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.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0112, Google Street View, New Mexico, Pennsylvania
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?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0111, Google Street View, Maebaleia/Satori, New Mexico, Pipersville/Sink X
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…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0109, Alabama, Gold City-, Jeogeot, New Mexico
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.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0105, New Mexico, Omega, Southern
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.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0037, 0103, Bogota, collages 2d, Google Street View, Jeogeot, Middleton, Midlands, New Mexico, Willow Hill
Little Big: what happened
What happened, Little Big?
“Yeah I’m looking right at him. Back to fishing on the pier. He’s forgotten again.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0514, Corsica, Northwest
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?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0510, Corsica, Northwest
“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)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0509, Corsica, Northwest
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).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0506, Bogota, collages 2d, Ebbert, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma
Sunklands 