knows about The Room. Something happened there, er, Alberta… sorry about the name before.”
“That is okay, sir,” Alberta the Selenite butler dutifully assured. “I am but a humble servant, ready to serve.”
“I think I’ll wear the Great Belt again — stare out at the tire.” He knew he could get additional insights this night. Energy was obviously strong here in Urqhart or thereabouts now that Collagesity had been manifested. So exciting! Green: so green here. No arid, desert-like surroundings to deal with any longer. He was *free*.
Alberta returned with the belt. “Here it is, sir. Do you…?”
“No. I can do it,” requested Barry X. Vampire, knowing what Alberta was going to ask. He didn’t need help getting it on this time. He was getting use to the contraption. And the shock. More difficult for a man!
—–
“I think it’s working, Albert!” he called back, happy in the moment.
“That’s very fine, sir.”
—–
He deftly straddled the Baja Bullet, looking around. Star, huh? Yeah, he was in the right place. Now to find Your Mama and, hopefully, Jim A. as well.
Maybe start at the Starlite up there…
no Bland
The Donut Hole, Marty thinks while looking down at it from the high window of the Starlite Lounge, fortunately for him and others one of the last Pipersville landmarks Lt. Salt had on his list to check. Didn’t get there. “And Sweet Alice is the filled void in the middle; no need to go back,” he spoke aloud while turning his red topped option back to the turntables. For every season, I suppose — seasoning. Pepper in this case. Pepper black starry void of 1975 or thereabouts.
He stares thataway now at what’s being filmed…
NOVEL 20
turning ugly
“You can take the Great Belt away, Walter. For now.”
“Buddy, sire,” softly and politely corrected the Selenite butler to his master.
“Yeah, sure. But Poetry and I are happy, Harry. We have some stuff to work on here for a while. Right Poetry?”
“Alberta,” she whispered back to lover Barry X. Vampire.
“What’s that dear?”
“Alberta!”
“Yes, madam?”
a ouija name
“You’re not listed.”
Waka Wajaka turns to face me. “I know.”
(*poof*)
A nearby green dot seemed to indicate he remained around, but I couldn’t re-find the guy.
middle
—–
“You are my *sister*.”
“Maybe.”
—–
continuation
“There’s no middle (sim) on this map, Charlie. What are you (still) hiding from me?”
—–
Better get him (Peter Oesso) back to square 01…
—–
“There was no middle sim on that map back there (in the school), Poetry — sister of mine.”
“Maybe,” she repeated in her pleasant enough voice. Made for a family member.
“I have some questions for you.” But then, looking right at the colorful watercolor painting on the wall while listening to the noisy, meaningless cockatoo chatter on, he realized he needs to ask about umbrella with a capital “U”. Umbrella.
—–
The sister (?) turned ugly again. Better get her back up the stairs just back there to lover Barry X. Vampire for her own middleing centering.
—–
“He was asking about the middle, where I was bourne.”
“What did you tell him?” Barry was itching for more plot revealing. The appearance of Waka Wajaka several days ago had really freaked him out. He had a Freak Out. Hmmm.
“I told them there was a motel. Over in a place with a heart in its name. Room 03 of 05. Secret room as well that acts as a control, a key — spies on the others.” All men are dicks, she was thinking.
“This is more than I’ve heard you talk in a long time, Poetry Dancer,” Barry X. Vampire responded, pleased. “You’ve spoken about this room once before.”
“Maybe,” Poetry replied, staring back at the fire. She had returned to her usual, non-talkative self. Reversion. Ironic, I suppose, that she was beautiful once more. Barry X. Vampire must hurry tonight; get more info out of her if possible. He thought “info” there instead of “information” to save time (for example).
“Room 03,” he prompted. “Big Black Smoke was guarding. Charlie mentions in LOST. Kinks song.” Ahh, he thought, solving part of the mystery himself. The Kinks and Zappa will always be linked now, thanks to the Piera. (David) Watts.
“It is what it is.” No more info will be found 2-night.
Paperville
Sun bathed Poetry, hovering on her more inaccessible balcony, stares over at the town clock, trying to get her bearings. 12:30, no 1:30, no 2. Is this another 5/4ths time keeper? She decides to give it up and go inside to ask lover Barry X. Vampire, since brother Peter Oesso isn’t available right now. Neither would probably lie to her, but Peter was the best bet. For now. Family is forever.
—–
“Barry, is this a sim or a planet?” she starts, trying to figure out the time flying thing. Soo frustrating this place is, arrrgh! She longs for center (sim) again.
Barry, seeing lover Poetry Dancer getting ugly, tells her to go ask Peter. “Just down the stairs outside at the small cafe,” he directs while holding his stuffed stomach full of bread and butter. No use in compounding the mood.
“Thanks,” she barks while angrily striding toward the door. *SLAM* “For nothing,” she then mutters just outside. She takes a deep breath. Calm again. Callmm. She is beautiful once more.
—–
“You can’t see the clock from that balcony,” Peter replies truthfully while continuing to read the town paper at his new table away from the former, umbrella themed one with the perpetual, unreadable music score laying upon it. “Impossible — it’s completely sideways to you there. Might as well be a clock yourself, heh.”
While reviewing the truth of his statement in her mind, Poetry suddenly remembers she has a sister. A brother and a sister. She tells this to Peter.
“Sidereal?” he exclaims, forgetting about the paper, the city as a whole. “What kind of name is *Sidereal?*”
1921
“I wanted to show you this underwater gallery, Barry, to demonstrate that Paperville has gone through many changes, some resulting in the disappearance of the village altogether, at least for a while. The important thing is that the concept carries on. And this same thing should happen to Collagesity. I’m sorry. I cannot allow you to stay. You of course can take Poetry back with you. You have to find her sister for one thing. Please keep up; we’re nearing the end of this section of our journey.”
—–
“You can look and you can look but you won’t find your sister in these series of pictures, Poetry. Axis, the New God of Paperville after all, said she hasn’t been here in a while — ran off with a fellow named Biker several years back now. Went to a place on the mainland called Iris, like an eye. And she was searching for an ‘I’. It went missing in a jumble of tiles numbering 25 down from 26. Now we are on a similar journey, Axis states. A search for center.”
“But we’re *in* the center (sim),” a disappointed, sad Poetry countered Barry, still peering at the people, still searching. That *could* be her in the far back with the white robe, she thinks, eyes squinting in an attempt to focus. Axis, although a New Near God, might not know *everything*. There’s always the 5 percent chance out of 10 that marks it down to 9.5. He has a Diamond of a mind now thanks to Cat-Witch, a true return of David A.B. to his perch at the center of it all. To him…
“Margret,” he prompts, interrupting her reverie and saying her real name for the 1st time in a while. She knows she must pull out of the past…
shoes
“Beautiful place isn’t it?” spoke the biker to his side. Hmm: Biker. “You won’t find a better place.”
“I don’t expect to,” returned Barry X. Vampire, knowing he was being kicked out by the head honcho. “Get your own sphere,” he said on our tour of the underwater gallery, seeing many of the iterations of Paperville in the past. “Collagesity can be as important as Paperville,” he then furthered. “You think about that upon your return.
Barry X. Vampire later contemplated the two were a balance, one focused internally and the other outside of itself, as in the great outdoors. They are kind of backwards from each other in this respect.
In this moment, the train outta here should be arriving any minute. Poetry had to run over to the apartment to retrieve a final thing, she said, but met Hucka Doobie sitting at Peter Oesso’s old spot on the way back. “Don’t — I know you?” she wanting to ask while glancing over, but didn’t have the time. She just passed and nodded.
Hucka had done her work. She would be remembered later on.
NOVEL 21
new
“I don’t understand what I’m suppose to be *learning* here!”
A noise from the back of the room. She had awoken someone. “I’m here. I’m here. I’m here,” the boyish male voice sleepily repeated, as if waking up from a dream. “I’m here.”
But when she got up and turned in surprised response no one was there.
“I’m here, I’m here,” it said, just out of earshot now on the other side of the veil. Only a dunce cap remains. “I’m here.”
new 02
He kissed the cone topped clown head from the back. “I love you,” he cooed. “And I *understand* you.”
He turned and finally saw her. In the flesh! She was scratching her head, but not from something she didn’t understand this time. Lice. Must have got in during the middle of the night. No more sleeping in clown barns!
She hadn’t notice him yet because of all the scratching. Itching and scratching. He could run away — again. But where? Back to his maw? Nah, that wasn’t really an option, although he needed food every once in a while. Tripe: better than entrails at times. It described his life perfectly.
Bubbles, he thought. That’s what I’ll call her. The name just floated into his head like an enclosed air pocket. And once he had a name then talking could commence. “Little girl, little girl,” he began softly, out of earshot again. He knew just how to pitch it to remain unheard. Then: “I’m here, I’m here, I’m — *here*.” The last “here” got through, as he planned. Despite the name (DeBoy, derived from D-Boy or Dunce Boy or one who makes a lot of “D”s and just gets by) this diminutive fellow is quite nuanced and different from us more learned folks. And now he possibly has a friend.
Suisan turned again toward the voice but again saw nothing but a cone. The boy remained invisible to her.
new 03
“Come on and hurry up with that kid’s puzzle, Duncy. I’m ready to start with the *adult* toys.”
“Alright.”
“Now Duncy. *Separate* your words; don’t compound everything you say just because you are *lazy*.”
“All… right.” He was trying so hard not to be stupid and duncy. He so wanted to earn a new nickname from Bubbles.
And later he would: The Boy or just Boy, derived from DeBoy (derived from D-Boy or Dunce-Boy or one who makes a lot of “D”‘s). Because one day, not too far in the future and maybe even today, The Boy from DeBoy would open Suisan’s eyes to the world around her and the horror it entails. Entrails.
“Maw came back last night,” DeBoy (still DeBoy here and not The Boy — yet) offered while keeping alert for a puzzle piece with a brightly painted clown face on it. “Fresh from Stomach Land.”
“Now, *Duncy*. You *know* there’s no such place.”
“There tis too.” He had a while to go in Suisan’s eyes. She could see the boy now but the cone still dominated the face. Sometimes — often — he became merely a cone again. DeCone.
“There it is!” he exclaims, spotting it with his keen eyes. He inserts another piece. Shouldn’t be long now.
news
Bake’s Bakery has moved in to one of the 2 lower rooms of my more downtown Teepot apartment. The demon hot beverage dispenser remains, ha ha (he he he (ho ho ho ho)).
Just around the corner (hu hu!).
Also: the important bits of the attached apartment remain. Like this now 5 day old pizza in one of the 2 upstairs rooms (hi!).
“We better get down to business, Jeffrie. Let’s talk about Audrey.”
“Okay, um, *doctor*.”
The original Jeffrie Phillips.
“Entrails please.”
“On the house today, boy. *The* Boy. Congrats!” the old service robot creaked and cranked. The look became him.
“Aww. Thanks Slicey!”
“He’s at the (Bumble) Bee, David.” tracking Duncan Avocado spoke over a nearby phone. Indistinguishable talking from the other end, then: “Yeah, his maw’s out of town again. This was an easy one.”
missing
“Well I’m worried because he hasn’t come home yet.” Indistinguishable speech. “Yes, I just got back into town.” Indistinguishable speech. “Stomach Land, right.” Indistinguishable. “Yes, should be good eating tonight — listen, just meet me over here at the motel. Is that alright?” Indistinguishable speech. “*Sorry*. Is — that — all — *right*?” Laughing, perhaps derisive. “I know I’m teaching him bad lessons; just get over here.” She hung up the receiver. She kind of slammed the receiver back into its carriage, actually. 1/2 and 1/2. She turned toward the Big Boy in the southwest corner of the sim and shook her head. So obsessed was her little dunce of a boy with it. “I’m going to grow up to be *this* tall!” he exclaimed one time, juxtaposing his own diminutive figure with the much larger one in an exact 1:1 match from Pink’s perspective. He knew how to manipulate the angles just right to get the effect. He was indeed a gifted child in many ways, his mother knew. But not schooling. And Marsha “Star” Pink’s lack of same didn’t help atall. At — all.
(to be continued?)
po(u)ring
“Umbrella, huh?” muttered private dick Wendell “Biff” Carter after he’d finally found the correct place to read in his red book. Read book? Anyway, maybe it’s just the correct *place*… to read his book. Paperville. In a coffee and pastry shop with some suspicious design parallels with the recently opened Bake’s Bakery over in Teepot. He can read it here; he can read it there. Hmm (again). Better get over for a shot of those “Umbrella dunces.” *This* is where Dunce Boy aka D Boy aka DeBoy (etc.) went after his hat transformation and acquiring that tracking red tie from either the Pot-D or Pan-Z tracking gang. Probably the latter, unless it is the former. Jeffrie Phillips would know. If we could find him. He’s disappeared too. Another suspicious design parallel.
To that tell-tale Paperville sculpture:
Compare:
The Boy is here!
Abbey 02
“I was wondering if you’ve seen a little boy. About yea high?” Walter Pillsbury then sticks his hand behind his head in a nervous reaction, pretending to scratch his neck. There was something on it that he wasn’t suppose to reveal. The hand must remain hidden and out of focus as best as possible.
“No, I’m afraid not sir. Like I tell everyone with such an inquiry, you’ll have to talk to the king.” That’ll put them off, Tipsy the barista thinks without saying. Because the king is much too busy to deal with such a trivial matter. Little did she know.
Stranger Creek 02
He was as close to the centre as he could be while remaining on solid.
He looked over at the big cone, where everything started to go wrong. Perhaps The Boy wasn’t here, but his influence has lasted. Through time. Whether he was or wasn’t the same as Illuminatus, the Great God of Chaos and Destruction and Deception and the like, didn’t really matter. Because he was merely a pawn in a game of long duration. Centuries. Yet only seconds as well.
He does a double take. The cone moved!
Someone else was here in this queer, weird land.
Post
He was going to be a different kind of artist. He was going to make holes, but he was going to cover up holes. Of sorts. Time to meet up with his other art friend in the sim. He should have some works ready by, say, next Friday? He’s got a long weekend to catch up. And he is catching up (*splat*!).
He’s a maker of magical jeans, dresses, tops, all the rage in Our Second Lyfe in yesterday’s tomorrow which is today. Almost. It’s the 11th dream day still. He works fast so he uses Paint 3D. He’s made a pact with a fire demon burning brightly and steadily in the center of it all.
His name is almost Rothko but not quite. If you googled it, the search engine might think you were looking instead for Mark. That close: Close City close.
He doesn’t have a lot of fans yet except for Sandy, who bought a designer dress off of him day before… well, Saturday. Sandy Beech, who we’ve already met over at NWES City, a world hemisphere away from this Corsica continent and its peakology and all. There are peaks on the Jeogeot continent but not the notable sharp, rocky kind like here. Barry likes peaks; that’s why he’s in Yellowmoon or thereabouts; that’s why he *might* also be, before or after or somewhere in-between, on that double peaked mountain near NWES City — on its overarching or inclusive or *umbrella* island. Barry sortof named Rothko. Thothko? Not quite.
It was in the Cub Run thrift shop on that city on that island where Sandy found the catchup stained dress. Hmm, he thought, unhooking its hanger from the rack to take a closer look. He’d never seen art clothing in a consignment store before. With its cute bow in the middle (he continues to think at the time) it looks exactly like — Oh *God*. He pays 300 lindens for the red and blue dress and quickly leaves.
a river runs through it
The artist whose name sounds like Rothko sits opposite Andy Warhole, one a-hole of a guy.
“The soothsayer will be here soon and we’ll *see*…
who’s the better artist in hyperspace and hypertime.”
“Just hypertime will do. I don’t do hyperspace.” His voice was level and confident, like he was the more famous artist already instead of a basic unknown. Andy was threatened. He’d been to Gabby several times since we last saw him over in Cassandra City (Moe’s –now sold!). The picture was clearing in his smoky ball. Andy was not the most famous artist of the land! Gabby then explained this was in hypertime — Gabby worked mostly in hyper worlds to see his visions, he said — and thus there’s *time* to change the outcome. Gabby didn’t illuminate the idea of complementary hyperspace to the rather dim witted Warhole; probably knew it would be a waste of his breath. Hypertime was enough for today. The stage had been set. And here he was, murderous covid ravens circling above and outside this tiny cafe perched on the top of Yellowmoon or thereabouts. With the artist whose name sounded like Rothko but wasn’t Rothko. Close! Close enough for Andy. Because Andy indeed thought he was this artist. He had trouble resolving near from same in his fuzzy way of thinking, and Barry was just playing along with the confusion. So this would be another Post involving Close.
Thoko: that’s it. Maker of fine designer women’s clothing. But that would become a front for something much more deep and sinister, like the Amazon itself. It was like going from Nowhere to Somewhere…
Ant arrives from his castle in the distance. Harrison Jett will shortly show up from his castle in the opposite direction acting as rear guard. Soon the battle will commence in earnest.
(to be continued)
Barry 02 Graham 02
Wheeler was called in to move some 88’s and decided to have a chat with Barry while she was at his studio. “How’d the meeting go with Warhole?” she asked to begin. “I heard Ant and Harrison Jett were also there. Something about murder?”
“No,” defended Barry, not worried about his blood stained hands in the moment, although he reflexively crossed his arms to hide them.
“No, everything was lovely,” he continued. “Warhole and I were bickering a bit when Ant and Harry showed up.”
“Harry?”
“Yeah, that’s what Ant called him all the time. Anyway, *they* started bickering with each other and then we started looking around, all four of us, and begin laughing. First a ha, then a ho ho, then a hu hu hu, then a full out he he he he for all. Graham then served some kind of regional soup for us and then everyone said ‘hi’ to end, kind of like aloha.”
