“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
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
I’m not sure when the original motel was expanded from 3 to 5 rooms but it fits. And a lobby with a secret room behind the registration desk where you can peer into at least the 5th which has replaced the 3rd as a new end of the thing. This is where we find Peter Oesso and his fellow au naturale bud John waiting for the return of the Boss. Buick + Red Point tells me this might be Bixby, or someone who can turn into a green hulk figure if provoked in a certain way. Call her fat, for example. Or even curvy.
David A.B. and Linda Halsey aren’t positioned in front like they were before. Nor is Yoko Ona around, walking the streets in her multiple self style. David A.B. can’t absentmindedly step off the front patio of the Missouri motel into the road and be sideswiped by a station wagon with Illinois plates like in photo-novel 20. The beanstalk remains an out-of-bounds concept.
You better figure out how to get out of Missouri — Miss Ouri — or you’ll remain trapped here forever, I can hear her say in my mind. Key, I knew. Where is that gall darn blasted key?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0049, 0308, Althyria, HANA LEI, Heartsdale+, Missouri
“Get out the shot, honey. I’m trying to take a picture of that ghoul in the cemetery over there!”
—–
“My people were tough on crime. And they didn’t tolerate breaking the law either. We grew up in the shadow of a mountain that began with Wee-Wee. My mother, when we moved over here to the states in ’79, said to be proud of the name and where we came from. But I was embarrassed, always called it the alternate name of Onigbaporo however tongue-twisty and unmemorable that was to the white people of our new land. But when I found Pee Pee Creek over on the west side of Rodentia and its crazy cemetery and its baffling preacher church I knew I had also found a home again in this world of Our Second Lyfe. My mother was priestess before in the “Wee-wee” place we came from and now I became quote unquote priestess in the Pee Pee place, as male and female polarities also switched positions there. It all made some kind of beautiful, circular loop.”
I studied the photo she held in her hand, looked at the flat headed statue of her mother in the center square the townspeople chose to erect before they left, a permanent tribute to her famous presence in their small Nigerian burg. Then I looked up from the photo at Daisy’s flat hair, the perpetually shaving razor held by a ghostly, hovering hand next to it. I started to understand the dynamics involved. But there was still the explanation of her non-colored father remaining. Non, hmm, I pondered. Could that be the reason for the obsession with creating the perfect, non-alcoholic brew? Turns out this was so… partially. TBC
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0604, Africa, Dokken Hollow+, Frank's Moving Castle, Google Street View, Hole in the Wall, Jeogeot, Nawt Vaya+, NVFS, Texas
“I’m telling you, Mike,” Pat relays telepathically. “If the next box is one specific color, one *specific* color… then we can’t kill her. We just can’t.
“We can’t kill her brother of mine (sigh).”
2 boxes later, past the demonstration of TILE that placated the onlooking, desirous ghouls, she finds the key, the center of it all.
Switching from colored to black and white, she can now unlock the door with the Newton-Jasper cube indicating scale.
Damn, thinks Mike. 2nd one today.
Sunklands 