Featured ware (B. 33)
He knew what he had to do. It all depended on the delivery. He approached Astrid as she was finishing meditating. He knew he could approach her because she had opened her eyes.
“Dear, I’m thinking I need an office or workplace or studio. My novel is kind of stalled and it might help.”
Astrid said “Of course honey. What are thinking about where it would be?”
“I think over in Newcastle.”
“Oh really? That’s a little ways off.”
“Indeed. Part of the process would be to make a break with my normal routine. I’m betting that the change would do me good.”
He knew what the place would be like. Plants everywhere spilling out of pots on the floor, pots hanging from the ceiling. Where ever one looked there would be green. Could he grow grapes there? Indoors? They’re just another vine, maybe he could.
Charley Canmore could it seems. He found an apartment with copious light to grow all sorts of greenery. He moved his desk from the house and had high speed internet. He kept no books, no music nor magazines there. The place blazed with light. He had extra lights added to the ceiling and had many floor lamps in every room. He bought a small bed. It wasn’t much more than a camp bed, but he wouldn’t be entertaining visitors of that sort anyway.
In fact, Canmore wasn’t interested in any visitors. He went to the apartment (by now he was calling it his ashram) alone by intention. It was a strong intention. The novel he was writing was galling him.
In the novel the protagonist was becoming more involved with the glass bead game – it was a prequel to the Hermann Hesse book. The protagonist Coale was more mystical than H.H.’s Knecht. Coale (named after the fire elemental) was deep into alchemy like H.H.’s fellow expat Carl Jung. But the material of the story was not lining up right for Canmore.
He started invoking the elementals earth, air, fire and water. He needed more time.
He was back at Astrid’s and his home.
“Honey are you sure you’re all right? You seem distracted all the time. I suspect the novel is not going well, but could you write something else for a while? As a creative break? Maybe we could travel and you could write dispatches from where we go. Sell them to a magazine.”
“Hush.” said Charley. “It is water rushing through me. I need it to cleanse me of my defilements.”
“You’re starting to scare me.”
“There, there you know how we creative types get.” He was silent for a long
while.
He was silent while at his “ashram”, too.
No one ever saw him except when he was coming or going. While inside his room the only sign that someone occupied the room was the smell of incense.
Just like the original by Hesse, in Charley’s story nothing was happening or had ever happened. By now this was starting to bother him. He wanted a breakthrough, not a continuation of some imagined Western culture. Just as the glass beads were appropriate technology for the time of the music masters cited in the text, Charley wanted a superior choice. His story had changed and now included time travel, so that he could write a prehistory and a post history for Castalia.
The technology of our time stood in for the tech of post history Castalia. However Charley had a odd idea of what passed for today’s tech. He only used the internet to keep up with a few chat websites about the occult, and to get random numbers from random.org . He was starting to use analog numerology as well. The secret code contained in regular text.
C. P. Canmore == 616
Charles Canmore == 113
Charles Peter Canmore Esq == 468
Nothing was working out.
***
Meanwhile the police sergeant was telling Astrid: “If he doesn’t want to be found, that is not a job for the police. You can hire someone to find him. Don’t use craigslist.”
She could sense the pity in his voice
***
Just as the nymph’s gift, she whom Apollo transformed into a fountain at Delphi, Charley was aching to taste that sacred water. Debased water was not piquant any more. Less and less bitter food.
An excerpt from [Title to be decided]
[[[
“Why did they leave? They were as strong a student as any other. They chose, Bob and Fred and Nathan to go to the fleshpots of the world. When they could have had the bliss of the weakling and coward. We….
Hey Luciana cut it out, 0kay?
You shut up, Philostrate! This is feelings we’re talking about!
High or low on the Salomon-Adam scale?
A 6 or an 8? 67590294
44218509
“Luciana you’ll probably be next”, said Philostrate
]]]
Charley was starting to include numbers into the main line of the text. The illumati would know how to decode them.
81114174 67015977 47248757 35089571 55800765 62922194 79129452 47171959 65381926 73469294 11075288 12900220 30453604 53947179 10862465 19269867 5004477 64109002 51428408 28698713 94917203 550052
…
When they found the body the house smelled, but not of incense.
Here we see Charles asking Astrid about the studio. He has a turtle on his back that will grow larger and larger until it takes over his whole life and death.
That turtle is of course numbers not a ninja. It does ninja him eventually to death.
He is trying to mollify Astrid with the offering of a dead huge thistle head. What does she think of that? Her familiar is doing a headstand and has not noticed the thistle yet.
Look closely – is Astrid pregnant? There is a little baby’s head just behind the thistle. Does Charley know? I bet not. If he did it would disturb him but probably would not deter him from his fate.
That would be another story.
Behind them is (B. 33) whispering “may we be peaceful”. Charles gets his peace, what about Astrid? Or maybe Charley is reborn as a hungry ghost? He certainly fulfilled the hungry ghost role in this life. Rehearsal?
Above (B. 33) is of course Charley’s ashram. And what a place it is. In his imagination there are indeed grapes or currants or something growing purple and untouchable. Inside is light more light and more light
(Thanks to Grego for the plastic leafy construction.)