Fred left the Army to spend so many words on letters to the editor proclaiming the wonders of his wisdom that he was left with few to write for his readers. Energized by Wagner's death, a creative spark shocked his diseased brain and he farted Zarathustra onto the page while Pinnochio sprang to life in the delivery room next door and Joyce across the hall.

Lafcadio meanwhile had already been pulled out of Greece and pushed out of Dublin, delivered to America to blossom in the benthos of the last stop for pilgrims. Ten years later he found a way to migrate again. He managed to pull Japan close but died 15 years before Goddard devised a method of reaching extreme altitudes.

One tried sunlight for nationalism, one tried hitting, one tried high art, and Prometheus invented the house fire. Wagner taught retreat into mythology behind a pompous veil that shrouds the disconnect from reality. Henry Watkin and Paul Leon drew the artist closer to the subject. Ariel drew a line and chased the tale, a dialectic of material mermaids!

Carlos left the Army to punish the Christianity into Pinnochio the year Benny was born. He left the Army to wrap his strings around the Mediterranean and when the Duce turned 21 he went out drinking with Disney, who woke up pregnant with the story as war overtook the world. Again! Not long after peace returned some five years later Donald The Dingus demanded an encore for his birthday then left his brother for realty, reality, and Rosie.

The Duck meanwhile had enlisted in the Navy and raised three nephews, who one night found a flute that they used to lure the woodworkers to the Magical Lathe in a cabin in the woods. To their surprise a bucket of glue poured down on each as they entered, and all of them pulled in by the spinning were squished up so close together that they hardened into the Giant Gepeto!

When he was all done curing, the trio took turns turning through the night. By morning the statue had been reduced to a pile of shavings and a figure small enough to fit under the Cloning Beam, which the nephews used to make this doll I bought you for Christmas.

I made one more trip to New York before Aunt Jin died, certain I'd see her soon down the Potomac. I first met her on the Gulf of Mexico, a long line cast to lure me to the Hudson. We spent the day talking with her caretakers, the neighbors, and the new parents moving in.

She sent me home with a table that I refinished waiting for the wake. Gravitational collapse calling the exploratory back to the island. Star. Starlight.

After the funeral I queued up "New Orleans Funeral Jazz", which is a thing you can do on a whim these days, and schooled up to race the body to the grave. We gathered inside a stone pavilion lined with the seals of the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, and Navy, two versions for them. A friend from Lake Winnipesaukee said a prayer and we left roses for the dead as we departed.

The gas light flipped on outside of Calverton and I thought about swimming to New Jersey or backfloating back to Sebastian Beach. Some foreward thinking spirit saw fit to build a gas station, and another to pack a snack for the drive, stockpiled for the mail carriers in the summer drought, and the ghosts of the past scared away the island fever long enough to drift to Jericho for nostalgia and salmon.

The sails were tattered by then, half my legs replaced with pegs, all my eyes patched, and my connection to the Internet severed, the dregs of bandwidth drained by "Party Hits" on the way from the cemetery. I managed to follow the signs to Queens after lunch but the Belt Parkway Portal appeared mysteriously near the airport to drop me in the Caribbean, a confluence of strange seas. I anchored on a small island I recognized from a story I once heard in West Philly and followed sunrise and sunset north to Wissahickon.

I found the dogs waiting for a walk, an opportunity to catch up with the squirrels on the last two weeks of life, and the next two minutes, generations, autumns. We landed somewhere in the present, fixed to Jeopardy. Terrible Terry, a skunk's critique of the air freshener in the outhouse behind the landfill. Brent's bonus 100k on Wheel. Giants and Steelers tied 9-9 at the half.

Bo and Willie visited for a sleepover after Labor Day. They came back again the next weekend while I made a trip to grandma's. I saw a sign for Shakespeare in Manhattan so I made a little detour on the way home. I thought I knew where I was going, but Jackie Robinson chewed me up and spit me out somewhere in Brooklyn.

I found a navigator in a bar full of monsters and soon enough we found ourselves underground negotiating with Cerberus. The dogs smelled one of their own inside so they offered what tricks they had to get by. They found him lying on the riverside and called out to the ferryman to broker a deal with him too, three bones for another day in the sun. Content with the terms the wolves howled for the good boy, who flew off with his treat.

We sailed on to heckle the bard, who guided us to a sphinx whose riddle I couldn't solve. Nearly mad with hunger the navigator sniffed us out a slice of pizza. As I finished my last bite, I saw in the grease on the paper plate the way home. I made it back just in time for Teemo's ninth birthday! He got cake and I got a tattoo. The seasons are changing and I needed a change of scenery. So I painted the site. And I built a hallway to hang some pictures.

We made a visit to Peace Valley today. I found another guy with two dogs and we scuttled around the shore with them for a bit pinching at the metaphor. They sailed off and we sailed on, stopping for a snooze in the shade before setting course.

