“What’s that, Maw? (answer) Yeah, go ahead and send me the movie that’ll be fine (click). Luv ya.” He hangs up too. Back to returning his full attention to Moon Flower, er, *Sarah*. Because things have shifted. The Hollywood sign remains, though. At the end and just before the beginning. 4-3-2-1…
“Yeah, Maw. This videotape you sent me is from 1923. I can’t watch this (click).”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0049, 0609, California
Stop, smell the roses.
Good, isn’t it?
But the smell of the hotel beneath it wouldn’t go away. The loop still exists: Violet Hope, the 1923 vampire who lived at least 100 more years. Can Can Girl, with a second head now emerging from the first thanks to the magic of instant collage, no mirroring required. Barry de Boy decides to created his “Does This Look Square to You?” series because of its reduced 814 x 814 pixel dimensions, becoming the second entry of the bunch which started with this…
… and currently finishes up with this, its third and perhaps the last personal collage, period, a good place to terminate the overall process (?):
1-2-3, with 24 x 24 miles square Newton County MS and 13 x 13 multi-colored square The Atom also in the mix somewhere, at least behind the scenes. Back to the hotel…
“I’m finished, Hucka! You can come in now!” Wait!! Why did I say that?? I’m disgusting!!!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0049, 0511, collages 2d, Ebbert, Jemison, Kentucky, New Mexico, Paperville+, Starfield, Willow Hill
Barry De Boy stands in front of the Shaffer Hotel in Mountainair NM, realizing that he had already checked into a room here in 2023 and then never left. Yet this is also his first time visiting. Time forms a loop in this place and disappears into a Vortex of some dimensions, some dimensions indeed. All of this was pretty much covered in photo-novel 37 sections 1 and 2 and a bit in section 3. I don’t think we need to rehash the story here. Moving on, then…
“Can Can Girls” 1923>2023
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0049, 0510, Bogota, collages 2d, New Mexico, Willow Hill
She got tired of waiting for her alternate self to grow up — understandably, because it could take *decades*. She decides to do some investigating on her own about the subject. Shamon. From the inn. Place of thorns. Not much of an inn aspect left to the place — no beds as far as she could tell. More a museum for the lower floors, she supposed. And then she found the letter in the middle of an antique book just chosen at random from a first floor bookcase. Hmm, she thought, separating the 2 pieces of paper from each other and laying them side by side. What’s this? She started reading. Plain it was at first to her. Mundane, run of the mill, no special qualities at all. A journal entry by someone named June about a trip across the western part of our US of A. Then she read it again. And again. And again, starting to put the 2 sides together to make 1; actually, let’s make that she simply eliminated the second to make one. Here’s what she had left…
Dear Dairy,
We’re finally in Missouri! Almost home! Bryan was so exhausted with today’s drive that we decided to have a sleepover at a cheap motel off Route 66. Madry Wise it’s called and the owners Martha and Theodore are just adorable! They welcomed us with open arms and invited us for dinner so we can share our Route 66 road trip experience with them. Bryan is just having a little nap and we’ll go once he wakes up.
I can’t believe how lucky I am. It’s been the best summer ever!!! Two weeks ago we started the journey from Santa Monica, CA and went through several states through Barstow, Kingman, Sedona, Winslow, Monument Valley, Durango, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Roswell, Amarillo, Oklahoma City until now Missouri.
So that’s all of page 1. She checked all the mentioned locations from its last sentence on a map. Santa Monica, Barstow, Kingman, Sedona, Winslow: yes, everything to this point was on Route 66 or, in Sedona’s case, quite close, only about 25 miles away. But June and her boyfriend Bryan start to veer away from that famous highway after Winslow AZ and only clearly pick it up again at Amarillo TX. In other words, June may not have even used 66 through the whole of New Mexico, going from Durango CO down to Santa Fe then Albuquerque then Roswell to its south before heading back up to Texas. *Crossing* 66 in Albuquerque but not necessarily travelling along it. While pondering this, Shelley Johnston Struthers realized, if so, that another motel might have been visited on the journey between Albuquerque and Roswell. Was this what was being implied all along?? Fictional Madry Wise Motel actually standing in for the most haunted hotel in America?
They should have never left some of the swastikas on the building because photos can be flipped and time reversed along with it. 1923: not that far away, then, not far atall.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0049, 0509, Arizona, California, Jeogeot, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Xilted
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.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0211, Google Street View, Nautilus, New Mexico, NORTH, Slaashsides
“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)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0207, New Mexico
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.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0206, Bogota, collages 2d, New Mexico, Willow Hill
Sunklands 