“Graham? Who’s that?” continued Wheeler with the questions. She didn’t plan on delivering so many but here we are. She looks over at the slanted picture of the Eiffel Tower and thinks we need to get back over to Marwood and the bots for more storytelling on the Jeogeot continent. Speaking of which…
“Graham owns the cafe. Rothko fan through and through, along with collecting covid ravens and practicing anti-fascist remote viewing.”
“She?” Barry didn’t say ‘she’ — didn’t identify a sex for Graham, which is more a boy’s name I’m assuming. Where did Wheeler get…? Oh, maybe *she’s* indicating I should go in that direction. *She* wants to be Graham. So I decided to ask her. Wait, I’m not in this shot.
Barry didn’t pick up on the anomaly and simply replied, “*she*, yeah.” Wheeler was already checking her outfits.
(to be continued?)
tiger
He was sitting in a far away city, staring at a wall and thinking of nothing. Not: how did I get here? Not: wtf?? Just a blank slate. We better write upon it. Where’s that chalk?
*Flower Shop*, that was it. Turn around, DeBoy, and come face to face with your new home!
—–
“I often dream I’m a little boy with this tie on. I didn’t know much but I was gifted in other ways. Something about this tie…”
“Are you going to crash here again tonight? asked Norma the cashier. But most people just called her Norm. Normal Norm, who always handles the Cash. And she has a secret pipeline to the Amazon — that’s why her flowers seem so fragranty and exotic. They are! Didn’t cost her an arm and a leg but instead something else. “Are you going to answer me, Graham?”
Graham, he thinks, still hazy from a dream. That was my name in another far off place. Something about a mountain without green, something about a big picture with blocks of color. Something about… an Ant.”
(to be continued?)
Oh, I forgot. “Yes,” he answered to Norm’s question. She rings up 10.75 in credit to his response. But he’ll probably just pay again with that other thing he’s good at besides lounging around all day.
lighten up
She kept scribbling with the chalk while talking, producing figure after figure, like an adding machine but beyond: all the numbers and more. “So you see it’s very easy.” She caps off her last equation with a triumphant swirl of the arm. She faces the classroom. “Bullfrog was Dr. Rabbid Baumbeer all along, so when Sue Ellen Hutchinson or Hutchison killed the *lat-ter*… she also killed the *for-mer*. It’s all indicated way back at the beginning with this modifier here.” But before she could circle the appropriate symbol with her yellow chalk — I believe it was a “q” — Barry spoke up. He couldn’t wait any longer; had his arm in the air for a while now, which the young(-ish) teacher was use to. She didn’t want to be interrupted until this decisive declaration.
“Miss Graham, Miss Graham,” he interjected. She twirled, as if surprised by his voice. She wasn’t. “Oh… yes Barry.” She points to him with her chalk instead of the “q”.
So (his name) wasn’t Graham — the *teacher* was Graham. Wheeler had her wish.
“I’m wondering, uh, if all this means red caps are bad. *I* have on a red cap.” He takes off his cap and quickly puts it back on to emphasize. *And* a red tie.” He flips his tie at the teacher, who jumps back a bit as if it were a snake. It made a peculiar, cartoon(-ish) snapping noise she wasn’t expecting. What was *that*, she thought internally. She’d have to add it in somewhere on the board to figure out later. Better not erase this juggernaut just yet.
—–
Barry woke up still holding his tie. “Q, heh?” he said aloud to no one. “I’m Q(!)”
(to be continued?)
“Half and Hole”
“If you approach things with a sense of humor, people immediately assume you’re not to be taken seriously. But I think truths about society and human existence can be approached in different ways. You don’t always have to be deadly serious. Sarcasm and humor can help you see things in a lighter vein.”
“It’s an extension of my old work into collage. The 3d Venus turns into herself (again) only to be a hole. Kind of like Warhole over there, ha.”
“Very funny.” Warhole didn’t laugh. Warhole hardly never laughs at nothing. The a-hole.
Ant, who was closer to Barry 02 and staring at his newest work with him (Warhole was staring away or looking at his feet or the ceiling, take your pick), spoke up again. “It’s wonderful. 2 4th floor works now. We want to commission you, me and Harrison Jett. You may remember him from the art rock group Beet, like a sugar beet. In fact, that was their original names: the Sugar Beets. Came out from the praries of Idaho around Rupert and Paul. Family all worked in that kind of factory, except for Uncle Bob. He was different. He was a frog.”
“We’ve been through that,” replied Barry 02, thinking back to the figure and symbol filled chalkboard of his most recently remembered dream. “But his name was Bullfrog.”
“That’s just what he *was*.”
Andy Warhole finally turns toward the work from his more distant, angly position. “I’ll give you 50,000 lindens for it, final offer. I’ll give it to Yoko Ona as a wedding present for her most recent marriage to John. I’ll let Marilyn kiss it for good luck before the ceremony with her permamark lips. I’ll let [delete name] [delete] all over it with his [delete]. Then it will be ready, then it will be good.” Andy Warhole pulls an attache case out from under the couch next to him. He always has it ready for an art purchase. Always 50,000 lindens for the nobodys, not less but certainly no more. Always over 50,000 for the somebodys.
Barry 02 pondered the deal. This means he could make art for a 1/2 year without any hassles of an outside job. He could paint canvases without painting walls or ceilings. He could sculpt with garbage instead of throwing it away with a group of similarly grody smelling men into bins. Binmen I think they call them across the pond, the ocean. “Okay.” Andy slides the attache case from the couch over to Barry 02. He’s almost sold his soul. One touch of the money and he’s done.
Dreamer
He crosses his arms, feeling guilty again. Was this statue that had trouble rezzing in before *alive*? Was it another version of himself? Was it Graham once more? The green dot doesn’t lie but no one was around according to his scanner. He pinches himself. Is he dreaming? His hand passes through his arm on the way to its intended action. Failure, of course. He’s dreaming.
He attempts communication. “Whatup?” he decided to frame it. “How’s it hanging?” he follows up. Nothing. There *must* be something to this — anomaly.
The only avatar around — found through turning off volume and toggling on the “show skeleton” option for avatars — is this dancing gecko more in the southern part of the sim: Montague. He teleports to the edge of a sky “o” to find it. He stares over at the drink cooler after manifesting, realizing this was another hole, like in his most recent work called “Half and Hole” featured in that last post before the current one here. And the bar itself is shaped like a hole. He’s traveling a diagonal again.
“Whatup?” he tries again over to the jiggling exotic lizard. He’s sitting on a “333 — Tiki Bar Stool”; he checks while waiting. But nothing again. He wasn’t surprised.
Someone else must be coming.
It seemed like a good place to send Crappy in, the newest freebie outfit on the marketplace I added to my cart only several minutes back. Crappy hates the 1974 music of Supertramp and thinks their album “Crime of the Century” is vastly overrated. Perfect.
—–
It didn’t work! Something is wrong with Crappy. Maybe Supertramp merits deeper study after all.
Dreamer 02
He met her in the club beside baker b.’s Red Umbrella gallery and in front of Norm the Cashier’s flower shop. In his dream he followed her down to a beach at the enigmatically named Publius sim. She was wearing a red dress, a freebie in a box as Graham 02 or Barry 02 soon discovered at the end of the path. Later the red (box) was removed at a club in Montague owned by a big fan of Supertramp. Red strip: now he knew what that meant. He can imagine Norm shaking her head. He better get back to her. If only he could figure out a way to wake up — pinching doesn’t work here.
—–
She was shaped like the letter Q, a hole with a squiggle on the edge,” he grasps for an explanation after finally coming back. “That’s me!” Norm doesn’t approve and threatens to cut off his credit. “Do you know how much I sacrificed to get to this place?!”
end
She was waiting to get her red tie and watching DeBoy up front ask question after question to Miss Graham the teacher. Soon she would be as inept as him but it wouldn’t last long. She had some cheat notes. The 5 looking on were eager to have a new host. Their stares through a window to her soul made Hucka Doobie nervous and scratch her arm until it almost bled on top of the bleeding heart tattoo that came with the body she’s had, oh, since Tammy Whatammy pushed her into that collage and sent her reeling reeling reeling (back?) to Gaston and that jail cell with *him*. The Most Ancient One: Casey One Hole. Another scratch here.
Miss Graham was readjusting the vast series of equations on her blackboard to include the new variable: the snapping red tie, which we know now is the same as a picture taking camera. Hucka Doobie had been exposed, with the prints now developing in a Red Room not far from here. On Level D I believe. She had no other choice, then. The red tie must go along with the red dress. Wish someone would have told me that before, she thinks while the chalk dust flies again up front, a finalizing equation.
What of Baker Bloch? Who will take care of him now, act as his sounding board when needed, give him sage advice when necessary (a lot!)? The people here helping with the transition say his other part, Baker Blinker, flew in from Chilbo yesterday but only to say goodbye, really. She, as Magika Bean, is starting her wrestling tour with Flip Bean — Wheeler — day after tomorrow’s Tuesday. Another jett plane flying not to war technically but certainly to battles. Battles do not necessarily add up to war all the time. Magika and Flip are friendly adversaries if you know what I mean, another 1/2 and 1/2, but she wasn’t suppose to use that expression for a while. That’s what the intervention group told her and she’s following through, kind of. 1/2 and… jeez. She rolls her eyes here while glancing up front again. Oh, something is happening making the situation slightly more interesting now. Miss Graham is pulling DeBoy by the tie toward her! She’s… planting a kiss on not his head but… his lips! She’s dragging him sideways now with the tie past the board with all the equations, and then behind it. She’s…
Hucka Doobie can’t look any more. But she’ll get his tie this way. Until she decides to relinquish it herself in the same manner.
—–
She looks at the 5 after it’s finished. She scratches again.
Miss Graham approaches down the aisle; soon they’ll be a part of her. Here comes the tie. The head passes through the knotted hole. Miss Graham straightens and tightens it around her neck. She feels them enter, one by one by one until all 5 are there to say, “hi!”.
END OF “SUNKLANDS 2020 LATER”.
NOVEL 22
tiger 02
It didn’t work with Norm the Cashier — dead — but it might with Wendy, another blue square of Earth just over there.
In a dream tonight, she shed something red and he did too: his red tie. They were on a beach in the dream and he was the dreamer and it was his beach. He’d been there a while but Wendy had just arrived — in red. Red Stripe Beach: that was the name, or that became it after the pivotal event. It was all leading somewhere…
—–
Barry woke up, his back aching again. Sleeping on his pink plastic couch won’t hack it long term. He needs a proper bed! First Norm’s couch at the flower shop that was destroyed by a fire week before last and now this nearby place with only a couch again to crash on. Norm let him stay in her bed some nights, but that was it. “Nothing over 50%,” she said. “We must remaining playing just a game and not let it become a philosophy or even religion. We are not a religion,” she ended, puzzling the younger Barry who only wanted the friendly, loving warmth of female companionship. She returned to her cash register with this proclamation and he returned to her couch. The final, fated visit by Amazonia for the 49×61 payment was still days and maybe weeks away. The number 17 comes to mind. He was out and about when it happened, just roaming the streets of Black Ice and wondering if Norm and he had any kind of future. Apparently not, now, although he’d heard the witch doctors down at the market could bring the formerly living back from the dead, a favorite cat or dog, or even a girlfriend or wife for the price. Which he didn’t have anyway — and that’s how Norm got in trouble in the *first* place. He sighs. “Oh well,” he speaks aloud and moves to the other room to write down his dreams per usual before making breakfast. Toasty-O’s, the story of his life.
—-
In another dream, Barry sits across from a guy named Jack Danielsun at a Toasty-O shaped bar but knows his actual name is Dimmy, like a lightbulb. Not the brightest, he ascertained from the dull conversation. Just another unschooled punk. He spoke of bartending at Phantom Hill and how he got there in a row boat from the other side of the rather large island he lived on. Again: not the smartest. And probably schizophrenic on top of it all.
(to be continued?)
Breezy
Turns out it was all just a dream. The pink plastic couch Andy Warhole sat upon while fellow artist Barry DeBoy dreamed lying down on the same is gone, and the 2 rooms of the apartment have indeed merged, just like Andy wished. Dreams and reality are certainly getting mixed up in ol’ NWES City, soon to be changed to NWES Town if certain members of the city council had their way, in reaction to all the “cities” springing up around it, like arrogant, belligerent suburbs. First there was Zen City, then Meat City. The list goes on. And then there’s Collagesity, which had the audacity to neatly and tightly integrate itself into the very fabric of NWES City and become one with it almost, another insult to the term. How could something call itself a city (or sity in this case) and be so much smaller than NWES City, lost in the coattails like a small child to a towering mother. No, these *satellites* must not be termed cities. It is wrong. And in comic reaction the mother who has the only real claim to the name (it feels) might instead abort it.
But we digress. We need to find out the whereabouts of Barry DeBoy. Poor thing: he’s lost his original home in the city to fire (Norm the Cashier’s Flower Shop), and then the apartment with the pink couch, as we’ve mentioned, is all just a dream. We must find out where he’s *really* dreaming, physically that is. He *must* have a location in town, er, the city — let’s not move too fast on that.
—–
He is dreaming again of his beach, searching for the one who also gave up red but with no physical presence yet found.
eerie birth
“Here’s what we have so far, then. Saints Joseph and Mary *combine*, see, at (Fort) Wayne, which creates the Great Black Swamp, the same as Jesus but blacker.”
“And that’s where TILE comes in,” I speculate from behind the batty-mobile, since there was no remaining room up front. “SID, I mean there.”
“Yes. The Great Black Swamp had to be drained by tiling, which had very positive effects short term but less so long-wise. Little Oakley Annie could now travel easily to Defiance formerly in the center of the swamp to purchase more bullets for her shootings back in the day but later she pays in a different way. We are trying to control the eventual damage — that’s part of all this.”
“And the mouth at Toledo is — the vulva?” I theorize further. “John (Bob) Denver would not be happy.” I snicker; not returned.
“The Abyss is the Mother,” half rabbit, half bat Dr. Rabbid Baumbeer replies pedantically, citing some dry and unmemorable TILE document now that I can’t recall the exact name of. “The Unknown, The Void, The *Static*,” he continues with the synonyms and analogies. He could have gone on for some time, I realize.
I stand even further back, almost against the far wall of the garage-room now trying to take it all in. Professor Art and his train car were turned sideways to begin, which also turns the splayed figure in the center of it all that way as well. Fort Wayne — birth of Rainbowology and the fusion of Oz and Floyd. The Great Blackness (etc.). But then at Toledo: light! Birth. Between the open legs of the mother. Newton from Jasper. It all added up to… we go from nowhere to…
“And the train car is Black Ice,” Baumbeer tacks on while turning toward the back of the garage. But that part behind the batty-mobile’s tail end remains unclear and ill defined.
tiger 03
It became clearer upstairs. Black Diamond.
I had my assignment, but I would need the good doctor’s batty-mobile removed from the garage in order to paint. Ceiling’s too low up here.
“No problem,” he answered. “It’s mainly just a show car anyway. I’ll store it up on the third.”
revealing
It was all so very funny, Supper Man and his new arch-nemesis Toothpick battling it out for the right to marry Dinner Girl and/or Elberta first. Because their fists and, occasionally, feet kept passing through each other. Neither was real. Onlooking Barry DeBoy determined it was a dream a while back because he was wearing the red tie. In reality he didn’t possess this tie any more — gave it to Miss Graham the schoolteacher in exchange for… what? A life without the 5 looking on. A life without Pan-Z. He felt the precious tie one last time before waking up, instead holding the air in front of his chest as it vanished into nothingness again. The Great Void. Blackness. “Yippy tie one on I suppose,” he tried to humor himself in the moment, but he’d also heard the word “tile” used in that expression recently over at the temple. Funny again. “Yippy tile one on” — made sense as well.
He rolls over. Helloo, who’s this?
Dreaming still. Wake up, wake up! But he didn’t want to suddenly. Wendy wakes up instead, tells him who he is. Not “Q”, because that’s already been covered. The symbol on the hat could pass for a “Q” but he didn’t want it to now, not for Wendy.
—–
“Annnnnnd CUT! That was great guys! But — Wendy. We need to get you out of *that* dress and into the blood stained one as soon as possible! The Twins are breathing down my back, bearing down on my neck! You need to be invisible down there.”
Wendy knew what he was talking about but didn’t care. Wasn’t she Miss Graham reincarnated? She was. Didn’t she give Hucka Doobie the red tie procured from Barry DeBoy in a similar way before and send her away? She most assuredly did. Baker and she were getting too close. “Barry, *you* are Baker,” she said earlier. “You are the artist that is going to paint CITY and save us all from suburbia.” He turned it over in his mind like a rubik’s cube and saw the truth in it. Better get back to work…
Snowmanster
He was dreaming again, hence the tie. “This is a little f-ed up,” he said to the woman nearby, who didn’t reply. No, he didn’t like this place. He had found a limit. Wendy would not be his daughter or something. He’d leave all that to Toothpick and Elberta and their Deep South ways (!). He’d have to talk to Eraserhead Man about this shoot, compare it to DaBob in that other production he worked in, the one less famous. Or was it more famous. Snap out of it, snap out of it! he cried inside while snapping his fingers, which, of course, passed through each other. Tarboo Bay, DaBob, The Twins… they were all together; all in on this. What does it mean? He better get Wendy to safety and out of the shiny light of revealing film while she’s still wearing that dress. He knows a guy who knows a guy in Snowlands who has a remote-ish cabin kind of tucked away in some small woods, getting smaller by the month but Barry DeBoy doesn’t know that in the present. He’d only find out about the deforestation of Purden in the future through a rogue Snowman gone good instead of the usual bad but still with a bad Santa, one called Satan, an obvious anagram (too obvious). The Snowman’s name is… well, let’s just wait. Regular readers of this here blog and derivative photo-novels probably already know the name. Let’s just make it the title of this here post.
