Consider the Sea

<div class="background"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> “I will find a [[purpose|Lonely purposes]],” Finley exclaimed. “I will travel the world from [[here|Cleveland]] to [[there|Budapest]], [[sailing the seas|Heavy woods]] and [[flying the skies|Escape artist]] and [[plowing through|Plodded]] the desert and seeking until I find exactly that.” Choose your [[directions|Dont you see]] or view the [[colophon|Colophon]] or go through the [[compass|Incantation]]. <img src="main.png" alt=a detailed eight-sided compass rose laying on top of an antique map, along with a red metal spyglass at the bottom of the compass. The map has scrawls that could be ships or camels or ropes or barnacles. Inconstant is to the north, Escaping to the south. Enchanting and Seducing are west to east. Innocent and Heaving are northwest to northeast, Lonely and Listless are from southwest to southeast. This is an image map, and choices are in text below as well.> ''Compass Points to go by:'' North: [[The inconstant sea]] Northeast: [[The heaving sea]] East: [[The enchanting sea]] Southeast: [[The listless sea]] South: [[The escaping sea]] Southwest: [[The lonely sea]] West: [[The seducing sea]] Northwest: [[The innocent sea]] </div>

<div class="escaping"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> If this had been any sort of [[reality|Red King]] at all, there would have been this landed interlude. The air would have been hot, and the master of the caravan, who he envisioned as an unsightly fellow in filthy djellaba with one eye crossed and a greasy [[gray|Innocent possessions]] beard, would have said to him in his heavily accented voice, “[[The desert|Plodded]], Finley-[[seedee|Seedee]], the [[desert|Escape doom]], she is a [[dry mistress|Mistress of the future]]. Never forget that, Finley. A dry mistress who escapes [[her boundaries|Cloistress of innocence]], who wanders with the wind and stretches out [[behind the universe|End game]]. He gestured out to the empty lands, faintly tinged with the red of drying [[iron oxides, crimson with ancient blood|Mistress of distress]] You could [[catch your death|Coup de grace]] out here.” Finley took a deep breath of the dry air and stood on the solid ground, feeling sands shift around [[his ankles|Oedipus]] in [[haphazard|Enchanters face]] patterns. “Yes, but one could live here too. This is a wide open space of endless horizons, like [[the sea|The heaving sea]], and there are so many possible ways to reach [[the end|Egress]].” <img src="escaping.png" alt=an eight sided frame perhaps carved in wood or aged in bronze encompasses the scene, within a beige border. The scene shows a figure in a camel, with another figure possibly on the camel or on the sand where we can not see feet. The main figure is within the arms of a compass drafting tool. Escape arguments is to the north; No escape to the south. Escape portal and Escape bar are west to east. Escape questions and Escape doom are northwest to northeast; Escape artist and Escape clause are from southwest to southeast.> North: [[Escape arguments]] Northeast: [[Escape doom]] East: [[Escape bar]] Southeast: [[Escape clause]] South: [[No escape]] Southwest: [[Escape artist]] West: [[Escape portal]] Northwest: [[Escape questions]] //[[Begin again|Consider the Sea]]// </div>

<div class="enchanting"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> Whenever the captain got his hands on a bottle of rum, or even a [[true whisky|Stupid stuff]] (rather than the insipid [[green mint tea|Whisky berbers]] that some bartenders tried to pass off as [[whisky berbers|Escape portal]]--but which was nothing like the [[caravan master’s brew|Escape doom]]--usually from a passing pirate who would lose at ring toss), he would drink himself under the table and [[snore sea songs|Sea chantey]] all night long. Finley always tried to stuff the corks from the bottles into his ears, but the [[parrots|Heaven forgets]] the pirates inevitably left behind would peck them out. They would roar out together that the life of the sea was for me and only me and only the sea and the words would form a stupifying [[incantation|Incantation]] meant to prove [[they were happy|Saucy Sailor Lad]] where they were. And perhaps [[they were|Words]]. <img src="enchanting.png" alt=an eight-sided compass well in the background, almost faded, with a faint hint of skulls. In the foreground is a pirate decked out in dark browns that were once reds and a deep blue not quite the color of the ocean or sky, with a bird that is probably not a parrot or an albatross on his hand. The pirate and the compass rise out of the sea, and two ships (on the left and right of the compass, respectively) are sailing towards each other. Enchanter is to the north; Enchantee to the south. Enchantress and Enchantment are west to east. Sea chantey and Sea chancey are northwest to northeast; Incantation and Invocation are from southwest to southeast.> North: [[Enchanter]] Northeast: [[Sea chancey]] East: [[Enchantment]] Southeast: [[Invocation]] South: [[Enchantee]] Southwest: [[Incantation]] West: [[Enchantress]] Northwest: [[Sea chantey]] //[[Begin again|Consider the Sea]]// </div>

<div class="listless"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> The captain swayed at his desk most nights when the sea was so calm that the sails barely breathed in the still, hot air. To stave off the [[murmured voices beneath the sea|The Sea-Limits]], he [[chanted|Incantation]] to himself. There he stared at his maps and his papers with his sextant and compass, with his inkwell firmly fixed within its little cubbyhole, [[the ink|Innocent ideas]] so low it could never escape to join the sea. He would roar for anyone he could, for his cabin boy or even for his steward to take care of the lists, [[forgetting|Heaven forgets]] that he had [[abandoned|The Cast-away]] that particular crewman in a port a long time ago, as a punishment for musing with [[pirates|Enchanter]] and [[nipping his whisky|Escape bar]] (which, by the way, was not of the [[berberian variety|Escape portal]]) somewhere he couldn't [[quite remember|Enchantee]]. Sometimes he would mutter to himself and then roar for Finley to come and solve these equations, to make the lists come out even. The [[sea is listless|The Sea-Limits]], he would tell Finley then as they both leaned [[on the deck|Heavenly bodies]], looking out at the [[horizon|Orizon]]. Without a list, without a leaning one way or another, without moving, there was nothing. Quiet and calm and [[without a motivation|Innocent tides]]. [[Impossible|Red King]] to [[waken|Waking]] without a [[passion|Innocent obsessions]]. Never let me see you without your lists, he would roar out, and call for [[a stronger drink|The enchanting sea]]. He knew he could handle the drink better than the too-calm [[reality of being|Stupid stuff]] listless, of being motionless, as his desk stopped swaying in the waves and the ship went nowhere. <img src="listless.png" alt=an eight-sided compass rose embedded in a lush executive suite, within a round desk that an important congressman or captain or pirate would sit behind. A slightly smaller chair is placed beside the executive chair, and a sextant is between them. List landward is to the north, List seaward to the south. List to port and List starboard are west to east. List your skills and List your strengths are northwest to northeast, List your interests and List your accomplishments from southwest to southeast. This is an image map, and choices are in text below as well.> North: [[List landward]] Northeast: [[List your skills]] East: [[List starboard]] Southeast: [[List your accomplishments]] South: [[List seaward]] Southwest:[[List your interests]] West: [[List to port]] Northwest: [[List your strengths]] //[[Begin again|Consider the Sea]]// </div>

<div class="seducing"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> “Finley,” the captain said, puffing [[gray smoke into a fog|Innocent possessions]] around the stem of his clay pipe. The gale would be blowing soon, but for now the sea lay calmly, quietly before them, immersed in the [[still dream|The listless sea]] before [[the arousal|Red King]] of the deep. The captain reached out over the [[deck|Heaven notices]] as if to stroke the waves. “Finley, the sea is a wet mistress. You need to remember [[her names|Mistress of joy]] as she gurgles them down into her throat. You should never [[forget any part of her|Heaven forgets]]. Watch her moods, boy. Know when she is asleep and when she might [[awaken|Waking]].” Of course, the captain may never have said this at all, or at least not out loud. Finley knew that all he wanted to do was to [[keep his mistress|Mistress of undress]] perfectly [[preserved|Cloistress of innocence]] in his dreams, the dreams he had every night that were always wet and drowning him in waves of sweat until he could not [[wake|Waking]] <img src="seductress.png" alt=A blond woman in a red princess cap and long flowing gown almost looks at the reader while holding a compass or ship steering wheel, almostas if playing it. A monkey is curled up in her arms. Behind her, almost invisible and definitely faceless is the shape of a boy in a brown robe. The background also forms the curvature of a compass. Mistress of ceremonies is to the north, Mistress of joy to the south. Mistress of the past and Mistress of the future are west to east. Sweetheart of serials and mistress of distress are northwest to northeast; Cloistress of innocence and mistress of undress are from southwest to southeast.> North: [[Sweetheart of serials]] Northeast: [[Mistress of undress]] East: [[Mistress of the future]] Southeast: [[Mistress of joy]] South: [[Cloistress of innocence]] Southwest: [[Mistress of ceremonies]] West: [[Mistress of the past]] Northwest: [[Mistress of distress]] //[[Begin again|Consider the Sea]]// </div>

<div class="innocent"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> “My boy," the captain cried after a hundred, a hundred thousand, a million days or years of searching for [[his obsession|Innocent obsessions]], “the sea is innocent. As innocent as the moon. As innocent as that [[damned whale|The Whale Watch]] that [[I am compelled|Innocent ideas]] to hunt." Finley looked up at him, wondering who the sea had [[taken from his life|Log and Line]] that he needed to be so emphatic about it. Many moments or millenia later, Finley remembered the captain’s words and understood that sometimes blaming [[fate|Enchantment]] or [[the sea|The Sea-Limits]] or [[the moon|Innocent tides]] or even [[your own fantasies|Mistress of undress]] for not finding [[your purpose|Ikigai]] is as insidious as a [[dream|Dreaming]] that you can not [[destroy|Dear Brutus]]. <img src="innocent.png" alt=a watery circle holds a lighter sea inside and a darker sea outside. In the darker sea, each corner holds a mysterious looking creature within a circle of its own. In the lighter sea, there is a compass with many rays. Only the NSEW directions are straight, and the rest are a tangle of tentacles. In the center is a round carapace that could be from a mutant crab. Innocent tides is to the north; Innocent times to the south. Innocent ideas and Innocent ideals are west to east. Innocent obsessions and Innocent deaths are northwest to northeast; Innocent lives and Innocent possessions are from southwest to southeast.> North: [[Innocent lives]] Northeast: [[Innocent tides]] East: [[Innocent possessions]] Southeast: [[Innocent ideals]] South: [[Innocent deaths]] Southwest: [[Innocent times]] West: [[Innocent obsessions]] Northwest: [[Innocent ideas]] //[[Begin again|Consider the Sea]]// </div>

<div class="inconstant"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> Nothing in his life had ever been constant, had ever had any consistency or sameness. Everything had always been in flux, always [[chiming|The Sea-Limits]], churning deep even under [[the calmest surface|The listless sea]]. [[Years later|Enchantee]] he finally understood that. Running away [[to sea|Heavy romances]] turned out to be a mistake. Even abandoning the sea to wander in [[the desert|Escape portal]] had been a grievous error. He [[realized that|Escape doom]]. It was [[no way|No escape]] to end an argument with his folks. He [[realized that|List your accomplishments]] now at [[the end|The End]]. No way at all. His folks were just that, people, folks, [[ordinary|Cleveland]] in their [[squalor|Saucy Sailor Lad]], their indecisive [[gray pallor|Innocent possessions]], their [[lonely lives|The lonely sea]], their [[despair|Oedipus]], their [[quotidian sameness|Cleveland]], their [[dreams|Budapest]] deferred, their [[joys|Enchantee]] lived. [[The captain|Dont you see]] was not his [[father|Inconsistent narratives]], after all. And [[the captain|The Whale Watch]] did not live an ordinary life. [[The pirate|Enchanter]] was also not [[his father|Inconstant fear]], after all. He never truly [[knew his father|Lonely closings]] or his [[purpose|Ikigai]]. He never knew if [[his words|Parting words]] were his own or [[someone else’s|Innocent ideas]]. He once had seen the [[Enchanter's face|Enchanters face]], though, and knew from that stern visage that everything was random and the only constancy was change. <img src="inconstant.png"alt=an eight-sided compass rose with many other points on the sides is embedded as if in a stained glass in a 1950s propaganda poster in grays and reds. The boy is reading to his father, but his face is obscured by the label Inconstant fear. Inconsistent excuses is to the north, inconsistent laughter to the south. Inconstant narratives and Inconsistent fathers are west to east. Inconstant directions and Inconstant faith are northwest to northeast; Inconstant fear and Inconstant memories from southwest to southeast> North: [[Inconsistent excuses]] Northeast: [[Inconstant faith]] East: [[Inconsistent fathers]] Southeast: [[Inconstant memories]] South: [[Inconsistent laughter]] Southwest: [[Inconstant fear]] West: [[Inconsistent narratives]] Northwest: [[Inconstant directions]] //[[Begin again|Consider the Sea]]// </div>

<div class="lonely"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> After Finley abandoned him in [[port|Escape bar]], the captain leaned over the railing, puffing his pipe in time with the waves. “The sea is a lonely place, that [[can not care|Innocent tides]] for anyone,” he muttered to himself. “Never forget that.” He emptied the bottle, stuffed Finley's [[last letter|Lonely letters]] inside, and threw it overboard. The captain knew about the aching longing for letters, having seen countless of his crew and even a few [[pirates|Enchanter]] too, joyfully receive these missives from a general post office box, which were to be found in [[every port|Escape portal]]. The letters were inevitably grimy and sweat-stained, containing a few precious locks of hair or tiny spaced scrawls to make the most of such magnificent real estate as the shoddiest paper that had once been [[destined for newsprint|Inconsistent laughter]], but smeared the [[family news|Oedipus]] in cheap and fading ink instead. He had [[forgotten|Heaven forgets]] his own family entirely over his long days or [[centuries at sea|The Whale Watch]]. He himself had never had a letter in his life, and thus he felt perfectly free to fire off his crew’s missives in manners that assured they would not arrive. Finley knew this, and thus he copied his last letter over and over again, posting it from various points, searching for both the [[beginning|Cleveland]] and the [[destination|Budapest]] of that tenuous communication. <img src="lonely.png" alt=an eight sided compass inside of another circular border in the fantasy art deco style of Heironymous Bosch meets William Morris. A figure in a 17th century costume that could be the boy or the captain stands in front of the compass, the ships behind. A circle frame of a medieval woman is in the upper left corner and a renaissance man in the upper right. Figures also include a snake, two lions, cherubs, and a woman with a monkey in the lower right, looking up. Lonely cities is to the north; Lonely streets to the south. Lonely closings and Lonely openings are west to east. Lonely hearts and Lonely letters are northwest to northeast; Lonely purposes and Lonely shades are from southwest to southeast.> North: [[Lonely cities]] Northeast: [[Lonely letters]] East: [[Lonely openings]] Southeast: [[Lonely shades]] South: [[Lonely streets]] Southwest: [[Lonely purposes]] West: [[Lonely closings]] Northwest: [[Lonely hearts]] //[[Begin again|Consider the Sea]]// </div>

<div class="heaving"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> His mother shouted, “Why don’t you run away to sea, then?” She had done this on many more occasions than one, each time wielding a different instrument of labor: [[a mop|Invocation]], a toilet brush, a [[television|Inconsistent fathers]] script, or even a bird cage, big enough to capture any pirate’s [[loose parrot|The enchanting sea]]. He was still at home then, not quite ready to shed the [[silvery gray fog|Innocent possessions]] of his childhood, not quite ready to abandon the [[old set of fears|Inconstant fear]] for an [[entirely new set|Innocent obsessions]]. “Because it is huge and heaving,” he might have replied. In a more rational time, when [[his father|Inconstant fear]] was not in the room, he would say this to himself as if [[chanting|Incantation]]. “The coasts are gray, and the seagulls [[wheel|Wheel]] and [[cry|The Too Ancient Mariner]].” Had he actually uttered [[these words|Peroration]], he would have been surprised at her answer, “Yes, but they are nothing like the [[gray|Grays Armory]] of [[Cleveland]]. Go and [[explore|Budapest]]. <img src="heaving.png" alt=a boy forms part of an eight sided compass. He is using the compass as a boat or steering wheel to stay afloat in a raging sea around him as there is no boat, only the determined boy standing in the sea on nothing but waves. One of his arms reaches back to the compass and the other reaches forward to touch the wave, even though his hand is interwoven with the wheel. Heavy romances is to the north, Heavy expectations to the south. Heavy woods and Heavy rails are west to east. Heaven expects and Heaven waits are northwest to northeast; Heaven notices and Heaven forgets are from southwest to southeast.> North: [[Heavy romances]] Northeast: [[Heaven waits]] East: [[Heavy rails]] Southeast: [[Heaven forgets]] South: [[Heavy expectations]] Southwest: [[Heaven notices]] West: [[Heavy woods]] Northwest: [[Heaven expects]] //[[Begin again|Consider the Sea]]// </div>

<div class="listless"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> He put down the drink, hardly needing to secure it tightly into its place on the table as the sea was calm and [[still|The Sea-Limits]], almost as if the sea were [[stable land|Cleveland]], unable to dream about anything, unable to progress, unable to change. Everything remained ship-shape, nailed down, and hardly moving. There was nothing new here, nothing moving, nothing to see. Nothing to do. Breathing deeply, he inhabited this [[calm center|List your accomplishments]], preparing for [[stormy weather|The heaving sea]] which might or [[might not happen|No escape]]. He thought he might daydream about the [[lonely spires|The lonely sea]] of [[Budapest]] again or even about [[studying there|University]] but decided [[not to|No escape]]. //Southeast: [[The listless sea]]// </div>

<div class="listless"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> He had had a [[happy life|Ikigai]] on land, once upon a time. The house might have been in [[Cleveland]], but he was not sure of his geography any more, and it could have been an artists’ street just off the Fisherman’s Bastion in [[Budapest]]. Although he was unsure of exactly where the house was, he knew precisely what was in it. He often went through each room in his mind, recalling just how the white couch lay almost to the wall, with a tiny space just right for fitting his shoes in after a hard day. The kitchen with its instahot next to the sink, ready for a cup of tea at any point, the cavernous refrigerator he never stocked up, the battered wood dining room table that had been just the right height, the back snug bedroom with the softest bed and the darkest curtains. He remembered an interesting job with people he cared about that [[made a difference|Innocent ideas]] in the world somehow. He wasn’t ever sure afterwards [[whether he had been|Enchanters face]] a captain of industry, an encoder of programs, a [[television|Inconsistent fathers]] producer or [[newspaper|Inconsistent laughter]] editor. He was pretty sure it had not been astronomy, as he remembered [[the stars|Heavenly bodies]] at night and this job held none of the [[complex infinities|End game]] he craved. He thought about [[the two children|Heaven forgets]] he had had who loved him and whom he loved, and he thought perhaps it was [[Frances|Mistress of joy]] who had settled with him, but he was sure she would deny such a thing had ever happened between them. He thought he might return, might take their grandkids to baseball every Saturday and ice cream every [[Sunday|Enchanter]]. When he [[woke|Waking]] in his narrow hammock swaying softly in the [[swaying foc’s’le|Heavy romances]], he was never quite sure that it had been his dream [[or someone else’s|Red King]]. //Southeast: [[The listless sea]]// </div>

<div class="listless"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> The ship’s creaking boards never listed to port, as the ship itself was built to stay upon the sea. Finley, on the other hand, would often [[abscond|Egress]] in [[port bars|Escape bar]] any chance he got, and the sailors around him [[dreamed |Dreaming]] of what they would do when they reached port. For what was a journey for except to arrive at the destination? And [[any destination|Enchanters face]] was [[just as good|Escape bar]] as [[any other|Sea chancey]], in their books. They [[sang|Sea chantey]] land songs of girls who loved [[saucy sailor lads|Saucy Sailor Lad]] in every port. They thought they knew where they were going, across the endless seas in search of [[treasures guarded|Dead Man's Chest]] well beyond [[their own deaths|Coup de grace]]. Each time they sang these songs, words would fall out of the tune and they would have to hum the lines. Some of the older sailors would simply thrum the melody in their throats, having [[long since forgotten|Heaven forgets]] that there were any words at all to these tales, or indeed which tale they were [[following|Enchanters face]]. The older sailors [[knew better|The Whale Watch]] than to remind each other of the actual words, their [[true destinies|Ikigai]]. And they never spoke of what it would be [[not to arrive|No escape]]. //Southeast: [[The listless sea]]// </div>

