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.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0406, Big Woods, Gold City-, Jeogeot, Towerboro
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.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0405, Blue Mountain, County Park
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.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0402, Gold City-, Jeogeot
“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
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0401, Gold City-, Jeogeot
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)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0311, Gold City-, Jeogeot
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.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0309, Gold City-, Jeogeot
August 14, 1974. Lucy Blue Dress takes one last look back at the campsite she’d stayed her summer after graduating from high school. She’d miss the cool cool stream that flowed and sometimes cascaded by her tent. She’d miss the gatherings at Sugar’s shack with all the weirdos of the woods. She’d miss more organized White Tree Village and dreamy Bluebird who lived there and who she took occasional long walks with. Most of all, there was Titiana and Vanessa, her bestest friends during this period in her life. “Come with me to college!” she begged of them beside their favorite wagon near the shack near the center. “No, we stay here,” said Vanessa, which made Titiana nod. They all called her Tiana, because her full name was just a little too much to pronounce in casual conversation. She didn’t like it but she accepted the shortening; she was growing up and becoming more mature about such things. Both were smart. Both took the SATs and did well enough to go to their pick of at least a public school. But: no. The woods had captivated them beyond escape. The Ourobos that is the stream had worked its magic, beginning matched with end. They would be happy going round in circles the rest of their lives, without a worldly degree, without a decent and rewarding job that resulted in such, without the ability to support a family beyond perhaps a husband or wife — both girls swung either way on that preference. “The woods will take care of us,” they said, and bade her farewell with teary hugs just minutes ago. They offered to follow her to the campsite down the stream and see her off from her woodlands home of 2 months but she said this wasn’t necessary, and there was no reason for them to watch her leave the way they all came: alongside the brick wall that led outta here. This corner is where the woods die for her.
And then there was Zapppa, who was set to leave the forest himself tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow at the latest, he promised. “Just gotta wrap up something at the cemetery,” he said minutes before she then met with Vanessa and Titiana that one last time.
He was the love of her life. Pretty sure of that, she was. Going to college with her, he was. Studying math: her, psychology. Stats would be their shared passion beyond the bed. They determined there was a 24.687531% chance they would return here after college, using their acquired skills to better the woods and their denizens and citizens. Never happened. The zero and nine would have to be added in to make it work and that, they realized, would defeat the whole purpose. Worldly they remained.
In one reality.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0307, Big Woods, Jeogeot
An urban legend claims that the monolith used in 2001: A Space Odyssey can be seen in some scenes of Zappa’s film 200 Motels (The Film). While a monolith can indeed be seen [most prominently at the beginning of the song “Penis Dimension”], it’s actually not the same one used in Kubrick’s film, as Kubrick had most of his models destroyed after 2001 was finished. On the same token Zappa didn’t film in the same studio Kubrick filmed 2001 in either. [1]
But it was the same, at least in spirit. And Zappa must have noted the 200-2001 similarity for the films. Subtraction of the 1 must have been satisfying for him, like he emasculated The Beatles with “We’re Only in It for the Money”. The monolith, the slab, is a penis with dimensions of 1:4:9. Perfection. It can all be telescoped back to 1 (and then gotten rid of).
—–
Zappp had long thought he’d always keep the extra p in his name after adding it in school. “Play Ruben and the Jets,” the children chided in the playground, lovers of doo-wop at an early age. “Sing Yellow Snow,” most of the same requested in jr. high after progressive rock became all the rage. You want extra p, he thought vindictively when all this went down, I’ll give you an extra p. At 9 o’clock on Wednesday’s Thursday’s Friday, October 5-7, 1973 he announced his name change. Zappp. 3 p’s in a row, not 2. *Now* try to make Zappp A. into Zappa, ya’ll.
But what he found in that grave when he dug up old man Franklin had him doing a rethink. It was a dream, yes. No one in their right mind would try to raise that dick from the dead. Sorcerer, everyone has heard. Wizard say some. Zappp knows it is the latter. Because he’s been contacting him via wegee board for years. Robert Franklin; Roberts and Franklin. Wonder what happened to Roberts, because they were quite the team, measuring their careers against each other, like, well, like the type of people they were. Probably doing the same kind of stuff in the afterlife. Again he should know. Old Man Franklin gives him an update from The Beyond at least every other week. Or the WIZARD does — Zappp is not quite convinced the 2 are one and the same, a logical reduction, despite mounting evidence over time. They sleep in the same metaphorical bed is all he concedes.
And then *this* when he wakes up. What is someone trying to tell him? He feels like the disposing of the newly placed Monolith over there — just digging it up (as well) perhaps — is the same as getting rid of the extra p in his name. Strong conviction on this.
He and Ben could do it together; he’s plenty strong but he’d need help from the stronger animal. But Ben had run away, totally frightened of the thing standing so shiny and alien in the far corner of the yard, and with that weird humm emitting from it, like some kind of dynamo — Dinah… Moe, hmm. Zappp couldn’t blame him. He’d like to run away in the woods too. Big Woods. Big Run. Anything besides facing another decision tree. While he’s at it, he may just dig up that tree as well.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0301, Big Woods, Jeogeot
“GRROWLLL!”
“What the?! — oh, hi Ben. You scared me you joker. I thought Eloise over there had come back to life!”
“GRROWLLL!”
“Yeah, I know. You’re probably starving. Been gone for 2 days. Where’ve you been… Ben, he he?”
“GRROWLL?”
“Well come on in and tell me all about it, then. We’ll eat breakfast and share stories. Because *I’ve* got something to tell *you* too, something you won’t believe.”
—–
“I don’t blame you, Ben. I don’t want to get too close to it either.”
“GRRRRROWWWWL!”
“I know. I’m scared too.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0217, Big Woods, Jeogeot
He sat in that hard-to-find, tucked away cafe in Ontario, sipping his coffee and waiting for the morning fog to clear so he can safely explore more of the city. Perhaps it never will this time, story finished for now (again).
Meanwhile, over in Jeogeot…
… clear as a bell.
Let’s begin with the manor.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0206, Big Woods, Jeogeot, Wendy-Ontario-
Sunklands 