Barry 02 01
He woke up somewhere very different than before. Twilight. The lamp had not been turned off from the night. The cat Nappy purred beside him, half aware that his master had awoken. 1/2 and 1/2 once more, but I’m suppose to limit (that expression) to one per photo-novel section at the most, as prescribed by my word therapist Bob the Knob who I don’t really like that much so I may insert it more. Or less. Damn Bob. Recommended by Richard, who I haven’t talked to since session 3. Or was it section 3? NO, there was no Richard in the story.
I’m admittedly getting a little confused about all the names (finally! the reader might utter here). Barry DeBoy who just woke up here in a strange but then very familiar land shares a first name with Barry X. Vampire who arrived in our text in photo-novel 18 — and also *writing*, at least partially, said photo-novel. He was a creator like me within the pages posts of his own creation. Mirror within mirror, etc. But the mirrorings seem to be increasing lately. It’s time, for example, to face the fact and the music that the two Barry’s in our novels — let me check (checks) — yes still only *2* Barry’s. Anyway, they are probably the same, and my rational — well, I won’t go into it in detail but let it just play out in the text. Returning to the awakening DeBoy version, then…
Took him a minute to realize where he was after gaining consciousness but as he looked around at the tall, brown grass, the dilapidated buildings and signs, it dawned on him, as the sun, let’s say, gained height over a yonder horizon. Home. Maw may even be here, even older than before. Some called her Pink, some just called her Star, but her actual name was Marsha. Marsha “Star” Pink. All three were correct, I suppose. But what am I doing here thinking about names? I must think about *action*. Barry tried to recall where this shed was in relation to his house where he grew up as DeBoy, who started as simple D-Boy (one who makes a lot of D’s, etc.) but then changed in stature within the community as he received the tie from… who? He recalls something about another Barry. Himself? he realizes. From the future or from the past?
Suisan might know. If she’s still around — or still alive for that matter. Always wearing that mask while growing up, always afraid of the germs and viruses swarming, she put it, in the air all around us. And now her fears have come to fruition. The Jasper virus, the mother, is here. He peers in the direction he remembers that his mother lives in. Home. She could still be there.
But then another whole series of memories locked into place. His mother had died! Along with Suisan, along with a friend named Brown. Along with another friend named Green. Maybe someone named Olive, even. This was a land of… he looked down at his hands. He attempted to swat one with the other but it only passed through. Yet another dream. His mother was dead but then she was alive, at least during *parts* of his childhood. How could this be?
(to be continued)
Barry 02 02
He awoke again a little later on in the day, not having moved from his spot in front of the Raccoon typewriter. Nappy the cat stared directly into the camera, aware of its presence. Eraserhead Man even dared to wave at it, thinking the noticing was funny. Barry DeBoy was not aware of it. Barry DeBoy was in character. He had awoken again, in the same spot as before. Someone, perhaps himself, had turned off the lamp. More clarity all around this time. Wadded up papers on the floor — was this something *he* wrote, perhaps a future or past version again? He picked one up, unwadded it. Something about a place named Gaston. Later he found parrot droppings on the floor of the shed and put two and two together to make four or five. A pirate with a parrot had been here, and he thought he knew which one. The dream controller. The one who brought the virus in his pirate ship for communities that didn’t heed the warnings. Like maw’s Storybrook. Like this place. DeBoy tries to remember the name, the most obvious thing he should recall. But all he could come up with was The Waste, which he knew wasn’t quite right. Something about a number. Or numbers.
He unwadded more; tried to piece together the story being written. Gaston had appeared in something called a photo-novel in versions 6, 11, 16, 21. Through this, the bastard pirate had concluded that it was related to something called a Magic Square of Jupiter, a 4×4 glyph that appeared, perhaps most famously, in Albrect Durer’s print “Melancholia” from back in the 15th Century or something — this from the pirate text again.
He finished unfolding the papers, shooed the conscious cat from the table, and tried to align them in correct order. 70 pages total, he understood from the numeration. But only 4 present here: bits about the magic square and the overall theories but no meat, no details. He would have to shift his attention elsewhere for more answers.
He turned to the stool and the easel holding a canvas on the other side of the screened in shed. Painting. Barry DeBoy realized he had two functions in life now. He was a writer. He was an artist, if not a painter then the equivalent. But in this moment: painter. He had work to do… he remembered that too. The CITY design. Black Diamond. He must get to work soon.
He wasn’t a writer in this incarnation. He was an artist. He wadded the papers back up and threw them in the trashcan underneath the desk. The true story of Gaston would have to wait until another day, another dreamer in another day perhaps, or one who dreams he is real even though he is just another character, one in a long long line now. Maybe he will share a first name with another of his kind — quite likely, given the sheer number. But before DeBoy gets to work — this is *his* work station now, not the pirate’s, not anyone else named Barry — he must explore the neighborhood. Find Suisan if possible and get the story about his mother. Maybe even — maw? He had to look. He had to know. Suisan would know. If she was available.
(to be continued)
Pink lives?
Aah, the old sign remains.
And the cats! So many cats. Now to dare try the manager’s door. Hell’s Here!, though. He attempts to ignore the warning and return to his childhood. Hello There! instead (!).
“Hello there!” he finds himself automatically uttering as he passes from outer to inner.
To his great disappointment, he just then wakes up for real, the presence of his mother unresolved.
This cat was a little better trained.
Barry was sleeping on a different couch but in the same old place: the old Same Place, a restaurant adjacent to the Pink Motel that had a duplicate or doppleganger in Tinseltown. This is what happened to him as an acne spotted kid when he and his mother had an argument, often about grades and schooling, sometimes about church and religion, occasionally about the status of the world in general. Marsha “Star” Pink was an optimist, Barry a born pessimist. Or was it the opposite? Heck, let’s jettison the whole idea of discussing the world in general. Let’s focus on local. Barry was sleeping on a different but familiar couch. It reminded him of the one in Norm the Cashier’s Flower Shop but that’s a future memory instead of the past.
He wakes up remembering something awful happened. Bullfrog, a friend of the family, had been killed over in NWES City, known then as New WES City before the shortening and way before the CITY decided to remake itself as a town to counter all the copycat but obviously inferior “cities” spring all inside and around it. Like Meat City, like Zen City before (destroyed by an atomic blast much like the one pictured on that vending machine in the above photo). Like Collagesity, with sity equaling city. You know. These are not Collagesity photo-novels any longer, but something else. Sunklands for the moment because that’s where *my* home is. Not Rubi as in the past. Not Fordham, or Urqhart over on the Corsica continent.
Pink knew Bullfrog from her mother who was green Green. An EEL of a man is often how her mother described him, but she was conservative leaning. Bullfrog was progressive and that’s a fact, and that fact which got him killed by a red headed and red hatted evil entity known as Lu Ellen Hutchison (or Hutchinson) played by actress Alice Frame in Act II. And now she’s back as similarly red topped Wendy. Barry DeBoy knows nothing of Wendy now, or that he is directly sleeping with a mortal enemy back in Black Ice in the present. He is ensconced in the past, in the dream. Bullfrog has just died by gunfire and his mother Marsha “Pink” Krakow, not yet a Star — neither Trek nor Wars — remains in shock, and Barry along with her. This was Uncle Bully to him, a friendly not hostile moniker. How could this happen?
(to be continued)
best
It occurred to him tonight while wandering around the old Same Place that he might be going slightly mad, kind of like Mercury X. Rising toward the end of his shortened life. In real life there is no such thing as a dulciwheel which plays a tune of complex design before him. He’s notice some time slips lately, and duplications. Heck, *he’s* a duplication, since there’s another Barry of similar, complex design in these here novels, art and writing in one. But after thinking about it more, he’s determined this is mostly projection from others. He *appears* mad but he’s not. No ghost variations here. And he’s been studying Robert Schumann, another dude who famously became mad toward the end of his life. Maybe he should stop listening to his music. In fact, that tune…
He quickly exits this portion of La La Land, needing some air. He walked right past Suisan sitting at the door, not noticing her presence. “I heard you were back in town.” Muffled talk through an omnipresent mask. Same old Suisan. The old Same Suisan. Suisan Same. Daughter of the owner of this here place. Makes sense she’d be here, then. Barry turns.
“Suisan! I’m glad to see you. But you scared me in the moment!”
“How come? This is the old Same Place. Makes sense I’m here.”
“Yeah… suppose. It’s just.”
“You’re *not* going insane.”
“But…”
“No buts. I’m here to talk to you. About your mother, heck, anything you want. Even, dare I say the name, Pansy Mouse?”
“Let’s take a walk,” Barry DeBoy urged to his old friend, one of his oldest. She was there even before the beginning. Before the tie.
(to be continued)
lessons
“Remember? I asked you to select a pencil to begin. Pull one of the 4 pencils out of the desk, I said to you that day long long ago. 30 years?”
“Maybe.” He recalled the desk of course, the pencils, the *dunce cap*. Always making D’s he was back then, until Suisan got her learned hooks into his hide.
“And low and behold you pulled out the 4th, the hardest to do. I knew you were special then. Do you still have the pencil?”
Barry DeBoy stared at the desk, indicating the 4 pencils. Suisan understood.
“Yes, you had to give it back. You couldn’t take it with you all of your life. Instead you received the *tie*. You traded the pencil for the tie. And so here you are.” She indicated, in turn, Barry’s omnipresent tie, at least in Dream World, La La Land.
—–
“Do you see all the planets, Duncy? *Sorry*: Barry. Old habit.” She turns slightly red here. “But you’re only suppose to see one.
“*There* it is. Appearing from a hidden place. Neptune. The icy planet. I.C.U., hehe. Remember we played that game with Neptune? You learned about the solar system and eventually the milky way and the whole cosmos that way. Nothing was hidden from you any more. Thanks to that pencil.”
“I recall.”
“Mr. Johnson came to call. He’d learned of a special boy in our class who could alter dimensions and make the 3d appear 2d. A special gift indeed. He wanted the boy for himself. And it was Johnston, not Johnson.”
“I remember.”
“We almost made the mistake of sending you away, Barry. We would have never found you again.”
“I’m Neptune.” He points to the now fully exposed blue planet slowly slowly revolving around the sun. Slower than any of the rest, even stinky Uranus, which will eventually catch up with her. Because Neptune is a she. He’d seen her once in the high grass beyond Le Mars. But he didn’t want to think about what she was doing there just then. In the moment.
“One more,” Suisan requested.
“Okay.”
—–
“The bomb, Barry. We never finished our childhood puzzle so we could move to the adult ones. But now you’re…”
“An adult,” Barry surmised. He understood the message. He must awake and get back to work. Zen City was gone, but there was still Meat City, Collagesity. CITY must be purified of all these hanger oners. Suburbia must be cleansed.
—–
Goodbye, er, The Waste. For now.
return
Clued in by his recent dreams, assigned artist Barry DeBoy searches the *city* for inspiration. Neptune, a central city sim to be reckoned with again!
Uh oh. Dr. Baumbeer out for one last spin in the batty-mobile before he has to put it into storage. Watch out!
Marwood
I am wearing a red cap for some reason. The skeleton opposite me has just flipped over the Ace of Spades from his own deck, the death card. But I have an ace to counter from mine. But my ace is red. I lose (*SLICE*).
MAT (Man About Time) wakes up with a gasp. He knows how the vote about the town vs. city moniker is going to come out. Good news! He can’t help but feel his neck, though, to make sure it’s on nice and tight (phew!).
name
Santa wasn’t happy. I think he was about to run me over in his flying saucer, *ZZzzOOOOOmmm*!” I wake up.
—–
“Another dream about the election dearest?” Wendy. Good ol’ Wendy. Always there during consciousness. Until the end.
—–
In the next Marwood bot dream, Norm, another local resident, took over from Santa. “Sit down,” he commanded, indicating a chair in front of the guillotine I was beheaded with just the night before. And a donkey’s alongside it.
Red hat still firmly attached to skull, I sat under the Ace of Diamonds I posed beside last night before the beheading. I knew this because I was looking on as an observer rather than being a direct participant. “There is no Other,” he said to begin our conversation proper. “There is only *Here*.” I’d heard this before. I sat in the chair.
—–
It was Miss Graham, formerly Jennifer M. Friend. She was then there, “DEMO” still tattooing head, which my mind started running again and again around the cap line of her skull, like a looped film. Faster… faster. Blurred… then suddenly stabilization once more. Slowing down. 7610 this time: clarity; focusing in. I stared again at Norm. We had been here before.
The tie was back. I had to get to work. Fast!
00220616
Barry DeBoy stares at the blank canvas he knows he must fill in soon. CITY, a concept that must be born if the city itself is to be saved. Almost a 90 percent chance of it now. He’ll take the odds.
He pinches himself to make sure he’s awake (he is). Wearing the red tie has made him nervous about that down through the months — before, he was always dreaming when he had it on. No more. Something happened: a reversal, a change of heart even, he senses. Miss Graham has given it back. But why?
“It was me,” Hucka Doobie spoke at a nearby table. “Come on into the picture. PICT ON PICT. Come on,” she urged.
“What’s he doing?”
“She. But that’s what we have to find out. Temple.”
“Wheeler. Of course.”
“Yes.”
NOVEL 23
meeting
“Excuse me, sir. I’m looking for the Shanty Club. Francis? You may know him. He’s kind of the owner I suppose.”
“Meat City,” Barry DeBoy metes out. “Just up the highway.”
“Oh,” Baker Bloch exclaimed. “Is this not Meat City? It’s across the highway from NWES.”
“Nope,” Barry reinforced. “Just because it’s across the highway doesn’t mean it’s part of the city, even though this is.” Barry says “city” with some satisfaction. After all, he was there at the vote. His art definitely helped sway the deal. “Go back to the highway. Go up. Look for the stumbling drunks and head right, and then another right past Big Dave’s garage then left. Tell Francis I said hello.”
“A friend?” Baker ventured., trying to remember all the twists and turns to get there.
“Let’s just say I don’t underestimate his *aunts* any more.”
“Oh.” Baker left the small trailer without understanding. Francis explained it to him later at the club.
00230106
Barry goes into the Symphony Music Store intending to buy a CD of Schumann’s Rhenish Symphony but ends up running away in a panic after spying Pansy Mouse at the back counter, formerly only seen in dreams. Barry wakes up.
Berry
Deep into the night, far past supper, the person formerly known as Amber and several other names decides to go into the city. She sits on the subway, wishing the town council would vote to get it up and running. But they have so much else on their plate! She’d have to walk.
—–
A new store: Rosehaven Yarn Shop.
But she didn’t have time to investigate tonight. She had to get back home to the Deep South of Black Ice by sunrise or else be found out by the parents. She was a man. She was a woman. Onward to the Red Rose owned by a Peet Aries who she’d never met but Dr. Baumbeer, the current renter, spoke glowingly about. Dr. Baumbeer: another changer, she thought as she passed the yarn store and kept in a straight line northward.
—–
She had to stop to look at a map…
… then she recalled the Red Rose wasn’t actually in the Neptune sim she was currently passing through. Instead: Apple’s Orchard. Where she or he had his or her earliest memories of the city. Good times. She remembers something about a neck. Neck City it was called back them, but that was a faulty implant, pheh. Much like… here she reached up with her left hand and felt something that had changed in the meantime. She recalled Sandy Beech doing the same. Or was it Herbert Dune. She looked around, feeling people watching her — cameras. But no one spotted.
—–
Like any urban area worth its salt, the city was changing.
She couldn’t go down this road any further — blocked in this direction. She checked her watch. 4:15. Time to be heading down to the lower side of Black Ice and crawl back in bed. The Red Rose must wait, she realized. For tonight at least, she would remain a woman.
(to be continued?)
character studies, Black Ice locations
Mary Pippins’ red umbrella and the Red Umbrella gallery
Bake’s Bakery (newly relocated!) with Barry X. Vampire and pretty Poetry Dancer
Zapppa’s apartment? (dreaming of that chick down there)
that chick down there — actually, those chicks, including the Her Majesty bigfoot/yeti in the doorway just down
Toddles roaming the mean streets of Black Ice at night again after drugging up her Grammy
Stumpy, the new bartender at Moe’s, smoking bong hit after bong hit while listening to noise rock with Gotham the psychedelic reggae monk. He’s got a head! He *is* a head!
Charlene Brown the punk working late night on her cryptozoology dissertation, unaware that off again on again boyfriend Barry X. Vampire Jeffrie Phillips is with Poetry tonight, the bastard
Melvin the devil boy offers a passing skateboarder some suspicious looking soup while half-sister Eldwina ponders her 1st assignment as an official member of the City Squad. Knew it! thinks full brother Judd from the stairs.