<div class="listless"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> At first, when he saw this question, he read it as //list your kills//. Which was perfectly (t)reasonable—particularly if you had killed as many [[whales|The Whale Watch]] or or [[porpoises|Porpoises]] or [[seagulls|Wheel]] or [[albatrosses|The Too Ancient Mariner]] or [[even pirates|Enchanters face]] or rescued as many [[damsels in distress|Mistress of distress]] as he was rumored to have done. But those kills belonged to a [[different story|Innocent ideas]]—[[another path entirely|Crimson badge]]. Here in this room, back in [[Cleveland]] with its sticky fan and white drywall walls, surrounded by gray carpets and even grayer cubicles, they were asking if he was qualified [[for the job|Lonely streets]]. Any job. Just [[spin the wheel|Enchanters face]] and take your chances, said the tattered recruiting poster in this office, which could have been any office, or any time. As he sputtered in indignation at the question, he reread it. “And who do you think you are,” he roared at the paper laying [[listlessly|The listless sea]] before him. “Who are you to demand any answers from me? I have been to sea many more times than you have demanded my [[CV]]!” And he stomped [[out of the story|Waking]] at that point. //Southeast: [[The listless sea]]// </div>

<div class="listless"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> They wanted this from him because they did not want to know how he trembled in fear of his [[obsessions|Innocent obsessions]], in terror of his [[own|Lonely hearts]] [[insanity|Insane]]. Because his secret strength was that he was at heart, a bit insane, a tad [[too obsessed|Innocent obsessions]]. He knew that because he was convinced that this entire structure of his world, all of [[the seas|The heaving sea]] and all of the [[sands|The escaping sea]] would fall [[out of reality|Red King]] as he never remembered his dreams when [[he woke|Waking]]. He was not nearly as strong a [[force on reality|Ikigai]] as the mythical [[Enchanter|Enchanters face]] that [[they|The enchanting sea]] continually murmured about. [[Nor could he|No escape]] claim to [[seduce the world|The seducing sea]] with his c[[harms|The Whale Watch]]. Indeed, he felt he had no strengths, no ties to anyone or anything. Mostly, he felt as listless, as [[purposeless|Porpoises]], as still as the sea was, as [[innocent as the tides|Innocent tides]] and as [[enervated as the times|Innocent times]] had always proven themselves to be. But these were [[fears|Inconstant fear]] that he told to no one. So obviously, he skipped that question. //Southeast: [[The listless sea]]// </div>

<div class="listless"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> He remembered the [[seduction|The seducing sea]] first. He had always been interested [[in her|Mistress of ceremonies]], had always [[loved her|Mistress of distress]]—even before he knew of [[her existence|Cloistress of innocence]], Then his mind went over to the [[dry side|Escape portal]], to those devils in the desert who mocked his interest in them, who the caravan master [[took offense|Parting words]] at when he muffled those screaming camels. Perhaps they had been right to [[mock him|Red King]]. Perhaps they were right even to [[this very day|Waking]]. His parents knew that as a boy he had had [[no interests|Lonely streets]] in anything at all. And thus they [[were always threatening|Inconstant fear]] to send him off to a boarding school in Cleve[[(r)|University]] land. In this clever way, they could [[write his story|Innocent ideas]] for him. [[They could deny him|Lonely closings]] the freedom to choose his own [[destiny|Ikigai]], to move in his own way, just as the [[moon denies|Innocent tides]] the sea [[any freedom|Innocent lives]] to stay still or to move as it chooses. This was what they told themselves. He usually made his [[escape out|Egress]] while they were arguing how to send him to [[Cleveland]]. They would ask him where he thought he was going. I’m taking the [[last train|Escape clause]] to [[Budapest]] instead, he would loftily [[inform them|Lonely letters]]. And he would run out to play until the street lamps came on, which as everyone knows, is the proper curfew for a growing boy. //Southeast: [[The listless sea]]// </div>

<div class="listless"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> They told him to measure everything he could about himself. To resume his life in numbers on paper in neat columns. To account for every second, every action, every breath he had ever taken in a short summation. He tried to total everything, but came up lacking. He was truly listless, truly calm without a wind in his sails. He was going nowhere now. And he had never been anywhere. He was [[simply stuck|The listless sea]] with nothing he had ever done, nowhere to go now, no wind at his back to carry him through to his future. Running off [[to sea|The heaving sea]] to be a [[cabin boy|Log and Line]], joining the [[circus|Mistress of ceremonies]] just so he could see her balancing that tight rope in [[constantly|Inconstant fear]] uprooted tents, scouting [[shifting desert sands|Escape portal]] for [[lost camels|Escape portal]] or [[abandoned airplanes|Terminals]] or [[destroyed lives|Coup de grace]], and even rescuing [[damsels|Mistress of distress]]—these factors did not belong in his [[curriculum vitae|CV]], in his course of life, in anything he had [[ever done|Achievements]]. [[They|List your interests]] were going to tell him that, he just knew it. All he had to do was [[wake|Waking]] from [[this dream|Red King]], [[this reality|Egress]]. But he could have been [[wrong|Peroration]]. He had never been [[good at sums|List your strengths]]. //Southeast: [[The listless sea]]// </div>

<div class="listless"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> He often lay on the rough planks on the [[deck at night|Heaven notices]], examining the stars. Having never been taught the constellations, each night he made up different [[patterns|Heavenly bodies]], different stories of what patterns might portend. He did this night after night, rocking in the quiet, motionless sea as though the night sky changed so slowly that he could never feel it move. The sea below him the would barely shift and the listless waves might gently rock him [[to sleep|Dreaming]]. Sometimes the sea merged seamlessly with the night sky—moving clouds endlessly over the stars and over waves alike, first hiding [[one story|Innocent ideas]], then [[another|Crimson badge]], then [[another|The Too Ancient Mariner]], yet [[another|The Whale Watch]] and growing more restless with each [[version|Red King]] until [[he woke|Waking]]. But more often, the sea continued its listless state, leaning neither to starboard, nor to sky, nor even to a [[preferred destiny|Enchanter]]. The sea was perfectly without an [[obsession|Innocent obsessions]]. The sea was calm, then, making up for its [[previous heaving|Heavy rails]] by doing nothing now. //Southeast: [[The listless sea]]// </div>

<div class="inconstant"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> [[This|Mistress of undress]] was no place for a lad whose [[father|Inconstant fear]] was a [[father|Lonely closings]] on [[television|Lonely shades]]. So he said, “Excuse me,” to [[Frances|Mistress of the past]], and went to [[the bathroom|The bathroom]] and stayed there all night, reading her [[newspapers|Inconsistent fathers]]. It was the only thing he could think of doing at the time. He could not have confessed to his worries about his [[reputation|Deaccession]] or [[the tabloids|Inconsistent laughter]], for he did not even know if the news about his awkward relationship had sprouted or spread in any medium. He was not his father, after all, and he had no following, no [[true identity|Ikigai]] to hide behind. His fears had no excuse, really. And sometimes [[he realized that|Mistress of joy]] and sometimes [[he did not|Lonely hearts]]. //North: [[The inconstant sea]]// </div>

<div class="inconstant"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> “It’s read [[all over|Inconsistent laughter]], Finley. Never forget that.” He sat in a [[bar|The monkeys tale]] on [[Euclid Avenue]], stuck in the city of [[Cleveland]], and drank draft beer, imagining it was the sweet green taste of [[Whisky berbers|Escape portal]]. It was dark outside and he [[longed to escape|Egress]]. Only once did he go with his father outside of his house. His father had come running back in for him, holding his hand, leading him on urgently toward the [[Cuyahoga River]], which was on fire once again. It was twilight, almost dark, and his father left him there to watch the burning river. He stood waiting for his father to return as the night gathered in the darkness and the river burned with an eerily cheerful glow that ranged from a ghostly green to a [[despairing red|Mistress of distress]] underneath clouds that would be, in a rainy daytime, gray with [[indecisions|Escape doom]] and [[imprecisions|Innocent possessions]], but which were, because of the darkness and the flames, tinged under with [[crimson streaks|Crimson badge]]. The darkness above and beyond the fires [[enchanted|Enchantee]] him, enthralled him as he watched the glow flicker within the blackness of the river that sullenly refused to reflect the dullness of the city above its banks. He imagined that even the fire had a [[purpose|Porpoises]], but he could not think of what that [[might be|Ikigai]]. //North: [[The inconstant sea]]// </div>

<div class="inconstant"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> His father was in [[the newspapers|Inconsistent excuses]] nearly all the time. Sometimes this was for a scandal or for stepping out with his “wife” or someone who [[looked like her|Mistress of joy]]. Most often, his father was a famous actor who appeared in a [[television situation|Inconsistent excuses]] comedy in the nineteen fifties. His father appeared in black and white and many shades of [[gray|Innocent possessions]], with flickers of light going the wrong speed for modern eyes, the wrong screen resolutions warping more and more as he replayed the scene over and over again. His father kept these newspaper clippings about himself saved in a [[red embossed leather|Mistress of distress]] binder. But the clippings themselves smeared their cheap black ink onto the sticky plastic binder in reverse images. Or the yellowed Victorian ones simply faded away, the iron gall ink sinking into the page, the tannic acids biting into the words, the [[serial stories|Sweetheart of serials]] left with their cliffhangers intact. These clippings, his father told Finley, were black and white without a trace of gray. They were also read all over, like an embarrassed zebra. Or yellow like a jaundiced zebra. He set these jokes up as [[the punchline of his life|Porpoises]]. These jokes were never funny. He never laughed. They were the kind of joke they would tell in [[Cleveland]]. //North: [[The inconstant sea]]// </div>

<div class="inconstant"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> “My father read [[newspapers|Inconsistent laughter]]. He was a [[father|Lonely closings]] on [[television|Inconsistent excuses]], in the nineteen fifties, which were [[gray with nebulous fog|Innocent possessions]], like the [[coasts|Lonely letters]] or like [[brick streets|Brick streets]] of [[Budapest]] in the rain.” He explained this on more than one occasion. Sometimes he went on to elaborate that his father had been on radio in the 30s or always in the [[newspapers|Inconsistent laughter]] in the teens [[before the war|Before the war]] was a famous novelist in Victorian times, publishing cliffhangers in [[serials|Sweetheart of serials]]. The times were inconsistent, the stories [[wilder|Enchanter]] and [[wilder|Enchantee]] each time he told his tale or [[rolled the die|Enchanters face]]. For he could not find [[a footing|Ikigai]] in any real [[place or time|End game]]. The truth, as he sometimes remembered it, was that he lived in [[the now|Sea chantey]], and his father lived in [[the then|Sea chancey]]. //North: [[The inconstant sea]]// </div>

<div class="inconstant"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> Finley asked himself what the sea meant to him. “What,” he asked, “does it signify, the sea? Does it [[portend your purpose|Escape doom]], [[imply possibilities|Innocent lives]], or [[symbolize your entire existence|Innocent tides]]? Does it indicate or point to a [[desert|Escape portal]] we can [[dream about|Dreaming]], perhaps, or a universe beyond [[our ken|End game]]? After all, [[mountains heave|Heavy romances]] themselves up from the bottom of the sea, and form islands, so perhaps truths do the same?” He felt deflated, as if he had had the [[last word|Peroration]] with himself and did not understand their [[purpose|Porpoises]]. And what of compasses, then, their hands gesturing wildly at [[every direction|Dont you see]] until they settled into one magnetic [[truth|Ikigai]]. Where did the sea point to when the compass was nowhere near it? “Of course, the sea lacks fingers for such gestures,” he continued in his [[nonsensical|Red King]] [[dreaming|Dreaming]]. He suddenly remembered his father’s pointing gestures poking holes in his [[newspaper clippings|Inconsistent laughter]] as to direct some angry chorus, as if to pontificate like some [[mad metaphysical logician|Escape arguments]] in a frustrated, hopeless attempt to find some meaning there. His father chomped on the bit of [[his pipe|Lonely closings]], releasing rich cherry flavored smoke throughout the house, its [[nebulous gray fog|Innocent possessions]] obscuring the black letters of the newsprint. He would stamp out the ashes from his pipe onto the newsprint, making the letters swell and [[smolder|Inconsistent narratives]]. He knew these gestures in himself, when he would point to some distant h[[orizon|Orizon]], punching like a wildly gyrating compass. Like father like son, he would mutter then, and he held his hands behind his back—a compass without a needle—to stop himself from pointing at [[one thing|Enchantee]], at [[everything|Mistress of joy]], at any [[random object|Enchanters face]], at nothing at all. He never smoked. //North: [[The inconstant sea]]// </div>

<div class="inconstant"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2>His time at the church was the one constant constellation in his childhood. Every [[Sunday|Enchanter]] his mother would dress him in his one good suit, shine his shoes, and take him with her to mass. (His father’s presence was erratic, depending on what had happened in [[the serials|Sweetheart of serials]] or [[newspapers|Inconsistent laughter]] or on [[television|Inconsistent excuses]].) She would sit him beside her, gripping his hands tightly so that he sat [[still|The listless sea]], his back straight, his eyes in front. The church was [[always the same|Cleveland]], varying only in the altar cloths, the decorations for each portion of the year solemnly brought out from storage, smelling of [[gray dust|Innocent possessions]], of [[times before the war|Before the war]]. The priests were constant as well, although their faces, their bodies, changed beneath the robes. Each time they changed, they announced that they were here to take care of the parish, but he always heard that as taking care to perish, to [[ensure his passage|Egress]] to another life when he died. The service was the same, and he always smiled to himself at the last benediction: //The mass [[has ended|End game]]. Thanks be to God.// But what was not constant were his thoughts. He was to call the priests “Father” and ask for [[their wisdom|Lonely openings]]. He was to whisper his sins to them, closed in a tiny box, as they [[walled themselves|Anchors of the Church]] off fom the world. But they were not his [[father|Inconstant fear]]. They were other beings entirely, possibly not from this [[time or space|End game]]. //North: [[The inconstant sea]]// </div>

<div class="inconstant"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2>They fought, from time to time, as if he were a [[character in a story|Innocent ideas]]. He was small and grieved. He was always late, [[always scolded|Inconstant fear]], a messy child, an unruly child. Obstreperous. Noisy enough to [[wake the dead|Red King]]. Rebellious. Lazy. Disorganized. [[Daydreaming|Dreaming]]. This is how children were labeled then as a prelude to developing a [[bad character|Sneered]]. The stronger the mutiny, the stricter the rules became—to be seen and not heard, to sit [[quietly in mass|Inconstant faith]], to present themselves to company politely, to never ever [[swear|An orphan’s curse]] or ask [[questions|Inconstant directions]]. These exhortations continued unheeded most of the time, like [[metaphysicians|Escape arguments]] counting fog bells on far too-distant shores. Some things never change. His father had said the same things to him, and his father probably before that, and so on down through the long line of fathers, each sitting in their high chairs, each lecturing their son who was standing before them, shifting on one foot first and then the other, on earthen floors, stone floors, hardwood floors, linoleum tiles, shag carpets, [[wooden boat decks|Heaven notices]]. Yet, every generation was [[different|Inconsistent fathers]], comparing their [[nows|Sea chantey]], against their [[thens|Sea chancey]]. //North: [[The inconstant sea]]// </div>

<div class="inconstant"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> Finley had always feared his [[father|List your strengths]]. He had never feared his [[father|Inconsistent fathers]]. His [[father|Log and Line]] loved him unconditionally, no matter what [[he said|Log and Line]]. The old “Wait till your [[father|Oedipus]] comes home” issued regularly from the lips of his exasperated mother, particularly after one or the other [[messy battles|Crimson badge]] with the mud puddles and the other boys. Cleaning up his [[bloody lip|Mistress of distress]] from [[yet another fall|Escape arguments]], he would threaten to leave and never come back. His mother barred the door. Wait, his mother would say. Just wait for your father. And so he did, [[until he left|Escape arguments]]. But did his father actually beat him? In later years, Finley could never remember. He only remembered the [[gray thin indecision|Innocent possessions]] shaking his shoulders would start when his [[father|Inconsistent laughter]]. came through the door, holding his [[newspapers|Inconstant directions]], his radio scripts, his [[television|Lonely shades]] prompts. Or perhaps this was not a constant fear. Perhaps there had been [[love|Heaven forgets]], and Finley remembered dimly running and laughing into his [[father’s arms|Lonely hearts]]. But this, too, might have been an [[illusion|Lonely closings]]. //North: [[The inconstant sea]]// </div>

<div class="seducing"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> In his memory, she was always innocent, always pure. He [[locked her up|Anchors of the Church]] in his mind to make sure of that. She would [[never have adventures|Innocent voyages]], never [[sail the seas|Heavy romances]], never be traded for [[anything|Trade in]], never rush into [[deserts|Escape doom]], or [[universities|University]] or even [[lonely streets|Lonely streets]] for that matter. She was innocent, [[pure potential|Innocent lives]], a blank slate that should be kept [[walled up|Innocent deaths]] and pure for him. She need have no purpose other than to [[exist in his dreams|Mistress of joy]]. This was, of course, not who she was, really. That is, if [[she had existed|Red King]] outside of his dreams, she would have had a life, a [[purpose|Ikigai]]. She was a being with [[true obsessions|Innocent obsessions]] of her own. //West: [[The seducing sea]]// </div>

<div class="seducing"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> He should have joined [[the circus|Training circuses]]. Elephants, the Big Top, trained [[monkeys|The monkeys tale]], [[beautiful ladies|Mistress of joy]] standing on their hands in spangled tights while their huge white horses galloped slowly in circles. Their breasts would be generous, bound tightly in the spangled suits, upside down. She (the one named [[Frances|Mistress of joy]], as it turned out) could lift one hand from the broad back as it rollicked in complex gyrations, up and down and side to side in an easy rhythm. Her other hand, palm down in the lightly sweating horse hair, held her up as her back arched delicately. Upside down she waved to the crowd. Her smile, almost upside down (her head tilting to show off her golden locks and her body turning to the audience as the horse galloped slowly round and round) was brilliant. Finley was [[enthralled|Enchantee]]. Later, in her dressing room, they smoked thin cigarettes packed with Bolivian tobacco and drank [[whisky berbers|Escape portal]] and spoke of [[the future|Mistress of the future]]. She was older than he, a woman of maturity and vision. He felt larger than life when he was with her. She was blonde to the roots (and there she was dark, although [[not gray|Innocent possessions]], not foggy or nebulous like the sea, especially those distant coasts.) He would, from time to time, sit at her [[imperfect feet|Oedipus]] as she let her long fingers drift delicately through his hair, and [[kiss the sides|Mistress of undress]] of her knee. Her knee was muscular. Her arms, too, were muscular. She could do a hundred pushups without apparent effort. One-handed. Either arm. It was a long time since she had been [[innocent|Cloistress of innocence]]. //West: [[The seducing sea]]// </div>

<div class="seducing"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> As [[dreams|Dreaming]] will do, his mind took a dive into the distant past. “Remember World War I?” he asked. The woman from the [[circus|Mistress of ceremonies]], whose name was Frances, did. “That was the one with the round hats, wasn’t it?” Her long fingers played with his hair, this way, that way. “The round hats, yes,” he said. “And the ones with pointy tops. They were made of metal. With spikes. The Kaiser, you know. He did not have those [[before the war|Before the war]].” “How. . . quaint,” she murmured, her long fingers scratching lightly at his bare scalp. He kissed her shoulder, memorizing it, remembering how her flesh felt so that he could carve this moment [[forever|Deaccession]] into his [[scrimshaws|Scrimshaw]], even as he slept on without [[waking|Waking]] from this convoluted [[dream|Dreaming]]. He twirled her golden hair about his finger, caressing her [[red lips|Red lips]], and wondering who she truly was. //West: [[The seducing sea]]// </div>

