Sandbagged Longings (Daily Planet email #934)

Chapter 1: The perceptual end to an ocean.

Land, ho!

Chapter 2: The Man in the Dumb Castle

I take a sounding and I don’t know where it leads. Some people, you can draw a line from the first unmooring. Others sail in insect cuneiform, bashing their brains against the light. They question me, or maybe I am preparing my answers defensively. Anyway, I go up to the clock tower and I evict the clock tower. No more time! …It takes forever to go back down the stairs. This paragraph is brought to you by the good people at Semolina Pilchard, LLC, offering business solutions for business people who do business in the cloud and beyond business, in a marvelous land no one has ever visited, nor laid eyes upon, and dares not hope to.

Chapter 3: Freedom

“You don’t need to worry.” They came to me, bothering me, three of them, one in a hat, and said, you don’t need to worry. I said are you sure? I said I’ve invested so much time in this worrying I mean to say are you sure? They nod, as if of one head, to say Yes we know now, you don’t need to worry, it doesn’t help we mean to say it doesn’t help. Nothing helps. I say what’s the hat for then, that must help with something you know, a thing. And then they say Oh no you have seen through our guileful guise, and as if one stomach, they hari-kari through in a shish kebob of the botherers. I did mention this was a dream, right? I’m worried I didn’t.

Chapter 4: Here be dragons

Dragons.

Chapter 5: Victory be assured

After valiant struggle, we contained the dragons to their own chapter and victory seemed assured. In fact, that was our battle cry: V.I.C.T.O.R.Y! It riled up the dragons to no end, we had to stay out of the blast radius, so much riling. I can hear them now, a smoky song, ringed with fear and nostalgia. Singed, Victorious.

Chapter 6: The Luxury of Introspection

I find myself increasingly uncomfortable with comfort. It’s no good being placid — you’ve got to show them you’re dissatisfied or you’ll be misunderstood. No one knows if it was worth it — no one will know forever. The jury is still out and they’re not coming back. They too will be hung.

Chapter 7: “The baboons have utterly spoiled our field.”

We make a path of stones, each one is different, each one is a stone. The differences make the path interesting. The path would be easier if the stones were ground down, crushed, homogenized, but then you would forget that there is a path. We make a path that is path enough to travel, difficult enough to enjoy, so we more gladly arrive at a destination. Either end is a destination, it’s not a ray. Not of stones, good heavens no.

Chapter 9: Trabajo

We didn’t know how good we had it, it was too good for us. We rode it like it was an endless horse of no horizon, no legs, no saddle sores at the Fiddler’s Gulch where the fat lady sang. They took everything that wasn’t nailed down: the keycards, the oil lamp, the beaded curtain. They even took some of the trees, though they certainly looked nailed down. The buildings, they couldn’t take the buildings, could they? Sure they could, and there they went . The sadness, they even took the sadness — I should have nailed it down.

Chapter 10: Epilogue

A man sits in a boat because he is fishing. Displeased with the results of his fishing pole, he draws a fish on a piece of paper. Soon the boat is overflowing with pictures of fish. Though he is hungry, his mind is fed and he begins to float, as does his boat. We traverse these currents of thought, and having been freed of questions, soon we will be free of answers as well. Just one, beautiful, inexplicable Is. There be dragons. “Where?!!” Up in Chapter Four, silly. You worry too much.