00230310
Besides the addition of the Thornwood sim, not much seems to have changed in Rosehaven since my brief residency there last winter. I left because of a seeming misunderstanding. I had overlaid a mythology on top of one already in place. My princess wasn’t their princess, who I talked to a bit. My queendom-kingdom wasn’t theirs. Merry Gouldbusk (my princess) doesn’t wish to return now and is resigned to remain with Sandy and perhaps other lovers in NWES City and NWES Island as a whole. She might be the same as All Orange but it is difficult to tell — certainly she is gold or amber in skin tone and that’s pretty comparable in color and may be close enough. What of Breeze and Wendy, who also hang around Sandy: collectively, the “Breezy” archetype? Merry Gouldbusk seems also to be the same as them — maybe. And what about her donning that red, MAGA-style cap before the election results were finalized and that side lost (yes, they lost: congratulations Joe!)? When we saw her wearing it she was heading across town to Dr. Rabbid Baumbeer’s Red Rose building, which he rents from Peet Aries, who is similar but also different from Peet Archer, a new-ish character in this here blog and photo-novel, 23 in a series of 20. But we know similarly red capped Barry DeBoy, the abstract artist featured in photo-novel 22, also resides or at least use to reside in this building as invited by Baumbeer. He saved the town with his art created there, specifically through a design called CITY, a combination of triangles and squares to tile a picture without internal gaps. TIGER may be another word for it but, again, unsure; we are not privy to the details of the saving so far. But my point here is that Merry Gouldbusk, in the moment, may have also been the same as Barry Deboy through that cap. We’ve only seen him once in the current novel, and in a different location more on the east side of town than before — across the highway, but not in Meat City, although (that suburb) is across the road from the main part of town as well. Sorry: *city*. As usual, we are dealing with many mysteries at once, and with blurring of plot lines and involved characters. The city and overarching island is a labyrinth to be solved, if not a maze. Let’s go with labyrinth, because mazes are designed to confuse and labyrinths aren’t — one path in and one path out for the latter. And we have our center now: All Orange. We just don’t exactly know its nature yet. Aldebaronian? Powerful witch Mid-Hazel thinks so. She also wrongly thinks All Orange is dead now. She believes Rosehaven, which she’s changed to Rose Haven to hide it from the locals, is up for grabs. Her assistant cat-witch Esmerelda is not as certain. She thinks it could be a plant.
“That was a nice song, I think I’ll write another now.”
NOVEL 24
goodbye hello
“We reached a dead end in NWES City, my love, future present past.”
“We did,” agreed Charlene Brown the punk beside him in the car at the center of the new city, whatever he or she or they decide to call it. Maybe just New Town.
“Oh… look over there, dearest. Another Happy Travels office, just like in…”
“Don’t say it, sweets. Let’s put that name behind us, move on to the new. New Town?” she then guessed, mirroring my thoughts.
“Anyway, there it is… again. Probably the portal to Gaston once more as well.”
“Don’t use it,” wisely advised Charlene. “Seal that up too. Let Barry X. Vampire the writer and, heck, Barry Deboy the artist deal with it if they wish.”
“Are the Barrys still around?” I ask through Jeffrie Phillips, borrowing his voice for the moment.
Charlene shook her head, but not as a denial. Instead: “Not our problem.”
“And a MacDonald’s,” Jeffrie joked when looking more behind them. Funny.
Official Guy Linden Temple in “New Town”.
triads
“Alright Barrys. Let’s strategize about what comes next since Charlene Brown is busy cooking up a storm in the kitchen. Barry Vampire…”
“*X.* Vampire,” he insists.
“Yes. What do you see on your computer screen? A specific location? A specific person? Or perhaps, dare I go there, a *thing*?”
Barry X. Vampire stares at his computer screen but only sees snow — whiteness. “Nothing yet,” he offers in a slightly disappointed tone. But he’s hoping for words over images. Too many pictures from Picturetown recently, he bemoans internally.
“How about you Barry De Boy? Pictures? Symbols? Words? Something else?”
Barry De Boy expresses he doesn’t see anything yet either. And neither can we even more in this picture. Not even snowy whiteness.
“How… about you?” ventured one of the Barrys rather timidly, I’m not quite sure which one yet.
“I’m not the important one (here),” Jeffrie Phillips declares firmly. “I coordinate between the two of you, the writer (nods toward X. Vampire) and the artist (nods toward De Boy).”
“But… you’re the author,” spoke the Barry that was different from the one who dared to pipe up first. “You are the base, the core. You coordinate *us*.”
“That’s what I just said.”
“But…” the first Barry began again, then was cut short. Charlene came back with chicken dumplings and a lot of other stuff, some smoking hot, some cool as a cucumber. They ate until 7 and then slept until 8. Then at 9 they spoke again but nothing about coordination or anything serious. I believe it was about the local infestation of wild parsnip. Or was it poison ivy. Giant hogweed?
triads 02
“She comes here every day, and every day a different game. I haven’t seen a repeat yet. She must be testing the atmosphere, maybe making sure it isn’t poison. 4 games left in the cache. I predict an actual, breathing human — *not* a mascot — will be arriving in the week. Wanna bet on it?”
“No, I’ll take your word for it. You’ve been here a lot longer than me. In this Castle Town. Isn’t that what it’s usually called?”
—–
We were taking a break from strategizing. I turned away for a moment, tired of looking them in the eye. I’d figured something out. Mascots — that’s what they were. Only mascots. Not real atall. Only symbols of a writer… and an artist. The two aspects of *me*. Maybe it *is* destiny that I take Baker Bloch’s place as leader of the blog and allow him to ascend to the White Palace to rejoin Hucka Doobie. I’ll have to talk to Charlene about it. But I’m kind of finished with these two.
He takes another sip of wine. They hadn’t even asked for anything to drink, not water, not booze. Nothing. That was the first big tip-off.
—–
“It’s time to play rock, paper, scissors, Barry, to see which one of us goes to Castle Town.”
“Oh all right,” answers Barry.
“Ready? One, two…”
—–
“Oh, and also a pad or something that I can write on, thanks.”
classical
She should have never gone into that cave. She was out in the open, the fresh, clean air with the star studded sky spreading out above her, and then she wasn’t. A path, but not leading to clean, fresh water. Dank, dingy, green, algae congested. Atrophied. Some say her life was atrophied when she got hitched to her twin brother Toothpick/Philburg back at the end of photo-novel 22. Only the Free Tilists, with close ties to the Deep South (of Black Ice), would marry them. “Amoral,” cried to Pentagonists, worshipers of all things 5 sided and 5 pointed and originating on Mars. “Blasphemous, a slap in the face of Our Lord God of Heaven,” bemoaned the Trilogists, better known as our Christians. Only the 4-square Tilists would touch it, but only in Catalpa outside the direct influence of the city council who had ultimate judgment in these matters and could expel the couple if the ceremony was held on their grounds. Instead: All Orange, between the wine red apples of Apple’s Orchard and the slick yellow banana symbolically lying at the center of Black Ice, which all revolves around like a Beanstalk or Pope to a helmet wearing monkey (crook) with one upturned and one downturned eyebrow. It was only in All Orange where it could happen. The 5th, but in a good way this time (we hope).
Barry De Boy settled back in the rocking chair with the maple leaf pillow and felt it was good. I have acquired the power of the three now, the scissors to begin, then the paper, then, lastly, rock (in the middle). Rock solid I am. Jeffrie Phillips I am. He he he. He he he he he. Ho ho. Hu. Huh.
“Hi!”
It was Waldrip. Or was it Waldrup. Waldrop? …drep? Anyway, I could feel his presence even if I couldn’t see him. Like a mouse.
He stopped rocking, stood up. “Who goes there?”
mates
“One of us will have to go, twin of mine. And *you* are the one sitting sideways. I think it’s you.”
The Wendy who was sitting sideways to the observing camera spoke. “Don’t cross me. You can’t cross me.”
“This is *not* a Jesus situation. Just because we *originally* were in a 0316 post.”
“Before the user Our God realized the mistake. Another mighty cock-up!”
“… is our Lord,” non-sideways sitting Wendy tacked on. But they both were in different ways. “Paper?” one uttered.
“Scissors,” answered the other. She was the one.
On the sealed evergreen island in the middle of snow snow snow, Barry De Boy waited.
And then nodded off.
end of 4th
Lisa the Vegetarian’s boathouse was still anchored off the west coast of New Island, but she had failed to find her brother, just like Wendy (one of ’em, perhaps the right one?) did before her. She’d heard of Picturetown by now and 102. She knew that the number stood for a game of roshambo, otherwise known as rock paper scissors, like the first 3 chapters of the red book and something to truly contemplate why this is so. Biff Carter might know. After all, he’s in it, but not the first 3. Instead the 4th, where triangle turns to square. He is just as dirty (in the book) as the doctor, the main character of the 4th. Instead of a private dick, he is a restaurant owner, perhaps of the Red Dress Diner if we mix up and combine realities again. But Biff Carter has been revealed — there — by his wife of all people, to be the same as Axis and may not reappear in this here photo-novel (24 in a series of 20; getting close to the end!), his story seemingly resolved but we’ll see. Maybe he leaves his cherished red book in a special place (Red Dress Diner again?) for someone else to find, perhaps Barry De Boy, or maybe one of the Wendys who seem destined to be a mate to him, like Biff-as-Axis has been paired off with… Wendy? Wheeler? We need to combine more characters, it seems. Have them play the triune game as well to whittle downward.
Axis is not Barry De Boy. I do have that much.
Oh look…
I wonder what chapter she’s on?
edges
She was told not to leave the mountain she was on. “Don’t go past the Easter Island head,” her half-sister rather commanded on the phone yesterday, knowing the Fall of Man lies all around. They chatted about mom. They chatted about… Bart. “On the lam,” Lisa states, acknowledging her fears. Never got over the Great Black Swamp. “Beware the Wheelers!”, then, “Beware Wheelers!” Or was it “Heelers”? — she couldn’t remember. All she knows currently is that Bart is in the swamp without the ability to TILE, to come back to the flock and rejoin his sister. She recalls the day her grandfather — poor grandad! — told her about the experiments, one that went right (sister) and the other which went wonky (brother). “The sister will be a good companion for you in future times of trouble,” he stated, listening to the ever-present sound of whales, which of course she heard as well but thought they were sharks. “She is older, she is wiser. You will see her every now and then and that is good enough. I’m estranged from Marg, and she’s blocked the visiting rights. But when the time comes, Lisa will make herself known to you. Bart as well, but: Beware Bart. He will be possessed by the Great Black Swamp by that time. The Soothsayer speaks.”
And so now she’s closer to her half-sister than ever, who rescued her from a sticky situation indeed. Kicked out of Green Yarn, a thought of new home where she could examine the whole Ray (short for Rainey) phenomenon in full and the inclusive 2 Barrys, who may be just one Barry now. Heck, Ray and Barry may be the same — the name of the former is included in the latter, after all.
But back to the half-sister…
(to be continued)
snowy peak again
NOVEL 25
dominos
On a break, Fern rolled the prophecy cubes and then wondered who Tessa was.
She better get back to her shift at the cafe…
—–
“I wish I had better news about the twins,” Fern Stalin later exclaimed to Lichen Roosevelt at the Yalta Bar and Grill down more in the innards of Castle Town. Actually, where we saw Barry De Boy last, taking up pen and paper for the first time and setting down his palette and paintbrush. Actually: both; he’s both an artist and a writer. Just like me. We return to the present conversation…
“All in this spell book?” Lichen exclaims back, surprised at the results of the equation. Q, she thinks. Barry knew all along.
One of the twins walks in. I wish I could say it was the right one but I’m not sure.
Actually I am.
beside the canal
“You’re not who I was expecting… *Wheeler*.”
“It’s because you tried out that different state on Elsa the other day. She didn’t want to come. She asked me to substitute for her. How did you like *my* kiss?”
Jeffrey Phillips wasn’t impressed and says so. Way too 18th Century, way too mellow. Besides, this was Wheeler for Christ’s sake. This wasn’t one of *his* girls. This was an equal (!). “Anyway, you kissed me, not the opposite way ’round.”
“I was just experimenting. Just like you, tee hee. Do you, do you know what they’re calling you back in Marwood, you stud? Bruce Springsteen,” she answers herself, “because you have your E Street band (of ladies) there, and also you are a Rock. Do you remember playing the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors with the Barrys? You won.”
“Well, Paper and Scissors, I mean, Barry (X. Vampire) and Barry (DeBoy) are still around,” Jeffrey Phillips tries to defend himself, thinking of the 2 faced God Janus looking both forwards and backwards in time. “Sandy Beech as well… I’m not Sandy.”
“No,” countered Wheeler, Hidi for the moment. “You are all of those and more. You are the…”
“… last man standing,” he completed for Wheeler, knowing it was true or at least largely so. Besides Man About Time — and perhaps he doesn’t even count since he’s so unfocused — where are the others? “Baker Bloch has gone to the White Palace in Heaven to join Hucka Doobie,” he explains for the both of ’em. “Baker Blinker is gone as well — you’ve *absorbed* her.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Karoz too.”
“Karoz is still around,” says Wheeler, knowing it was both false and true at once.
Jeffrey Phillips blew out air. “I guess… we just needed to talk.” He looked over at her: Janus faced as well. She changed. Windy, as in City. Big Windy even, bigger than ever. Where was this going? Was he ready… or did he need to wait? And where the heck was Norm Bob, Jimbo/O’Jimbo, Bimbo/O’Bimbo, and Drunk Dude? Why just the E girls now over in Marwood? Bruce Springsteen, pheh.
“I am not with you,” he decides to say, thinking of the queen-prime minister type relationship again that they had, his saving grace.
“I know.” She breathes out as well. “I have others.”
00250614
He was beyond the end of Route 13 now. He sensed a hole in the West here, something he couldn’t get to while corporeal. If he hadn’t wasted so much time chasing girls here and there, he lamented. But the Afterlife is all about regret, at the beginning. What could and couldn’t have happened, and so on. There’s always a gap between what occurred and the ideal, and a big one. Get ready for the shock. But the ideal still exists and that is the salvific force, the saving grace. The ideal *was* made flesh, and you can view it, you can penetrate it at points — non-corporeally of course, but also — sometimes — with real significance. And it is here in the West that Jeffrey Phillips decides he can start to make the changes he desires.
“Ahh, Barry DeBoy,” he says from his higher position, looking down. “Something about that island.” He penetrates.
GUMMMMP!
Q: Who is Publius Enigma, what is the meaning of it all, and what is the treasure to be had? A: (Uncle Custard) As the Infamous Q has emphasized, ‘you humans are so limited’. This is a project for all those out there with higher IQ’s, it does require a mastery of diverse languages, along with a lot of spare time.
The Publius sim was a stranger one, so close to Public Nudity yet so far. Not being multi-lingual I decided to tread lightly from this central spot, a default landing point on a bridge. I looked down. I recall the red dress. And the woman inside.
—–
Hucka Doobie continued to read on the floor, then, momentarily: “22 is a good one, Baker Bloch. I think I might like that best.” About 20 minutes later: “Here, just here.” She points to the book before her. “Barry DeBoy is in The Waste but it’s *not* the Waste. What was the name of that place?”
Baker Bloch was still fiddling around with the piano, to mix a metaphor. He paused in the effort to recall, which he couldn’t. “Something about numbers,” is all he could distantly offer.
“We should look that up. The place should be separated from The Waste. Not everything has to be Hana Lei if it is the unknown.”
“Suppose.” He started again with the bad “Chopsticks”, hell bent on mastering it before night’s end.
—–
My home! I think excitedly while still peering down. Pink’s motel that she runs. *Mom*. And… Suisan. I am D-Boy, which means I make a lot of D’s which makes me a Dunce with a capital D. So says Suisan. Before she fully understood my special gifts. I learned to make Art with a capital A, an accomplishment that needed to be acknowledged. I stare into the transposed Tiger’s mouth. Black Diamond. CITY.
A friend waits outside beyond the screened in studio. “Hellooo?” My best friend. My only friend. I wind him up and he winds me down. Now we just have to figure out how to return to the White Palace and get that ruby red key.
—-
“Got it!” But Hucka Doobie was fast asleep by now.
army of one
Bestie, as I liked to call him, was always the best. He constantly pointed out to me when I was down and out that I was a writer as well as an artist, and to find the balance between the two represented my path in life.
The path between the canvas and the typewriter here led to… Mom? Suisan? I had to find out (again). And to somehow avoid Schuman without the extra N if possible. Don’t piano around with fiddles! I was on my way. “Thanks Bestie!” I called back, thanking him. He tipped his mustard colored metal helmet at me in parting, however brief. He would return. He was almost a constant shadow, as they say, in that I’m able to muster him up in any time of trouble. Like now! How to end photo-novel 25, a series of 1. Forward! (hup hup hup)
dream’s end
Of course I got lost in the maze that is my home. This happened even in childhood when I was more familiar with the place. But when I spotted the dummy with the red tie in the middle of the road I knew I was close. Me! They made me a martyr, just because I was special. The 5 were still inside of me all right, all taking orderly turns now, no fighting or jostling for top position. They’ve learned to cooperate. I’ve taught them well. Along with Miss Graham of course. I wonder where *she* is now?
Onward to the motel.
—–
The door was open. “Mom?” I called in.
00250701
The tiles behind the stove were falling off. And she’d left the burner on again.
“Oh Mom,” he complains. “What are we going to do with you?” He turns the knob to the off position and starts clearing the air.
—–
“We have to fix TILE,” Man About Time urges, making his pitch. “Carrcassonnee has become Sepisexton, the 7 and the 6 at once, and is roaming the metaverse unchecked, freeing demons right and left that she can use at her disposal. We’ve already clocked 4 with the same name of Jenny.”
“Jenny is *not* a demon,” countered Mabel, present for the debate. “She’s just… very orange.”
“Aldebaronian,” clarified likewise alien Roger Pine Ridge, who also made a window in his busy schedule for this important discussion.