<div class="seducing"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> This promise was something out of the old 1950s [[television commercials|Inconsistent excuses]] or Victorian Expositions and world fairs where [[melodramatic vaudeville stars|Sweetheart of serials]] touted their wares. The mistress of the future would have everything at her fingertips. She would want for nothing and live in [[Budapest]] forever. Every household convenience would be hers, and all she had to do was wait for it. But he took these fantasies more personally. This was what he had to look forward to, he told himself regularly. A bright future, where everything fell into place for him. A [[meaningful life|Ikigai]], a [[beautiful woman|Mistress of joy]] by his side. Actually, he could not imagine the future, just as he could not have imagined what really happened [[in the past|Before the war]]. He kept walking up and down [[the swabbed shone deck|Heavy woods]] or susurating along the [[gray brick streets|Brick streets]] or marching up and down the [[Armory|Grays Armory]], still looking for his [[purpose|Porpoises]], his future in all the [[wrong places|Euclid Avenue]]. //West: [[The seducing sea]]// </div>

<div class="seducing"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> She was beautiful, and she took on the name Frances because that was the name that he whispered at night in the midst of his [[passion|Mistress of undress]], of his constant [[dreams|Dreaming]]. They lived, in a small stone cottage by the sea, happily ever after. Sometimes the [[parrot|The enchanting sea]] nested in the chimney again and smoke would fill the cabin from the blocked flue. Sometimes he would come home with empty nets as of course in this life, or was it this fantasy or [[just a dream|Innocent ideas]] he was a fisherman, still out upon the waves each day, hugging the land each night. That was what she had told him he was, when he had confessed he had [[forgotten|Heaven forgets]] most of his life, especially after having been [[abandoned|The Cast-away]] in the [[desert|Conclusion]]. But their little garden prospered and he sold his [[scrimshaw|Scrimshaw]] carvings in sleepy hillside villages perched on rocky cliff coasts or wild [[port taverns|Escape portal]]. (This story might have [[taken place|Inconsistent fathers]] when ivory was legal, or perhaps it was [[no longer|Deaccession]] and if so, well then he sold to [[unscrupulous dealers|Enchanter]]). Nonetheless, they considered themselves quite happy and [[contented|Enchantee]] with their lot in life, being neither in [[Cleveland]] nor in [[Budapest]]. He refused to [[wake up|Waking]] from this version of his life. //West: [[The seducing sea]]// </div>

<div class="seducing"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> Never any one single form, the dream of rescuing the [[princess|Mistress of joy]] underlay most of Finley’s [[nights|Heaven notices]] and sometimes even [[his days|Mistress of ceremonies]]. Always in hues of red, as if the blood cells in the back of his eyelids colored themselves [[crimson|Crimson badge]], a flash of red in his otherwise [[gray|Innocent possessions]] brain. This had always been Finley’s favorite fantasy. She would be in peril, waving at him from some high tower window [[without doors|Cloistress of innocence]] (her tear-streaked face beseeching him out from under her inevitably regal [[scarlet|Scarlet]] [[hennin|Hennin]], the princess cap which showed she was a true princess, one worthy of his gallant rescue). There would always be dragons to slay or cyclopic giants to trick before he could climb into her pure, pristine tower and rescue her. He would tell her to avert her eyes, to maintain her [[innocence|Cloistress of innocence]] for a while longer. At any rate, somewhere there would be [[bloodshed|Coup de grace]]. She would stand over the slain beast, stepping daintily in the streams of blood running from it, and throw her arms around his neck, showering her with kisses. These kisses always retained their lipstick marks on his face, suffused with the pulses beneath [[his skin|Heavenly bodies]]. All of this [[dreaming|Dreaming]] would end of course, in a [[night of passion|Mistress of undress]] that Finley always struggled to [[wake|Waking]] from. //West: [[The seducing sea]]// </div>

<div class="seducing"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2>This was their night. It possibly only happened once or maybe it had never happened at all. But he remembered it so often that the threads of his memory had become softer than the [[old gray|Innocent possessions]] sheets of his childhood, easily torn by a passing wave or a wind-blown grain of [[sand|Escape portal]]. It was provocative. Her [[scarlet|Scarlet]] blouse had slipped from her shoulder, her neckline plunged deep into her breasts, her back was bare. The entire costume was meant to seem as if nothing were actually there, as if she were fully contained within [[her own skin|Heaven notices]]. He could only stare, only touch her with his eyes. And then she invited him further down. It was perfunctory. “Take your clothes off and lie down.” She finally ordered him to do this after she was tired of him staring. He [[made excuses|Inconsistent excuses]] that had nothing to do with that particular time, that specific scene, those nebulous and inconsistent emotions. She was the one who insisted on disrobing him. It was a simple exercise, nothing romantic about it in the end. Nothing like [[his fantasies|Mistress of distress]]. They stayed, in various stages of undress, in her little circus [[trailer|Training circuses]] that entire weekend. It was passionate. Every cell in his body stirred to that memory, each and every time he thought of it. It was everything he had ever dreamed of. And then [[he would wake up|Waking]] with [[wet socks|Stupid stuff]] and colder [[wet sheets|Red lips]]. //West: [[The seducing sea]]// </div>

<div class="seducing"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> He loved attending the melodramas, sweeping the little ingénue off her feet. These were the serial romances stretching from the [[flickering silent films of his father|Inconsistent fathers]] or perhaps his grandfather and stretching deeper into the past, into the long-awaited sequels in Victorian magazines or [[broadsheet newspapers|Inconsistent laughter]] or drawn out stories in the decades-long soap operas [[on television|Inconsistent excuses]] into the flashy one-minute TikTok romances that were even today toppling into the sea, tumbling down the rabbit hole to find [[another venue|Egress]], a new medium of expression. In [[whatever form|Enchanters face]] these serial romances took, she was there. [[Always waiting|Mistress of the past]] for his love, for their [[happy ending|Mistress of joy]]. Invariably, she was dressed in [[scarlets|Scarlet]] and [[crimsons|Crimson badge]], even in the grayest of black and white silent pictures. There was always a cliffhanger and never a [[true parting|End game]], for this was the [[serial dream|Mistress of distress]], the one he cherished [[every night|Mistress of undress]], alone in his bed before he could fall asleep. //West: [[The seducing sea]]// </div>

<div class="heaving"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> He was often sick. It was the [[romance of the sea|The seducing sea]], especially, that nauseated him. It was the constant heaving of the sea, probably, although the hugeness of it, the moving and yet never going anywhere, too, made him feel ill. Endless days gliding over the water, [[flat and calm|The listless sea]], other endless days spent eternally rolling from side to side in completely [[contradictory motions|The inconstant sea]], lurching up an incline only to tip down the other slope as if they were troughs and peaks under a turbulent gray sky as endless as [[earth or sea or man|The Sea-Limits]] or anything else. On those rolling days when the clouds churned themselves into solid land, into mountains slamming the sides of the fragile ship, each moment lasted forever. He lay [[on the deck|Heaven notices]], holding [[the rails|Heavy rails]], unable to imagine anything but that tiny corner of the ship. And thus this infinity of endless days and forever moments [[fogged his mind|Innocent possessions]] and he could not seek his [[purpose|Porpoises]]. He did manage at times to wedge himself into a corner, unseen by the captain or pirates, and [[enchant himself|Incantation]] into being one with his [[scrimshaw|Scrimshaw]], carving and [[creating as if|Ikigai]] nothing else mattered, not even his heaving insides that at that moment matched the heaving of the sea. It was then that he dreamed of strange places that might lay at the end of this endless sea, the [[exotic ports|Budapest]], the swarthy peoples of the tropics or the remote pale ones of the northern climes or the even pale office workers of his [[father’s land|Cleveland]], marching up and down [[Euclid Avenue]] in search of [[sanity|University]], in search of stability. At night, he touched the worn wood below the deck and changed his dreams from [[who he might be|Dear Brutus]] to [[who he might find|The seducing sea]]. It was these [[dreams|Dreaming]] of [[passion|Mistress of undress]], of [[rescue|Mistress of distress]], of innocence [[courtly romance|Cloistress of innocence]], of [[experience|Scarlet]] that poured every wave of the sea into [[every cell|Heavenly bodies]] of his body, every sway of his hammock, so loosely tied in the dark cramped and creaking corners of the fo’c’sle. //Northeast: [[The heaving sea]]// </div>

<div class="heaving"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> The sails snapped in the gust and blast. The ship creaked. It was the sound of wood separating from other wood, as if the trees, once so stately and green, were flying away from one another in this alien place. As if the trees were fighting one another now they were no longer home. As if they were drowning, each one alone, crying out to be saved. The sound made him [[queasy|Heavy rails]]. “Arrgh lad, stand by the scuppers if you are going to be [[that ill|Heavy romances]]!” and the captain hauled him off onto the open deck and stationed him above the scupper that went through the gunwale. Thus he learned that the scuppers were the holes in the ship’s side to carry water overboard from the deck. From then on, whenever he could, he sat near the scuppers, [[close to the rails|Heavy rails]] and carved his [[scrimshaw|Scrimshaw]] and contemplated how wet the sea was, how domineering and [[unforgiving she was|The innocent sea]]. He grasped the water-logged and heavy woods around the scuppers and [[considered the sea|The Sea-Limits]], the echoing of desire and mystery with each lapping wave, the immense [[body|Heavenly bodies]] of water that was somehow holding up this ship, these logs heavy with [[barnacles|Innocent deaths]], dripping with time. //Northeast: [[The heaving sea]]// </div>

<div class="heaving"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> To avoid cleaning the deck again and again, when he felt that [[desperately ill|Heavy romances]] Finley learned to run for [[the rail|Heavy woods]]. He usually made it to the scuppers without causing more of a mess. But the sea, far below, heaving, would throw indifferent spray into his face, and the salt sea did not cheer him nor clean him up afterwards. He clung to the railings, which had been taken from a [[civil war|Crimson badge]] steamship and were too heavy [[and strong|List your strengths]] for this ship. They creaked and groaned, moving with each flutter of the sea, never staying still for an instant. The wood inside was rotted out; the outside edges held together only by the [[thin shards of barnacles|Innocent deaths]] that stubbornly clung to the ship’s side. Still, they were the most solid things that Finley could find to hang onto in his desperate journey, his never-ending search for his [[purposes|Ikigai]]. "[[Thar she blows|The Whale Watch]]!" the captain would yell out over the railings as he rescued his [[luckless steward|Log and Line]]—but it was only the wild [[porpoises|Porpoises]] frolicking and showing off their indecency to the calculated, shocked amusement of [[any child|Log and Line]] passing by. //Northeast: [[The heaving sea]]// </div>

<div class="heaving"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> “[[Get a job|Cleveland]]” his mother shouted. Or go off to [[sea|The heaving sea]]! These were her parting words to Finley, and he had hated his [[job|Lonely streets]] on [[Euclid Avenue]], which left only the wide sea as a [[possibility|Innocent lives]]. Finley’s expectations of the sea were vague and nebulous. He had expected heaven, which he had always imagined as a place of endless adventures, of happy cries and much smashing of thick bottles of [[molasses rum|Stupid stuff]]. Although he had never eaten molasses or [[tasted rum|Enchanter]], he longed for that experience and dreamed that he could live for the rest of his life on these heavenly seas. He had not expected the [[heaving motions|Heavy romances]] that never ceased, the winds that came from nowhere, the creaking of the ship’s [[woods|Heavy woods]] in his ears, the rats that scurried along the ropes of his scratchy hemp hammock that pricked through his thin cotton shirts in the fo’c’sle. His stomach churned against him, writhing inside him like a sea serpent, lashing him to the sharp shards of [[long-dead barnacles|Innocent deaths]]. As he gripped the [[rails|Heavy rails]] and leaned over the swaying sea, he recalled the calm and somber ceilings of the church [[his mother|The heaving sea]] used to take him to. He remembered [[the priests’|Inconstant faith]] chanted [[intonations|Incantation]] and cried out to a Heaven, a (if:visits is 1)[[[smiling|Smiled]]] (if:visits is 2)[[[sneering|Sneered]]] God that he had never truly understood. “If [[anyone|Enchanters face]] is there,” he shouted into the onrushing wind, “Hear me now. Grant my prayer. Let me [[live a different life|The escaping sea]], one that has a noble [[purpose|Ikigai]] and away from this hellhole of [[darkness and sickness|Enchantment]].” He imagined he heard a response of voices in his head or on the wind, or perhaps it was the voice of a passing shipmate or the captain or a passing pirate or even a [[ghost from past|Innocent obsessions]] or [[future|Escape doom]]: //“What did you expect?”// //Northeast: [[The heaving sea]]// </div>

<div class="heaving"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> //Heaven is like the internet, //he often [[intoned|Orizon]] to himself as he logged on. //What you get out of it depends on what you put into it. // This is what he thought he should say, what he was expected to say. But the internet might as well have been [[Victorian serials|Sweetheart of serials]] or [[newspapers|Inconsistent fathers]] or [[television|Inconsistent excuses]] or campfires in the [[desert sands|Escape doom]] for all the truth that it held. And he might as well have been the camel driver muttering this over his [[whisky berbers|Whisky berbers]] or the captain storming from the decks down to the darks of [[the fo'c'sle|Lonely closings]], or [[the parrot|Enchanter]] counseling the pirate, or even echoing it from her [[red lips|Red lips]] as they lay there afterwards. But in all probability, this aphorism had stemmed from the priest, who had gotten this mostly from his [[meditations on God|End game]] while he was [[surfing|Porpoises]] the web. On a completely different day at some point back in his childhood, Finley and the priest had been cleaning the altar after service. They both looked up at the stained glass images of God on high. I never know, the priest whispered to him, whether the Almighty is [[smiling|Smiled]] or [[sneering|Sneered]]. Finley wondered then, as he often wondered now, what difference that would have made, and why what Heaven expected was completely different than what he had always imagined his life could be. //Northeast: [[The heaving sea]]// </div>

<div class="heaving"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> He lay on the deck, his one hand grasping the bottom of [[the rail|Heavy rails]], his other hand twisting in a coil of hemp rope. The stray strands of the splintering hempen rope dug into his flesh like claws formed on tiny tentacles, and the remains of [[scraped barnacles|Innocent deaths]] cut his fingers. The planks, worn smooth with [[swabbing|Invocation]], supported his spine and he felt himself becoming one with the wood, rocking with the motion of the sea. And the sea’s heaving the deck up and down, matched his heavy breathing in and out. In and out. He [[dreamed it|Mistress of ceremonies]]. He looked up at the night sky, the dome surrounding the [[earth’s fragile shell|The Sea-Limits]], the miles of air one could not cross, [[keeping us all here|Cloistress of innocence]]. He picked out the constellations in clear patterns. He imagined he saw one single coherent pattern of [[a woman|Mistress of joy]]: the thick band of [[the Milky Way as her spine|Heavenly bodies]], twisting her body against the [[infinite deck|End game]] of the sky. The [[moon|Innocent tides]] morphed into her eye staring down at him and seemed to know everything about him. He shivered in his [[sleep|Dreaming]]. <img src="starbody.png" alt=a starry sky, with the profile of a woman with wild hair outlined in a glow in the forefront. Her body is comprised of stars and her eyes glow with a single fully moon.> //Northeast: [[The heaving sea]]// </div>

<div class="heaving"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> “Heaven waits for no man” was something Finley had heard [[a priest|Inconstant faith]] say once. But Finley thought to himself when he remembered this phrase that he was a man, he was a human being, he was someone worth waiting for. He was all mankind, and mankind was all him. Finley was sure that somewhere, Heaven was waiting for him. This was the heart of the matter, he told himself as he swung in the darkness of the fo’c’sle,touching the creaking wood of the ship as it swayed to one side, then another, helplessly battered by waves which were [[themselves helpess|Innocent tides]]. All he had to do was find [[his strengths|List your strengths]] and find [[himself|Innocent obsessions]]. He had to know [[who he was|Ikigai]], and who Heaven was waiting for. //Northeast: [[The heaving sea]]// </div>

<div class="heaving"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> The captain never remembered who he had [[kept close|Log and Line]] and who he had [[abandoned|The Cast-away]] or even [[where|Escape bar]] he had done so. He had had so many stewards, so many young lads who traipsed seawards under his command. He could not possibly expect to remember any of them--much less who he had (if:visits is 2)[[[smiled|Smiled]]] (if:visits is 1)[[[sneered|Sneered]]] at. The pirates always kept an entire flock of [[parrots|The enchanting sea]]. Even though they named them things like [[Shivers|Dead Man’s Chest]] and [[Timbers|Heavy woods]], or [[Red Night|Red lips]] and [[Gray Beard|Innocent possessions]], or even [[Barnacle|Innocent lives]] and [[Night Wind|Enchanter]], they never knew which one was which. None of them could ever quite remember which bird they had taught which [[swear word or fatal curse|An orphan’s curse]] to, as the entire flock would reply to them in unison. Every pirate always took at least one parrot on their shoulders as they went off the pirate ship, but often they forgot to take the bird back to the flock. Yet somehow, in every port, with every ship that passed within flying range, a new parrot would be added to their flocks. Finley had forgotten [[his two children|List landward]], except in his [[dreams|Dreaming]]. In one possible world, or maybe in as many as a million possible worlds, his children existed, perhaps outside of his dreams, [[perhaps not|Red King]]. In those worlds, he had been there for their births, had loved them, and cared for them. He even had kept his childhood vows to be a faithful father: one who truly saw his children for the precious beings they were, one who could lead the children to think and feel and be on their own, yet one who the children could always turn to for anything, even the best chocolate [[sundae|Enchanter]] in [[town|Cleveland]] if they needed it. And [[he had succeeded|Achievement]], even his children would agree to that. But in this particular world, with this particular [[ending|Egress]], these children might as well have never existed. [[Frances|Mistress of joy]] never remembered the [[monkey|The monkeys tale]] or even Finley, for that matter. [[She|The seducing sea]] was never quite sure, afterwards, whether she had truly existed or had been merely a shadow of [[Finley’s fantasies|Mistress of undress]]. The priest never could remember the [[lines to say|Orizon]] and he never remembered his childhood ambitions were to be [[a clown|Training circuses]]. He only remembered that once he had been [[content|Words]] to [[anchor|Anchors of the Church]] himself in the stones of his (if:visits is 1)[[[smiling|Smiled]]] (if:visits is 2)[[[sneering|Sneered]]] God's house like a [[permanent barnacle|Innocent deaths]]. </div>

<div class="escaping"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> He had had a fight with the captain, who was [[obsessed|Insane]] with his eternal hunt for the [[giant white cetacean|The Whale Watch]]. “Why don’t you take off into the desert, then?” the captain shouted, jabbing the stem of his clay pipe in Finley’s direction for emphasis. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry,” he shouted. Spittle flew from his lips, bedewing his beard. “Don’t [[forget|Heaven forgets]] that, you. . . you . . . foreigner.” He had learned [[early on|Inconstant fear]] in his life never to [[argue with authority|Peroration]]. And so the very next time they came to port, Finley climbed the mooring ropes, got drunk in [[the bar|Escape bar]], and stole the [[first airplane|Escape artist]] he saw--a rickety single seater with a rotary engine that had been carefully stowed in the vacant lot behind the bar for far too long. He clambered aboard and [[flew|Escape artist]] until he was out of fuel. He landed deep in the desert and [[plodded|Plodded]] for centuries, for [[millenia|Ozymandias]] but fortunately found a passing caravan and begged for water to [[continue to speak|Peroration]]. But there were only a few drops, which the caravan [[refused to spare him|End game]]. The caravan held only the caravan master and a few camels. It did not hold, unfortunately, a metaphysical professor and therefore they found [[no water|Lead the way]]. //South: [[The escaping sea]] // </div>

