“Mermaid? What the flying f-ck? We always called that the Jellyfish.”
“Just humor me, Uncle Bob.”
“Uncle Bob?”
Tag Archives: TIGERS
back in Maebaleia…
“Ah ha. Finally found a use for that wearable pipe chair you gave me last Christmas.”
“Thanks for showing up Tracy. Like I said, I can’t find him anywhere. We were just scouting around the center of the continent, looking at places. We came here. I realized I had to go do something with the kid again and told him to just stay put till I got back. Then when I returned — and a long drive it was all the way from Pipersville — he’s not here. We talked about renting this house. Real cheap rent. In fact…”
“… it’s free,” finished his lover-on-the-side Tracy Austin. “I saw the sign outside. But this one is rented.”
“It’s in arrears,” he explains. “Just checking out the furniture.”
“Well I *hope* the real renter doesn’t come back.”
“He won’t. *They* won’t.” Second Life is so empty now, he thinks not for the first nor last time. Middle of continents — basically a wasteland.
“So dark in here,” complained Tracy Austin. “Can we get some light in this place? Will these blinds open?”
“Sure.” Craighead Phillips Option 01 touched the blinds to his side and back, automatically opening them.
Tracy Austin peered out. “What’s all this?”
Craighead Phillips Option 01 looked too. “I don’t know. Earth, I suppose.”
Interested, Tracy Austin moved toward the side window to take a closer look at something.
“2701 Bland Road,” she recited, then turned back toward Craighead. “This place got a computer?”
“No, but there’s one down at the office. I spotted it while trying to get out of this town the first time.”
“Do you have a key?” Both laughed at this.
—–
“Well. Is it there? Did you find it?”
“Just a moment,” Tracy Austin requested while still typing away. Then: “Ahh. *Bingo*.” She indicated the screen. “There it is. The same sign.
That’s where he is!”
Craighead Phillips Option 01 put hand to lip. “Jeepers I guess we’ll have to go in after him, then. I can’t exist, I don’t suppose, without Option 02.”
“*You’re* going in. I’m staying here with Katy. If something happens to you I’ll tell her you went away. To France.”
“Uh, I’m not going without a gun. I’ve heard stories…”
“Alright, Uncle Bob has a gun. We’ll go see him first. Then you’ll say goodbye to Katy. Hopefully not for the last time.”
“I know you’re joking…”
“I am?”
“Things use to be better between us.”
“Listen, Craighead. Craighead Phillips Option *01*. We gave you The Freedom, all you wanted. Blue Feather Sea, patterns. Astrologers around every corner. *Everyone* knows their sign. No chance involved in the playing of dice or cards. Freedom — Katy and I. Yet you still hang around with your other family.”
“My *actual* family,” Craighead Phillips corrected, not helping the situation.
“Alright.” Tracy Austin got up from the computer table. “Alright if it’s going to be like this I have a confession. I’ve been seeing someone else. A sailor of the Blue Feather Sea. Older man, admittedly, but I think it’s something real. We may even…”
“Get married?” Craighead was incredulous. “How old?”
“50, 55. Maybe 60. He’s *cool*. He has a good sense of humor. He’s built like a soldier and swears like a pilot. Katy’s met him, but she doesn’t know the circumstances. Yet.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t I?”
(to be continued?)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0014, 0405, Hills of Bill^, Maebaleia/Satori, West Virginia
man cave
“You will not be able to figure it out. The Azure Sky hides truths under its many lights. This is Science. You are Art.”
“Blue Feather, please,” she corrects her girlfriend while continuing to try out new poses.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0014, 0106, Blue Feather Sea^, Maebaleia/Satori
Blue Feather
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0014, 0104, Blue Feather Sea^, Maebaleia/Satori
Then tigers showed up at the Red Umbrella…
… or prisoners.
Bees?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0013, 0303, Rubi^
True Man Show
“It’s possible here in Columbia for people to see surrealist masters like this in our own backyard,” Laverick said. “That’s what the Tiger Hotel has always been about, creating a place that would be at home in New York or Chicago, and this is the next level of that. These paintings would normally only be accessible in a big city but they’re right here.”
“Today Missouri. Tomorrow: Rosehaven.” Ruby Fantasie extends her arms and shrills in as nasal a voice as she can muster over the city. “Come fiind mee! I’m heeere!!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0013, 0208, Missouri
SIDney
“What is this place, Baker B.?”
“Morgan. Morgan, and, over there at the bell, Julia.”
“Hmm,” offered Hucka Doobie the bee person. “Let’s meet at your place instead.”
—–
“Yes, I can feel it.” Hucka Doobie checks his inworld map for the general lay of the new diagonal, this “Heart Line” Diagonal. “Where was the spinning train?”
Baker Bloch checks as well. “Umm, Velox. Two sims up from us. We’re in Sabulella. Between Velox and Sabulella is Vashti. Beyond Velox is Webworm, Polia, Ufeus…”
“I get the picture,” interrupted the bee person. “I was called in because you finally, *finally*, got in over your head.”
“Well…” Baker Bloch started to protest.
“But you did,” Hucka Doobie completed matter-of-factly. She tried to turn toward the interior of the Tao Lodge they sat just outside of but found she couldn’t pivot her head. “Let’s get up,” she rather commanded. “Let’s go look at the painting that prompted you to give me a call. *Finally.*”
—–
“Here’s another Dali painting I missed before.”
“I don’t think that’s a Dali,” proffered Hucka Doobie, walking up. “Let’s go see the real Dali.”
—–
“Just around the corner here, Hucka Doobie. Tigertail, Stinger, Chick all in one.”
