Ak & SC

THE BEETLE

THE TONGUE

THE CABBAGE

THE ORCHID

AK, CC, SC

WHAT’S INSIDE?

SENTIENCE?

HAPPILY EVER AFTER…

– AK, SC, CC

Write a word, fold and pass. The next person writes its definition blind.

PETUNIA – (noun) – A homogenized egret egg baked in the sun.

CARPET – (verb) – To attack aggressively with a hatchet.

AIRPLANE – (noun) – An oblong eskimo sled used briefly by the Argonauts over cold fading stars.

IGUANODON – (verb) – To disintegrate as if through the action of acid.

DIAMOND – (adj) – To appear discreet.

SWAMP – (verb) – To engage in coitus with an orchid.

SLUG – (noun) – A layer of the stratosphere filled with venomous gases.

FLEA – (noun) – A wishing well that has run dry.

BRONTOSAURUS – (noun) – An emission from the bodies of oysters, prized for its aromatic properties and used as a deadly poison.

– SC, ML, CC

Nessie, as recorded within Doc Shiels’ spacial spatula

Doc Shiels’ grand absorption

From SLAG

The immediate purpose of this game is to provide evidence, drawn from living experiences, of the existence of a ‘surrealist poetic time’. There is here a necessary prior consideration: to discover to what extent there is in each of us, and how intensely, an experience of time that overlaps with ‘forced time’ in all its possible manifestations. Testimony, modest but decisive, of an experience of ’emancipated time’. Naturally, what comes out of the answers will be a mystery that can transform the obviousness of the game into something new. Although this remains to be seen.
1. A clock face is found from which the hands are removed.
2. Each player designates a time associated with an event from his/her life that upholds the principle of the marvellous: revelation, passion, liberation, emancipation, encounter.
3. Each player selects a sentence that acts as an emblem of this lived experience and, upon the clock face chosen for the game, writes it against the corresponding time.

‘Each participant indicates the gift that he or she would present to various historic figures on the occasion of their meeting. Thus, each player in turn can nominate an historic figure and all of the players then write down their response. Once all of the responses are written down and the round completed, they are read aloud within the circle.’ 

REMEDIOS VARO

ML: A voluminous robe made from gold Lamé 

CC: A white bear who speaks in seven tongues

SC: A little glass dog, insides filled with squirming green vines

ODYSSEUS

SC: A large wooden oar shaped like a phallus

ML: A condom

CC: 5 & 20 bolts of oiled sailcloth

HYPATIA

CC: A pearl necklace

ML: Oyster sauce

SC: A pair of singing oysters

CASSANDRA

CC: A snakeskin purse in which to carry the severed ears of her enemies

ML: Agreement

SC: A field of sentient ropes

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN

CC: An orb which transports him to any point in time when swallowed

ML: Colt 45

SC: Cast-iron tear

BUSTER KEATON:

CC: A pocket watch with a chain

ML: A daisy to wear on his lapel

SC: A smile

CHARLES DARWIN

CC: A hardy specimen of the tortoise variety

ML: A bag of yams

SC: A black-haired burrowing duck

BESSIE A. FICKLEN

CC: A handmade doll with eyes made of glass

ML: A swatch of soft green velvet cloth

SC: A hotel run by wayward trickster puppets

FRANKLIN ROSEMONT

CC: A diorama featuring a prairie and a sloth

ML: A music box

SC: A golden machine gun, shooting miniature suns

-SC, ML, CC

Crawlspace as surrealist object? Of course—why not? And this particular crawlspace? Truly an ONERIC ASSEMBLAGE, if ever there was one.

Underplace, you are marvelous. You are a place in which I slither many times more than I need. My wife, she calls me a future dwarf. She calls me a miner. She says that one day I will stay within you, set up shop, abandon the upper-realms. Perhaps. In order to enter you, I must cover my body with a thick double layer of clothing, and wear my wife’s pink floral shower cap. As an armor against spider, against camel cricket, against scorpion. Against all your unwavering stillborn sentries. I walk around the left side of the house. At the threshold of your slit I stand fearful-excited. Dialectical. I begin to enter you, avoiding the snickering of the asbestos tile, that dancing old alabaster cripple. And I think back also on the journey of the builderman fool, that babyfaced one with his crippling arachnophobia. Once, long ago, he had entered you. His thin legs shaking, his face disgraced by an irritated grimace. He had not given you the proper respect. And so—on exit from your womb—he had been graced by the gift of the poisonous arachnid.