<div class="escaping"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> When they got to port, Finley jumped ship. He sat in a bar at port with the sea at his front and the bustling city at his back and behind that the endless desert in his dreams. He drank beer [[without ice|Innocent times]] after [[beer|Stupid stuff]]. It was draft beer, stale from the incessant desert sun, and it was warm. Outside, flies swarmed in the heat over camel dung. The camels brayed and complained. Finley drank his beer slowly, staring at the [[ice|Innocent times]] as if he had nothing else to do. No place else to go. [[one place|Cleveland]] is as [[just as good or just as bad|Sea chancey]] as any [[other place|Budapest]], he supposed. A passing caravan master sat Finley down to hours of a [[Whisky berber|Whisky berbers]] and went on at length about this [[conclusion|Conclusions]]. “That, [[seedee|Seedee]], sahib, sir boss, is the greatest untruth you have ever told!” the enraged caravan master came up to Finley and gnashed his Whisky berber in Finley’s face, spilling some of it on both of their worn and travel-stained jackets, which smelled of mint, of plants, of the promise of life far away from either the sea or the desert, where neither of them could go. The caravan master continued in this vein, his dry spittle dampening Finley’s shirt, mingling with the sweat stains. There are many places to go, many things to explore. And one of them will be [[yours|Ikigai]]. You need to infuse your purpose into your spine! [[Your breathing|List seaward]]! [[Your journey|Heavy rails]]. You must find [[your purpose|Innocent obsessions]] before you breathe your [[last breath|Escape doom]] on [[earth or sea or sky|The Sea-Limits]]. They continued [[arguing|Escape arguments]], and everyone joined in, with harsh voices strident from the desert winds, the sea gales. After [[all of the strangers in the bar|Enchanters face]] had left for the night, the barman came over with [[the bill|Looming]]. //South: [[The escaping sea]] // </div>

<div class="escaping"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> So Finley took to the air. It was the only thing left to do. The captain had said, “Why don’t you take off into the desert?” and so he did. He imagined to himself that he was searching for [[that one place|Budapest]] where he could be [[happy|Words]]. The huge rotary engine roared into life. Clouds of [[gray|Innocent possessions]] dust and exhaust flew out behind as he taxied to a flat place in the desert. He tested the controls, the ailerons, the elevators, the rudder, the magnetos. He pushed the throttle forward and the biplane, painted a [[bright red|Mistress of distress]], the color of some vast bird from [[crimson hell|Crimson badge]] that only he could pilot, slowly gathered speed and lifted, at last, into the air. He had filed no flight plan, taken no maps, flung himself in [[any direction|Dont you see]]. He only knew he would reach the desert when he saw it. The little red one person plane wheeled around and around, as he [[searched for his landing place|Terminals]]. Finally, it dwindled away to [[the east|Cleveland]], where the [[gray desolation|Innocent possessions]] extended itself forever. //South: [[The escaping sea]] // </div>

<div class="escaping"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> Finley landed in a port. Agadir, or perhaps Safi. He refused to call it Casablanca for fear of connecting to bad memories of another White House or of an ancient movie. He would not play politics again or make those connections. He definitely (or was that defiantly at this point) remembered walking [[into a bar|Escape bar]]. Some of the people in the bar had worn djellabas which had once been white but were now the soft yellow dust of the sand. Others had not. Some were simply sipping [[whisky berbers|Whisky berbers]], that sweet green tea of the devout who would not touch alcohol. But others had stronger drinks hidden under their age-softened robes. Finley drank some of these, not realizing how doctored they were. His eyes at first grew weepy, then sleepy, and he could not follow the murmured conversations as he sunk slowly into an [[ersatz happiness|Stupid stuff]] that he would never remember later. The muddy puddles under the bar seemed like a paradisical place to sleep, and so he did, ignoring the soft leather kicks from embroidered babouche shoes, crusty with sand. He woke up in the desert alone. He may have had to travel miles inland before he reached the edges of the desert, or maybe he had only walked a [[few feet|Iamb]] (he might have been sleeping it off in a truck, but he could not remember). Yet he had [[no memory|Innocent ideas]] of arriving here. And now he was in a desert vaster than the sea with the horizon’s edges shimmering gold in the sunlight instead of silver gray. The sands were [[gray|Innocent possessions]] and [[end|End game]]less. They [[heaved|The heaving sea]] into waves, into swells as the incessant winds blew the tiny grains around his feet. He may have met up with a caravan master in a [[bar|Escape bar]] and then taken a camel in a caravan across the desert, with occasional stops at an oasis where the water was [[blood red|Mistress of distress]] from the iron oxides exposed in the wind as well as a few palms, bearing dates brown from the sun, drooped listlessly. But had he done so, the air should have been filled with alien curses and the sound of camels [[screaming|Coup de grace]]. As it was, he heard only silence in the wind, in the shifting sands which sounded nothing [[like the sea|The Sea-Limits]]. He regretted this choice and wished that, like in the fabled Barnum and Bailey [[circus’|Mistress of ceremonies]] House of Wonders, there was a simple [[egress|Egress]]. //South: [[The escaping sea]] // </div>

<div class="escaping"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> “[[Your problem|Rose garden]], [[seedee|Seedee]] is that you have no [[purpose|Porpoises]].” A small and filthy man with a squint leered over to Finley as they both swayed in their carved leather and wood saddles, swaying up and down on their camels. The caravan master’s feet were bare and caked with decades of sand dust, but they were neatly tucked underneath his food and camel slobber stained silk robes. Finley rode alongside the caravan master for a long while, for [[centuries perhaps|Ozymandias]] or perhaps just days, without saying anything. The wind blew sand into every crevice of his being. The [[whisky berbers|Whisky berbers]] and even the fire, even the delicate camel bone cups he had carved to while away this journey were long since [[discarded|Deaccession]]. Finally he raised his carved gourd to his lips, seeking the last few drops of water. “Perhaps so. I have probably [[forgotten|Heaven forgets]] my purpose, my directions, for a long while. I have been traveling for a long [[time|Innocent tides]], an [[endless time|Innocent times]]. I [[ran away to sea|Heaven expects]], you see,” he explained. “Where,” he added, “I was a [[foreigner|Cleveland]] seeking [[foreign shores|Budapest]].” “Nonetheless, my [[point remains|Inconstant memories]],” the small man said. Finley expected him to remove his blackened small feet from beneath his tattered robes and perhaps jump to the floor, perhaps drawing a long curved dagger and executing a complicated dance step, something of the wild nomads of the desert, swirling the long curved blade in the air. But he did not. He merely said it again, “My point [[remains|Sweetheart of serials]],” allowing the [[words to die|Parting words]] in the wind, gathering sinister implications. They rode again in silence until they had reached their oasis and had nearly stopped by the water’s edge. A whistling noise split the air. The caravan master gave a short grunt and [[fell forwards on his saddle|Coup de grace]]. Finley leaned over and caught the [[tiny body|Mistress of distress]] before he fell and before the camel could stagger off. Ignoring the [[red blood|Crimson badge]] streaming down his arm, Finley stared at the carving knife in the caravan master’s back for a long while. For the knife had a [[scrimshaw|Scrimshaw]] handle [[carved from|Enchantment]] a camel’s bone that gleamed with not quite a [[pearly gray sheen|Innocent possessions]], which somehow seemed completely out of place in the cool shade of the umbrella acacia trees. //South: [[The escaping sea]] // </div>

<div class="escaping"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> Once, and only once, Finley dared to ask another living being what the meaning of life truly was. What was the question, the ultimate reason for existence. Unfortunately, when he decided it was time to ask this, and he summoned up his courage, he was alone in the middle of the desert plains, well beyond reach of the [[oasis|Escape doom]]. The only difference between the desert and the sea was the shift in movement, the wind able to push only grains of sand in eddies around him. That small and filthy man, the [[caravan master|Escape doom]] had long since disappeared over [[the horizon|Parting words]], and [[the poet |Ozymandias]] had [[plodded|Plodded]] on, [[iambically|Iamb]] limping in search of [[his fabled city|Ozymandias]]. And so he stumbled through his questions aloud, with only the camel beside him. With only a few drops of water left in his water gourd, the camel bone he was carving now with the same knotted patterns he used for his [[scrimshaws|Scrimshaw]] during those [[lonely days|Lonely letters]] aboard ship. (The camel snorted its nose whenever this carving was brought out, and stayed as far away from the fire and the dagger as it dared to. But inevitably, that morbid dread of camel bones would bring it edging back toward the [[incessant carving|Conclusion]]. Finley croaked out his question. At this point, he did not [[expect|Heaven expects]] [[an answer|Ikigai]]. He stared at the camel for a long time, considering. The camel stared back from under its too-long lashes, its expression exquisite, sour, and aloof. It stood under a tree, the only tree, a juniper, which stood on a hill in the exact center of a desert plain that spread, exhausted, to the horizon. After a moment or perhaps it really was an eternity, the camel opened its nostrils to snort, “Brlaaugh.” After this, Finley wandered as he pondered what the [[camel had meant|Coda]] for a long time, somewhere between forty days and forty years. It might have been longer than centuries. That was in [[Morocco|Escape bar]] where the ambient temperature was 42 degrees Centigrade and the shade was too thin to stand under. //South: [[The escaping sea]] // </div>

<div class="escaping"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> Once, some time well before he had wandered off [[alone|Parting words]] into the desert, Finley found himself in Debrecen, a city in eastern Hungary near the Romanian border, not quite close enough to be anywhere near [[Budapest]]. He was walking the empty streets, past old buildings from the Old World. They weren’t tall, and they seemed to scowl. He remembered the [[monkey|The monkeys tale]] at that moment, and the [[monkey’s scowl|Lonely streets]]. He wrote [[a letter home|Lonely letters]] and [[posted it|Mail bag]] before he could [[regret|Egress]] his actions. Immediately, he was overwhelmed by a desire to sign up for classes at the [[University]]. He simply had to study Anxiety and Its Germanely [[Fabuliac|Innocent ideas]] [[Liaison|Sweetheart of serials]] to [[Loneliness|The lonely sea]]. Surely the University had a department for that. In those days Debrecen had only a single tram line, Tram Line Number 1. It went north and it went south. Luckily, it went from where he was downtown, surrounded by [[empty streets|Brick streets]] to where he thought he wanted to go. Tram Line Number 1 went to the University, so he got on board. The tram started up. He was alone in the car, and darkness was gathering outside. The wheels rattled, the car jostled back and forth, then it stopped. A man came into the car, glared at Finley, and sat down next to the door. The train started, rattled, stopped. The man stood up and said something. The door opened and closed. Again the car rattled, stopped, the man stood up and yelled, “Aquaticum!” Finley did not move to disembark, as he had no wish to return to [[the sea|The heaving sea]] or even [[the desert|The escaping sea]] now. He was not the one [[chasing the whale|The Whale Watch]] or even fabled cities of [[statues|Ozymandias]]. He sat down. Finley leaned toward him and said, “You should name this Tram Line Number 6 so people think Debrecen is a real city. You can’t have just one line.” “OK,” the man said reasonably. “We’ll build another.” “Will you call it Number 6?’ Finley was feeling proud. “No. We will call it Number 2.” “Oh.” And nothing more was said. The train rattled, stopped on a leafy green street. The man stood up. [[“Egyetem!”|University]] he yelled. He noted Finley had hailed from Cleveland and so he translated this as no one from [[Cleveland]] could ever hope to speak a word of Hungarian or another civilized language like French or even or possibly [[Arabic|Escape doom]] or even [[Amazigh|Escape portal]]: “University. Your stop here.” Finley woke up. “Where am I?” The man leaned down and stared intently into Finley’s eyes. “[[End of the line|Parting words]], Finley. It’s the [[end of the line|Conclusions]].” //South: [[The escaping sea]] // </div>

<div class="escaping"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> He did not do this, however. He did not take a [[camel into the desert|Escape questions]] to run Enfield rifles to [[warring tribes|Crimson badge]] in exchange for women or gold. The gun-running season was nearly over, anyway. He had never met the caravan master, never shared a [[whisky berber|Whisky berbers]], never learned of [[his fate|Escape doom]]. Whatever it was that [[he had forgotten|Heaven forgets]], he never did remember. He was a [[character in a story|Innocent ideas]], the one about the lad who runs away to sea. Or maybe it had been the one about the [[immortal captain|The Whale Watch]] who could think only of his [[elusive whale|Innocent obsessions]]. Or the [[pirate|Enchanter]] who dreamt solely of treasures, running his hands across his rough peg leg as if it were the ragged edges of tarnished pieces of eight. He was older now, and not very much wiser, unlike [[the hero|Enchanters face]] of any of these stories who learned things. In fact, he had never done any of this. He had led a quiet life in [[Cleveland]], and followed his parents, his ancestors, never [[leaving Ohio|Not there]], and this was all [[of his dream|Dreaming]]. In short, he [[anchored his life|Anchors of the Church]] outside of [[these fantasies|Waking]]. //South: [[The escaping sea]] // </div>

<div class="lonely"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> The [[envelope|Mail bag]] was postmarked [[Budapest]], where [[gray stone|Brick streets]] bridges spanned the river. The [[Danube]] river in Budapest did not [[burn|Cuyahoga River]] with a cheerful [[orange flame|Inconsistent narratives]]. This was a disappointment to the mayor of Budapest, who wished his town could be more like its sister city, [[Cleveland]]. But the envelope itself had not come from Budapest. Instead, it was engrained with the sands of time from the [[wide deserts|Escape portal]], where the [[lonely cities|Ozymandias]] truly slept under the sand, under the bones of [[camels|Escape bar]]. //Southwest: [[The lonely sea]]// </div>

<div class="lonely"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> When Finley was about 5 years old, [[before|Innocent lives]] his life truly opened up to all of the possibilities of the [[wide and drenching sea|The innocent sea]], the [[busy office|The listless sea]], the [[broad and thirsty desert|The escaping sea]], he went up to his [[father|Inconstant fear]] and laid his head on that narrow, bony, suit-trousered knee. “Father” he had asked. “What is the meaning of life? What am I here to do?” His father did not answer for a [[long time|Lonely letters]], as he went on reading his [[newspaper|Inconsistent laughter]]. Finley stayed where he was, as he knew this was a question worth waiting for. Finley tugged at his father’s ankle, as his legs grew sore and his face creased in little squares with the imprint of his father’s trousers. There had to be an answer. There just had [[to be|Universal thump]]. Finally, his father put aside the newspaper for a minute. He picked up a [[television|Inconsistent fathers]] script instead. “[[Someone else|Innocent ideas]] wrote my story for me,” he said slowly, considering each word. “And I have never been able to [[read it|Coda]].” “Will someone [[write my story|Innocent ideas]] for me?” Finley asked, lifting his head from his father’s knee and looking out the window at the gray skies of [[Cleveland]]. “Will I have to live in that story and nowhere else?” His father returned to his [[newspaper|Inconsistent laughter]] and never answered. //Southwest: [[The lonely sea]]// </div>

<div class="lonely"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> [[“Get a job!”|Cleveland]] his mother shouted when Finley lay on his childhood bed, still gazing at the silvery gray wallpaper, far too old now for his [[fuzzy wuzzy teddy bear|Innocent possessions]] but still muzzy with the school, in preparation for his [[college courses|University]]. He kept on revising the [[illogic of the metaphysics|Escape arguments]] that he was supposed to be studying but had never fully realized there. Finley remembered these words (along with the comfortable bed and its soft gray sheets that he was now forced to leave behind him) every day as he worked his first job, a night clerk in a run-down hotel on [[Euclid Avenue]]. During the day when he was supposed to be sleeping in his basement apartment, the one with a clear story window that just reached the street so he could see the shoes of people passing by, he instead lay moping on his rickety bed, the iron bedstead that was missing a few spokes. Once, as he was almost half-asleep, he heard the sounds of a car sputtering and knocking over the garbage cans as it careened down the avenue. The car squealed to a stop, more or less in front of his barred window. Finley stood on his only chair, a wooden stool with chipped lime green paint that had once belonged to a tiger trainer [[in a circus|Mistress of ceremonies]]. Reaching on his tiptoes to get a better view of the street, Finley stood and watched as a monkey opened the door to the now battered Miata and came over to his window. The monkey leaned down into the window well and shouted in Finley’s ear: “Ach, [[Budapest]] [[before the war|Before the war]].” Finley never knew why the monkey said that. The monkey held his paw up to the window, and Finley held his hand out as well. They touched, with only the glass between them. Finley could see their breath merging together, both of them steaming the glass on either side of the window. This thin glass was the only thing that separated them now. The monkey scratched himself and yawned. Finley laughed at these antics and kept on smiling, baring his teeth. The monkey then scowled at him and began beating the glass with two fists. Finley moved away from the window, and [[the monkey disappeared|The monkeys tale]], leaving only an empty [[gray|Brick streets]] sidewalk for him to gaze out on. //Southwest: [[The lonely sea]]// </div>

<div class="lonely"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> As he tossed and turned in the tiny hammock in the fo'c'sle listening to snores, he dreamed he was back in [[Cleveland]]. Or maybe he actually was in Cleveland, in the Sailor's [[Monument]] and was simply hoping this was a dream that he might forget when he [[woke|Red King]]. In any case, there [[in his dreams|Dreaming]] it was summer, with rain, sleet, and occasional snow. Things were damper now and colder. His [[father|Inconstant fear]] was there, standing next to the [[ television|Inconsistent fathers]]. It was difficult to tell [[which was image|Inconsistent laughter]] and [[which was life|Inconsistent narratives]]. They were strangers—his father and the image and his mother (who had [[urged him to the sea|The heaving sea]] or to [[get a job, any job|Lonely streets]] just to get away from them). His mother’s hand dangled down with a burning cigarette held between the third and fourth yellow smoke-stained fingers. His father held his [[inevitable pipe|Inconstant directions]], with its Borkum Riff cherry liquor tobacco rising smoke obscuring his [[face|Enchanters face]]. They stood stiffly across from him on the opposite side of the [[polished hardwood floor|Heaven notices]]. His father leaned against the bookshelf and flipped through [[a scarlet binder|Mistress of distress]] of [[newspaper clippings|Inconsistent laughter]]. His mother turned her back slightly to dust her tiny knickknacks, china shepherdesses from all over the world, which smiled [[forever innocently|Cloistress of innocence]] in their opulent and fragile pannier hoop dresses. “I really don’t know you,” Finley said to the strangers standing before him as they stared at each other, taking their measure. “Who did you say you were?” “You know us,” his mother replied, stamping out her cigarette in an [[ornately carved ashtray|Scrimshaw]] that he might have given them so very long ago when he first set out to sea and patting a carefully curated curl at her neck. “We’re [[your parents|Log and Line]].” “No,” Finley said. “I don’t think so. I have [[studied the matter|University]] thoroughly and I simply have no idea of who you truly are.” His mother shook out a new cigarette from its pack and busied herself lighting it. His father stamped out the ashes from his pipe. They stared at him, and then slowly turned away from him, [[unable to explain|Peroration]] themselves. Then of course the dream [[ended differently|Conclusion]] or perhaps simply [[changed directions|Escape clause]], and he could never quite remember if [[he woke|Waking]]. //Southwest: [[The lonely sea]]// </div>

