To the Fabulous Unknown City

Time goes on, the work continues. Life is as full as you can fill it. Lately I've been thirsty for inputs - empty vessel. Empty of money, empty of ambition - that kind of thing - it's a rest period. That's all ending now though - the creative effort resumes, the tides shift, the seasons and the personal chemistry all create the next phase. Which is a story I'm going to tell you.



This is the journey you take.  You leave your home  & do not want to.  Your people come to see you off, there are tears & long embraces - you try to hold the sounds of voices & the feel of those embraces - this is a final good-bye.  You are taken in a carriage which gathers a few people, delivers others.  It makes its meandering way across the earth.  You are halting & hesitant with these other passengers - unused to strangers & travel.  You are brought to a town along the sea & board a ship.  Now you are far, far from what you know.  The ship rides vagrant over the sea meandering.  You speak to the sailors who are alike & different from you as night is different from day and as alike.  You do not make friends but you have friendly times.  You learn new card-games, new songs  stories.  How to curse in a dozen languages.  The ship stops often along coasts.  You learn to watch the weather - see icebergs & whales for the first & final time.  Your nameless ship takes you to the marshy estuary where the river Music meets the Ocean-Sea.  Disembark there.  Land underfoot for the first time in months, only an hour of that before you're put aboard one of the local dhows, a low open sailboat that swims up the current.  Others are put aboard in the Prashnilivarii town.  You sail & help to sail up through the Valley of the Music through the marshy heart of Arcingspray, the dominion of the Prashilivar.  You pass through brick  stone cities perched over reed-crowded marshes, vast paddies of rice under towering ziggurats. Passengers come and go, you are destined for the final stop.  Soon it is down to just you & the boatman who smiles & is kindly and worried.  He's been paid well, you know, to brig you so far.  You've nothing to give him though.  He says nothing until you reach the destination, your final stop, far up the River Music where the mists of Arcingspray fall like a curtain from the wall of the Silverheaven beyond.



There is a little jetty, a collection of tin & wood shacks & a great pillar of mortar & brick, bigger than a house, from its peak a leg-thick cable extends off into the impenetrable mists, lost from sight.  The boatman leaves you there, at the jetty under the pillar with the others sent or chosen to come.  Besides yourself there are what look like some mercenaries, warriors; prisoners, some who've a reedy-scholastic appearance, some who're nondescript.  All have a reason to enter the unknown.



Bolted to the door of one of the shacks is a sign that says Engineer & the Engineer proves to be a young Prashnilivarii man, thickset, squat-built like an anvil & black as soot.  He's amber-eyed and his affable manner, avuncular presence- they convey a sense of persistent mystification, surprise, wonder.



"You are going to Awese?"  He asks you.  You have no choice and wonder why he would ask.  "We have your kit here, we do not know what you will need in Awese, but we guess.  Everyone gets a trunk.  Every trunk is a bit different..."  He trails off, thinking of another thing.  Stamps his foot, reproving himself.  "I am the Engineer.  I just operate here, some return, I take their statements.  We give you a trunk.  Ever trunk is a bit different - in case one item is needed where another is not.  But you all need food.  Water.  We provide you that too, a purse of each, canteens.  We do not know when you can go.  We all wait here it has been some days, but soon.  You'll go soon.  Relax here for now.  No escape is tolerated.  There is no escape from here.  Do not leave without permission."



You do not leave.  You do not know what is going to happen.  The Engineer has a staff of armed men, they provide you with the food he mentioned, the canteens, they feed you and watch over the pavilion where the other travelers all gather and sleep out on the ground.  It seems improper to talk, you don't.  None do.



