Thursday, January 27, 2011

The Events of 11/23 - 11/26 - Chapter 9







November 23, 2010

William - "I think this can be easily done"
The voice erupted from someplace deep inside me and I was astonished to see that my shadow had taken on a life of its' own. This was my voice yet not.
Susan, startled by this development, dropped the mystery vial in the sand.
Shadow grasps the bottle and begins to drink.

Shadow Drinking from the Pandora's Bloch Vial - William Evertson

Mark  - I was awakened by the jostling around me and a realization that I was surfing on the pull of gravity. The vial had been turned topsy turvy and as I careened toward the top of the vial, now below me, I frantically reached, gripped, flailed and pounded the enclosure with my fists as I slid down towards the opening drenched in tears and sweat while a giant blue shadow started to roll over me. The feeling of being released from the glass bubble was overwhelming. Separated from the world of the Blue Squirrels that had locked me in here with the squeaky pressure they applied to the cork "roof" of my icy isolation barrier so long ago had blocked all other sounds,
sights and concerns for so long. But now the genie was out of the bottle or about to be. And "I am that unlikely genie," I thought as I felt the tiny copy of Mount Analogue slip from my fingers and out of the mouth of the vial that was rapidly approaching.

November 24, 2010

William  - Shadow gulps the frothy liquid with a rapid motion that left us agape. Shadow, although part of the liminal world we often ignore suddenly began to take on new dimension. Actually Shadow appeared to be forming a depression in the sand as it filled with the vials contents.
"A mold" Susan exclaims!
The little blue darted over, dipped its' tail in the liquid then sprinted for the rope still dangling from the area of the ruined waterfall.

*Authors Note to the First Edition: William's journal contains additional thoughts that were probably written two to three months after the "Vial Day" From pages 137 and 139: "The event left me pondering the creation myths contained in the Popal Vuh, namely that the gods first attempt at human making involved mud. This attempt failed and man dissolved. I was relieved the shadow attempt still retains substance."

The Blochman Shadow Mold - William Evertson

Susan  - We turned our faces in sync towards the de-bossed bubbling sand as a thick greenish blue slimy liquid started to gel. I turned to myself as our tresses smashed into each other in sync and glanced back down to the silhouette taking form several times as we kept our sparkling green eyes on that scheming yet endearing Bill and the tiny blues. The blues were hopping rapidly from one foot to another in an unusual yet rhythmic set of beats. Their sharp blue claws clicked a series of sounds and we realized they were transmitting messages around the island.
The sand particles mixed with the goop started to form some kind of protoplasm. We started to laugh uncontrollably as the site of glistening granules sparkling and exploding on the beach started to take shape.
GUMBY………it is GUMBY! We were chortling out of control. Bill was staring blankly at the horizon stomping his feet in a trance to the beat of the blues. “Mark, what kind of tomfoolery is this” we tried to blurt out between the uncontrollable chuckles?”

Mark  - Between the chuckles and the attempts to blurt, Bill's throat closed up. For deep inside the shadow desperately trying to imbibe the contents of the vial, a choking sound could be heard. The shadow had emptied the contents of the vile into its shadowy mouth and the first thing to drop out of the container was the tiny little copy of Rene Daumal's book, Mount Analogue, which now lodged itself in the swirling throat of the shadow. Something was terribly wrong. But being a shadow, this unexpected snafu in the pre-ordained "Liminal Plan" had no impact. Instead W.E merely felt a slight tickle in his own throat and could not speak.
As I tumbled from my little bottle I saw below a vortex of spiraling lava. It had the convex shape of a mold and was blanketed with the wispy hairs of a blue moldy fungus that covered its surface. A mold covered with mold. I knew that this must be the work of the kabala numerical alignment I was warned about decades ago. 

Lee  - LG sat at the edge of a blue rock at the top of Mount Analogue. It was sunset and the travelers on the sand below were illuminated by the strong rays. Being in the shadow of the mountain, LG knew they could not see her, not that they would look, as their interest was absorbed by a small blue glass object that had been found.
No matter- she thought-seeing me would have no impact as the other LG is thousands of miles away...enough duplicates here to stir the pot.
 
LG thought about the other Mount Analogue, so unlike this one...the streams there ran icy cold and was a deep deep blue...white rocks along the banks had flecks of blue that glistened in the sun, leading the way to the vast mines of the mountain...The blue is the treasure of the mountain. Veins of blue ran through the mountain - mined by the small blue squirrels ...the mines were run by a band of green monkeys with wild eyes. The precious stones of the mountain are not unlike lapis lazuli of this world... 
Because of the harsh work by generations of squirrels, the small animals were now a lovely shade of blue. Their world was quite dismal, their only pleasure being the nuts that they were paid for the precious blue stones mined from the depths of the mountain. Over the years some of the blues would escape through the rip between worlds. The blues tried to avoid detection of the searchers that would come to round them up for return to the blue mines on the other side. Occasionally the green monkeys would slip over to find special miners.
It was quite easy to slip back & forth undetected for many years...until now...now that the travelers have arrived on this mountain...things are much more complicated for the searchers from the other side......

Mara  - “Here, over here!!! “ I waved my arms as if I were holding semaphores, and then knelt to break open the first aid kit. We had packed it before knowing what would be required, but had done our best. “One blue burnoose, coming up!” I tossed the garment over the shadow’s depression and immediately we all felt better. “There. That should calm everything down.” Slipping on the 2nd glove, I gingerly lifted the material to look directly into his eyes. It’d been 1967 the last time we’d ran into each other. I imagine he’d forgotten as there had been a shipment of absinthe missing and all the usual suspects had scattered with promises to send a postcard. “I brought the distillery, what’re we makin’?” Mark smiled. Maybe he hadn’t forgotten after all.