<div class="lonely"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> “It is from [[Budapest]],” Finley’s father said to Finley’s mother as they sat stiffly together on their blue sea and silver fog-patterned couch in the well-lighted and stable living room. “Or perhaps [[Cleveland]]. The origin is impossible to read in this light.” She lit a cigarette and watched the thin gray ash grow at the tip. He busied himself with fixing his [[intricately carved|Scrimshaw]] camel bone pipe, redolent with cherry and vanilla smoke. It was not clear if he was discussing the foggy weather and [[heaving seas|The heaving sea]] seas where Finley might have been or the lonely ship [[in the bottle|The enchanting sea]] on the mantelpiece or the dinner on the checkered tablecloth in front of him. He might even have been fingering one of Finley’s [[final letters|The lonely sea]] that had actually made it to his father’s desk. Waterlogged, the postmark could not be read at all, and it was difficult to determine the [[contents|Lonely letters]]. But then his father continued in a different vein, “It is difficult to tell what the content contains or even [[the ultimate message|Ikigai]]. I can not see clearly at only 525 lines of resolution on [[television|Inconsistent fathers]] and 30 cycles per second in black and white, not to mention the light from [[the internet|Heaven expects]], which only serves to distract me.” Finley’s mother thought that he might be referring to his television shows which flickered on the ancient set before them as they sat staring at it. Or perhaps it was the closed captions at the bottom of the set as some of these might have been in Hungarian, that [[orphan|Log and Line]] tongue with no equivalents. The languages might even have been [[Arabic|Escape doom]] or even [[Amazigh|Escape portal]] for all his mother knew. His mother had never quite figured out Google translate. In any case, it was clear his father was not addressing Finely or even talking about him. His father had [[clearly not studied|Not there]] at any Hungarian [[University]], and could not conceive of any world where he might be a part of [[Budapest]]. They had always been at cross-[[purposes|Porpoises]]. //Southwest: [[The lonely sea]]// </div>

<div class="lonely"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> Finley’s father took a pair of steel-rimmed reading glasses from his gray tweed jacket and adjusted them carefully over his nose and before his eyes, the corners of which turned down in sternness befitting a serious actor [[on television|Inconsistent excuses]] and held just a touch of [[fear|Inconstant fear]]. “Here, my dear, is what our son Finley has to tell us from [[Budapest]], a large city in central Europe which spans a river, which is called the [[Danube]]. Our son has arrived safely and reports that he is [[happy|Words]]. He has enjoyed his [[University]] courses and he has found his [[true calling|Ikigai]] and thus he has [[carved out|Scrimshaw]] a life for himself there. He says that the streets are gray there, but it is a different texture of gray [[than here|Cleveland]]. We need not [[worry about him|The heaving sea]] or find [[excuses for him|Inconsistent excuses]] any longer.” He smoothed [[the letter|Lonely hearts]], the sand-worm and sea-softened paper, which had been folded far too many times and stuffed into one [[mailbag|Mail bag]] too many, on his knee. He took out his [[intricately carved|Scrimshaw]] camel bone pipe (which had appeared mysteriously in the post one day, along with the matching ashtray set, and he had never thought to investigate the origins nor question the slippage of [[time|Innocent tides]].) “Does it say in the letter that he misses us, and that he is alone in the world without us there by his side?” Finley’s mother asked anxiously as she lit a new cigarette and inhaled deeply, the foggy smoke circling her lungs. Finley’s father peered at the limp page again. “[[The writing|Innocent ideas]] is faded,” he said finally. “It is [[impossible to say so|Lonely openings]].” //Southwest: [[The lonely sea]]// </div>

<div class="lonely"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> In an eccentric [[turn of|Crisp returns]] whim and fate, one of the bottles the captain had thrown [[out to sea|The lonely sea]] actually found its way to Finley’s parents. They edged the brittle paper out and smoothed it. “What does he say, dear, our son Finley, who ran away [[to sea|Heaven expects]]?” Finley’s mother asked. Her face, too, was crinkled with concern for her absent boy, despite being gray and having thin horizontal lines across it. The lines could only be seen from very close up. “He says. . . ” Finley’s father gazed at the paper for a long moment, his forehead creased in concentration. He lowered the page and said, his voice choked, very slightly, just a small catch in it, really, not a big sob of grief or despair, but a turn, a small snag in the smooth flow. “He says the coasts are [[gray and wet|The heaving sea]]. He says there are many [[places distant|Budapest]] from our small town in Indiana or [[Ohio|Cleveland]], and [[times very far|Inconsistent fathers]] from the nineteen fifties. The nineteen eighties, for example, or the eighteen twenties, or the [[twenty-twenties|Egress]]. He says that the gulls [[whee|Wheel]] in the air, crying, and that the coasts are [[desolate and dark|Heavy rails]]. There, he says, the rivers never [[burn|Inconsistent narratives]] with [[passion|Mistress of undress]]. He says the sea is a [[wet mistress|The seducing sea]], and the desert [[is a dry one|The escaping sea]]. He says that somewhere, just over the nose of [[his airplane|Terminals]], lies a treasure beyond price. He asks if I read about him in the Wall Street Journal. He wants us to know that he’s sorry he ran away [[to sea|The heaving sea]], and that while he left [[Cleveland]] after only a few hours, it was not quite [[as bad as|Hate]] he thought it would be.” His father looked up from the paper, and afterwards, Finley’s mother was never sure if he had read the words or not. He says he [[might be|Enchantee]] [[happy|Mistress of joy]]. Finley’s mother threw her arms around her husband’s neck. Finley's father’s hands, now somewhat stiffly attached to his arms, reached up to his throat and patted her arms, feeling the dry crepe of his skin against her own. //Southwest: [[The lonely sea]]// </div>

<div class="lonely"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> The words were smeared on the cheap paper, and Finley’s father could read anything into it that he wanted. And so he did, reading out loud to his wife and skirting around the unknown blobs of ink gall. “Oh, darling,” Finley’s mother said, stubbing out her half-smoked cigarette. “I’m so happy! We have remained [[here|Cleveland]], but [[somewhere|Budapest]] in the world our son, who ran away [[to sea|Heaven expects]], has found [[purpose|Porpoises]], [[meaning|Ikigai]], and [[fulfillment|Heaven notices]].” “My dear,” he replied, laying his pipe down to edge his hand around her waist and hold her [[close|Mistress of the past]], “I always knew that boy would [[go far|Budapest]]. Even if I can not make out clearly what the letter says, what he means to tell us here in these [[smeared pages|Lonely letters]].” She asked her husband whether or not he thought that their son had found a mate, someone [[to share a life|Mistress of joy]] with. He looked again at the tattered paper in his hand, the sand-stained and water-logged envelope that it had come in and shrugged. “The [[letter|Lonely letters]] doesn’t say, my dear. So I would think that our son is alone in the world now. After all, he would have told us if he shared his life with anyone else.” They stood side by side, arms around each other’s waists and gazed out across the little pond and the white picket fence into the sunset. She thought perhaps they were looking the wrong way for her son, but she knew that it did not matter, that he was too far away for her to find anyway. //Southwest: [[The lonely sea]]// </div>

<div class="enchanting"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> It usually happened on a [[Sunday|Inconstant faith]] for some reason, often when the ship had sailed into the West Indies and had left Rokovoko deep behind as it journeyed on into the sunset. [[The pirate|The enchanting sea]] would hail the ship from starboard and come aboard, leaving his own tattered vessel to lag behind. The captain and the pirate would talk late into the night while Finley slept fitfully under the captain’s desk, in case he was needed to fetch another jigger of rum (for everyone know that neither the captain nor the pirate could drink the other under the [[table|Stupid stuff]]). The captain and the pirate would compare notes about the [[Enchanter|Enchanters face]], papers rustling as if they were shifting [[newspaper clippings|Inconsistent laughter]] gathered from every [[port|Escape bar]] in every sea. Some called him Tim, others called him Time, still others refused to name him at all. They were certain that he was not Francis Drake, or even that [[famous seductress|The enchanting sea]] who had [[adopted a similar name|Mistress of joy]]. They all knew the Enchanter. They [[invoked his name|Invocation]] in every port, shaking [[gray beards|Innocent possessions]] deeper into their Whisky glasses or bottles of rum or even [[Whisky berbers|Escape portal]] and muttering imprecations reaching back into his forsaken ancestry. They would list every promise that the Enchanter had made, spells for adjusting their compasses to always point to their true [[purpose|Porpoises]], [[incantations|Incantation]] for focusing their fo’c’sles for [[better living|Ikigai]] spaces, potion [[recipes|Whisky berbers]] to clear their lungs and continually improve their tastes and aspirations. They feared [[his carving|Enchantment]], though and would never speak of it, muttering instead about their own past times, their own tiny [[scrimshaw|Scrimshaw]] representations of their worlds. And the parrot squawked without mercy as the ships rolled onward through the [[endlessly churning|Heavy romances]] nights: “[[Crackers for brains|Brain colors]], brains for crackers, cracked nuts, nutcrackers.” Finley finally shut his ears to this unceasing talk which punctuated the never-ending roils of the sea. He turned back to [[his carving|Scrimshaw]], his [[one true joy|Conclusions]]. //East: [[The enchanting sea]]// </div> |------P------|

<div class="enchanting"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> “I’ve been spellbound, my son,” he confessed one day. And he pointed to his [[gray hairs|Inconsistent laughter]] that were slowly proceeding from a distinguished spot of [[gray|Innocent possessions]] at his temples to form wispy tufts that failed to comb over the bald spots, like waves receding from [[the tides|Innocent tides]] that failed to cover the beaches. I met the [[Enchanter|Enchanters face]] long since, in a [[port|Escape portal]] I’ve [[long forgotten|Heaven forgets]]. Or maybe it was in [[Frances’ dressing room|Mistress of ceremonies]] when she was getting ready for her big break. I can’t remember now. He enticed me with promises of //[[The Meaning of Life|Ikigai]]// telling me if I only recited these words, put them all in a [[course for life|Conclusions]] I’d [[resume|CV]], I’d have money and fame and power. I’d know instantly where I was and where I was going. He even gave me a pure [[gold compass|The listless sea]]. But it (t)rusted badly my [[first time out|Heavy woods]]. He promised me [[Budapest]]. But it turned out to be [[Cleveland]]. And I have [[forgotten|Heaven forgets]] the words [[he told me to say|Words]]. //East: [[The enchanting sea]]// </div>

<div class="enchanting"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> The captain and the pirate often told tales of [[glorious war|Dulcet tones]] or of sorcery to Finley to make his hair stand on end and his skin crawl for weeks afterwards. One of the ones they loved best was the Carving Tale, with its [[knives of deception|Dear Brutus]] that determined your fate. It seems as if [[the Enchanter|Enchanters face]] had once taken up scrimshandering as the [[whalers|The Whale Watch]] practiced it. But the Enchanter had gone a bit further, as he had studied in the [[Morrocan deserts|Parting words]] as the berbers sported their taweez and in New Guienea the Papauan’s practiced puripuri in the deepest rain forests, each with a differing and contradictory lesson, and collected the poppets hailing from that [[gray time|Innocent possessions]] in Salem. The Enchanter’s carvings were dice that told your life forces: on one face infusing [[your spine|Heaven notices]], your life with the joy of living with your [[purpose|Ikigai]], on another face granting you fulfillment within a [[lonely life|Lonely purposes]] then turned around into [[sickness|Heavy rails]] and darkness without even a passing thought from the [[porpoises|Porpoises]] under the sea. Finley thought about this as he hunched over on the deck above the [[scuppers|Heavy woods]], carving his own life, his own future from the [[scrimshaw|Scrimshaw]] set the captain had given him. For [[carving reality|Red King]] was a perilous adventure indeed. //East: [[The enchanting sea]]// </div>

<div class="enchanting"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> They had all heard [[her singing|Sweetheart of serials]] at one point. This song was of the true dream, underlying his [[true purpose|Conclusions]], indeed the entire meaning of [[it all|Universal thump]]. Homer deafened himself against her, true, but [[his sailors|Saucy Sailor Lad]] were not the first to be in thrall to her call. Not by a long shot. The captain had heard her and cursed her heartily under his breath, for it would not do for the men to hear him [[curse|An orphan’s curse]] any more than it would do to [[kill the albatross|The Too Ancient Mariner]], or shake off the heavy hands that bound him to his purpose. Finley heard her song and [[wished her joy|Mistress of joy]]. The pirate heard her and [[sang louder|Dead Man’s Chest]] than she could to drown her out, as if arguing [[against an arbitrary fate|Enchanters face]]. He always wondered if she was happy, if she ever lived a life filled with [[purpose and meaning|Ikigai]] and and if she had [[carved out|Enchantment]] a life of [[contentment|Words]] away from his fantasies. Long afterwards, news of her happiness actually did reach Finley. The man who brought it wore a [[sand-stained djellaba|The escaping sea]]. They sat cross-legged over small glasses of [[whisky berber|Whisky berbers]] in a [[dim green room|Escape bar]] smelling of fresh green mint somewhere in the world. All around them the air shrieked with [[drunken|Stupid stuff]] sailors [[chanting|Sea chantey]] and stomping their feet on the polished wooden floor. “Tell her,” Finley shouted over the uneven tones, “that the sea rings its [[listless|The listless sea]] chime, which, among other things, is [[time’s self made audible|The Sea-Limits]]. And it’s no place for strangers.” //East: [[The enchanting sea]]// </div>

<div class="enchanting"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> His earliest memories were of taking singing lessons. He was rocked in his [[mother’s|The heaving sea]] arms as he learned The Farmer in the Dell and sang //eieio// without understanding its existential yearnings, its [[essential undertones|Universal thump]]. After he learned Mary Had a Little Lamb, he felt an overwhelming need to become a farmer. When he resolved to become a farmer though, he realized it was a [[dead end|No escape]] job. His mother told him that [[any job|Lonely streets]] was as good as another, and it was at that moment that he realized he did not have to believe everything she said. So he ran away to [[sea|The heaving sea]]. It seemed he had [[done that before|List your accomplishments]], that he had already run away to sea, though he was not certain which sea had foamed around his cradle and what [[sea salt|Innocent tides]] had made him cry. Here the men had a song for everything, [[rollicking tunes|Saucy Sailor Lad]] that mocked [[his innocence|Innocent lives]], [[mournful tunes|Dead Man’s Chest]] that mocked their deaths, [[their obsessive|Innocent obsessions]] search for treasure. Someone would break out a bottle of rum or a fiddle stashed behind unused rope coils or [[a parrot|The enchanting sea]] that a [[pirate|Enchanter]] had left behind and they would all slap the deck, their thinning shoes polishing [[the old wood|Heavy woods]] even more with every step. And thus their songs marked their days as the [[sounds of time|The Sea-Limits]] went on and on without limits, without [[purpose|Porpoises]], without [[end|End game]]. //East: [[The enchanting sea]]// </div>

<div class="enchanting"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> At the [[end of his life|Conclusions]], he reflected. He had clung to many t[[rails|Heavy rails]], circled in many [[directions|Consider the Sea]]. Looking back on it all now, any road, any circumnavigation, any [[other circumstances|Enchanters face]] would have beenjust [[as good|Budapest]], just [[as fulfilling|Ikigai]]. Or just as bad, just [[as emptying|Heaven forgets]]. There is more—[[ever so much more|Budapest]] than one life. More than one possibility. This is what he [[intoned|Sea chantey]] to himself. Whenever [[anyone|Enchanters face]] was around, he would [[begin to explain|Escape bar]] what he meant, when all he wanted to say was that you could have a whole school of [[purposes|Porpoises]], a whole diapason of [[chimes|The Sea-Limits]], an entire raft of [[meanings|Enchantee]] in life. You just had to [[carve out|Enchantment]] a place for yourself, he would say to anyone who would listen. //East: [[The enchanting sea]]// </div>

<div class="enchanting"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> He always began every day, every morning, every evening with this same (if:visits is 1)[[[invocation|Smiled]]](if:visits is 2)[[[incantation|Sneered]]]. He had meant this to be a guiding light, like a [[compass|Consider the Sea]] that always pointed northward. But in reality, this [[chanting|Enchantment]] just became a sound he was used to hearing issue from [[his lips|Invocation]]. It had no more meaning than a compass that had lost its magnetism. //East: [[The enchanting sea]]// </div>

<div class="enchanting"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> Finley swabbed [[the deck|Heaven notices]] with his worn mop until [[the wood|Heavy woods]] was soft and silky, shiny under his feet like his [[mistress’s|Mistress of ceremonies]] long golden tresses. This reminded him of his [[mother|Lonely streets]] and his [[homesickness|Lonely closings]] turned to [[seasickness|The heaving sea]]. Sighing, he took up his [[scrimshaw|Scrimshaw]] and carved out his [[mistress in bone|Sweetheart of serials]]. A pirate who had clambered aboard with too many bottles of [[rum|Stupid stuff]] and a tot of whisky for the captain, heard his sigh. “Arrgh, laddy, take advice from me and just [[sing your own song|Saucy Sailor Lad]]. Perhaps the [[Enchanter|Enchanters face]] will hear you and give you the [[right answer|Ikigai]] for [[once|Conclusions]]. And he went of whistling the airs to the [[Dead Man’s Chest]], which had been popular in a serial for young folks, when his father first began to [[read newspapers|Inconsistent laughter]]. //East: [[The enchanting sea]]// </div>

<div class="innocent"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> The captain and Finley stood on the deck, waiting for the calmness of [[the slack tide|The listless sea]] so they could enter the harbor. The captain filed through his charts, muttering to himself that time and tide wait for no man, but that man must wait upon them. And Finley chafed at the delay, at the time he needed to spend waiting before he could [[act on anything|Escape portal]] at all. The captain noted his [[anxiety|Escape clause]] and schooled him on it. He pointed out the shrinking tide which gradually uncovered the rocks that would tear at their bottom, would ream their hopes and dreams and ensure they could continue no further. It revealed that they could not [[anchor there|Anchors of the Church]]. Finley remarked on this deception, this water that covered and recovered the horrors of [[the deep|The Whale Watch]] and of [[the shallows|Innocent voyages]], as if mocking all [[their aspirations|Ikigai]], all their schools of [[purposes|Porpoises]]. It was as if, [[as the bard had said|Dear Brutus]], [[the fault|Enchantment]] lay in [[the stars|Heavenly bodies]] and not in [[their desires|Rose garden]]. "The moon just //is//, my boy. Always remember that." The captain continued on with his lecture as he stood at the helm, steering into the moon's pull, the bulge of the earth where the water is thickest before dawn. "The moon doesn't care what she does to us. And the sea just is. Justice has nothing to do with anything. Just as the moon can not care about the powers [[she pulls|Enchantment]], the sea does not care about [[the lives|Enchanters face]] she holds within her depths." The captain left off the helm and leaned beside the mast, taking a swig from his ever-present bottle, which did not hold [[whisky berbers|Whisky berbers]], but something [[much stronger|Stupid stuff]], which was meant to be drunk alone. "Now get below and scrub the decks clear of those [[barnacles|Innocent deaths]]," the captain ordered. "Can't have those little buggers hardening up our arteries, clogging those lower decks, slowing us down, [[anchoring us|Anchors of the Church]] here so that we can never find our [[purpose|Porpoises]]." //Northwest: [[The innocent sea]]// </div>