A bluejay in the backyard reminded me I forgot something so we were back on the water soon as we made it home, back to the Aisle of Grocery. The dogs watched the boat while I went ashore hunting and foraging for sunflower seeds and a can of wet food.

I finally made a fire and ate then did some work on the site, which helped inspire this little write up!

Mainly I added a new landing page. This space has been blog-forward from the start, now feels time to aim the shrink ray at the ChangeLog and set it beside Thing Being Changed on the same island. The posts kept the same URLs but their index is now here. The archive and rss links are also still the same but I removed them from the main navigation.

1. valley

2. sailor

3. shanty

4. squidward

5. mushroom

6. identity

7. internet

8. inventory

9. warehouse

10. courier

11. ship

There was a time when there was one line dividing two sides. One day the two got to tugging at the thing until it started to tear. So half the two patched while the other half pulled. Weakened by the depleted force, the line began to collapse. So half the patchers grabbed their bike pumps and inflated it until the cracks began to show again. Just as the millenarians donned their formal robes, somebody declared that a second line had emerged! So large had the one grown that life on each side finally outpaced the travel time between the ports.

With two lines there appeared three bodies, Left, Janus, and Right, though the old heads still only saw Earth and Ocean. Despite the resistance, personality ignited in the sparks near the poles, which twisted Janus-Left around Janus-Right. The polarity reversal split the brain but left undecided the claim of where the moment lies. Those on the outskirts of each side channeled lightening to move the center of gravity, which tightened and coiled the lines into transformers.

Even if it didn't, aligning actors in conflict around two lines looks like a monte carlo model for character and alliance generation, and the choice of Four is next year's hedge. Or a mythological navy-sized metaphor deployed to resolve a conflict I'm sure some other apple started. Either way, I'm pressing the American political family through this framing lately.

left	janus-left	janus-right	right
democratic	polyarchic		authoritarian
	at-large head	representative body
gen 3	gen 2	gen 4	gen 1
icarus	dedalus	ovid	hedge
heart	axon	dendrite	stomach

It was a dark day when Earth and Ocean fell into each other.

Dusk'd been writing weepy poems that got Dawn stuck sweeping up after the dance, no time to invite the light. Lulling, longing. Slept through another alarm. Buried in the sheets. So the collision seemed unavoidable, stitched into another story before this one even started.

When the Long War did end and the maps were drawn, the crabbiest planted their feet in the mud and stuck around. Others, for all their reasons, burrowed entirely or floated away.

Stella emerged on the one side and Billy on the other, hard shells on the field between. Pulled together by the sinking sands of time then torn apart by love, Billy scuttled off. Stella traded shells for scales and swam higher. The fish built schools. And when at last she gained knowledge of flight, the sky appeared.

Turtle Stew was with the cod at the time.

He'd been missing the depths so he seized the Magic Conch to travel home again. News of the sky traveled fast, arriving soon after Stew sat down for tea with grandma. After the cookies were finished and the crumbs were scooped the turtle stepped out to leave. Moved by tales of wings the barnacles also stepped out, leaving the mud to climb on board, to visit the fish, to see the sea.

The ascent was slow but steady. The submarine surfaced and finally shared shell with moon. All around him Stew saw water. And then on the horizon, beside Air on top of Ocean, was Earth again.

The turtle set his course and sailed through the endless night, no tree nor star to guide the way. Still he arrived. The ship docked on an island spotted with coconut trees and mystery. The barnacles disembarked and found the hermits. Turtle Stew found a case for the Conch in the shade, and in the distance sunlight and sounds of ukulele.

1. one

2. two

3. mermaid

4. tail

5. departure

6. wake

7. whirlpool

8. vortex

9. sky

10. turtle

11. barnacle

12. moss

13. moth

14. worm

15. silk

16. despair

17. resilience

18. bamboo

19. lift

One day Amelia declared dismay with the terrestrial tether and swore she was running away. As punishment for her rebellion Poseidon bound her to a tree while King Crab clawed at her spirit for all eternity.

By some accounts Hercules had been sailing to Nagasaki when the wind pulled him to Howland. Hearing Amelia's cries for freedom he picked the crustacean up by the pincer and hurled him into the night sky. A flash of light appeared to beckon the hero back to his boat, and Athena remained behind to transform Amelia into a crane.

Some say the earth had been seen with one of Poseidon's sons, who'd been heard telling tales that the sea had taken his lover's wild child. Others say Amelia never stopped flying, and that after finding the fleece the Argonauts visited every corner of the ocean in search of Jason's sandal. The hunt was a flop, but watching the horizon Castor and Pollux found Fred stalled on an island. The two swam to shore, lifted the plane below the wings, and together rocked back then forth sending the aviators soaring to the sun where the pilot rents an apartment with a Milky Way view and the navigator cultivates the celestial charts.