The day, days are confusing, with the wall of mist.  Perpendicular to the earth, by day it is the color of pearl and snow, by night it is gauzy and infused by rainbows.  There is a faint sound of thunder from within.  The third day comes and when the moon rises steady & full, chasing the sun from the bisected sky there is a rhythmic clanging that becomes an insistent clanging, then demanding, then overwhelming.  You are unused to the loud rhythms of mechanisms.  It is like a metal heartbeat, racing, faster.  The encampment wakens and the staff hurries you and the other travelers to the pillar.  Out of the mist a great metal boat, or a carriage, some union of the two, it descends along the cable, which it seems attached to by a channel at its top.  It stops as it reaches the pylon & apertures on its side open, sliding doors, metal and glass.  A few ragged people dart from the doors even before they open completely, falling over themselves and each other.  They run across the dirt-field around the pylon and are set upon by the Engineer's men immediately, restrained, you don't get a good look, you are hustled onto the carriage by others of the Engineer's retinue.  "It may leave quickly, it may stay only a moment, hurry!"  You are pushed along with the others barely hearing the Engineer's hasty benediction.  "My friends it is time.  Good luck!"  In a flurry of arms and efforts the crates and luggage are pushed up onto the carriage what seems a frenzied effort to wall the doors behind you.  The crates are stacked, and the urgent loading of the carriage stops, completed.  And then anticlimax of nothing happening.  For a long time.  "You go no-one knows where.  You will see what no one else will see, or ever does.  No one knows what will be provident or reckless where you are going.  You are like infants born today, you are like the first men and women in the world!"  The Engineer begins his longer speech.  It seems he might continue - but the carriage lurches and there is a disheartening sound - metal on metal warping, or worse, and then the rhythmic clashing and then the carriage begins its hasty ascent into the mist.



More to come.  Awese awaits!








And every other project as well. There's time enough for them, for the moment, and impetus, dreams,ideas, the fulfillment of ambitions.

The 2 of Cups! Let's go out - you and I.

Hey! Yes! Back and still at it, I can do everything and all at once. Promise!

So here's the 2 of cups. Cups are feelings and compassion, passion, relationships. We started out with the one cup - which is the fountain of feelings. On to two cups. Personally, I have a cup of coffee and a cup of water sitting next to me most of the time. I am hydrated furiously. But the two people with cups - it's a date right? They are on a date.

Connections - the first time meeting, the last time talking. This is the date - maybe you go out and there's a person, a new person, there's a connection or there isn't. Drinks, conversation, the world moves or you just keep going. Or it's the latest date- the rest of the night is a forgone conclusion, relationships, togetherness, bonding, ritual. Or it's a last time, it's been ongoing, it's getting tired, it's getting old, you're running out of things to say and so you drink. Later a movie- so that you won't have to talk and maybe you'll have something to talk about afterward. Or it's the last date. The final moment, the brush off, the mournful goodbye. There's two people and feelings.

Now you ask me - do I think a boy and a girl together is the whole thing of it? That that's the two that is? I say this - you know what. No. But you put the two kinds of people in there. I say the two kinds of people because the kinds of people that are involved in making additional people are the kinds of people that I count as archetypal. Have whatever complex opinion you want about it - I'm just saying - there's lots of kinds of sex and togetherness and it's weird that sex and togetherness are equated. Sex is something trees and fish do. Sex is - really, in a technical way - the way that babies are made. So it's strange that Sex is this thing that involves all kinds of acts that are not procreative. It's weird!

I don't know why I went this way. Dating - you get to this point and think about it. Pollen, pistils and stamens- that's what sex is. Dating is togetherness, the whole courtship and togetherness. Here's the picture. The two of cups. Sharing a drink, a conversation, some looks and then you hold hands. Maybe you go into the bathroom together to paw each other like beasts, maybe you can't make it home or to the car, maybe you're groping the alley. I won't pretend that I haven't been that way. Maybe this is the card that foretells the alleyway grope, the furious new kiss. Or maybe it tells about the real true feeling, the now and the best the realest.



Two cups, drink up.



Like this part- Coming Apart- the 23rd Hexagram - and Aim a spirit who teaches all kinds of witty talk. Dating. It's the whole story.


I don't know if I'll keep this going - I mean, cards - right? Cards. Maybe I aughta, and maybe I aughtn't. Trying.

It's a manic kind of day. Don't judge me too much about my gender-specific sentiments or my ability to paint pictures okay?