“No, like I said, there are *4*.” Man About Time remained fixed about the unfixed nature of the town’s chief religion, the one it is known for through the temple and some other stuff.
“Boat,” Baker Bloch piped in. “I recall a boat. Didn’t that crash over in Wallytown, though?”
“*Wallytown*,” stepped in Wheeler, “is something we’re *not* suppose to talk about. Not after the shower.”
“Counter that,” uttered Carrcassonnee propped up in a corner, unable to walk still or talk very much. She was basically limited to things that belong in a kitchen. “Spachula,” she offered further. “Scrape up eggs off counter. Will stick if not scraped. Spachula.”
The rest tried to figure out what that translated to in the latest Carrcassonnee limited language issuances. Probably something to do with eyes again. Or “I”s. Despite the split, MAT had gotten her this far, which was something, they agreed.
“Danny. What say you?” Danny was, once more, Man About Time’s right hand man, just like in the past. Pickleland in the sideways world, his trusty plunger turned back in time. Tiger.
“Radar.” Another simplistic issuance but followed up by 176 more sentences that I won’t write out but explained very well what the lack of radar meant to the Schuman without the N. Because there was Sector R to deal with now. “… mustard,” came the end of his last sentence of the 176, describing the color of the entity most responsible for the confusion. Earlier words in this sentence and the 175 preceding it elucidated a robot from a sideways world, probably Oz, who wormed their way into susceptible people’s lives disguised as a “best friend”, as he had called it. This was the case with Barry.
“Very good, thank you Danny. I will close then, for now, by saying that every state of the US is also a state of mind. Think about that.” MAT stares them down from his position in front, on top. For the moment and, hopefully, for the future.
Of the 10 people in the meeting, only 2 thought about bordering states with this, and that is only because they shared some of the same static, been out in the same snowstorm and not made it back in time for supper and a movie that one instance. And suffered the consequences.
(to be continued)
00250702
We began again the next day…
“It’s Plan 2, Stumpy,” spoke Man About Time within Moe’s Bar over at NWES City. He’s decided to leave this footprint in the town; keep paying rent on it. “Black Ice is kaput.”
“Yeah, I know,” replies Stumpy the formerly headless bartender, hired only after he promised to get one. “We’ll have to think of ‘what ifs’ on that one.”
“What if…” MAT starts, “… I was recognized for being a world renowned artist.”
“What if…” Stumpy chips in, getting into the game himself, “… I remained headless and could still balance red wine and blue pot correctly.”
“What if…” MAT’s turn again. “All of this is a dream.”
“What if… I were actually dead instead of alive.”
“What if… Charlene were actually my girl instead of Jeffrey Phillips’.” MAT pauses here; Stumpy takes a good gander at him. “Because, you know, he’s dead and all.”
“Maybe *we’re* dead,” Stumpy doubles down. Were they still playing the game? “Do you, er, fancy her, Man About Time? You can tell me. I’m your no. 1 bartender after all. Remember, you hired me after I promised to get a head.”
“Ahead in life, yes. Which the job would give you. So: case closed; loop completed. You are here. You have a head.”
“Back to Charlene…”
—–
He sits for a while on the subway before he remembers it was never finished. He’ll have to walk. Another “what if,” then. What if… the subway system of town was finished and residents could more easily move from one sim to another. But to Black Ice and continue his pitches which are All Pitch. Maybe he should buy Barry DeBoy’s red baseball cap. Put it on backwards so he can tell the two apart. “I’m here,” he imagines saying to forward cap wearing Barry across from him on the train. “And you’re there.” But he was facing (transposed) the other way and couldn’t even see him. Reminds me of a certain Tiger we’ve viewed recently. Barry, I mean, MAT sits alone again. Then gets up. Because of the whole nonfunctioning part of the subway. He’ll have to walk to Black Ice. Surely he remembers how to walk — yes, one foot then another then another. Feets get moving!
(to be continued)
NOVEL 26
pondering point
Past the pond and along a path that followed Wine Creek he went until he came to a grove of beech trees. There he built a fire against the side of a log and sat down at the end of the log to think.
Ward George had to escape art but Tennessee was all around, ready to embarrass him and make him turn red (as an apple) at every turn. Through his late night research, he knew about “Flapper” and a promise not fulfilled of artistic success, perhaps the point of it all. He was using his magnifying glass of a brain to focus on sewers and monsters therein and the death of Allen Martin who was actually a Martian (green hair in back giving it away, like a Conrad Bain). He had to find the beech grove, a place of sanctuary.
“Martin is alive,” he’d heard Duncan say while talking about the old days in good ol’ VHC City, before the coming of the… hotel? Anyway, it all started/revolved around that Black Hole of a structure created by Pitch Darkly. 97/97/97: triple number. If only the powers of VHC City back in the days had listened to his warning about the coming of The Diagonal that would link the whole continent, southwest to northeast, so powerful that its rather malevolent energy, or what turned out to be so, had to be counterbalanced by a second sw-ne line called Heart. Heart balances Head, like in a Hand (Health). But it was all suppose to happen like this most likely, George had also determined with his own head. But where, and who, was heart?
“No way out this way,” gruffed Suisan the pyramid shaped hat wearing fish butcher without turning around, bloodied cleaver at rest for now. George would have to turn back out of Kentucky back to Tennessee.
“Kay,” he said simply in response. The smell of chopped fish was overbearing.
Heading home.
“Found it!” he cried.
(to be continued)
NOVEL 33
00330210
“Miss Graham, Miss Graham,” Barry DeBoy interjected, raising his hand.
The teacher points to him with her chalk instead of circling the all important modifier on the blackboard, the center of it all.
D’Eddy, sleeping in a nearby cardboard box and overhearing some of it at the end of his dream, wakes up. What started with his hands now extends over his whole body. He is fully black now. He looks at his hands, his arms. He even takes off his shoes to check his feet. It’s all tinged with red a bit too. He ponders what that could imply. Indian as well? “Well well well,” he found himself muttering, shaking his head at it all. “Well well well.”
He prepares breakfast by standing on the sink and touching it. Rosebud tea with butter and muffins. Perfect.
He realizes he can’t get rid of the cap attached to his belt because it exposes the red around his waist. He can’t exchange it for red because red is already in place. I.e., he is not the Barry DeBoy of his remembered dream. He has that much.
He waves hi to his neighbor Hutchison (or was it Hutchinson?) out the window, tending to his garden next door. Not seen.
He goes downstairs to play the piano, since there’s not a lot more to do in the house where he lives. The cardboard box was a dream, but he knows where it is still. Enigma. He’ll go there later when he gets bored. A player’s place is at the piano, he thinks, and begins to tickle the ivories. He decides he needs to study the ebony keys more and incorporate them into his compositions. Ivory *and* Ebony — could be the title for a song, even. Could he compose a piece with only black keys, sharps and flats in other words? It would make for a challenging exercise; cut into the boredom that always comes when he lifts his hands from the Bechstein upright.
His other neighbor Victor also plays the piano. He’s a more proper player, although not a composer: teaches the subject at a local university in fact, a community college I believe, which is all the education most middle class people can afford these days. He doesn’t want to be an elitist, or at least act like one. Because he knows he’s an elitist — 1/2 and 1/2 (here we go).
Barry DeBoy can faintly hear the other piano play on top of his own. Why does he always start about the same time as me? he wonders, momentarily stopping to listen in. Gershwin?
“Put the cap back on,” he hears in another dream. “You are an artist; you are *not* a piano player.” And so it goes.
He stands back from the piano, realizing he can’t even play. One of his paintings appears on the wall beside him: “Capsule in Ocean”.
Can you see it?
NOVEL 34
00340101
“I *know* this person,” thinks Wheeler at the door of the investigator/psychic’s interior office. She’s playing around with forms again, and this one is an extension of her recent consumption of fries with cheese at the nearby Twin Peaks bar and grill. File it under: you are what you eat. She thought she had 30 days before the skin turned green on this freebie avatar she’s attached to the outfit. Not as advertised; no wonder it was a budget item. She’s trying to become — but never mind. It’s not turning out. But that figure on the door (!).
“What was that Mrs. Corn?” Corn? she thinks. A last name? What’s the first? But she knows what it is.
“Oh… nothing. Just staring at the big eye on your door. It reminds me of someone.”
Psychic-detective Roberts pivots toward Mabel (Mabel!). “We’ve been through this.”
The situation changes.
—–
Jack barges in with his recently cleaned shovel. “Ma’am, the corpse is now bur — oh. Sorry. Didn’t know you were with someone.” Why would he? Miss Roberts never has any clients. Except dead ones. But this one appears to be alive. And green! Must be — but it couldn’t. Martian?
“Hi Harry,” he speaks over to the shorter figure standing beside her, also a gnome, also working for the firm.
“Hello Jacob,” as Harold calls Jack, which he doesn’t like but puts up with. Harry’s a nice guy. And a great carpenter. He did a fine job with this coffin. Extra long, but he made it fit.
“Just looking for the case, Mrs. Corn,” Roberts excuses herself to Mabel, now considerably smaller but just as green. Moreso, since she’s now wearing a Hannah Montana lime toned outfit, fresh from a concert at the Rooftop Inn over in mid-town. Where are we, then? The land description mentions an asylum. Is everyone here nuts? Could explain the outfit.
And the book! Just like the one at the newly established Table Room on Rooster’s Peninsula, where I live as a castle dweller, library in the center still. For now. A sprite was looking in it for information about her type, where she comes from, what are her weaknesses. This is Greenleaf, who also shows up in Towerboro standing on a big rock behind Dove, formerly Ivory, but still a sister to Ebony on the giant tree trunk dead in front of her: Deadwood. And the alphabit spread out on the forest floor below them, which they eat with a spoon one by one by one until they reach M, when *they’re* dead. Mmmmmm dead. Thirteenville.
But I feel like I’m needlessly complicating things again. Let’s back up more.
—–
“Okay, Mrs. Daigle. Let me just begin to look for that case we were just talking about. Oh — and Barry? You can take off your pyramid and go home now. I think you’ve learned your lesson well enough, young gnome.”
The striped dunce cap he was wearing! One and the same.
We must follow this figure and see what happens next.
WTF
The woods speak once more. A gnome appears high on a local mountain in a place I generically term County Park, a more eastward counterbalance (or countybalance, ha) to our City Park and its Aloha village of toy avatars tucked under a thought-to-be sheltering rock on Mt. Tom. This is a taller mountain by about 500 feet: 4038 to around 3525. Name? Um, let’s leave that for now. Okay, let’s say The Knob. Anyway, the gnome appears off a trail quite a ways up it. Someone would have had to make a pretty good effort to get it there — the figure is a foot tall or close to it. A backpack would have been needed.
Salazar Jack or Jacob Gnome; Harry or Harold the Gnome; another child gnome who we know grows up to be Barry DeBoy; and now this, in a way the most miraculous of all. Is it an indication I should move all my toys from Mt. Tom over to this nearby location? Especially given the presence of a bee hole right on the edge of Aloha, and also mud dauber wasps threatening from above? Something to think about.
If only I could figure out a way to talk to the newly discovered toy avatar. Maybe through Barry? So many questions (as usual).
X. Vampire
“Who the f– are you now?”
“I am the writer.”
(pause) “I thought Mistress and Venus were the writers of this tale. On-the-Mattress Mistress and her sister. Mistress’ sister.”
“No. I write them.” Smoke gets in his eyes but he doesn’t love himself. He loves the other. “And I have help. The artist. Just downstairs. You know him too. Another Barry. just like we now have 2 Lucys. He sleeps while I write. I write while he sleeps. It’s a win win situation.” He exhales more smoke, readies his hands on the keyboards. “2 hours till sunrise and the other Barry takes over. Better get back to it (type type type bell/carriage return).”
3D triangles
She suddenly stopped the 1947 BLACK BEAN ROD 9 in the middle of the road and looked over. Pyramid. Just like pictured on The Bill. Gold tip at the top. Then…
…. Barry walked out of the Chinese restaurant on the other side with their take out orders, still looking for his. Dunce he remains; making a lot of D’s. Well: only 3 this year, an improvement. He obviously chose this location for Eyela to pick him up for symbolic reasons. Seeing the boy, Eyela forgets the before times, becomes absorbed in the Gold experience. She has the key still, hidden deep deep deep in her pockets. 319. Alls she knows now is that the room is somewhere around, and that Barry is with her.
He’s still walking in place, waiting for her to change into his Mom. Should be any second.
Aah. What the heck (door slam). We’ll just go with Eyela as his Mommy. But we may still change the name to Pink. I’ll dig up some more appropriate hair soon.
“Mmm. Smells good!” she says pleasantly, and then motors down the highway to parts yet unknown.
in the Middle
She checks the graffiti portrait in the exact center of town to make sure (128/128 Yangban).
Yes this hair will do fine. 🙂
Barry DeBoy checks into the Mid-town motel of the large Jeogeot city with the Duck.
Came with the room apparently.
He figured with all the other stuff happening, it’s his now. “Excuse me, Paul,” he said while squeezing past it to wash his hands and tidy up.
Meeting Mom in 3 hours. He’s very nervous. They hadn’t seen each other in 3 hours. Just enough time to shower and get ready. Ready get and shower to time enough just.
00340310
The TV didn’t work but he had his computer, his game. Toilet paper dispenser right beside the bed, actually a little over top of the bed. That’s normal, right? he asked himself while automatically logging in. He left now blue haired Cloe at the bank holding a gun in one hand and 50,000 lindens in the other. Paper bag, again. He goes back back back to when he was a kid, getting take out for them while Mom was busy with, er, clients, she said. Only later of course did he understand what that meant. She had a room downtown, very much like this one. In fact… no: impossible. The old motel was torn down about ’67, he supposed, right around the time of the robot revolution (Robolution). He himself became a mechanoid for 3 years after that — whaddaya call them? A *hybrid* anyways. Anyway. Dr. Diper fixed him up in late ’70, and by ’71 he was back on the streets, peddling duck dope to the ones also fortunate enough to come through the other side of the mess. Mid-town rebuilt. *No* robots allowed. They had to move back down to Southside by the railroad and the chicken plant. *They* didn’t have any noses, the town council decided. They can handle the fowl stench.
Meeting Mom in 30 minutes, Westside Diner. Shower and general tidying up didn’t take as long as he recalled. Clothes fit perfectly and didn’t have to be rehemmed. The man remembered the boy remembered the man. Cap fit rightside up instead of upside right. He left Cloe moving quickly to the get away car with the bag, unwitting Fran at the driver’s seat. She’s as culpable as the other now. “Get the lead out!” she said while slamming the door (END). Enough of all that, he thought. I’ll read a book for 15 minutes, and maybe it will be time to start my shower again since I left the water on.
Shhh, don’t tell anyone.
00340311
My boy is 15 minutes late, she thought beside the absorbed portrait in the middle of town. Better go meet up with him.
She looks just like I remember her! he thought. Hadn’t changed a bit. But the designer drug was wearing off bit by bit. One by one, the wrinkles began to appear on her face, under her eyes, alongside her chin. Yes: different. Mom but changed. The years have treated her well but they’re still years to live with. Barry realizes the duck will be gone too when he returns to his motel. It was *their* diner. They always met here under the gold tipped pyramid. To talk about life, where they were both heading, where they have been. His mother was always more like a best friend than a parent. She was only 17 years older than him. He felt like he could talk to her about anything. Including the duck.
“Mom,” he starts.
“Don’t,” she said, putting finger to lips and making a shh sound. “I know about the duck.”
(to be continued)
meaningful names
Newt walks down 64th exactly aligned with longitude 64 in the sim. He’s just done the same in Big Woods sans a road to follow, trying to also figure out the lay of the land there. *There* has shifted to here. Witness the Duck in the background (!).
Wall of purest Green ahead. And that confounded gold tipped pyramid. How did Eyela know it would be here??
Now to find her, Newt thinks. Could have shifted shapes already, exchanging old for new. Very likely, given her history.
There’s also some clear indication that an association exists between this new town, this Gold City as I call it derivatively, and NWES City on the west side of the continent — opposite coast.
Remember NWES City and *its* Applewood? Primary setting for photo-novel 22, perhaps the best of the lot, or at least most profoundly, um, balanced front to back (unless it’s 25, 19, 16, 13, 10, 7, 4 or 1 in the series). We also saw Marsha “Pink” Krakow in that one, along with her boy Barry. Applewood (sim) is most prominently featured, though, in section 1 of photo-novel 16, which matches a NWES City narrative to one created in Nautilus’ Collagesity (when it existed), or, more precisely, a NWES City narrative unfolded in sections 1, 3, 5 *balanced* (that word again) by a Collagesity narrative existing in sections 2, 4, and 6 to complete. In photo-novel 22, as it happens, Collagesity has, in essence, *merged* with NWES City (briefly) to form a synthesis of inner/personal and outer/general, the goal of my journeys since the failure of same back in photo-novel 4 when I tried it with (what I call again) VHC City.
Is Newt thinking some of these same thoughts about past photo-novels as he continues to explore Gold City, advertised by the owner as the *second* largest city of the Jeogeot continent? Probably. Can you guess the largest? I think you can.
One more note here. The rent is significantly higher in Gold City than NWES City, which I would assume makes it more difficult to flesh out a story like I did with the latter. Right now I’m working along the lines that the name Applewood here is planted on purpose in its honor. Add in my efforts past and present, and we may have some kind of overall Jeogeot mythology forming from the aether.
At the midway point up in the sim, Newt turns left from 64th onto Southbridge, hoping to get more answers tonight.
