My experiment of expanding my presence continues:

www.dreynet.com

This is how I spent my Saturday.

Pictures will explain what words cannot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/birzer/sets/72157604762416387/

Another cycle completes, stars spin with the sound of calendar pages, and the bats are once more beneath their bridge. The heat and humidity begin their steady encroachment upon the city, breathing at my doorstep, getting down to business a few minutes earlier each day. It is spring, so everything is tinged with an ecstatic madness, as though sex could leap from the trees, coffee cups, anywhere. All people shine with mystery. All people are generous and kind, and even their narcissism becomes a wonderful twisted mirror, scattering light.

Today I received a letter from the Texas Department of Public Safety. Inside I found a plastic card bearing my photo, my face already strange. They wanted to let me know that I live here now. Officially.

1. Veronica Mars
2. Battlestar Galactica
3. Lost
4. Doctor Who
5. Torchwood
6. Flight of the Conchords
7. The League of Gentlemen
8. Haibane Renmei
9. The Mighty Boosh
10. Witch Hunter Robin

1. There Will Be Blood
2. Batman Begins
3. Ghostbusters
4. Barton Fink
5. Old Boy
6. My Left Foot
7. Ratatouille
8. Gone Baby Gone
9. Cloverfield
10. Juno

1. Rock Band
2. Psychonauts
3. Rez
4. Viva Pinata
5. Puzzle Quest
6. The Secret of Monkey Island
7. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
8. Zak & Wiki
9. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
10.

1. Spook Country
2. Odd and the Frost Giants
3. Interworld
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Mr. Doughty and his crew get on stage half an hour early, disguised as a noise jam band. They wear beards and funny hats, but the crowd is not fooled.

The Panderers pander and we accept.

Mr. Doughty returns. His voice is indeed golden and delicious. New tracks and Soul Coughing throwbacks. The crowd enjoys.

Mr. Doughty denounces the use of pot. It being 4/20, the audience misunderstands, screaming with joy.

Circles!

Mr. Doughty explains that he is going to throw the bridge out and replace it with “half-mumbled half-words”. The crowd accepts this proposition.

Mr. Doughty plays the best cover of Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler ever performed.

Mr. Doughty plays a fake last song, asks us to pretend he has left the stage when he in fact is just turning to face the back of the stage, turns back around to play the real last song.

Crowd spills out of Antone’s.

“Poisoned!” cried Lord Sauding, hurling the bowl away. It arced through the room before getting caught in the sagging badminton net and sloshing its contents in orange glops. The net relaxed and the crockery shattered into jagged bits as it hit the floor. [read more… ]

“Boatswain, have you seen my Felix? He was just here.”

Bastian’s hand found some wooden protrusion and steadied himself, and he spat an oily wad of phlegm onto the deck. But he didn’t retch this time. He felt his atrophied skills most profoundly in his limbs, heavy and distant, like a stranger’s. Braced by the brittle sea air, he soon had command of his senses once more. A gull shrieked above him, its wings frozen by memory. Bastian wondered how long it would hang there. Until there is no one left to remember. Or longer.

He turned to face her. [read more… ]

I’m archiving some of my entries from a now defunct collaborative writing project, the entirety of which can be found here: http://collectiveinventioncontention.blogspot.com/

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Bondmistress Oubliette herself had come to find him. The sputtering bulb in the elevator shone through the wide moth eaten brim of her hat, dappling her pale face with sodium-colored light. Of all the caretakers, Bastian considered Oubliette’s face the most well maintained. [read more… ]

I must resist the foils. Shall I become hideous to them? Shall I construct a bullwark? I need a lefttennant with my best interests in mind. A guard against the foil. That is what is always missing from the scene: A friend.

I can still feel your wake. Damn it, I’m right here! I’m standing as still as I can, given my shifting nature. Where are you? I’ve learned how to track so many trails. I’ve learned how to track *me*! I’m not present and I never will be. But I am focused like light passing through a diamond. I’m that sparkle in the moment, even as I move through many shifting dreams where clocks are useless.

Find me.

I saw her again, the avatar. Garbed as a swashbuckler and lovely beyond reason. In the company of the dread pirate, a man I come to find was a knave of the blackest stripe.

The pattern appears and the players are drawn along its shattered axes. The foil shows herself, drawn to me, as she always is. I’m so fucking weak. Lonliness sapping away all my brave plans.

But now my understanding of the pattern is more complete. I should be able to recognize the cycle immediately when it starts again, not halfway through the dance, when it is too late.