Mark  - I was disoriented. Not surprising. After all,  I had two bodies at this point. One was tiny and swirling throrough the digestive system of a liminal shadow man, half hollow, half evil and all made of tiny Peradam crystals covered in a blue-green moss. But I couldn't see that I knew that because my OTHER body was staring down at the scene as if I was floating above it but my feet were planted firmly on the ground. How did I get here? Mara was referring to our 1967 meeting but I was only 11 years old then. The Butterfield Blues Band was out of my league let alone absynthe. Yet she seemed to remember me as an adult. Could this have been the result of the time machine mishap that took my dear friend? Something was odd but I couldn't put my finger on it. Once again I suspected the Kabbalistic sequences of the Fibonacci Infinite Series Algorhythm.

November 25, 2010

William  - A light rain had begun to fall and I turned my head to the sky and let the falling water calm the searing feeling in my throat. I felt a tiny blochage dislodge.

Ria  - "Wow, what a sound that Tibetan bowl made!" I turned my bike around Bill, skidding the wheels, it felt like I flew, I ran my red rope around Bill's waist. He was looking at the sky, I wondered why, I wondered why they were all staring into or at something blue or shadowy, but I thought 'better not dwell on that, better not "go" there and ask.' I knew deeply, 'if Fibonacci strikes, we may all be lost' ... Bill seemed to cough ever so slightly, I sighed, put the bowl on my head and started singing 'do you know the way to San Jose,' and set off towards the East along the horizon, Bill, like a kite, flying in my tracks.
 

November 26, 2010


William  - The cooling rain drops dislodged my choke. Yes... awkwardly stated, yet that is what it was; a thought or idea that we perhaps at first cannot swallow. Either from habit or perhaps fear.
That tiny book slides down easily in the morning rain; ... I'm fully present and in turn full of the realization of the hows and whys of prior failures that had lingered so heavily on my psyche.

I felt elated; in fact I felt buoyant. I felt myself rise above and detach from my shadow. The shadow itself senses this with a longing, and reaches as if to grasp me, pull me back yet it finds itself with a new weight and destiny that denies it its' prize; me.

I am pulled into the air, my new realization filling me with a lightness and the certainty that if I cared to glance into the small sack I had by a string tied like a necklace, I would find a peradam.
It had everything to do with that red rope attached to my waist and that tiny girl with the bowl on her head pumping furiously on her bicycle far below.

I knew the meaning of the Red Thread!

  
Mark  - In my peripheral vision I could see what looked like a hallucination but it seemed so real: elsewhere on the island Mara’s double said, "Look! The little one is making origami!" As a blue squirrel never before seen with crazy hair began folding paper madly, the other blue squirrels around her and Mara, speaking to invisible phantom figures, heard crowd noise, then white noise then silence that that the origamist blue attempted to mold so she could call it by name. The blue focused. She believed. She expected a pattern from no pattern, and no pattern within pattern. Then finally the pattern of no pattern.

Then in front of me Ria ran her red rope around Bill's waist and pedaled her bike in a circle. He was looking at the sky, then began to lift off the ground. This was creating the “Red circle becoming a cone,” I remembered while the rest were all staring into something blue, creating the "downward looking cone, the vortex, the nadir." Out of nowhere, Susan whispered to herself in their form of SueTwo that "nadir is an anagram for drain" as Ria, noticing Susan's whispers, seemingly nonchalantly, uttered the operative words setting things in motion: “If Fibonicci strikes we might all be lost” when all of a sudden we heard a great crack of thunder and nuts again started to fall from the trees. But this time each was accompanied by it's doublenut, falling up from the ground and lodging in the trees where tiny green monkeys had been waiting all along.
 

Ria  - "Oops"

Lee  - Lg woke with a start...staring down was the major monkey, patiently waiting..."time for you to leave here LG, you need to start climbing now to reach the summit of return
-leave the blues to experts .."
..but what of the doubles? she thought........I can't just leave them behind..
...the green monkeys eyes shimmered in the lingering sunlight as he looked down on the travelers and doubles below..."you know they can only travel the portal once and they won't really remember where they're from.
..no one will ever believe any of their tales of the mountain."

LG began to climb..higher & higher until the air was clear & colder then she thought possible..the sphere was just coming into focus in the distance...as it began to spin, LG realized it would only be a matter of minutes before it vanished....the air grew thinner & thinner as the negative ions multiplied pushing her faster and faster toward the sphere... one look back was all there was time for--before LG and the sphere dissolved into the atmosphere................
As the boat smoothly sailed into the port..LG thought about the long journey to this strange place...even the idea of taking this trip was absurd ....but here she is - looking at the group on the beach...strangers but so familiar...she realized this certainly was something she was meant to do...and these were people she was destined to meet....she stepped onto shore................
 

Lee Arrives at Port O'Monkeys - Lee Goldberg

Mara  - With sighs of relief we took our places around the campfire. There were the usual noises of people getting comfortable, rolling up of blankets for props, lighting a pipe.

"What exactly are in those nuts and what just happened to us?" "It was.... rather dazzling" "Did you fly too?"

The conversation continued in this vein, with sheepish smiles and eyes to the ground.

"Hunmmm..." Bill said.

Our heads snapped up to double check that yes, it was still the Bill we'd embarked with and not the blue squirrel Bill.

The shared visions brought us closer together.

Much later, before snuggling down for the night I entered quick notes on the last few days (or was it hours?) in my sketch book and placed the 2nd single glove on a rock so I could look at it until I fell asleep.
 

Gloves - Mara Thompson

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