<div class="innocent"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> When he was [[away from|The escaping sea]] the sea, he longed for[[ the sea|The heaving sea]], forgetting all of the [[queasiness|The heaving sea]], all of the [[romance|Heavy romances]] he had found there. Once, when he was studying Anxiety and Its Germanely [[Fabuliac|Innocent ideas]] [[Liaison|Sweetheart of serials]] to [[Loneliness|The lonely sea]] at the [[University]] in Hungary, in [[Debrecen|Escape clause]] (which was not quite close to [[Budapest]]), he partook of a lunch in the Csakhal Bisztró, where the fish was excellent. The waiter brought him his fish soup and a dark cola drink, which had no [[rum|The enchanting sea]]. He examined his drink, a small, square glass half filled with a darkness, which was covered with [[ice|Trade in]] (unlike the warmth of the [[whisky berber|Whisky berbers]], which he had grown to [[love|Escape portal]] in the desert as it told a cleaner truth than the dirtier, stronger drinks he had [[consumed in earlier|Stupid stuff]], more innocent times when he thought the answers could be found in [[bottles|Enchanter]]). He stared at the ice. Half a glass of miniature, calving glaciers. “Does [[the sea|The lonely sea]], [[heaving|The heaving sea]] and [[gray|Innocent possessions]] and cold, yearn for [[empty, desolate places|Escape questions]]?” he asked. He reached out to his drink as if to shake the glass out of its complacency. “Or perhaps it [[feels nothing|Innocent tides]], wants for nothing, and [[is content|Words]] with its lot. The glass [[did not answer|Lonely letters]], though a cube did turn over with a brief tinkle, almost like a [[camel’s braying|Escape questions]]. “No,” he answered himself thoughtfully. “It does not. The sea has quite enough of [[depressing vistas|An orphan’s curse]]. Almost as if the sea had ever been to [[Cleveland]].” //Northwest: [[The innocent sea]]// </div>

<div class="innocent"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> The captain clasped Finley on the back as they gazed out over the endless horizons. "I'm trapped here too," he confessed, [[spearing his supper|The Whale Watch]] with a rusted harpoon and rotted line in the [[heaving|The heaving sea]] waves. I'm caught up in another person's story–[[a different writer|Innocent ideals]], a far distant time. And you, you are not writing your own tale either. [[Someone else|Author page]] has captured your ideas, put these words in your mouth, dictated your fate. They created you, they know you better than you know yourself. For you [[only exist|Red King]] in their imaginations. You are only composed of words and can leave nothing [[solid after you|Ozymandias]]. For a long time, I quested after the identity of this writer. It has been weeks, centuries, millenia and I can not find them. I have given up trying to [[escape|No escape]] my pages, but [[my passion|Ikigai]], my [[insane quest|Insane]], that someone else [[wrote|Inconsistent laughter]] for me, someone else [[plotted for me|Dear Brutus]], has long since foreclosed [[those possibilities|Heaven forgets]]. I only hope to wake from this tangled mess of a nightmare. But even then, I am not sure I was created with the [[power to wake|Waking]]. //Northwest: [[The innocent sea]]// </div>

<div class="innocent"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> Once, he thought that he might have liked to live in [[Cleveland]]. And once, he had even lived several lives there, although most of them he promptly [[forgot about|Heaven forgets]] afterwards. Or that he could still have moved there, when his life was as flexible as a [[baby barnacle|Innocent lives]]. He'd dig into a foundation, build a strong house with [[shatter-proof|Innocent deaths]] [[red|Mistress of distress]] [[brick|Brick streets]] [[walls|Anchors of the Church]]. This would be [[his purpose|Ikigai]] in this life. Plow a vegetable garden behind the white picket fence. He'd cleave the land into neat rows. Squares. Nothing circular, nothing fluid, nothing uneven like the sea. Everything as solid as stone, as straight as a [[newborn|Innocent ideas]] [[plumb line|List starboard]]. He'd stop being at sea, leave off being at the [[mercy of every wave|Innocent tides]], [[every storm|Mistress of distress]], [[every scarlet-tinged sunset|Mistress of distress]], [[every night|Heaven notices]]. His life, like a [[fully grown barnacle|Innocent deaths]], would stay put forever. He'd [[cleave to the land|Cleveland]] as his [[anchor in life|Anchors of the Church]]. But then he [[remembered his parents|Lonely openings]] and the generations behind him, all wedded to the land, all without a single adventure. All without the need [[to study|University]], to be [[enchanted|Enchantee]] into happiness, to [[question life|Not there]]. He sighed and picked up his loathing for [[Cleveland]], his unreal dreams of [[Budapest]] once more. //Northwest: [[The innocent sea]]// </div>

<div class="innocent"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> [[Baby barnacles|Cyprids]], Finley found to his surprise, are soft and almost formless. They squished under his fingernails, gently moving off, easy to pry loose to wander the seas again. He envied their innocent journeying, their [[freedom to find|Ikigai]] a different spot to settle in. They could now go anywhere, do anything. They had not yet [[hardened|Innocent deaths]] into their [[obsessions|Innocent obsessions]]. These tiny new beings had as yet, done nothing, been nothing, and [[accomplished nothing|List your accomplishments]]. They were only, as yet, unformed possibilities. //Northwest: [[The innocent sea]]// </div>

<div class="innocent"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> Finley chipped uselessly at the intractable shells of barnacles (which had [[once been |Innocent lives]] a [[sea-gray|Innocent possessions]] and foggy softness and now clung with a sharp surface more obdurate than granite) and found them impossible to remove. [[These homes|Cleveland]] were stronger than bone, deeper than the lives that had sheltered these creatures, who had settled into their implacable hardness of being. They lived and breathed within these shells, taking the clear water of the sea and coloring it blue from their blood. But when he scraped them away, the shards broke off into tiny fragments and he could not [[turn them into works of art|Scrimshaw]]. The sharp edges made his fingers bleed—and nothing more. The layers of barnacles had encased this ship over the decades, centuries, perhaps longer, than the captain had sailed in his endless quest. Finley could see new boards nailed over the sharp carcasses of the old barnacles and knew that this ship was only hold together by the cement left over from these lives. These were merely fragments of lives, of barnacles as [[anchorites|Anchors of the Church]]. And thus Finley scraped away at this ossuary, this cemetery where their soft hearts were never to be seen again after their shells had hardened and hidden them away. //Work harder!// Finley could hear the captain roar in his ears, although no one ever said a word and no one was ever about and there never any sound except the soft lapping of the sea against the [[creaking wood|Heavy rails]] of the boat. //Bash in those shells!! Blast them all!!// the commands came into Finley's ears. And so Finley hung there for a second, for an infinity, for at least a few hours or days or months anyway, and scoured away in the salt and the [[sea|The Sea-Limits]]. Years later, he could never be quite sure how many tiny [[lives he ended|Coup de grace]] in this shattering of [[shards|Conclusion]]. //Northwest: [[The innocent sea]]// </div>

<div class="innocent"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> Do what you love, [[love what you do|Ikigai]], is the motto that so many people aspire to. The question is, what do you love? You say you are obsessed, possessed, driven [[insane|Insane]] by the one thing you desire. Ahh but do you love your obsession or do you [[hate|Hate]] it, that is the question. And when did this obsession start? Did [[someone else|Innocent ideas]] [[ordain this|Enchantment]] for you? Is this a [[randomly assigned|Enchanters face]] choice, or a wild [[purpose|Porpoises]] that mocks your existence with its hollow [[laughter at life’s bad jokes|Inconsistent laughter]]? Or is it a [[true calling|Ikigai]]? Is it [[ordained|Enchantment]] in [[our stars|Heavenly bodies]]? These were questions he only pondered in [[his dreams|Heaven forgets]] and never in his waking hours. Once, long ago in his childhood on one of his many forays to [[escape his father|Inconstant fear]], he simply walked around [[the rose garden|Rose garden]] in Fenway (only a block and a park away from [[Euclid Avenue]]) for hours. He told himself he was taking the time to smell the roses, and he gathered the soft blossoms to his face, but could smell only the acrid must of [[a desert|Escape portal]], only the half tangy, half rotted air of the sea. He even studied [[his lessons|Dear Brutus]] there, but of course, he could not [[understand them|Escape arguments]], as he [[was young|Innocent lives]] and had not the experience of his [[later years|Innocent deaths]]. [[A priest|Inconstant faith]] sat on a bench near the opening of the circle, watching him as he admired first one vibrant bud, [[almost blooming|Innocent lives]] and then one [[gray dried flower|Innocent possessions]], its petals almost all scattered in the rich dark earth. Finally, the priest spoke in a low prayer, as if still at his [[orisons|Orizon]] and asked: “Are you [[creating your own obsessions|Insane]], or is [[someone else|Innocent ideas]] guilty of instilling that one focus, that one thing you can not deny in your life?” He was not sure who the priest was addressing, let alone how to [[answer|Peroration]]. //Northwest: [[The innocent sea]]// </div>

<div class="innocent"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> This memory was how he knew that nothing was true, not even the fog bells booming with each passing wave, warning of sharp rocks ready to tear the fog of unreality from any passing ship. His bedroom was firmly situated in [[Cleveland]] but could have been in [[Budapest]] in another [[possible world|Crisp returns]]. In any case, the walls had been painted in soft silvery grays, a grisaille [[geometric pattern|Rose garden]] of compass wheels with points that turned into enchanted dreams of [[parrots|The enchanting sea]] and pirate hats and camels and airplanes when he stared at them too long. His mother had always sung him this nursery song until he fell asleep, and long hours after that. He never did figure out the answer to the riddle, the enigma behind that soothing voice that colored his memory in soft hues, like a sheet washed and hung on the line a hundred thousand times over in a lifetime. In the [[dolphin-gray|Porpoises]] recessions of [[his mind|Brain colors]], he knew that this was important, that there was no clear line between sleeping and waking, between dreaming and reality. //Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear. Fuzzy wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy wuzzy was not fuzzy, was he? Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear. Fuzzy wuzzy had one hair. Fuzzy wuzzy was not fuzzy, was he? Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear. Fuzzy wuzzy had two hairs. Fuzzy wuzzy was not fuzzy, was he? Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear. Fuzzy wuzzy had three hairs. Fuzzy wuzzy was not fuzzy, was he?// The gray lines of his teddy bear’s hair slowly filled in with more and more ambiguity as his eyelids drooped into sleep and his last thought was always that everything would still be that [[shapeless|Innocent lives]] and fuzzy when he [[woke|Waking]]. //Northwest: [[The innocent sea]]// </div>

<div class="background"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2>(set: _allPassages to (array: "Consider the sea", "Cleveland", "Budapest", "The listless sea", "The Sea-Limits", "List seaward", "List landward", "List starboard", "Dreaming", "List to port", "List your skills", "CV", "List your strengths", "Red King", "List your interests", "List your accomplishments", "The inconstant sea", "Inconsistent excuses", "Inconsistent fathers", "Brick streets", "Inconsistent laughter", "Inconsistent narratives", "Cuyahoga River", "Euclid Avenue", "Monument", "Inconstant directions", "Inconstant faith", "Inconstant memories", "Inconstant fear", "The seducing sea", "Sweetheart of serials", "Cloistress of innocence", "Innocent voyages", "Mistress of undress", "Mistress of distress", "Hennin", "Mistress of ceremonies", "Mistress of the past", "Red lips", "Before the war", "Mistress of the future", "Mistress of joy", "The heaving sea", "Gray’s Armory", "Heavy romances", "Heavy woods", "Heavy rails", "Log and Line", "Heavy expectations", "Heaven waits", "Heaven forgets", "The Cast-away", "Heaven notices", "Heavenly bodies", "The escaping sea", "End game", "Plodded", "Escape artist", "Terminals", "Escape arguments", "Ozymandias", "Peroration", "Escape bar", "Looming", "Scrimshaw", "Conclusions", "Escape portal", "Whisky berbers", "Stupid stuff", "Egress", "Escape doom", "Seedee", "Coup de grace", "Escape questions", "Coda", "Escape clause", "Parting words", "University", "No escape", "Lead the way", "Waking", "The lonely sea", "Lonely closings", "Lonely streets", "The monkeys tale", "Lonely shades", "Not there", "Lonely letters", "Danube", "Lonely purposes", "Porpoises", "Lonely hearts", "Lonely cities", "Lonely openings", "The enchanting sea", "Enchanter", "Enchanter’s face", "Enchantee", "Words", "Enchantment", "Enchantress", "The Too Ancient Mariner", "An orphan’s curse", "Sea chantey", "Sea chancey", "Incantation", "Invocation", "Dead Man’s Chest", "Saucy Sailor Lad", "The innocent sea", "The Whale Watch", "Achievement", "Achievements", "Innocent tides", "Dear Brutus", "Innocent times", "Innocent ideas", "Insane", "Innocent ideals", "Innocent lives", "Cyprids", "Innocent deaths", "Anchors of the Church", "Innocent obsessions", "Rose garden", "Dont you see", "Orizon", "Innocent possessions", "Brain colors")) (if:visits is 1)[Cleveland, he firmly believed, was a place to avoid at all costs. No matter [[what job|Lonely streets]] he had to take, no matter [[what port|Escape portal]] he had to find, no matter [[what fate|Dear Brutus]] he brought down upon himself, no matter [[what course|Crimson badge]] of [[study|University]] it took, he was determined to leave and never come back. <img src="cleveland1.png" alt=a shack covered in blistering white paint, with round port hole windows and junk. It looks slightly better than a tin roof and cardboard shack found in shantytowns or refugee camps.>] (if:visits is 2)[In some ways, Cleveland actually held a scintilla of shelter. A possibility of [[settling down|Innocent deaths]] and the dimmest hope for a happy life. Perhaps even this horrible fate of being stuck in Cleveland might be better than the dark damp of [[the fo'c'sle|Lonely closings]] or the interminable sickness of [[the railings|Heavy rails]] or the sun-drenched thirst of [[the desert|Escape arguments]]. But he imagined this place in the gloom and [[smoky fog|Lonely letters]] and could not bring himself to admit to staying there forever. He had to find [[his fantasy|Budapest]]. Live out a [[true|Ikigai]] [[purpose|Porpoises]]. <img src="cleveland2.png" alt=a small white house in a gray foggy background with a rickety white picket fence around it, and a bare tree growing too close to it. It could be fixed up into a small but comfortable place to live.>] (if:visits is 3)[If you keep returning to Cleveland, you will stay here [[forever|End game]]. This is the [[true|Ikigai]] [[purpose|Porpoises]] of your life. [[Get married|Mistress of the future]]. Have 2.1 kids. Get a steady job doing the same things over and over. Every day the same lunch. Every Saturday the same golf game. Every Sunday [[the same church|Heaven expects]]. [[Everyone the same|Universal thump]]. This is the meaning of life. Nothing more. Nothing less. You do understand, don't you, that this is the dream, the [[pinnacle of success|Budapest]] for so many? He heard these words pounding in his dreams, in his [[rituals|Incantation]]. He was almost starting to believe in them, as if they were the only possible answer to his [[prayers|Orizon]]. <img src="cleveland3.png" alt=a nice house with a sunny sky and trees. A white picket fence circles the house. The house has a round window above a bay window and looks like a pleasant place to live.> ] (if:visits >= 4)[After returning again and again, he found that Cleveland was actually quite a charming place to live, with its own set of [[enchantments|Enchantment]]. He [[settled here|Innocent deaths]] and lived a [[contented life|Enchantee]] forever. He had [[forgotten|Heaven forgets]] that he had ever had any other life or ambitions or worries. He combed through his past, resolved his differences with [[his gray|Innocent possessions]] and [[depressed|Innocent times]] [[childhood|Inconstant fear]] and [[his parents|Lonely closings]]. And he was [[content|Words]] never to find [[another calling|Ikigai]]. <img src="cleveland4.png" alt=a large ranch house with a double layer of a picket fence around a lush green lawn with a small pond in front. This would be a lovely place to live and have kids.> ]  You ended up here. You could stay here in sameness for the rest of your life. Or do you want to: * Try again from the [[beginning|Consider the Sea]]. * Delve deeper into [[the street|Euclid Avenue]] which ends at the [[monument to its dead soldiers and sailors|Monument]], just a block from [[its locked up past|Grays Armory]]. Even the [[rose gardens|Rose garden]] hold some [[promises|Innocent obsessions]]. * Or just roll the die. Anything to escape Cleveland. (link-goto: "... again", (shuffled: ..._allPassages)'s 1st). </div>