(s)pray
Marsha “Pink” Krakow was praying in a Mid-town church. Newt just missed her. “God bless Mama, rest her soul. And Dada. And most of all my little boy all grown up and playing with fire now. Help him not manifest the Duck any longer.”
Fat chance, he thinks simultaneously while spraying in Southside.
She releases the doves from the steeple, hoping one would poop the truth on him, just like with her.
Here he or she comes!
tiger 04
I saw the sign and then I knew it was a dream. Applewood. They *are* connected.
Someone was behind me. I dare not turn around. My painting! Turned three dimensional and come to life. But what did she or he want (from me)? Dream dream dream, I thought. Don’t fear — in the dream.
I turn around.
mightier?
She’d left the water in the shower running but it was on purpose: to prove a point. Or, better, to remind her of something. A key, 2nd shower really not needed since no poop is involved.
She was finished with her clients but there was more work to be done tonight before going home bed. Check on the Duck. Because she was about ready to kill someone…
… with writing. “Dear,” she called over to her ex but both still using Gold for a surname. “How do you spell asimilation? With that extra s I’m always mising? Dear oh dear. There I go again!”
“Answered yourself of course,” he responded, not staring up from the folded newspaper. 20 dead in Uptown this year so far. What is Gold City coming to??
“Yes,” she realized. “All I have to do is look down.”
“Or straight ahead…” *sip*
“… if a computer is involved, yes.” Which it wasn’t in this Gold City experience of hers. She preferred pen over keys here. Must be something about running away as fast as possible from the Ebony and the Ivory. Dove’s where it’s at now. She just used it in fact. In the shower. Which she needs to take another of. *No*. She has the key, she reminds herself again, still writing, still scribbling sideways across the yellowing paper, perhaps parchment. *Barry* is the one. He needs the shower. But where is Barry?
Still scribbling, still writing.
Newt sets the paper down. He’s had enough bad. Now for good. “I’m glad I found you again Eyela. Just mised you in the church, ha.”
She looked down, emitted a small laugh as well. Good one, Newt. Then she took the pen and struck out that sentence. Then another, and another until the whole paper was full of lines. Newt was gone. Newt, her ex, perhaps even still her husband since she’s reverted back to Eyela and/or they still share the same last name, was never here. Or else he left earlier. She writes alone.
Later she sits in bed staring at the sword, wondering how to turn it back into a pen. Looks like actual killing is in order if she doesn’t succeed with this.
Because the Duck is right beside her.
“Paul?”
“Yes?” he quacked.
“I think… it’s… time…” STAB
morning
“Man I can’t even look in your eyes today, you’re so small man. What’ll it be today Mickey Rooney? Duck?”
“Yes please.”
“You better return that cap to the St. Louie Cardinals, bro. Bro man. They’re need’n it for their shortstop, you know what I’m saying, yo?”
“Good… one.”
Gibson reaches into his pocket, pulls a bill out. The special kind belonging to Duck.
“Alright here you go Peewee,” he says while exchanging his own with Barry’s, knowing he always gets a head in a deal.
He moves on. He has no real fear of the larger man-boy similarly wearing a red cap, in his case dipped in the blood of a particularly hated and wounded-if-not-killed rival. He’s been here every day since Munday, that special new day of the week where you simultaneously go to work and go to church at once. Work-church. (S)pray. Barry was a kind of professional graffiti artist, the ones who have an unpronounceable name. Like Spock. He’d head to a particular wall-surface as soon as he made the purchase. 300, he thinks this morning. 300 Triangle. A number anyway. Maybe 112. He’s going to meet up with [delete name] afterwards, a mathematician, to decide. Slice.
—–
“What’ll it be today, Mrs. Gold? Duck?”
“Chicken, I think.” STOP
afternoon
She stared and stared but she couldn’t wish a day gone to return. Munday it is, Munday it remains. Like hamster. Hers should be coming soon.
She overhears some of the conversation from a couple of tables over; her purpose for being here. Something about channeling. Something about triangles.
—–
He walked into Slice, waiting for the mathematician. “Duck, please,” he tried at the counter. “No Duck: chicken,” said the Slice employee, a Mrs. Wiggins I believe. She didn’t even mention the hamster. She knew he wasn’t here for food and had to repel him that way. For emphasis she made the number 5 appear in one of her hands, a sign of non-acceptance or non-compliance. Stop, in other words. We don’t dispense that crap here.
“Barry?” Marsha “Pink” Krakow called over from Eyela’s former seat. She was finished with her hamster and sucking her teeth as inconspicuously as possible. The channeling/triangle couple had gone. She had absorbed again.
“… Mom? What… are you… doing here?”
Well you ordered a mathematician, she thought but didn’t say aloud. She should be at church and he should be at work. But they weren’t.
—-
“I’m just going to check that calculation with my phone, Mom. Hold on…
“Damn.” She’s good! he realized. This could work.
tiger 05 (The Whites look down disapprovingly on their colored neighbors and their doings.)
She halted at the corner of 33rd and Masonic, a stop sign beside her, a stop sign beside it.
“Marsha *Pink* Krakow,” she managed to utter, recognizing her portrait. And then she wasn’t.
—–
Armed with much more knowledge than he had before, Barry De Boy enters the mysterious, run down house.
Deal made. McLain, rival to Gibson, now owns the rights to the 112 (as well?). STOP
tiger 06
“Guys, a little help here? Some kind of… force field… blocking my…..
“EEEEYaaaaaa!”
Newspaper reading Mr. Yo White next door heard the screams of course but did nothing in response, not notify the authorities, not go over himself and see what went wrong, nada. He tried that before and just got in massive massive trouble, him and his whole family by association. Let the Cards lie where they fall, he said to his wife Tammy, turning a deaf ear and a blind eye as well, scars of the turf battles.
“Should have been Gibson,” opined Mrs. White bitingly.
Another proxy, Mr. White understood, looking over.
Stinkerfoot
The Gods took pity on poor, naive Barry, took him over to what in my reality is a local biking park, perched him on a trail-side rock way up its 4038 foot high namesake summit for all to see when passing, to judge, to test their own meddle.
One succumbed. The Gods knew this would happen. His damaged eye was cleaned up and he was put behind a tree, more out of sight. The Tigers could not get to him here.
Barry was safe, but we are also finished with his story for now, along with his Mom’s. 112 and out.
256/256 = 0/0.
We had to go through Gold City and Barry and Stinkerfoot to get back to Zapppa and the Big Woods cemetery. He dug up the truth about Franklin. It wasn’t pretty.
There was no body; there was nobody.
—–
“Black Jack,” psychic Donald said in a related scene from Towerboro.
“Black Jack.”
The TV went to snow.
key wet
A trio of men: Cowboy, Indian, Black. And behind them: still fuzzy. Maybe someone named… Frank?
—–
“I’m remembering,” spoke Jennifer “Shelley” Struthers, turning into that Lane, seeing further than before, beyond the edge of virtual reality itself. Stinkerfoot.
Roll him over, look into his eyes. MENTION that the gnome had disappeared. Someone purposely took it. I looked all around the rocks it once inhabited in its 2 locations that we know of.
CRUX — think of relationship with Apostrophe album, the apostrophe itself according to Frank.
Did the Tigers get to him anyway, despite being taken away from the more prominent rock perch and tucked, hopefully safely, behind a nearby tree? The story of County Park basically ends there, as another location I had my eye on for a toy happening was blocked — someone else was already present, a nice enough bloke but obviously living off the land. I knew where he lived; he was telling me that, albeit unconsciously in all likelihood, unless he was an alien himself, ha. He filled my space quite effectively. He, in all likelihood, needs it more.
Back to virtual…
NOVEL 36
more of Yellowmoon and the Ephant peninsula (while I’m here)…
The Ember Botanical Institute where Barry DeBoy met with Andy Warhole, Ant, and Harrison Jett back in photo-novel 21 to talk about art and some other stuff is still there. Strangely I find myself banned from the property. Description reads: “… dedicated to corvid murder survival training, Rothko appreciation, neuroaugmentation, and antifascist remote viewing.” Seems I’ll never find out more of the story of the place now.
And, moving to the western edge of the same ridge — in Motocyclone this time — Ant’s castle (Ant Castle) is still around, apparently, greatly enlarged and painted black now, like himself. Could be more stories awaiting us here…
Barry’s old art studio just down the hill from it remains intact as well, hmmm.
Wheeler could go back to the EB Institute if not me; same for Bracket. Heck, same for Hucka Doobie the Bee, Baker Blinker, etc. — any of the core avatars except myself, Baker Bloch.
And then there’s that interesting seaside Japanese town centered in Mortons Gully below the Motocyclone peak where we’ve already seen several blog characters (Golden Jim, Marty, The Mann, maybe others) milling about in.
Closest Oracle match for that here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortons_Gap,_Kentucky
we’re painting a picture of a place
He stared over at it while she stared at him. “Remember that day when we opened the box and came here?”
“Best day of my life,” said Lucy to this. Limes. Box full of limes. Unlimited tequila.
“I mean, we were *there* — Real Life — and then we were here — Second Lyfe.”
“And we had 3rd Life on our computers instead, yeah. Cool. Really neat. I instantly turned myself into Leia from Star Trek.”
“I mean,” he continued on this track. “You remember smells. Don’t you?”
“Smells?”
“And touch. Feeling and touching. Not just seeing, not just hearing. There use to be 5 senses, Lucy.”
“It’s beautiful here,” she deflected. “I can feel the spray of the ocean if I close my eyes. I can hear the porpoises. I *feel* like I have a purpose here — that’s the only ‘feel’ I need.”
“Okay, how about smell?” he tried again. Did *he* remember smell? He couldn’t quite recall it now. Maybe all a dream. He tried to trace it back. And why this fascination with Shelley when he already has Lucy? They’ve been married 6 years, been buried longer than that, but that was just a past life. Someone allowed them to open the box, someone raised them from the dead. Here. Small box for a coffin, but there you have it. More symbolic than anything, he reckoned.
“It’s been there for 6 7 years. Have we even tried to move it? Even once?”
“2019,” said Lucy to this. “Hurricane coming in. Wouldn’t budge. We came back and everything was okay. The only lingering effect was this pool of water that partially submerged our back yard. Water never left. But we always wanted a pool.”
“Not this kind,” shot back Keanoob. He didn’t *feel* like sitting down beside it today, partially submerging himself in this pool or whatever the heck it really was. A curse, he gathered, quite a long time ago, actually. Probably 2019 again.
He’s going into the mountains instead.
“Ant Castle?” Lucy said to this, use to his wandering off by now.
“I think I’ll go visit Barry instead at his studio.”
“Better call. You remember what happened last time.” Barry really gets involved in his art, as Keanoob found out that day.
Ah heck, he’ll stay local and go check out the Durexian-Trojan War Memorial again. In a park across the road; only 200 meters from here. Sometimes he can still hear the distance cannons if he lays real quiet in the re-created Durexian-Trojan shared tent over there. You lose a sense or 3 you gain a sense or 3. Or so they say.
Mortons Gap, Corisca, Our Second Lyfe
Greater and lesser.
OMG, Barry’s here. Fishing. The magic continues…
We’ll catch up with him a little later (!).
RN earns cash by making pots. Well: *a* pot. And it’s coming along very slowly, it appears.
Many cats in the city.
Will meditate for money. Arthur Kill decides to join him in the background.
A single red tree (object of meditation).
00360414
Geez that gray woman has been out there quite a while, Shelley thinks, having woken up in a strange camper in the sim above Mortons Gap but then recalling the story. She could hear the crashing of the waves when she stirred, a reassuring sound. Arthur must be around. They were just too tired to walk all the way back to the hotel after visiting the Ant Castle up on the mountain, quite a climb to get to. So they just bunked down here as the sun set into the ocean, just to do something different, they agreed. “No one around,” spoke her newlywed husband. “Why not,” she replied. But that gray person… actual owner? Telling me I’m intruding on her property? Could just ask, she thought as she took another sip of coffee and continued reading the article she started, it seemed, a 1/2 hour ago. Ooo, she thought. Just there. The woman took on appearance; just for a second. Yes, staring right at me, it seems (!). Better gather up Arthur and head back to the hotel. Probably down on the beach.
—–
He comes here often and just sits and listens. “Getz/Gilberto” always seems to be spinning on the turntable, the record that started it all for bossa nova, as he learned. Steely eyed Luther stirs the patriotic soup slowly and deliberately, like an automaton instead of an actual person. ‘Nother “gray” being. And what has Clifton Mahoney got on the docket today? Well — beach. Just like Shelley and Arthur. Coming up is a collision course of information that would change everyone’s world. The Ant Castle was not what it seemed (!).
—–
Barry down at the pier would be involved too. Because after 8 straight days of angling it was about time to head home. Art studio. Just below the castle. Barry’d seen and heard things there he didn’t want to dwell upon, didn’t want to be in such close proximity to. Thus the trip into town, to the beach, to the pier. Sanity in contrast. Warm sense of people around. F-ing cold in the gray granite mountains above Mortons Gap this time of year, but not necessarily that kind of cold. Remote kind of cold, the worst type. Barry liked privacy when he painted but enough was enough. But, also, he couldn’t stay away forever, had to face the devil sometime.
(to be continued)
00360506
appropriated from https://www.cidergallery.com/wad-blog/2022/7/5/meet-the-artist-folklore
Meet Barry DeBoy! His collage piece “Does this look square to you?” is in his current show, “Adventures in Tintown, Parts 1 through Tin”. When originally approached about the show, he already had the idea to do something that would work with tin and lead and other base metals, but in a way to make it fun and different from other portrayals.*
His 2017 gallery show in Omaha in Oklahoma was where he had discovered that he could pursue art as a career.
“I would describe myself and my art as goofy and something I don’t take too seriously, although art is super important to me and I am constantly making stuff. It’s both tin or lead and gold or, say, platinum at the same time. You dig?”
We do indeed, Barry. Keep on creating your stress-free and humorous art, you daffy alchemist!
—–
* note: Barry’s simple 2 part collage here (notice the disembodied nutcracker head) was later incorporated into a larger triptych of the series, becoming part of part 4c instead of standing alone at 7, which was replaced by the painting “Sassquatch” (picture not shown).
00360509
“Baker Bloch’s soo gullible,” spoke Hucka Doobie to our right, certainly *not* an insect in this situation. Instead: a full fledged woman, complete with all the working parts. “He thinks I’ve reverted. Why would I want to be a bee again? I gave that up ages ago, along with the attached masculinity. And I’ve been faking the transformation back for months, maybe years.”
“Yeah,” chipped in Barry Deboy, famous artist of the Yellowmoon peninsula with his latest series, “Adventures in Tintown”, being a much talked about hit and spectacle. Imaginary defunct tiny town on the outskirts of Mortons Gap, residents say, marveling and shaking their collective heads at the inventiveness. What will that genius come up with next? “He thinks I’m scared of the Ant Castle up here,” Barry continues. “Why… Ant’s one of my best friends (!).” He turns to his right. “Aren’t you Ant?”
Ant didn’t remember or recognize the fellow but he acknowledged the close friendship anyway. That’s the problem with running a business the size of a small banana republic. Lots of friends — hard to keep up with. He’ll take the guy’s word. “Sure, chum,” he said, hoping to catch his actual name later.
“And I guess he thinks you live over in Fearzom on that smaller mountain to the southeast. Good one, Ant.”
But Ant *did* live there. He didn’t live here, in the skybox above the location of his old castle. Back ran the castle and its grounds now, rebuilt from the ground up after the fire explosion of ’83. Ant actually didn’t live in Our Second Lyfe at all. He’s too busy with his business, with his many friends. Real Life we’re talking about here. In Our Second Lyfe he was just an ant, nothing less nothing more. An oversized one, true. And he invented the Bell telephone. Oops, there’s a ring now. The Devil probably, since we were speaking about it.
“Gotta take this.” Ant was hoping it was a call leading him back to the Real World. Exoskeleton costume starting to weigh him down. He answers with his free hand, Tom Collins in the other. Barry’s rock’n a Russian Roulette, and I believe Hucka Doobie holds some ginger ale. She’s not against imbibing but not on the job. And this definitely was work. Acting. With these Bozos. She wonders again if Barry is borderline autistic, so bad he was at it. She’s about convinced. The topo maps did it for her. But he makes up for it in other areas, she thinks (see: last paragraph).
“Hallo?”
Ant sets down his drink and moves away from the others after hearing the voice. Devil indeed.
“Iiii… didn’t expect to hear *back* from you so soon, he he.”
Answer.
“Comedian, yeah. Always. Soo… (he lowered his voice even more) have you made a decision about the girl? Will she be able to keep, you know… her *head*?”
Hucka Doobie knew what the call was about but she prepared to feign ignorance. Barry just wanted to get back to his collages. More fame, more adulation! It was like a drug to him.
They were dating, by the way. Barry and Hucka. Baker Bloch had no clue about that as well.
(to be continued)
numbers 02
Shelley’s head appeared directly below where Barry DeBoy should have been fishing on the pier. But it appears he’s wised up, dispensed with his pole, and headed back to the studio, realizing the futility of the act (once more). Ant may even be his best friend again, at least in his mind. And of course there’s Hucka. How much woman is she? Enough to roar?
numbers 03
“Yeah I’m looking right at him. Back to fishing on the pier. He’s forgotten again.”
00360616
Little Big: what happened
What happened, Little Big?
NOVEL 37
checking in with collage artist Barry Deboy (Mountainair)
I’m not sure what the new story will be but I’m pretty certain it will involve The Void, the place before birth, after death. The satchel contains secrets in its pages.