O Lover, I am coming inside you now…And if the door should close fast behind me? I would welcome it. Of course, this is not my first time swimming in subterranean, no no. I am certainly no red-faced virgin. Two houses ago—a very cold, very wet, very dark crawlspace she was—that was the time of my very first underdeath. It had been wintertime. And there was an attempt on my part to light a gas furnace. But down in the crawlspace, my fragileyoung flesh had been transmuted by that unexpected pool of still, frigid water. My poor little leggy legs, paralyzed by an under-lake at least three inches deep, uncompromising. Filled, no doubt, with a thousand suckling worms. With a thousand little devils, sailing on a thousand tiny ships. Mud-covered and shivering I was then, with a mind fast becoming the “porcupine smile”. Eventually my slime-covered body had retreated, squirming from her dark interior like the strangest of all possible snakes. Cast out from only orifice available; a hole about one feet tall. And then!—that sweetest kiss of new sun—that second traumatic birthing. I can’t go back now, friends. I’m hooked. And why not?! A man might as well rebirth every 2-3 months, that’s what I say!

Oh, but have we lost the narrative thread? Let’s reverse it a bit then, let’s get back to that OTHER crawlspace now…So anyways, yeah, I make it through the doorway easily enough. And then I look around. And yeah. This particular underworld, it’s a real odd one. To be sure. No reason, no rhyme. Layer upon layer of antagonistic timelines, all competing for dominion. Specters of 1945, of 1967, of 1992… Along the path, wire-snails wrestle in the language of unreasonable stones. And everywhere else I see great fissures opening, “allbleeding it” across a terrain of orange dust. And they whisper legend in my ear as I pass. Hints, tales of some lost prehistoric epoch, of some grand musical earthquake, microscopic…Cracked in 1972? In 1983?

The ceiling gets higher—it seems I am now beneath the kitchen. So be it. Under the ancient mold-queen, with her everwatchful galaxy eyes, I wait. And I wonder. And I appreciate the opulence of the nearby trash stratum. A real swim of deadpearls can be seen over there now, little strangesomethings left by worker or by vagrant or by ghost. Sigh. Crawl low, journeyman, but not too low. Pass palpitating stomach over primeval feces-mountain. Is it of the raccoon trickster, or is it of the grey cat?

I huddle under the bathroom area now, watching those old pipes running downdown into deep. Pipes! They fall right into the abyss, brave souls, right down into the center of the earth. But that particular hole I shall never approach. So let’s not approach it. Onward! Flecks of white snow fluff are seen nearby, scattered. Buncha blow-in attic insulation, it seems. Completely separated from their kin. Cut-off, adrift. They had merely followed the path of least resistance, those carefree childish ones. Had merely tumbled down one secret raccoon passageway after another. And, absurd as it might seem, they had somehow ended their journey here, in this deepest of household caverns. And all had beheld and all were perplexed.

I squirm on. I look for the nest of kittens, for the prophesied nest, and yet I cannot find it anywhere. Our grey stray had been very recently pregnant, you see, and where else could she possibly have taken them? A great feline mystery. I turn now, looking for the exit. I am feeling slightly panicked, as though my time here is running short. What would happen if one strayed for too long here, in this crawlspace’d fairyland? Who knows, I don’t, no expert can be found, whatever kid. But I know that it’s the place where dreams come to hibernate in the daytime, I know that much at least. And that’s something, eh?

ML, SC, CC

What better way to while away those hazy quarantine hours than with a game of…SURREALIST BINGO? Courtesy of Megan Leach.

FIRST ROUND:

The three weird sisters passed a lotus flower growing out from within an old women’s ear. The flower was male, and the tired women was heard quietly mumbling to herself that she wished that he would find somewhere else to lay his dirty roots. “Nature seems dead today”, commented the third sister.

SECOND ROUND:

Hear, now, the drums throbbing to mark the newly laid spring. Here, now, is the song of exile sung under the cinnamon tree where the milk of human kindness drips uncleanly. Hear, then, the psalms are budding yearly.

THIRD ROUND:

“Its in the rain!” cried death’s counterfeit. Death remained utterly confused as in his dreams he existed as a hairless shell, i.e. causing oblivion.