Series
What happened to Simone’s parents?
Boo Boo has gone rushing off into the marsh and has found a strange nest of unnatural things. We learn secrets of both Jack and Simone that we do not know. For the most part, Archibald’s colleagues have been very kind and courteous about his new tentacle arm, bu not everyone!
Mutable Sound Chicago, Illinois Mutable Sound is an online gallery for sound and word located in Chicago, IL. We are dedicated to publishing works in all genres, from the dense and inextricable to the light-hearted and absurd, and release albums that are experiments more than anything else, without being particularly experimental.
I’m playing piano at a bar. It’s just 7 PM on a summer Tuesday in Chicago, and I’m sort of drunk in my sky-blue tie.
I don’t really know how to play piano, in any sort of academic sense, but I know that if you’re hitting, exclusively, the white keys, and that if you’ve got a sense of rhythm, and that if you’ve got anything like a ‘feel’ that then—then you can’t really go too wrong. This much has gotten me dates with girls I didn’t really like, at this bar in the near-northwest side of Chicago; this much is keeping me company with myself in this bar, with two old men and a blaring TV screen.
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From the cliff, it looked like an enormous pecan shell. As they climbed down the rocks, Marcus could better see the soggy outline of each broken plank. Below them was a wooden hull, flipped on its side.
The old water had worn a smooth stone grotto into the cliff set. It also left pieces of a ship there.
Most of the planks came loose with a tug. Marcus removed four pieces and laid them beside one another on the stone at their feet.
“This ship,” Colin said, “was a model ship.”
“How do you mean?” Marcus rearranged the boards into a square, brought together the corners. “It was a battleship or something.”
“Someone built it like a battleship. Someone built this thing to look exactly like a Roman battleship. See, these are the oarlocks, below deck, because warriors didn’t row. Slaves did.”
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What invisible forces hold Simone under their sway?
We learn the details of Simone’s dark past, and what power that lives within her. Could the faeries be responsible for this demon possession? Jack knows something of faeries, but what happened when Simone’s parents were killed? Let’s just say, more horrors awaited them even after the horrific act!
Mutable Sound Chicago, Illinois Mutable Sound is an online gallery for sound and word located in Chicago, IL. We are dedicated to publishing works in all genres, from the dense and inextricable to the light-hearted and absurd, and release albums that are experiments more than anything else, without being particularly experimental.
This blog has been created to encourage what we all need a little more of: My Time. As a decadent lady who was raised in the upper echelons of society in Manhattan, Barcelona, and Tallinna, I learned a long time ago that being a woman in and of society isn’t easy. Sometimes it’s enough to not rip off your control top stockings and throw them at your doorman as he wishes you a good morning.
Recently, my husband, Astor, a virologist (for those of you not raised around such professions, a “virologist” is someone who invents new viruses to combat creatures that wish to overtake humanity, such as badgers and mosquitos and Muslims. Or something like that. Anyway), received the Mel Gibsoner Grant in the Sciences to study the creatures that populate a state in America I had never heard of before, “Missouri”, and gracefully destroy the lesser creatures of the world that aim to take control of our planet. Ever heard of a “cave cricket”?
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What secret world is concealed within our own?
The thing wants Boo Boo to be frightened and curl into a ball. Boo Boo’s people raised the sorts of animals that would force them to live on the outskirts of any village. Things such as unicorn worms and other fantastes.
Mutable Sound Chicago, Illinois Mutable Sound is an online gallery for sound and word located in Chicago, IL. We are dedicated to publishing works in all genres, from the dense and inextricable to the light-hearted and absurd, and release albums that are experiments more than anything else, without being particularly experimental.
Face Painting by Huang Yan
(The author believes the only “true” translation of the Tao must be a mistranslation, for, as 老子 himself said, 道可道非常道, or ‘Tao as Tao not eternal Tao’. Enjoy this ongoing mistranslation!)
1.
Tao as Tao is not Tao. Name as Name is not Name. Heaven and earth began in a nameless place. The ten thousand things were born when each was given a name. To have kept your reason but have lost even the faintest glimmer of a desire, accordingly observe him wonderful in all things, while he who is ruled by his desires, accordingly observe him trapped in a sheer container of his own design, banging at the walls and hollering. These two things (to know without desire and to desire without knowledge) are alike but each different. Both are considered profound. Profundity’s still profound when it leads to the person being trapped in a sheer container of his own design, he then becoming many beautiful things’ entrance.
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The man face down in the puddle out front is come hunting for his childhood sweetheart.
Why does Simone hate the faeries so? And who is this man hunting for the truth of his childhood sweetheart? And will that boy ever be able to get unstuck from the crib? And why is Gundrun so distracted? And why are Archibald’s eyes rolled back inside his head? So many questions!