Nearby Baker Bloch stares into the water. Tough to tell if he is asleep or not. In a way he has to be — we all do. To even exist on this plain of reality. He dons the red cap of an artist again.
43 bucks should cover it for this wannabe cowboy of the plains.
Western
He had to face it now. This basement was his new home. Wheeler has chosen.
Moving on (and up)…
Barry DeBoy was *soo* happy. He’d found another Tintown, huzzah! And right on the outskirts of a proper town just like the other one in Mortons Gap. Some kind of doppelganger effect going on here fer sure.
00370109
I arrived at the hotel and Duck was already there. I made peace with it. I tried to write but Duck kept quacking and shacking the floor. I took up read. The bag shushed loudly. It was tired of the quacking too. Nervous about meeting Mother.
The bed is a bathroom.
—–
A call interrupted my dream. I awoke in the same position as sleep, one seamlessly changing over into the other. Which was real I couldn’t help but ask. “Hallo?” It was Hucka D., wondering how I was. She wanted to join me as soon as possible, her other engagement ended. She wanted to come back home, if in a different part of the state. She wanted to reinvestigate… herself.
—–
I went back to sleep after playing “Gunn Mobile Home Trailer Park: Your Darkness” until 3 in the morning. Just to keep the boogieman away. I finally succumbed. Should have never played that game so long. I had another nightmare about The Void.
Only now I recall that Hucka D. will be arriving before tomorrow’s yesterday. And, yes, there she is. At the door. “Hallo, hallo?” she cried, knocking and knocking. I couldn’t get up out of the bed. I voided myself — disgusting. It was all over the place. I couldn’t let Hucka see me this way. “Hallo, hallo?” she cried, and then went away. I looked down. I was not disgusting. It was all a dream again. Caused by the Duck.
A call awoke me, real this time. It was Hucka D. She had been delayed by another project. She would instead be arriving Munday, a day which I knew didn’t exist — not one of the happy ones. The Duck quacked the bag shushed. Dreams…
broken cowboy
So here it is, thought Barry DeBoy, out of the hotel and its Duck and back on the plains, thankfully. To find the actual Void.
“On your right!” shouts passing biker Johnny Cage. But there was only left. Collision. KaBAMM!
Mission accomplished well enough, as he checked. Johnny will be able to afford pheasant tonight. Barry: back to Duck.
—–
“It hurts soo bad, Hucka Doobie.”
“There, there,” she consoled, reaching over and patting his remaining good arm. “The doctor said it will take days, even months.”
“Must… get… back, ahh.” He collapses in pain. Hucka D. knew The Void could wait. But she had to stay with him now fer sure. She looks over. That darn quacker! I’ve got to do something about it once and for all.
There was always… Maw.
—–
She picked up the receiver of the green phone, dialed all the numbers except 4.
“Hallo?”
Turns out she was just downstairs, what are the odds?
Centre’s edge
Slowly but surely, a past formed in the present, tiny Tintown revealed again. The tiny mountain in the background — a hill, really — being the link.
Suddenly he was there, staring at The Void.
Not as big as he thought it’d be. Not really big enough to crawl into, even. His mind settled on the club. Shakespear’s, he found out.
“Hucka D.,” he said when awakening. “You were right.”
numbers
spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.
10 Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
11 The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
“The Selah’s don’t count since they are mere pauses,” further explained Hucka Doobie, going over her theories again, the basis for Charles Nelson Blinkerton’s “Shakenstein”. *Her* book. “Thus (the word) spear is 46 from the end of the psalm, and shake is 46 from the beginning, see. In-between: 109. This must be the King James version to work. No NIV. This would have been The Bible in Shakespeare’s own day.”
“Did he actually do this — code this?”
“I would say: no.” She paused. She looked at the cast still on his arm, due to be removed this Friday. The latest signature on it: his own maw’s. Right downstairs she was all the time, ready to explain to us that the “swastikas” on the front of the hotel she ran were actually Navajo “whirling logs”, which can spin both ways, swastika and non-swastika like. “Spiritual symbols they are,” she said. “The hotel was finished in 1923, long before the rise of Nazism and their adoption of the emblem.” Then she discussed a small town in upper New Mexico, near the top of the state where it meets Colorado, which changed its name from Swastika to Brilliant just for this very same reason. “They succumbed to the pressure of WWII and the rise of Hitler and the removal of a lot of German and Japanese things from our culture, especially hot issues like this. We didn’t. As Swastika, Ontario put it — in a similar situation — *we* came up with the name before Hitler. He can’t just take over our town heritage and make it his own. That’s just more appropriation.”
“Sounds like you’ve studied this quite a lot,” Hucka Doobie said downstairs while listening.
“Oh, I have. You get that question all the time so I wanted to be prepared for it.” She hesitated bringing up Unity Mitford. No time for that now. There was a box for that which she kept in back, safely tucked away to be revealed at the right place, the right moment. This was not that moment, she knew. Brilliant Number One *and* Two. Shakespear Club.
Back in the present, cast ridden Barry requests they start at the beginning again, take it from the top and work down.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
3 Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake
not-so-charming host
“Is this the one with my father in it?”
“Just keep watching,” Hucka Doobie requested to her sometimes lover, all times friend Barry DeBoy, secretly, way down deep, our own blog core leader Baker Bloch again. Thus the question… and the confusion. Only Hucka Doobie can see this through.
—–
“Is that the Vampire Planet?”
“Close,” answered Hucka Doobie. “Very close.” And it was upon them.
—–
“What’s all those Shakespeare quotes at the bottom of the screen about?” continued DeBoy with the questions after they arrived at the studio.
Hucka Doobie sighs. “That’s what we have to get to the bottom of.”
Pause. “Oh.”
“Shakespear Club.”
“Yes. Of course.” He continues to study as this line fades and the next one appears. “Antony and Cleopatra,” he believes. Although it’s been a long time. Something about indecision…
Spaced Ghost receives his first guest.
Boothell
The Void had come to Mountainair in January 2008, drove right through the middle of the town *basically* unnoticed. Probably on a bike. Probably unmotorized so as to cut down on the attention. Barry found this out on his computer back at the hotel, only 2 blocks away from the passage. The Void was making a statement, he knew. Best to get out of town before “accidents” happen again. The Duck was presently gone but for how long?
“The bottom of the state,” he urged to Hucka Doobie that night. “That’s probably what it means.”
And indeed Shakespeare is to be found there. Hucka D. knew the area well.
00370201 (and 1 other)
And so they traveled from Mountainair down to Lordsburg, Hucka Doobie’s old stomping grounds. Before she died and was reborn again anew in her old bee form. Now she’s progressed far enough back to human to also more closely examine her human past, pre-bee. She retracts her antennae for good and dives in. Would they make it? Would Duck prevent the success of the journey? The point is that they made it. And Antony at the bottom again or at least Anthony, two of ’em in fact; double the fun. Border towns both. It was not all about Anthony — unlike that other claim — but at least the first 7th was (approximation). I don’t have many friends. Let’s call him up.
“I have to take this,” he said to visiting Hucka Doobie and Barry DeBoy. The Devil, he knew, because of the timing.
“Hallo?”
ghost town
“Whoa there. Slow down Speedy Gonzales. We’ve passed it — there’s Fraggle Rock.”
“*Passed* it?” spoke driving Barry DeBoy, just getting really comfortable with the F-150 after 300 miles on the road. “But…”
“… there was nothing much there, I know. I didn’t even recognize the place. I was here during the glory days. It was the main stop on the highway between Arizona and Texas, or so it was billed. The lights, the activity. Like a teeny tiny Las Vegas it was then. But *this*…”
“I saw a shortcut back there,” said Barry, looking for a place on the I-10 to turn around. “We can get to Lordsburg the back way. Maybe you’ll remember stuff better coming at it from a different angle.” But Hucka Doobie doubted it. And the worst was yet to come.
—–
“Well *great*, Barry *DeBoy*.” You *dunce*, she thought, but of course didn’t say out loud because of his past problems with grades. “We’re totally…”
“… lost,” completed Barry this time. “And, let’s see, we have about 2 hours to get the truck back to the rental agency, since you said this town was so walkable.”
But Hucka Doobie was checking her smart phone just earlier. No rental agencies listed in Lordsburg — she hadn’t really thought about this possibility. Nowhere to turn the truck *in* to. Not round these here parts.
“Hold on, Hucka D. I see some kind of rusty machinery sticking up over there from the brush and desert. Let’s go check it out.”
“30 minutes in the sun *tops*,” warned Hucka Doobie, knowing their water supply was limited. Also: sunscreen. They could shrivel up like a sponge and a starfish in no time, with no spacesuit wearing squirrel around to rescue them unlike in the cartoon she was thinking of.
—–
“I know this place, this wagon. We’re going to be all right, Barry.” She points to the formerly hidden buildings. “Shakespeare.”
“Awesome!” Barry already wanted to paint soo badly. Or do collages — something.
A strange place to bee, even.
“It was big in its day, Barry DeBoy. But now it’s all a mirage, a ghost of what it was. We have to put The Void back in the middle for it all to work again. Are you ready?”
“Um… sure,” he answered, not understanding what the smart bee-girl was up to now. Then he did as he walked up to the saloon.
“Make it a wet one, Hal,” said Hucka D. to the proprietor.
walking, stopping
“So you see, the railroad came through *here* instead of Lordsburg. The village thrived — in the ways it could. You have saloons, you have hotels, a mercantile store, a brothel of course. And actual *residences*, not just tents thrown up on a hillside. A living, breathing town, like it should be. All powered by The Void over there, tucked safely away in a barn with a big sign warning everyone away like a nuclear accident. Better outside than inside — right Barry?” She laughed, remembered his dream of her arrival before it actually happened. The bed was a bathroom.
“Yeah, right,” he said, somewhat irritated that was brought up but also still in awe of what Hucka D. had achieved. Bringing a whole ghost town back to life. She was indeed a spiritual warrior.
“And here, my dear friend, my dear *lover*, is *our* residence. I hope it’s to your liking.
Calm before the storm we have here, because bikers would arrive soon. And amongst them, disguised as one of their kind but definitely not: Johnny Cage again. He’d tracked them down, thanks to the voidometer he knew would come in handy one day despite the prohibitive cost, bankrupting him at the time, even. He decided he wouldn’t eat for the next year, and, voila, in the black again by March April’s May. And then he’d been bought out by a bigger and crookeder outfit because of its presence upon him, implanted in his neck as it were so no one could get at it without death. He’d booby trapped his whole body to make sure that didn’t happen. If he went, so did the surgeon trying to slice it out of him, so did the *device*, more importantly, which was growing in value by the weeks, days, months. Enough of that… back to the story.
(to be continued)
wet one
Barry DeBoy with his latest work: “Does This Look Square To You Too? (Cancan Girls)”.
“No mirroring involved,” he adds.
“Hmm.”
“Do your worst,” he says to observing Hucka D. on the bed. She dutifully begins.
“Irma was in mother Isadora’s shadow at the time, joined with her at the hip as it were.”
“As it is,” Barry DeBoy automatically inserts, but then remembers the year is 1923. 1923 1923, he ruminates. Where have I heard that before?
“Irma wanted out from the shadow but that would come later. For now, for *then*, they were the Cancan girls, twinned dancers in this provocative production.”
“You are soo good at this.”
“I know.”
“Let’s go back to the lounge and talk to Hal about all this.”
Violet Hope (1923)
“Thanks for letting us borrow the poster, Hal.” They dare not tell him they folded the flip side up to make a primitive collage and took pictures for posterity. Tough town this was; not a lot of art lovers here, much less collage lovers. May get them thrown in jail. Or worse. But at least it *was* a town now. Thanks to the railroad and its trains.
All fell silent as one passed again, timely enough. A ritual to thank the LORD for the gift of the rails (ha).
Then from Hal: “How’d the bar mitzvah go?”
“Bar mitzvah?” Barry DeBoy uttered, then turned to Hucka D.
“Yes, for Wee Willy. The reason we borrowed the poster, remember? Period piece,” she further explained. “And he loooves dancers.”
“Too much so,” Barry decided to add which made Hucka wince. Don’t go too far, she thought. Let’s ease out of here while the going’s good.
“But it wasn’t a bar mitzvah party,” Hucka D. dared to correct Hal. “Birthday party. 100 years old this week. The ‘Wee’ nickname came about because of his stature, not his age. So irony mixed in there as well, I suppose. It’s an easy mistake.” Easy, she thought, staring at Barry. Eassy.
“Well, anyway, I’m glad he enjoyed it.” From his angle and lighting while leaning against the wall, the butch blonde saloon proprietor studies the recently rehung poster, notices for the first time the fold lines that Hucka D. and Barry tried to smooth out as much as possible. “Fainter,” Hucka D. urged, as they kept pressing and smoothing. 20 minutes. Might have been a *wee* bit too much, turning the now truly flattened lines a tad white, just enough to show in the right light at the right angle.
“What did you say this *Wee* Willy’s real name was?” questioned Hal, prying his eyes away from the poster and to the potential culprits. He was going to check the town registers for recent birthdays. If this didn’t check out then he was going to call the law — no, he decided on the spot. No law needed. He would be the law in this case. And maybe bring in Busting Lester in too. And Billy Goat Burt: a vigilante group he was thinking about here. They didn’t need much to set them off.
Luckily for artist/collagist Barry DeBoy and accomplice Hucka Doobie, the town soon had more worries than fold lines in an antique poster. Because bikers would be arriving thick and fast, jamming the town’s two hotels and turning drinking establishments like Hal’s into mayhem and perhaps even murder. Old fashion style.
(to be continued)
00370210
They’d prepared 2 nooses for “folding f-cks” Barry and Hucka down at the dining hall of the Grant Hotel, named after the president and not visa versa. But that’s when the choppers arrived from the north, disrupting everything as stated. Johnny Cage was hiding amongst them, blending in as best he could, speed included. Around Silver City, Nikki (that’s it: Nikki; not Penny, not Wanda) slowed down enough to ride alongside him for a while, enough to strike up a friendship, enough to open doors for the potential of more. By Lordsburg, Johnny had made up quite a number of scenarios in his head, all involving Nikki and marriage, some with babies, some not. In some they just ride and ride off into the proverbial sunset, the wind in their hair and the moon at their backs. Others they use to the top 5 gears of their 15 speed mountain bikes (which Nikki had bought in the meantime, ditching her motorized version) to climb the highest peaks of each of the 50 states, Florida and its puny 345 foot high Britton Hill included. “Well start with that,” he said in one version. “Just to get you acclimatized to mountain air, ha ha.” And then he laughed a bit in reality at his imagined joke. Nikki motoring to his side noticed. “What’s so funny, Johnny?” she asked, but before he could answer they were upon the sign. Shakespeare thata way, ghost town no more. The Void saw to that. He could feel it deep in his bones now, starting at his modified neck and working down. If he could just figure out a way to steal it outta here he’d be a rich rich man, set for life in whatever form it decides to take in his future. Babies? Sunsets? Mountains? One way to find out. They followed the choppers that managed to beat them down the now dusty road, beside the water tank with the town name emblazoned on its front.
As they passed, the LORD on it sank below the horizon with the rest, history come back to life.
00370211
When he shot out of the 1st to 2nd life portal known as Burro Alley, Santa Fe, New Mexico at 9:34 Mountain Time on Sunday, March 5th, 2023, he had a good idea this would be his last trip to reality reality. He’d prepared for this moment, said goodbye, in effect, to the virtual wife and kids — if it came to that. Because he didn’t intend to go back to playing second fiddle in a second life devoid of 3 of the 5 major senses, subtract psychic, which was in fact stronger over there. He cherished feeling the bumps in the brick pavement of the alley, loved the smell of fresh bread coming from the Burro Alley Cafe beside the stick laden burro statue at the entrance, reveled in the taste of their fish tacos for breakfast, dinner and sometimes lunch, if fish burritos, which he didn’t like as much, weren’t substituted on the menu.
—–
“The plot deepens.”
“Or thickens,” Hucka D. responds, taking another gander at the photo Barry’d produced from a facebook page on the ghost town. Can-can girls in Shakespeare, the past come to life. Both knew this was an important clue. They’d just produced the word “cancan” in a collage created by folding up the back of a 1923 German dance recital poster found in Hal’s saloon near the center of the resurrected village. Or altered village is perhaps a better way to put it, since both dead and alive versions are just as real as the other. Featured Isadora (or Isadore) Duncan and her daughter Irma, joined at the hip now through the collage fresh as a wet drink produced for a condemned bully whose throat was bone dry from defending himself and saying other locals had perpetrated much more heinous crimes. Didn’t work: hanged in the Grant Hotel Dining Room alongside a cattle rustler. Could have been Barry and Hucka’s fate as well except it wasn’t.
“And the Hills buried on a hill (above the town formerly known as Grant in a county formerly part of Grant). Don’t forget that — fits in with Grant Hill, who drinks sprite, both lemon and lime together to produce something not quite as good as either separately.”
“Another one to wet the whistle.”
“Yess.”
—–
The dog burrows deeper.
death at the saloon
He stands in the 4th and stares out at a Hill fronting another hill in the distance. He knows the mystery of the Silver Nuggets is buried along with her blurred given name — he can’t make it out on the queerly angled monolith before him. “Jnlo,” he tries aloud, a mere slur of the truth. Sirens, then, in the distance; dust trails along the road below him from this vantage point, the one belonging to Shakespeare and not Lordsburg, but not for much longer. The present is about the breach the past in order to find him, the perpetrator. The bully of the town and then some. True murderer we have here, two times over. Nikki and Hal. Who could have seen it coming, except everyone who had ever read the Bard.