<div class="background"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> (if:visits is 1)[Ahh Budapest. [[Before the war]]. She had [[moaned this|Mistress of the past]] so many times in [[her sleep|The seducing sea]] that he began to fantasize about it himself. The details were never really ever solid, and [[shifted logically|Lead the way]] in his dreams and even [[his memories|Inconstant memories]]--but never entirely in his reality. Besides, he never knew [[what directions|Inconstant directions]] his fantasies would lead him [[to next|Heavy expectations]]. You, on the other hand, are free to [[dream|Red King]] this place in any way you desire. <img src="budapest1.png" alt=a blurry image of a castle and possibly the words Budapest above it. In the background looks to be a sea. Only one small doorway is clear.> ] (if:visits is 2)[This is the city of [[lions|The lonely sea]], of spas and bathhouses so ancient as to be [[legendary.|Ozymandias]] This is the place where all dreams can come true. It is a [[dream too|The innocent sea]] far off onto the distant shore [[to reach|Cloistress of innocence]]. He had almost, but never really, convinced himself that this place might exist. Because of course, [[it couldn't|Peroration]]. You think you could stay here forever, because you have made this an [[unreal city|Innocent ideals]] on the hill. This, you think, is the land for [[happily|Words]] ever after. But even princes and princesses [[have to eat|Cyprids]] breakfast the morning after. And the one after that. And so on. And how to do that remains unclear. <img src="budapest2.png" alt=a slightly clearer image of a castle and the words Budapest above it. In the background looks to be a sea and a village. Three ornate sets of windows and doors are clear.> ] (if:visits is 3)[He wanted to try to live here, [[studying|Not there]] Anxiety and Its Germanely [[Fabuliac|Innocent ideas]] [[Liaison|Sweetheart of serials]] to [[Loneliness|The lonely sea]] and [[numbering tram lines|Escape clause]] to lull himself to sleep. He was afraid of [[waking up|Waking]] and being somewhere else entirely. And besides, even in [[his dreams|No escape]], he could find no true openings, no way to enter. <img src="budapest3.png" alt=most of the castle is clear, revealing an ornate circular fantasy of a building built somewhat in a compass rose shape. Three towers rise above a clear blue sea. There is no entrance, and all walls are the same.>] (if:visits >= 4)[Sometimes fantasies can become reality. Entire villages can spring up and out of our [[dreams|Red King]]. But then, the reality becomes [[prosaic|Innocent voyages]], and no one notices the fantastical details of our [[daily lives|Cleveland]]. In a sense, we all grew up with Budapest, the [[priest intoned|Anchors of the Church]] once. We come into the cathedral [[at first|Innocent obsessions]] awed by the miracles of [[carving|Scrimshaw]], the heights of stone arching into heaven. But after a lifetime of [[Sundays|Inconstant faith]], our [[true passions|Ikigai]] too, become so usual that we [[no longer see|Heaven notices]] the [[heavenly beauty.|Heavenly bodies]] in our midst. You can only sigh at these old homi[[lies|Dulcet tones]]. Ahh, Budapest. [[Before the war]]. <img src="budapest4.png" alt=A clear castle with ornate words Budapest. The village is also clear, showing a possible town life. There is now a grand entrance and we can see people entering the compass-rose like fantastical structure.> ]  Most people who live in Budapest would not recognize this dream as their actual city, filled with [[fantastic architecture|Danube]] and [[sculptures|Ozymandias]] and [[history|Dulcet tones]] that never happened and somehow devoid of coffee shops and grocery stores and auto mechanics or even hospitals. You keep wishing to be here, but you are gradually convinced that this place exists only in your [[imagination|Innocent ideas]]. There are other places in the world [[to explore|Escape bar]]. Do you want to inhabit these castles [[in the air|Terminals]] or do you want to: Try again from the [[beginning|Consider the Sea]]. [[Study|University]] its charms [[more closely|Brick streets]]. (set: _allPassages to (array: "Consider the sea", "Cleveland", "Budapest", "The listless sea", "The Sea-Limits", "List seaward", "List landward", "List starboard", "Dreaming", "List to port", "List your skills", "CV", "List your strengths", "Red King", "List your interests", "List your accomplishments", "The inconstant sea", "Inconsistent excuses", "Inconsistent fathers", "Brick streets", "Inconsistent laughter", "Inconsistent narratives", "Cuyahoga River", "Euclid Avenue", "Monument", "Inconstant directions", "Inconstant faith", "Inconstant memories", "Inconstant fear", "The seducing sea", "Sweetheart of serials", "Cloistress of innocence", "Innocent voyages", "Mistress of undress", "Mistress of distress", "Hennin", "Mistress of ceremonies", "Mistress of the past", "Red lips", "Before the war", "Mistress of the future", "Mistress of joy", "The heaving sea", "Gray’s Armory", "Heavy romances", "Heavy woods", "Heavy rails", "Log and Line", "Heavy expectations", "Heaven waits", "Heaven forgets", "The Cast-away", "Heaven notices", "Heavenly bodies", "The escaping sea", "End game", "Plodded", "Escape artist", "Terminals", "Escape arguments", "Ozymandias", "Peroration", "Escape bar", "Looming", "Scrimshaw", "Conclusions", "Escape portal", "Whisky berbers", "Stupid stuff", "Egress", "Escape doom", "Seedee", "Coup de grace", "Escape questions", "Coda", "Escape clause", "Parting words", "University", "No escape", "Lead the way", "Waking", "The lonely sea", "Lonely closings", "Lonely streets", "The monkeys tale", "Lonely shades", "Not there", "Lonely letters", "Danube", "Lonely purposes", "Porpoises", "Lonely hearts", "Lonely cities", "Lonely openings", "The enchanting sea", "Enchanter", "Enchanter’s face", "Enchantee", "Words", "Enchantment", "Enchantress", "The Too Ancient Mariner", "An orphan’s curse", "Sea chantey", "Sea chancey", "Incantation", "Invocation", "Dead Man’s Chest", "Saucy Sailor Lad", "The innocent sea", "The Whale Watch", "Achievement", "Achievements", "Innocent tides", "Dear Brutus", "Innocent times", "Innocent ideas", "Insane", "Innocent ideals", "Innocent lives", "Cyprids", "Innocent deaths", "Anchors of the Church", "Innocent obsessions", "Rose garden", "Dont you see", "Orizon", "Innocent possessions", "Brain colors")) Stay here or flip the die to end up (link-goto: "... elsewhere", (shuffled: ..._allPassages)'s 1st). </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> He had always fitfully learned the history of Euclid Avenue, even before he had [[his first job|Lonely streets]] there in a rundown hotel, longing to be one of the [[travellers|Enchanters face]] and not one of those stuck behind a desk. He had written an article about it once, but the teacher said it was cribbed mostly from a Wikipedia article and would not be [[admitted in class|University]]. Nonetheless, he treasured his [[stolen words|Innocent ideas]]: //Euclid Avenue received nationwide attention from the 1860s to the 1920s for its beauty and wealth, including a string of mansions that came to be known as Millionaires' Row. There are several theaters, banks, and churches along Euclid, as well as [[Cleveland's|Cleveland]] oldest extant building, the Dunham Tavern. [[Grays Armory]] was a mere stone’s throw away. <img src="euclid.png" alt=wikimedia picture of Euclid avenue taken from a tenth story window,looking down the avenue to the soldier and sailors monument and river. The street looks somehow rundown and disreputable.> Looking westbound on Euclid Avenue from above E. 9th Street and the Schofield Building. The [[Soldiers'|Crimson badge]] and [[Sailors'|Saucy Sailor Lad]] [[Monument]] can be seen in the distance. Wikipedia, as of 6-20-2023. By the 1920s, the former "Millionaires' Row" was in decline. During the Great Depression, many mansions were converted by their owners into [[rooming houses|Lonely streets]] and rundown hotels, which accelerated the decline. In the 1950s, Cleveland's Innerbelt Freeway cut through the Euclid Avenue neighborhood between downtown and the rail crossing at East 55th Street. By the 1960s, the street that once rivaled Fifth Avenue as the most expensive address in the United States was a two-mile long slum of commercial buildings and [[port bars|Escape bar]] and substandard housing. A large reconstruction project, which brought [[the HealthLine|Ikigai]] to the street, was completed in 2008.// <img src="euclid1.png" alt=Google maps shot of Euclid avenue from October 2022. this is a ground floor look at the same street with the soldiers and sailor monument in the background. The street looks clean and modern, with a new subeay station in the middle of the street.> //The [[Soldiers'|Crimson badge]] and [[Sailors'|Saucy Sailor Lad]] [[Monument]] can be seen off to the side as we draw ever nearer. Google maps, October 2022. // </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> The [[monument lived|Inconsistent fathers]] in the then, and has long since been overshadowed by the now. In any case, the [[rollicking sailors|Sea chantey]] and [[murdering soldiers|Coup de grace]] were long gone, their [[wars|Crimson badge]] forgotten, [[their memories|Dulcet tones]] were scattered [[somewhere far|Enchanters face]] away from [[here|Cleveland]]. <img src="monument.png" alt=Google maps image of the solider and sailor monument with bronze workers at the bottom and a tall goddess domed almost phallic obelisk rises above them. The Victorian ornamentation clashes strongly with the gray office building behind it. The gray of the monument is dirtier and smudged with smoke in comparison to the shining clean grays of the tall skyscrapers behind it. The shadows on the skyscraper could almost be from the tall spire of the monument as the light hits the monumnnt first... the workers at the bottom of the monument are completely shadowed over.> <A HREF="https://www.google.com/maps/@41.4992153,-81.6926645,3a,75y,309.94h,119.66t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sI7YJsGI9cmGSc6WN9_BsPg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu">Google map</A> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Finley had written a school report about the Gray’s Armory at 1234 Bolivar Road. He had loved the name and address, a soft and fuzzy [[gray counting|Innocent possessions]] paired with the military march step in place. The [[history|Iamb]] of the Grays had been made [[glorious in the telling|Crimson badge]] of wars, both civil and overseas, although reality had probably been [[far different|Dulcet tones]]. But the building itself, the huge stones each bigger and taller than he had ever been as a child, held the songs from countless social events and concerts and tours from as far away as [[Budapest]]. These [[memories|Inconstant memories]] were not his, and he could not interpret what the stones tried to tell him each time he touched them, shivering outside on the corner. For Finley stopped at the little round turret, each time he passed this place in his wanderings just slightly off of [[Euclid Avenue]] where he spent so many [[cold and lonely nights|Lonely streets]]. But he had never bothered to go in. Nor had he ever sat on these steps, [[either|Brick streets]]. Old memories of social events that his father might have–or [[might not have|Inconsistent fathers]] attended and land-locked army relics had never held the same fascination for him as the sea did. <img src="grayarmory.png" alt=a snapshot of Gray's Armory in Cleveland with a fancy almost half compass entrance of stone and intricate metal work and a hint of towers and brick. A stylized guitar is out front for a concert.> Gray’s Armory, , <A HREF="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4846038">By Nyttend - Own work, Public Domain</A> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> At one point while he [[plodded|Plodded]] through the desert, Finley met a Victorian poet, who happened to be passing by through this wasteland on a lark. It was his European tour to all of the [[great cities|Budapest]]. The poet asked Finley for water, but neither of them had anything at [[all to drink|Stupid stuff]], not even a [[Whisky berber|Whisky berbers]], for the caravan master had long since [[deserted them|Parting words]]. They left off their [[limping|Iamb]] and rested under the thin shade of a tiny outcropping of rock, left bare in the [[shifting sands|Escape portal]]. They did not speak of their incessant longing for a sprig of green mint, a spray of salt water, or anything [[more substantial|Ikigai]]. Finley silently took out his [[scrimshaw|Scrimshaw]] set and started to carve the poet’s face. The poet turned this way and that, pleased to have [[a lasting impression|Legacy]] on the world. The poet searching after the legends, that told of a [[massive city|Lonely cities]] of gold at one point in that desert, that the place reeked of [[glorious history|Dulcet tones]] and treasures scattered on the surface for his taking. Finley told him about the [[only monument|Monument]] he had seen, where: //Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert.// and on the pedestal of this proud statue were carved in letters so deep they were still readable: //My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; [[Look on my Works|Deaccession]], ye Mighty, and [[despair|Achievements]]!// But Finley assured the mad poet that nothing else was there at all, save the desert sands. And they could see plenty of that right here. With these words, the two [[parted|Parting words]]. Quotes from Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Ozymandias. 1817. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3>In his cups, when the [[captain|The listless sea]] had been drunk under the table and lay there [[snoring away|Red King]], there was no one else to converse with, the [[pirate|Enchanter]] would take Finley aside and tell him of the [[horrors of war|Crimson badge]], simply to counteract any [[sea chanteys|Dead Man’s Chest]] that might hint of purpose and glory in [[taking a life|Oedipus]]. He recited this over and over again as it was the only poem he was ever taught to memorize in that long-ago and far-away [[school|Coda]]. Sometimes he [[changed the wording|Innocent ideas]], but never by very much. //If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, [[incurable|Innocent deaths]] sores on [[innocent tongues|Innocent lives]],— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some [[desperate glory|Mistress of distress]], The [[old Lie|Escape bar]]:// Dulce et decorum est [[Pro patria|Lonely closings]] [[mori|Coup de grace]]. Owen, Wilfred. 1921. Dulce et Decorum Est. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> [[“Get a job!”|Cleveland]] his mother had shouted at him. But instead, Finley decided to go to the University. It was a traditional choice for a young lad who had no idea of what his [[true purpose|Ikigai]] might be. And probably safer than [[the sea|The heaving sea]]. This is where Finley thought he could study away his Anxiety. He took a course labeled in the catalog as Anxiety and Its Germanely [[Fabuliac|Innocent ideas]] [[Liaison|Whisky berbers]] to [[Loneliness|The lonely sea]]. The professor mumbled, perhaps in [[Hungarian|Budapest]] or perhaps it was French or even or possibly [[Arabic|Escape doom]] or even [[Amazigh|Escape portal]], but certainly nothing that Finley could understand. He took to [[lying|Dulcet tones]] in the courtyard, imagining where the deserted cobblestones met the spouting sea. But this image in this story is still not the correct picture, for of course, you must imagine this scene as it had been then in the 1800s, in the glory days of [[whaling|The Whale Watch]] or even in the conformity days of [[Victorian serials|Sweetheart of serials]] or [[newspapers|Inconsistent laughter]] or [[early television|Inconsistent excuses]], rather than now with the building blocking the view of any potential distant sea. You must feel [[Budapest]] [[before the war|Before the war]] in any of your [[imaginings|Red King]]. <img src="university.png" alt=a google shot of a dry grayish beige cobblestone courtyard at the Debrecen University with a somewhat phallic geyser of a fountain in the distance. This mirrors the image in Euclid Avenue of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument.> Egyetem tér - Google Maps <A HREF="https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5514701,21.6220925,3a,75y,178.05h,78.78t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipP2tzZHxSnr5Zd7El-BzYwAJTDrjsJpAsI6_Kfv!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipP2tzZHxSnr5Zd7El-BzYwAJTDrjsJpAsI6_Kfv%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-21.913696-ya349.34335-ro-0-fo100!7i7200!8i3600?entry=ttu"> Google maps</A> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> This is the [[obligatory logic|Coda]] bit that every [[metaphysical professor|Escape arguments]] knows [[by heart|The Sea-Limits]]: //Here she checked herself in some alarm, at hearing something that sounded to her like the puffing of a [[large steam-engine|The bathroom]] in the wood near them, though she feared it was more likely to be a wild beast. “Are there any lions or tigers about here?” she asked timidly. “It’s only the [[Red King|Enchanters face]] snoring,” said Tweedledee. “Come and look at him!” the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice’s hands, and led her up to where the King was sleeping. “Isn’t he a lovely sight?” said Tweedledum. Alice couldn’t say honestly that he was. He had a tall [[red night-cap|Mistress of distress]] on, with [[a tassel|Crimson badge]], and he was lying crumpled up into a [[sort of untidy heap|Stupid stuff]], and snoring loud—“fit to snore his head off!” as Tweedledum remarked. “I’m afraid he’ll catch cold with [[lying|Dulcet tones]] on the damp grass,” said Alice, who was a very thoughtful little girl. “He’s dreaming now,” said Tweedledee: “and what do you think [[he’s dreaming about|Dreaming]]?” Alice said “Nobody can [[guess that|University]].” “Why, about you!” Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. “And if he left off dreaming about you, [[where|Cleveland]] do you [[suppose|Crisp returns]] you’d be?” “[[Where|Budapest]] I am now, of course,” said Alice. “Not you!” Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. “You’d be nowhere. Why, you’re only a sort of thing in his [[dream|Innocent ideas]]!” “If that there King [[was to wake|Waking]],” added Tweedledum, “you’d go out—bang!—just like a candle!” “I shouldn’t!” Alice exclaimed indignantly. “Besides, if I’m only a sort of thing in his dream, what are you, I should like to know?” “[[Ditto|Heaven forgets]]” said Tweedledum. “[[Ditto|No escape]], [[ditto|Innocent lives]]” cried Tweedledee. He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn’t help saying, “Hush! You’ll be waking him, I’m afraid, if you make so much noise.” “Well, it's no use your talking about waking him,” said Tweedledum, “when you’re only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you’re not [[real|Innocent lives]].” “I [[am real|Innocent deaths]]!” said Alice and began to cry.// <img src="redking.png" alt=Tenniel woodcut print drawing of a fantasy chess king curled up under a tree asleep. His long white nightcap arches over his body, his square face is not quite smiling.> And of course much later on, Alice [[wakes|Waking]] up herself and addresses her cat, who had played the Red Queen in the aforemasted dream sequence: //“Now, Kitty, let’s consider who it was that dreamed it all. This is a serious question, my dear, and you should not go on licking your paw like that—as if Dinah hadn’t washed you this morning! You see, Kitty, it must have been either me or the Red King. He was [[part of my dream|Dreaming]], of course—but then I was part of his dream, too! Was it the Red King, Kitty? You were his wife, my dear, so you ought to know—Oh, Kitty, do help to settle it! I’m sure your paw can wait!” But the provoking kitten only began on the other paw, and [[pretended it hadn’t heard the question|Lonely openings]].// <img src="alice.png" alt=Tenniel woodcut print drawing of Alice holding a black kitten to her chest in one hand and holding out a tiny chess king in the other while looking somehwat disdainfully at a mother cat washing a white kitten.> Which do you think [[it was|Enchanters face]]? Carroll, Lewis. 1871. Through the Looking Glass. Illustrations by John Tenniel. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> This is the poem Rob remembered as [[he wrote|Original words]]. We have strived to keep its distant echos near within this text. The Sea-Limits //Consider the sea's [[listless chime|The listless sea]]: Time's self it is, [[made audible|Coda]]– The murmur of the [[earth's own shell|Cleveland]]. [[Secret continuance|List your strengths]] sublime Is [[the sea's end|End game]]: our sight may pass No furlong further. Since [[time was|Heavy romances]], This sound hath told the [[lapse of time|Lonely cities]]. No quiet, which is [[death's|Coup de grace]]—it hath The mournfulness of [[ancient life|Innocent deaths]], Enduring always at [[dull strife|Inconstant directions]]. As the world's heart of rest and [[wrath|Crimson badge]], Its painful pulse is in [[the sands|Escape portal]]. Last utterly, the whole [[sky stands|Heavenly bodies]], [[Gray and not known|Innocent possessions]], along its path. Listen [[alone|The lonely sea]] beside the sea, Listen [[alone|Lonely letters]] among the woods; Those voices of twin solitudes Shall have one sound alike to thee: Hark where the [[murmurs of thronged men|Enchanter]] Surge and sink back and [[surge again|Heavy rails]]– Still the one voice of wave and tree. Gather a shell from the strown beach And listen at [[its lips|Enchanters face]]: they sigh The same desire and mystery, The echo of the whole [[sea's speech|The Whale Watch]] And all mankind is [[thus at heart|Heaven waits]] [[Not anything|Red King]] [[but what thou art|Waking]]: And Earth, Sea, Man, [[are all|Ikigai]] in each.// Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. 1850. The Sea-Limits. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> In this completely [[different story|Insane]], the little steward boy was a simple, abandoned after thought in the [[obsessive quest|Innocent obsessions]] for [[the whale|The Whale Watch]]: //“But had Stubb really abandoned [[the poor little negro |Log and Line]] to his fate? No; he did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his wake, and he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip very quickly, and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations towards oarsmen jeopardized through their own timidity, is not always manifested by the hunters in all similar instances; and such instances not unfrequently occur; almost invariably in the fishery, [[a coward|Crimson badge]], so called, is marked with the same [[ruthless detestation|Dulcet tones]] peculiar to [[military navies and armies|Grays Armory]]. But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly spying [[whales close|Escape arguments]] to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and Stubb’s boat was now so far away, and he and all his [[crew so intent|Insane]] upon his fish, that Pip’s ringed horizon began to expand [[around him miserably|Innocent ideals]]. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him; but from that hour the little negro went about [[the deck|Heaven notices]] an idiot; such, at least, they said he was. The sea had [[jeeringly kept|Deaccession]] his finite body up, but drowned the [[infinite of his soul|Ikigai]]. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the [[unwarped primal world|Innocent lives]] glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the [[miser-merman|No escape]], Wisdom, revealed his [[hoarded heaps|Parting words]]; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, [[coral insects|Innocent deaths]], that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and [[spoke it|Inconstant faith]]; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is [[heaven’s sense|Heaven waits]]; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to [[that celestial thought|Achievement]], which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God. For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. [[The thing is common|The Too Ancient Mariner]] in that [[fishery|The Sea-Limits]]; and in the [[sequel of the narrative|Innocent ideas]], it will then be seen what like [[abandonment|Waking]].”// <A HREF="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2701">Melville, Herman. 1851. Moby Dick: Or the Whale. Chapter 93. The Castaway</A> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> “[[In heaven|Heaven waits]], my child, there will be perfect peace. Perfect bodies.” A [[priest|Inconstant faith]] had intoned this once to him as he lay in his bed, scratching at the chicken pox that had sprouted suddenly throughout his flesh. He had thought the priest was telling him that he was going to [[die that night|Coup de grace]]. From that point on, his [[dreams|Dreaming]] centered on his body, matching each erupting pustule with a constellation from [[the night sky|Heaven notices]]: the stars making the goosebump patterns on his [[naked skin|Mistress of undress]] permanent. //Northeast: [[The heaving sea]]// </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> “Thar she blows!” the captain would bray every time he took his spyglass and scanned over the horizon. When Finley asked him why he did that, the Captain looked at him and said simply “I must. [[I am not crazy|Insane]]; I was only [[written that way|Innocent ideas]], to [[cleave to|Cleveland]] one particular path and [[no other forevermore|The Whale Watch]].” Ahh but [[the priest|Innocent obsessions]] would intone in Finley’s mind that the proper word is orisons, the proper stance to find [[your true calling|Ikigai]] is to look inward and [[upwards to God|Anchors of the Church]], and not out at some [[mirage of movement|Porpoises]] off on [[some fool|Rose garden]]ishly distant horizon where the [[endless sands|No escape]] meets the [[endless sea|Heavy rails]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> You reached the Jane Space. [[Go back|Consider the Sea]] and read no further. //I thought, [[niavely enough]], that I could keep this in bounds and relatively tight-laced and not color outside of the lines. But unfortunately, that goal eluded me this time. For my 2024 New Years Resolution, I vow to keep stories under control from now on. // //So I led my *[[students]] on a merry and ever complexicating dance. I told them to keep a journal of their creations, and showed this as an example. Naturally, they ran away screaming. To say this got a wee bit out of hand is like saying [[the sea|The Sea-Limits]] is a wee bit wet.