Mutable Sound Chicago, Illinois Mutable Sound is an online gallery for sound and word located in Chicago, IL. We are dedicated to publishing works in all genres, from the dense and inextricable to the light-hearted and absurd, and release albums that are experiments more than anything else, without being particularly experimental.
Have you ever truly lived, my pock-marked asterisk of a friend? Have you ever walked into a room and made out with the leading lady of your dreams? Or dove into the darkness with the eagerness of an action hero? Or been there to save the most important person in your life from what would otherwise have been the worst mistake ever? Have you ever openly wept? Or looked out from your hopeless meandering moment to instead be filled with awe when facing the incomprehensible absolutes of your life? That all who you love will decay and die before you, and that you will be one of these people? Unless of course you feel nothing, and then it’ll all happen behind your back while you’re always rummaging in corners looking for shiny objects to distract you from this ever-expanding horror. So. I’ll ask you again.
What about, have you ever truly died? You over-sized prawn-powered muttering device. Have you ever slipped into unconsciousness convinced that you’re never ever going to ever wake up again ever?
I say this in all seriousness as I simultaneously split my tongue with a straight edge razor and eye the dribbling blood with an inconvenient hilarity. For I have tried to do both of these unfortunate things—this living thing and this dying thing I mean—at different times but always in the same backhanded passive aggressive fashion. And all because of you.
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Archibald as a younger man in Shanghai.
Archibald has disappeared, but we learn a bit about his backstory and the cage he spent his adolescence in. Jack has a new invention that the Headmistress finds dirty, and Boo Boo has just stormed in the room holding up the cuddliest parasite the world has ever seen. Are panty-holes the solution? What’s happened to the Grammar Instructor’s hands?
Mutable Sound Chicago, Illinois Mutable Sound is an online gallery for sound and word located in Chicago, IL. We are dedicated to publishing works in all genres, from the dense and inextricable to the light-hearted and absurd, and release albums that are experiments more than anything else, without being particularly experimental.
Millenium Park, Chicago, in the bandshell seats. Jonathan Richman on stage.
Nearby a small boy is flailing his arms and legs almost imperceptibly, with his Hummingbird energy; I believe he is attempting flotation, and my roommate, next to me on my right, is talking about how important it is to observe these young kids dancing this way, while they’re still willing to do it. The little boy’s smile is the biggest thing in sight but his father isn’t amused. ‘When he’s thirteen, he’s not going to want to dance that way anymore. When he’s twenty-three, he’ll have to get *really drunk* to do it.’
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(The author believes the only “true” translation of the Tao must be a mistranslation, for, as 老子 himself said, 道可道非常道, or ‘Tao as Tao not eternal Tao’. Enjoy this ongoing mistranslation!)
25.
Something formless and complete, from before the universe was born—silent, empty, independent and unchanging—taking careful steps yet with no danger lying in wait—it can be used as the mother of the universe. I don’t know her name, that character we call Tao, but the force that comes from that name is called “Great”. This Greatness is known when it departs from us, and as it departs is seen as a vision in the distance, and from a distance is known as its opposite.
Therefore, just as the Tao is great, the sky is great, the earth is great, human beings are also great. Within the region’s midriff can be found these four greats, yet people alone encompass all the rest.
Humans obey the law of earth. Earth obeys the law of heaven, while the Tao’s method is that of nature.
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What madness is occurring in the infirmary?
A man is face down in a puddle out front. A boy stuck in a crib has somehow worked his way through the doorway. Simone is lost in some other fantastical realm full of trees grinning stupidly. Jack continues to ramble on incomprehensibly as he whispers his concerns to the Grammar Instructor. Will he be shipped off to Zimbabwe?
Mutable Sound Chicago, Illinois Mutable Sound is an online gallery for sound and word located in Chicago, IL. We are dedicated to publishing works in all genres, from the dense and inextricable to the light-hearted and absurd, and release albums that are experiments more than anything else, without being particularly experimental.
Will Grammar Instructor Gundrun accept Jack’s advances despite his invention of pantyholes?
Gundrun must once again announce her absolute and complete lack of interest in Jack and any and all romantic plans he has concocted. Archibold is himself concocting a plan of revenge with his recently resuscitated telepathic monkey. And Headmistress Ursula? Even as she relates intimate details from her past, she continues to weave a web of mind control and other illocal elements.
Mutable Sound Chicago, Illinois Mutable Sound is an online gallery for sound and word located in Chicago, IL. We are dedicated to publishing works in all genres, from the dense and inextricable to the light-hearted and absurd, and release albums that are experiments more than anything else, without being particularly experimental.