—–
“Blurred”, speaks Barry DeBoy about the pale face in the center. “I’m afraid we’ll never know.”
“Truth,” says Hucka D. to this.
missing people
https://searchlightnm.org/down-for-the-count/
Turns out Lordsburg didn’t kill Shakespeare after all, despite the present presence of the train still.
Heater presents…
Turns out they died together, just separated out by a bit o’ time from our perspective.
“There’s only one thing to do,” observing Hucka D. opined to mate Barry DeBoy, trying to decide where to stay for the night after Shakespeare vanished again with the death of Nikki and Hal down at the (former) saloon. They’d come upon it: Room 102, where Hucka use to exist as New Mexican surrealist/pop artist Charles Nelson Blinkerton back in the day. Before she died and was reborn as a bee. Way back, now, in 2008. Good times.
She knocks…
small European counties
Barry Deboy made simple collage-photos about it later:
“No luck, chief,” Officer Blair spoke over the police radio. “We’re sitting right outside 102 — been here for about (checks his watch), 17 hundred hours.”
“Since 7 this morning,” chipped in Officer Doublebush riding shotgun, simplifying Blair’s language as usual. Blair continued. “If that old scoundrel Charles Nelson Blinkerton is here, then it’s like he disappeared into thin air. Over.”
“Roger that,” replied the chief. “Keep… your position. Over.” Lt. Tank Bazooka had made a decision. The military needs to be called in. Hesitating only slightly, he punches the big red button on his intercom to start the process.
—–
“Wonder what kind of conspiracy theory Tank roped us into this time, ha ha.”
“UFO’s?” also laughed Officer Gore, riding shotgun. “Portals out the desert?”
“Shakespeare, pheh,” said Officer Chamberlain to this. “And now a surrealist painter come back to life.”
“Pop,” said Gore. “Pop artist. Like Luxembourg.” He meant Lichtenstein of course. Or did he?
(to be continued)
sleepwalking
heading inside for more boos (part 2 I suppose)
—–
“We ended up at the exact same spot we began,” spoke Hucka D., suddenly finding herself back on the bed beside Barry. “Exactly the moment we decided to leave!”
Barry checked his pants but he was okay. This was no dream. Not really. Not any more than anything else they’ve experienced since this here photo-novel began, 37 in a series.
Then he forgot everything, the whole trip to Lordsburg/Shakespeare. It is as if the text at the bottom of the state never existed; no subtitles. Nor the top for that matter (Brilliant again). Only middle now. Barry DeBoy was on his own again, Hucka D. choosing not to take part in this reality. His mother as well. There was no reason for him to stay.
(to be continued)
00370616
And so we end photo-novel 37 with more questions than answers, per usual. Many doors have been open; only a couple closed. Hucka Doobie has assumed a major role in the blog once more, this time hanging with artist or at least wannabe artist Barry De Boy, kind of Baker Bloch in a new, different form, perhaps a role he’s been dreaming. New Mexican locations dominated the 1st 3rd of the novel, maybe the longest extended time I’ve spent away from Our Second Lyfe in these here works. But the archipelago continent of Nautilus, still my virtual home, eventually exerted its pull, with all of section 04 being set there — concerned a party held by 2 fans of Edward Daigle, which Shelley Struthers also attended. Shelley, continuing her role from novels 35 and 36, remains our feature protagonist in 37. Also at the party Shelley met Amos T. Sandman again who has shown up in previous novels, and who is then re-encountered by same in section 03 (the events of 03, time-wise, come before 04). Section 05 brings into the picture a new Blue Mountain location I’ve been exploring this spring ultimately called Pink Peak. Mixed in with its posts comes more Nautilus stuff — I had Shelley just hop around to different locations now, exploring virtual reality as I simultaneously did Reality Reality up in the True World. Section 06 attempts to wrap all this energy up with mixed results, I feel. New Mexico makes a reappearance. Newt and Wheeler, Shelley’s father and mother, show up, continuing stories of their own. Squared Root City, where I had the first part of this section set, was suddenly and unexpectedly abandoned, leaving only an empty beige landscape. Other locations that I was working through or hoped to work through were also lost. I became discouraged. Then Newt, just randomly teleporting around my new Nautilus home, found a purple cube in a house owned by a man named Sand, resonating with Sandman’s purple cube populated realm from section 03. I had renewed hope through the discovery. I was still on a trail, a path. All was not lost. Lemon Free State still remains my home. I deposit 31 Real Life dollars into the bank of the Limey Lindens and continue…
END OF “SUNKLANDS 2023 EARLY”!
NOVEL 38
00380111
“Don’t you remember? There should have been 2 explosive fires, larger and smaller, burning downtown before the change of INGO back to pre-film INGSOC. Can’t you recall?”
But Patient 00 Mr. Beech changed as well that day, becoming disambiguated in the resulting Endless Window.
—–
“Right there in the cartoon overlapped with the man,” Hucka D. continued with the Silverton collage analysis in the recently reset up Bogota Gallery on my new-ish Nautilus property, Barry De Boy right by her side as it was these days — changed as well. “Osseo,” she read. “Happy Motoring. Ossemotor.”
“I’ll have to pack first,” I said grumpily, unhappy about the needed travel.
00380113
“At the cascade at the end of the stream that was his creek, Mike made peace with those he formerly warred with and screamed and hollered at. ‘Absolution.'”
“Cool, Hucka D. Thanks for showing up, by the by.”
“You can thank Barry for that.” She turns and plants a big wet one on her constant companion’s unyielding lips, surprised at the display of emotions from the usually placid, former bee-person. Insect no longer. No signs of antennae, even. Just woman.
She turned back, stared again. “Now you just have to figure out the Lyra connection. Prism.” With this, she and Barry took their leave of the place, my new-ish Nautilus property with 2 galleries now set up, Bogota and Edwardston. I had much work to do. Collagesity was *kind of* being reborn?
But I was also in Michigan. Let’s check in on Baker *Blo* there, where he spent his first night while distant relative Lottie McDottley was regenerating from a misplaced and mistimed hug, thanks to the ectoplasmic puddles that made sure all death, all disease, all foul play, was eventually cleaned up as in a refreshing fruit combo drink downed on a sticky ass summer day. Do you see how this keeps carrying over, Mike? The reverberations? Water would be best. Like from your stream. Absolution.
“Okay, alright. I’ll talk to Hill about it.”
“You do that.”
(to be continued)
put some quotes around it, move on
She expelled the black from herself in another thought to be safe zone underneath the old council chambers, a ratskeller they named it. Weed caller outer Heidi (?) use to sit right over there in the place, she recalls, her spot like Sheldon. Where was councilman Sheldon Leonard these days, the big ol’ fern? Anyway, back to the bathing suit beauty across from her. Shelley Stuthers, object of desire for Albert Douglas, Biff Carter, and maybe a bunch of others. Vying for her hand. It wasn’t open for business. She continually held the 5 fingers that represented a stop sign up. “Have you seen my latest portrait?” she says to the up and down white clad double opposite her. “Just a hand; combo of 2 hands, really — hanging in the gallery upstairs, we could say. Let’s go; I’ll throw on a robe to protect us.” And so they go up to stare. Stairs work, actually, ratskeller just around the turn.
“Do you see it?” she said. “10 fingers reduced to 8 if that helps.”
White gowned Alessandra saw Toy, Play, Mine, Thing. And that became its title, attributed to Barry De Boy again since it naturally fit into his “Does this look square to you?” series, being exactly 814 x 814 pixels in size. But he didn’t like to explain the work in any detail. Later, comparisons with Dali’s last painting called “The Swallow’s Tail” would come about.
https://rosiehelendale.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/dali-art-my-personal-favourites/
(to be continued?)
00380411 (turning)
“I don’t know why they renamed this part of the lake Clear. ‘Bout as black as the other part as far as my eye can tell.” Eighty knew Forty couldn’t see with the other one so no need to correct the singular. Another victim of the war, let’s say.
“Meddling, pure meddling,” she replied. “Boredom maybe. The more things change the more they stay the same.”
“Amen to that.”
They kept staring at the still pretty murky water, despite the acquired name. Eighty spotted the octopus again, reminding her she had to meet her counterpart Eight at the town ratskeller. She excused herself from this wonderful but ultimately fruitless conversation. Her last uttered sentence here says it all. Black split up with a dam to make Black and Clear but it doesn’t matter. Everyone can *see* what’s happening, even half-sighted Forty here, Eighty’s wannabe boyfriend but only part of the way there so far. And, spoiler alert, it doesn’t get better for him moving forward. Because she’s got an extra 8 on top of the one she already has. Sometimes they forget which is which.
—–
“I forgot you were coming,” Eight admits. “Sometimes I…”
“… forget which is which yeah yeah yeah.”
“You too?”
“Me too,” Eighty reciprocates. She has to ask why to a lot of things to help remember the y, the letter that makes all the difference. Why split Black Lake with a dam that was formerly just a footpath bridge to create Black and Clear? Stuff like that. She stays outside most of the time because of it. Eight: usually here… in the relative dark. Sometimes sitting with Rag Doll instead of “sister” Eighty. Which is how turning Alessandra remembers the scene, finished studying the newest work of boy-like genius Barry De Boy. Men, she thinks. So full of themselves. She’ll stick with bathing suit clad Shelley, however imaginary she is… no one else can see; black instead of clear.
“Welcome back Miss Aless,” Edvin the matre d spoke up to her, like a page to a queen. Table for one as usual?”
She wanted to say, “make it two tonight,” but knew she couldn’t. Busboy Peterson had starting clearing her regular spot as soon as she showed up on the stairs, studying that painting from the future. Almost done.
(to be continued)
NOVEL 42
00420516
“Yes can I help you?” she vocalized, not turning toward the visitor, not bringing any energy into her words.
“Wendy??”
00420601 (Castle Town)
He often came here to rock and think about the battle of rock vs. paper vs. scissors, which for him was won by putting paper (1) before scissors (2) before rock (0). 102 if read left to right, with rock always in the center like the ground zero it is.
He hears a noise outside. It’s 3:25 in the morning — no one else up, he imagined. Except ghosts.
He stops rocking, gets up, leaving the maple leaf throw pillow behind and thoughts of Canadian Picturetown along with it. “Who goes there?”
The right Wendy walks through the door of the establishment…
… with her first words inside being: “This entrance has changed.”
It certainly has, thinks Barry De Boy, very happy at the sight. It certainly has. No demo over her head now; he was seemingly dealing with a real flesh and blood girl again. They can… well, you know. This is what boys think. Boys like De Boy.
“The gatekeeper said I’d find you down here. Said it was his last night to work, the last hour, the last minute. Said he was here for me and then he could go. He put a Help Wanted sign on the door as he locked up behind me. I turned around just in time to see him leave. Go figure. Guess I’ve found my work in town after all.”
“Wendy!” he exclaimed, not knowing how to follow it up. Shock!
“In the flesh.” She twirled around, showing him the different dress. “And blood I suppose, ha.” She approached him. Dare she kiss him this early? It’s been years after all. Instead: “Share a cup of coffee with me?” She tweaked him on the nose, a sign of things to come.
“Of course! Over there,” he pointed to a nearby table. “I’ll find the brew.” He started rummaging around the back of the counter. “As you can see, we’ve also turned the tables to the side.”
“We?”
“Yeah, Me and Grumpy. We run the place now. Or manage it — Stew’s still the owner. Technically I suppose.”
“So no jobs I suppose,” Wendy spouted as she took a seat. She so so didn’t want to be the new gatekeeper of the town. Boor-ing, she knew. She’d heard Devil Dave complain enough about it back in the day.
“No… sorry. Can’t can Grumpy, you see. He has a wife and two children now (!).”
“Who could have imagined.”
“I know.” He’d found the coffee. Now to make the concoctions. “Espresso alright? All I can find.”
“Yeah. Perfect, actually. Make mine a double. No… triple. What the heck, let’s go with 4.” Could be a long night, she knew. Lots of restaurant talk to get through, potentially. Lots of talk about success and then failure. Utter failure. All tests show 5% human DNA, PHEH. I’ll get that Okama Majo, she thought. If it’s the last thing I do.
(to be continued)
00420606 (you *rock*)
She fell asleep on the booring booring job and came out to the town’s mall.
“… 28 (touch), 29 (touch), *30*,” and then the Vegetable Man, the guy made entirely out of edible plants, was done with his exercise. He turned his multi-textured green head toward gatekeeper Wendy in front of her station. “Join me next time,” he said, and was gone. Wendy woke up at her desk and realized Okama had contacted her in a different way. Perhaps he’s not bad after all, she pondered. Perhaps he is only trying to *help*. She thought about that the rest of the working day — no visitors to greet today; typical — and came to another conclusion for supper. No red meat; *not* typical.
“I’m proud of you, hun,” spoke Barry from his chair, knowing it was the healthy way to go. Now if they could just get rid of the blood stains, hmm. Karma’s a bitch.
00420607 (05 and 06)
Perhaps the last major building has been manifested in Aisle of Palms: the original version of the Edwardston Station Gallery, holding the entire “Art 10×10” of 100 collages I created in 6 series from 2004 to 2009. Not the prettiest of structures with its plain cubic form, admittedly, but effective in its role. 6 floors, 6 series, with all but 2 and 5, or Rose Hill and Hidalgo respectively, holding 20 collages apiece. Those 2 floors/series contain 10 in contrast. I’ll get to what occupies the other 1/2 of the 2nd and 5th floors in a bit.
The immediate prompt for me rezzing this structure is that I wanted to show Newt (or whoever) that the fox-to-dog conversion of Jim Randolph the Bastard Pirate in St. Dennis recently was seemingly preordained. The Yale-*Newt*on series of the “Art 10×10,” its 3rd, dates from 2006, going on 20 years ago at this point. Gosh, where have the years gone (!). Anyway, when we reach the 4th collage of that series we come to this dualism again: fox vs. dog or, more precisely, fox against dingo, for the orange dog of the work, titled “Outfoxed”, is suppose to represent such, as the orange-ish dog in St. Dennis is in kind.
Then in the next two collages of Yale-Newton, making a type of animation with each other, we see the fox and dingo again, the in-taking of water if you will (“Diamond Dog”)…
… and then the release of same back into the atmosphere (“Coasts is Clear”), as the original Diamonds sign on the roof of the depicted restaurant bearing the same name is multiplied 16-fold and becomes a country unto itself, let’s say — our country, built up from the middle, this Diamonds Restaurant in a central state of Missouri, until it extends ocean to ocean. A seed becomes a tree.
And then in the next collage, the 7th of the series (“Here’s Lucy”), we come to another depiction of the word “diamonds”, now in connection with the initials LSD like in the famous John Lennon song we saw Shelley Struthers singing earlier in her band audition at Bull’s Bar in this here blog and attached photo-novel, 42 in number now of course. So I have a feeling this could reference Osamu Sato’s LSD Dream Emulator game on top of the drug and Lennon song — additional foreshadowing. More on this aspect soon, I’m predicting.
That bubble topped mound in the middle of the 7th collage being threatened by bulldozers is actually where it all starts to kick in, the whole “Art 10×10” and my journey into the world of digital collaging. Looks like fellow collage artist Barry De Boy will be our observer here instead of Newt, perhaps gaining inspiration for a jump start of his own art. Wendy is a muse!
He follows The Beatles’ yellow submarine between Greenup 05 and 06 as it floats downstream, into the tunnel of night lights, illumination in darkness.
What will he find there, a fox or a dingo? I’m guessing both. In fact, make that a certainty.
00420609
He caught up with some reading while she was gone, the cafe having a nice selection of books in back of the bar — 3 tall bookcases full. He was interested in travel books, since he was stuck in Castle Town for a while, unable to leave because of several physical conditions plaguing him at once. Mr. Goldilocks, Wendy liked to call him, because up top he was susceptible to cold while down below: the heat. The waist, she pointed out, represents the equator, the only place things are right. Too bad you can’t live there perpetually, she says. Between the Tropic of Cancer (points to chest) and the Tropic of Capricorn (points to private parts) where it’s not too hot not too cold. Great Belt she also called it for reasons unknown presently.
So because of this Barry stayed behind; didn’t venture with Wendy to Kangarootown to confront Okama Majo once more about his seemingly dirty tricks at the time. Cats’ litter boxes unclean, he knew. Ran out of “burny sticks” as she said he called them, so the place was cold when she and mayor Golden Jim arrived — stank like urine too. But this was her beef, her karma, he said to make another excuse besides the bodily conditions. “You’re the one who has to make two wrongs a right,” he said to her before she left, tickets in hand. “Last chance,” she said back. “The sky trawler is only half full last time I checked. You can sit by my side. I’ll help you with your issues, pass you an ice pack when you need it, a hot water bottle when you need that instead or in addition.” “In addition, yeah,” he said, knowing he’d often need both at once. But he’d already made up his mind: he wasn’t going. He had books to catch up on, videos to watch as well back in his topside apt. graciously provided by the town council. For he was something of a cult hero in these here parts, having famously saved the city of NWES City over on the Jeogeot continent from, let’s call it, abstraction. Drew it back into the real by drawing the real. One work of genius popped out after another. Soon everyone remembered why their town — nay, their *city* — was so great in the first place. The buildings, the people, the food, the arts, the crafts, the beaches, the sand, the sun, the *fun*. He must go back there too.
If only he could get rid of these bodily issues once and for all, pheh.
Sunklands 