“Hold on, Baker B. I’m seeing something else in this one.”
—–
“A map. A map that freaked you out, grid lines running all over the place. What has this dude been up to? you asked yourself upon reading his profile. Chick, Tigertail, Stinger…”
“Yes.”
“But the chick is the elephant, and not the chick on the ground. Gala. Dali’s muse of course.”
“The chick is the elephant,” Baker Bloch reaffirmed.
—–
“A nice fire. A laughing monk. What next, Baker B.?”
“I think you know what’s next.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
—–
“It really was all my fault, Martha my dear. I was overthinking the situation.”
“Think nothing of it. The Diagonal was being misused and you stepped in, just as you should.”
“But this one is different.”
“Yes.”
“Soooo…”
—–
“Who’s going to tell the children, Sid?”
“We’ll do it… together.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0013, 0202, Heterocera, Mountain Lake^
End
But Ruby (Fantasie) had already left the Borderlands and entered Rosehaven proper with the true coming of spring. She has emerged from between the tigers’ tails which are actually Tiger Tail. This was the true meaning of Eraserhead Man’s vision of the Tigrett in Vineyard Cafe, for they are one and the same, tiger tales both now.
The Borderlands Oracle, the *Mother*, is currently stuck on the figure of Morgaine, an ambivalent character from Arthurian legend who can take on both negative and positive roles. Red and blue if you will. Surrounded by 12 rounded rocks, this border also signals the end of our yarn or weaving, or as far as we can take it currently. Our 12th Collagesity novel.
Borderlands has greenly homogenized with Rosehaven as a whole. There’s no need for a tale now within. We are done with it. Same with Fruity Islands, End of Time, The Waste. All put away in the creative closet, perhaps pulled out later for further play.
The Brachiosaurus which doubles as a sea monster here seems to be telling Baker B(loch) goodbye.
But what of Mssr. Gold and wife April Mae Flowers of Snowlands? Herbert Gold will keep dreaming of these lands for certain — he is stuck as well. April Mae will keep seeing the gardener Steve on the side and visiting her ex’s grave over on the Omega continent. The mysterious Bauerbridge dune will remain an obstacle in her way.
Despite the end of perhaps a cycle of Collagesity novels, Collagesity itself also goes onward, up and away and beyond the effects of any storyline. For this is home. The anchor. From here I can enter any world I dare to penetrate with a certain style of wizardry: Stonethwaite, Tugaske, Avebury. All the “satellite” realms. But one has to have a center to return to.
So I, Baker B., Baker Blinker and Baker Bloch both, will say goodbye to you my loyal reader while sitting at home sipping on my Starbucks 4 shot latte and enjoying the relative warmth of an early spring night.
END OF “COLLAGESITY 2018-2019 WINTER”!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0618, Mountain Lake^, Rose Heaven^^, Rubi^
rounding it out
Eraserhead Man re-created the scene. “The drawbridge will CLOSE! The delegation from CALEDONIA — not CALEDON mind you — will move across with the Prince to meet the ones from ROSEHAVEN on the other side! The closing of the BRIDGE represents the closing of the GAP between the two QUEENDOMS. KINGDOMS… whatever!”
Hearing aids, thinks Sandy Beech opposite him at the Vineyard Cafe table. He’s forgotten them again. Where’s that Ruby woman when she’s needed — he never shouts around her, aids or no aids. A magical relationship. He then has an idea.
“Where’s the actor playing Ruby now? Is she still up in Borderlands?”
“What’s that?!”
“The ACTOR playing RUBY. Where is she?!” Sandy Beech forgot his own aids — the blue, calming pills.
“OH: BORDERLANDS.”
It took a few minutes, but Sandy finally got the idea in his director’s head that they should go visit her… check the scene out that may end the current production. The oracle and such. “That sphere over there,” and he indicates with his head a table across from them in the cafe without looking, “is only a terminal! We need to find where the MOTHER oracle is!”
“I see a TIGRETT over there, Sandy!” Eraserhead Man then declared, fingers nervously pattering against the table. “What do YOU see?!”
Sandy turned.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0617, Caledonia^^, Rose Heaven^^
arrival 03
It took them half a day to reach another of those clear spaces where they could make enough sense to each other for more of the story.
“A railroad oval. An engine runs into a caboose. Tale before the tiger,” Marion explained. “A race between beginning and end, she said. Tale wins.”
“Maybe tails win,” Billy Jean King said while sitting on a small bed in the corner of the otherwise almost unfurnished and undecorated cabin. “As in a coin. Flipping a coin — heads and tails.”
“Maybe.”
“What else?”
“She said to always pay attention to the blue roses. They always indicate something. We looked west now. Two thrones — blue roses to side. She said these were the Prince and Princess of Rosehaven, but only when Caledon is Caledonia.”
“See?” BJK nudged Philip sitting beside her in the ribs. “I *told* you it was Caledon. Maybe we were in the wrong place to start with.”
“No,” insisted Marion. “We were definitely in the right place. Caledonia. And then — get this — they removed their, er, masks. Actually the Prince had on some rainbow swirly globe or something — over his head. The princess just shed her golden skin, like a snake. ‘Let the waters rise,’ they said in unison, then. I looked around but didn’t see any water, let alone water rising. But something had changed. I could feel it.”
I also noticed there was a tiny bit missing from the Prince’s fin-foot, like it was bitten a little bit.”
“A little *bite*,” BJK insisted. She turned toward Philip knowingly. Philip just stared back blankly.
“The Princess’ shoe was right there.”
“Achilles heel?” BJK offered, visualizing it backwards in her mind.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0615, Caledonia^^, Rose Heaven^^
Sunklands 