Luo Brothers, Welcome the world famous brand (2000)
(The author believes the only “true” translation of the Tao must be a mistranslation, for, as 老子 himself said, 道可道非常道, or ‘Tao as Tao not eternal Tao’. Enjoy this ongoing mistranslation!)
46.
Those who have Tao retreat before horses depositing their excrement upon the neighbor’s lawn. Those who are without Tao are themselves military horses giving birth in the suburbs. The harm is not great for those who are not yet content, and the blame is not great for those who have already obtained their desires.[1] Causing contentment to actually indeed both be enough and always almost but not quite yet sufficient.
47.
You don’t leave your front door yet have knowledge of everything under heaven. You could never spy into the window of enlightenment and still face the heavenly way like an unraveling tongue of light. This journey fills the far reaches, but its knowledge fills few. According to the sacred person, not walk but know, not see but understand, a shell of a man yet become complete.
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The Headmistress’ mind control techniques are very effective.
Confronted by trans dimensional beings, Gundrun at last lets down her guard with Jack. But what is going on back inside the infirmary? And out in the world beyond?
Mutable Sound Chicago, Illinois Mutable Sound is an online gallery for sound and word located in Chicago, IL. We are dedicated to publishing works in all genres, from the dense and inextricable to the light-hearted and absurd, and release albums that are experiments more than anything else, without being particularly experimental.
(A D Jameson has a new book out by Lawrence & Gibson, a remarkable little outfit in New Zealand renowned for their beautiful hand-sown craftsmanship. Jameson’s new book, entitled Giant Slugs, is a strange and alluring creation; it’s narrator exiled, ousted, put out by those oozing outsized interlopers, denied his true inheritance, his due kingly crown. So begins this epicene narrator’s epichorial wanderings (part epicrisis, part epicedium) in this largely silly, slightly filthy, pun-laden Epicurean retelling of the ages-old Epic of Gilgamesh.)
On the fifth day, our class was taken on a field trip to Ninja City’s secret portions, the developing suburban bailiwicks, expanding eastward at the rate of three blocks per year. The slogan of these newer parts was, “Virus-Free Since ’93!” Their motto was, “We Will Find the Serum.”
The ninjas who lived there, global warming enthusiasts, threw webbed geodesic domes over desolate tracts—the war-scarred landscape it had been left to them to develop. When the finished dome was turned on, it generated an interior rain that lasted for forty days and thirty-nine nights. When the domes were taken down, the desolation had been transformed into normal, productive topsoil, rich loam like you’d find in a national forest. Other ninjas, the ones whose talents disposed them to comprise the follow-up crew, paved over the mess and poured concrete sidewalks marked with their handprints and the date. Then they built roadside stands from which they sold pints of Noby Sheets’s coleslaw. (She used her spare time once a week to make big vats of the stuff, the most delicious slaw I’d ever tasted.)
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What invisible forces are at work?
The Headmistress wants to believe she is the evil one, but the narrator has something else in mind. Faeries will never amount to anything, and narrators can impersonate people when they’re off in the bathroom, and may occasionally titter over smashed faces. And the devil should be obvious.
Mutable Sound Chicago, Illinois Mutable Sound is an online gallery for sound and word located in Chicago, IL. We are dedicated to publishing works in all genres, from the dense and inextricable to the light-hearted and absurd, and release albums that are experiments more than anything else, without being particularly experimental.
Zhang Huan, Family Tree (detail), 2000
(The author believes the only “true” translation of the Tao must be a mistranslation, for, as 老子 himself said, 道可道非常道, or ‘Tao as Tao not eternal Tao’. Enjoy this ongoing mistranslation!)
66.
How is it that the rivers and seas are able to become king over the hundred valleys? It is as a result of their ability to flow downward. In this way, they become as kings.
Similarly, when a saint wants the people to be raised up, this must be done through words that lower; wants the people first, must be done by putting the body last.
Is according to the saint that the government stands over them, yet the people are not burdened, the office is put before them, yet the people are not harmed.[1]
All of which is made possible because this is a joyful push by the politburo and by no means a hateful one. Accordingly, no one can therefore argue, causing, all under heaven to be unable to find anything to complain about concerning the politburo’s most recent re-education campaign.
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What devil possesses her?
Archibald has a little heart to heart with Poppy. The narrator is still going on about his covert powers. The man passed out in the puddle out front is just now coming to his senses. The headmistress uncovers two of her staff in a compromising position. What more could you want?
Mutable Sound Chicago, Illinois Mutable Sound is an online gallery for sound and word located in Chicago, IL. We are dedicated to publishing works in all genres, from the dense and inextricable to the light-hearted and absurd, and release albums that are experiments more than anything else, without being particularly experimental.