// Deena 1-6-2024. Consider the Sea Deena's ongoing story creation Instructions: As you create your piece, take notes on how you will use each digital story element. Date your ideas so you can see your progress. Use your own symbols and your own way of noting how you create your story. Experiment to find what writing style works for you. ?? means that I need to address something. Title: Consider the Sea Author: Deena Larsen and Rob Swigart Format: Twine, eventually Access instructions: http://www.deenalarsen.net/cs is an early version, but will be replaced soon. Writing is at http://www.tinyurl.com/ConsiderC at the moment. Work Provide a brief description of the work. If there are elements that do not work yet, describe those and explain how they would be coded to work. (For example, I want an image map but don’t have it yet) NOTE TO DTC 354 STUDENTS This work will be a VERY large work, and I am not expecting ANYTHING at all like this complexity from you!! Whew. But I do need a place to explain and think through these concepts. And I don't want my fellow writers in 354 Digital Storytelling to do anything I would not have to do myself! Consider the Sea is a work of fiction based on a short story from Rob Swigart and other solicited writings from Rob. This was originally a story from the 1980s that was meant to be a surrealistic piece of writing (How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb? Fish.). This has morphed into a piece about searching for purpose and meaning (and perhaps finding it. Or not). Audience(s)and Purpose(s) Describe who this work is written for—who are you trying to reach? How do you want your readers to react and interact with this piece? Why did you write this, and why do you think readers will engage with it? What will readers get out of it? Note that there can be many purposes. 9/1 This work has several potential audiences and purposes: A general audience. We will probably submit this to the New Media Prize (due in February). But beyond that, we would like to appeal to an audience willing to spend some time digging about and finding connections (in other words, a digital storytelling light audience). We anticipate that these readers might spend an hour or two in the work. This audience will be looking for entertainment and an engaging story, so that they keep clicking and finding interesting materials. They do not want to be completely confused, but they do want to be able to join the treasure hunt for meaning in my characters' lives. A scholarly audience. I always get people who want to write their PhDs on my work. Their purpose is to uncover deeper truths that other readers have skipped over. So I have to lay complex thematic trails for them to follow. I need to make sure that these are consistent and deep. I also need hidden elements because that is what I am known for. Rob just wants to have fun. So we need to make this fun and engaging. Your writing strategy Describe how you developed the work. If you used AI, record the prompt, original response, and your edits. Hint: Keep this document open and provide screenshots or notes as you write the work. 9/1. My navigational images are all from MidJourney. I used various prompts over the summer and did not record them. I went through about 500 different images for about 40 different prompts before I settled on the ones I liked. My place images are all from google maps I first read through Rob's original story and then cut up his story into pieces. I put the pieces together in themes. Then I developed an overall navigational strategy centering on a compass (as Rob wanted a compass rose without directions on it). See navigation. TO DO: Research the latest copyright guidance for google maps and wikipedia commons. Digital elements Describe how digital elements work within the story. Would it be impossible to just print this out into a book and have the same experience? Why or why not? 9/1 Yeah, the amount of intricate linking and themes would make it very difficult to read as a print book. Rob tried to do this as a print story in the 1980s, but it kinda flopped a bit and his readers could not follow it. Images and video Describe what the images and videos are and how they work within the digital story. Hint: Copy and paste screenshots. 9/1 See the powerpoint for my navigational images. I put each of the 9 compass roses in powerpoint and then added the titles for each of the 64 main directional nodes. 9/2. I do want to have some secondary images and I wanted to explore the Heaven notices idea of woman as sky. This can become a hidden doorway into Frances?? Midjourney with the winning prompt of "a woman made of stars in the night sky, her spine is the Milky Way " and many variations. I may also want to do an image of the night sky as a spine with an eye. I found one and am asking for permission. I want this picture to vaguely represent her spine... One ending is that Finley does find his purpose, and it has to merge all storylines. So this becomes a hidden story map as well. I want to add in the Enchanter as an image, and maybe link to the Enchanter node here. This is a minor node and not a navigational image--so it does introduce a dissonant note. But as the Enchanter lurks behind the scenes, I thnk that is ok. Enchanter is at lower left. This was one of the images that I had discarded for the pirate. But now I want to use it as a secondary character image in the Enchanter as well. Ikigai represents a cross section of what you love, what the world needs, your skills and talents, and how you can be rewarded. So this is a reworking of the conceptual diagram. 9/5. I need to redo my navigational image for the Seducing sea, because her hair is blonde. I could try to do this in photoshop, but I really hate the lion anyway. What is it with Midjourney and circus prompts that invariably give you a lion?? I need a monkey. Many prompts later. (a compass rose with a monkey hanging on the outside of the compass. On the inside is a gorgeous woman in a skimpy tight red spangled costume. Barnum and Bailey style ) (Finally getting rid of the word circus on the prompt got rid of that damn monkey.) Red and Gray 9/3 Red traditionally breaks down into love or lust/violence and blood and danger. I could write **The distress of damsels** node (nit) so that it becomes the center node (nit) for that passion and violence. Gray is boredom, stability, uniformity, lack of imagination. It is also the fuzzy logic, the gray areas. It can also connote neutrality and practicality and control. I could write the **Innocent possessions** node (nit) so that it becomes the center for that settling down. This is going to be a grisaille, and I'll need a trail of <H3>s down to explain that. Grisaille | Flemish, Renaissance, Monochrome | Britannica I could represent and think about a spectrum of red toward passion and gray toward settling down?? Do I want this image in a hidden node?? Bury it in an H4 so that readers have to drill down pretty far to get it?? 9/4. Resolved. Do not do a spectrum but use the polar opposition thematic tension as already set by Budapest (fantasy) and Cleveland (daily life). Wrote those two nodes (nits) and searched on all instances. Blue and Brown/Yellow/Gold 9/3 These colors represent the sea and the desert, and they are mostly in the navigation image. They are not picked up in the text yet. Frances has golden hair and there is the idea of treasure as gold. Do we want them to be?? Should we write these colors into the theme?? If so, what do they represent?? And what would be the keywords?? 9/4. Yeah, blue is not in the text at all. Yet we have the ocean, sky, etc. Should blue be the background and yellow the treasure?? Wait. Can't do that, as the Enchanter/reward is done in blues. Unless I fix that in photoshop? No I do not want to fix it in Photoshop. See color analysis in navigational structure. Yellow could work as a thematic opposite to blue as Finley does not find his treasure/purpose in the blue (Heaving, Innocent, List {has the blue in middle, but brown/in edges,} --but the yellow escaping sand holds all of the endings and the Enchanter/pirate combo are blue. 9/5. Ok. Rewrite so that yellow and gold are polar opposites to blue. Yellow is the treasure, the purpose, leading to ikigai/scrimshaw/conclusions. So yellow/gold is the endless sands as well as Frances' hair, blue is the endless sea as well, so how many meanings do we want to cram in here? No. Leave this tempting opposition alone for now. See if we really need it. Sounds Describe what the sounds are and how they work within the digital story. Do they set the mood? Provide more input? 9/1 Rob wants to do sound. I told him that he should work with John Barbar this semester. I just can't. I am not sure how sound will work in this piece. It might be interesting as a mood setter and back drop, or Rob might even come up with a new dimension of meaning. It might be interesting to read a few of these nodes (nits) or link to a conversation between the Captain and the pirate, or between Finley and the Captain, or Finley and Frances, or Frances and the monkey, or even between Finley's parents. But we would have to figure out captions or something... Do we want to/can we get someone to sing PDQ Bach on <h3>Porpoises</H3>? Do you want me to sing <h3>saucy sailor lad </H3>?Woud not add much to the meaning, as this is down in the weeds? Structure Describe how the work is structured (is it linear? Multiple choice? Is there a structure map? How does the structure relate to the work itself?) 9/1. The piece begins with a single compass rose as the title page. This is an image map (and the text links are below the image map). Each of these links goes to one of 8 points on the compass rose. These are subtitles with their own compass rose, which are image maps that go to 8 main nodes (nits). Each main node has a standard "back" navigation set up that follows the order in the compass rose: **begin again|Consider the sea** Always the same, goes back to the very beginning **turn clockwise|Heavy expectations**Goes to the next node (nit) on the sub compass. Note that the end node (nit) does not have this link. **turn counterclockwise|Heavy woods]**Goes to the previous node (nit) on the sub compass. Note that the beginning node (nit) does not have this link. **review your consideration|The heaving sea]** Goes back to the sub compass rose There are two poles or "living points" (they are not ending nodes as they are inextricably linked with other text): Budapest and Cleveland. Budapest represents the fantasy life, the imagined day dreaming castles in the air. Cleveland represents the day-to-day, humdrum existence that Finley fears. There are associated subnotes with these places: Brick streets for Budapest and Cleveland Gray Armory provide a similarity and a connection between Cleveland and Budapest. So if you follow these links, you can see that these places are not so far apart after all. Navigation 9/1. Readers can navigate in many ways The very structure of the piece. Readers can click on the image map for the main sub compasses and their associated nodes (nits). Intricate linking strategies follow themes. See links. 9/3 Ending strategy! If I put a third level "end" on each of the nodes (nits) on Escaping sea, we can have eight different ways for Finley to find a purpose in life and to end the story. The escaping sea, lonely sea, and inconsistent sea all take place on land. 9/4. Ok, end points should NOT have any links out. If they do not, then the piece does truly end and that is what separates the end nodes from ordinary nodes. 9/5. Ok, I have all the links for ending in Escaping. BUT now I want to add deaccession to Finley's life work in scrimshaw (a pivotal node that is Finley's ikigai). So do I break my navigational schema (which is really subtle anyway) and add an exit node to scrimshaw as well? Or I could put scrimshaw into Escaping as another layer under Ikigai, where it would make more sense anyway than under Enchantment. Then I could link to this from Enchantment and keep my conceit of endings only in the Escaping line. Done. 9/3 Note that the third level headings will be the same as the second level headings in Twine. The only indication that they are add ons or a deeper level of thought is that they can not be reached from the main compass navigation, but are only tucked deeper into links within the main or secondary nodes (nits). Navigational thematic areas Each direction has a theme: **The escaping sea** Escape from without a plan. Also escaping to something requires leaving. This is done in yellows and a hint of blue/gray on the main figure and red on the figure behind (which could be picked out for those color nodes... if you want Frances to be on the camel... **The enchanting sea** Find happiness where you are, have many purposes. 9/5 Lead back into Conclusions from each page? Show a true enchantment? Pirate and bird are in blues and reds, behind a yellow background. **The listless sea** Ambivalence, complacency not fitting in and no motivation to fit in to the corporate world (reject corporations and they will reject you.) Heavy brown with a gray/blue/black accent in the chair **The seducing sea** The romance, life with someone, fantasies of how life could be. Sex goes here. Reds, browns, flesh, yellows, golds. **The innocent sea** Forces beyond himself, the possibilities of innocence, of beginnings. Blues and browns with one red star pointing to innocent possessions (as a very subtle counterpoint--PUT a tiny map on the red to distress of damsels) **The inconstant sea** Relationship with father, inconsistency in time, can not measure up to father’s fantasy. Gray figures, red background which they ignore. Grays and reds in the compass. **The lonely sea** the letters home, wanting a family, family abandons him, but brags about him from afar. Browns, but the figure is in reds, with a few red accet. Sea is gray. **The heaving sea** Illness, weakness, can not live up to expectations, disability. Forgetting goes here. Grays and blues with boy in blue and compass wheel in browns 9/7 I really have to think about how the polar opposites of Budapest and Cleveland are going to function within the navigation of the piece. These will be frequently visited as people find them to be destinations. ?? Do people leave the work at this point, go back to the beginning? or can these be randomly linked? I think give people both choices, but do not link on the text itself... 9/4 TO DO Add in the scrimshaw and link to **Conclusions** Should it only be Finley who does the scrimshaw? Linking themes: **Budapest** = the fantasy world. The world of possibilities, of dreams. (Brick streets here are gray with stairs) **Cleveland =**the humdrum, every day world most of us live in or settle for (settle down, raise a family) (Gray armory here is also gray with stairs, so we can dig deeper to see a similarity between the polar opposites of Budapest and Cleve(r)land). **Purpose|poirposes** orphan **Before the war]] is a dreamy time, the time that will never come back **Innocent ideas]] is the writer behind the story, breaking the third wall to the characters themselves **Heavenly bodies]] puts scars on bodies, while **Heaven notices]] uplifts Frances to the skies **forgetting|Heaven forgets** is a connection node that mentions all characters and how they forget. **abandoned|The Cast-away** is throwing Finley/the cabin boy/the steward away. This is in contrast to Finley running away and abandoning his parents and the captain. Finley is probably not the actual steward come to life. However, the captain can not distinguish between Finley (his new cabin boy) and his abandoned one. See also the footnote Log and line, Orphan’s curse, Listless sea, escape bar. People links and themes: There are major nodes (nits) used a "landing point" for each character. These are the most common links associated with that character or major character theme. **Captain|The listless sea** Obsession (forced on him by the author or by Herman Melville as a story archetype) **Finley|Heaven waits** (Heaving sea centers around Finley, BUT the main page links to Finley's mother) ran away **to sea|Heaven expects** using the sea as a theme for trying to find oneself and concentrating on barely staying above water, barely surviving. **Finley's father||Inconsistent narratives**] for a description and Inconstant fear for the emotional relationship between Finley and his father **newspaper|Inconsistent laughtee** **Finley's mother|The heaving sea** is mostly nagging Finley to get a job and run away, but has a soft spot in her heart for him anyway **Frances|The mistress of joy**. Finley's dream lover (and maybe Finley's father, as we link from Inconsistent laughter to the mistress of joy) **pirate|Enchanter** One of many pirates who sail the sea. These are interchangeable. 9/3 ??this is the same link theme as Enchanter. Should I do something different for pirates?? 9/4 No, I think this is ok as pirate and enchanter may be the same person?? 9/5. Acck. There are too many mysteries already. I know Rob wants this to be surrealistic, but I think each character needs to be distinct. So... the enchanter never actually speaks or appears except in <H3>Enchanter's face</H3>. Ok. Enchanter's face becomes a random generator, so it is a mirror navigational icon that just erupts chaos. Because... you know... chaos. **Priests|Inconstant faith**. one of many voices from Finley's childhood. (Heaven waits, Heaven expects). 9/5 Keep this as a minor character without a symbolic meaning. 9/12. No, actually create this. Prist as stand in for father, but is also inconsistent. Could be heavnly (hevenly bodies) or could be mocking. Confessions? **Enchanter|Enchanter's face**ambiguous character who everyone knows **parrot|The enchanting sea**One of many that the pirate leaves behind each time they visit. **monkey|The monkey's tale**. Rob had to have a monkey. So this is a minor footnote plot point. Random, hidden, or other elements Describe these elements and explain their role within the story. How do the hidden elements augment or subvert the main or obvious content? How do random elements work together to provide cohesive narratives or readings? What other elements did you add and how do they build meaning into the work? 9/1 (should I do a linking key word/tab hidden within the piece? hmmm...) I do not really have any jane spaces. hmmm... I do want to do some random links. I also want to have some mirror nodes (nits) that are exactly the same as the other nodes (nits) except for using female rather than male pronouns. Rob wants to play with non-gendered pronouns. Hmmmm... 9/5 The enchanter's face is a pretty hidden mirror navigational scheme, but I do want to have an explanation. What if I simply put all other images as image maps directly to the Enchanter's face as easter eggs? Do not do Jonah. Do I want to do a hidden depths? No. Make depths correspond to a color--black. But if I do that, I would need an opposite color, white... 9/13 This is a bit pedantic, but I capitalized Enchanter (male) and not mistress (female). I could change that... BUt I do have Enchanter, Enchantee, Enchantress as caps. And I want there to be only one possible mistress, while there are many possible enchanters. Or should we open up mistress and delete the "The"? Yeah, that would probably work out best, as there are multiple candidates for mistress now... Reader Interaction and Games How can readers interact with the story? Do readers select links and paths? Provide input? Play a game? How does that affect the main message? 9/1. I'll have to talk to Rob about this. I had not envisioned any real dialogue or game elements: just a click and read piece. Accessibility notes and thoughts Are there elements that depend on good vision, hearing, and mobility? How would not being able to access these elements affect someone’s reading of the work? 9/1. I must have elaborate alt text notes for all images. If Rob really wants to do sound, we'll come up with something. NOTES FOR PROOFREADING BEFORE TWINING Reread through for cohesion. Are characters consistent? Search on double spaces, spaces before the ** and the | Search on pp (error for typing **) h2 should be H2, h3 should be H3 to be consistent for coding and searchingf Be aware of: Mistress (changed from The mistress globally, check locally) Places (thematic opposites of Budapest and Cleveland) Colors (thematic opposites of red and gray) Quotes need to be in italics // Links Check format as **entrance text|destination node]]) Check titles (Only capitalize the first letter, unless a name Gray's Armory) NOTES FOR TWINING Go back to original presentation to do the jpgs and navigation as things have shifted during writing. Image maps Tiny map on red dot in Innocent to **The mistress of distress]] as counterpoint to gray innocent possessions. Do a final navigational run through as nodes have changed order Fix the directions on the alt tags as well! (Twine question answers) Hi Is there any Twine format that would provide a map to the story, in other words, where the reader would be able to see the Twine structure as a map and click on those nodes? @bkelly1984 Hi Is there any Twine format that would provide a map to the story, in other words, where the reader would be able to see the Twine structure as a map and click on those nodes? Somnium — Today at 10:22 AM Not as default functionality, but can be done in most formats Ahh. Thank you! Is there any guidance/manual for that? Thank you! //What twine format is best to support image maps and a random generator function? @bkelly1984 //What twine format is best to support image maps and a random generator function? Somnium — Today at 10:25 AM Image maps prob best in SugarCube, although you are talking about a frid-like thingy, so can be done in other formats too. Random is just a basic function in any format. As a starting point try not to think about it as "showing the passage map". You're not and won't be doing that. You will be showing an arbitrary map, because you will have system passages and other stuff that are invariably not part of it. So your framing is a bit of a red herring here. You're just looking for a clickly map really Thanks. I actually have a bit of a complex piece going on. (www.tinyurl.com/considerC is where I am writing it). I need to: 1) show the story structure (which has 8 sides and looks like an octopus). If I can show that structure, then I can have only one side contain the exits, and that will make more sense to the reader. It would be nice if the reader could click on these (just like in the Twine creating environment.) But not really necessary. 2) have an image map for each of these 8 sides that the reader can click on. This is the main mode of navigation through the piece 3) have a random generator in only one portion I am writing the content at the moment, but planning to port to Twine pretty soon. Thank you! — Today at 10:30 AM It doesn't sound complex, just keep in mind that you're building what the player sees independently of what's going under the hood. Yes, I was afraid of that. I would like the reader to see the entire structure at once. I may have to just do a screenshot of the structure and then render that as an image map. Sigh.he reason to show the structure is to explain the story elements in a visual way. nium — Today at 10:37 AM You can also have them open it in Twine if viewing the underlying structure is a core part Crepes — Today at 10:38 AM If the structure doesn't change, you may be able to implement recreating some sort of system using its exported twee file. In a twee file, I believe passages contain info on how they would be laid out on the Twine storymap </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> He woke as he always did from these vivid dreams, replete with a headache. He stumbled to the bathroom, palmed two aspirin dryly into his mouth, shaved without cutting his cheek into blood, and decided not to brush his teeth. He got dressed, kissed his wife and two tiny children perfunctorily, and left this story behind for work. [[The End]] </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> [[Someone completely different|Innocent ideas]] in another age was also sipping strong drinks at [[a bar |Escape portal]] and adjuring his fellow drinkers that: //Ale, man, ale's the [[stuff to drink|The enchanting sea]] For fellows whom it [[hurts to think|Red King]]: Look into the pewter pot To see the world as the [[world’s not|Before the war]].// And then [[confessing|Enchantee]]: //Oh I have been to [[Ludlow fair|Mistress of ceremonies]] And [[left my necktie|Mistress of undress]] God knows where, And carried half-way [[home|Lonely letters]], or [[near|Lonely streets]], Pints and quarts of [[Ludlow beer|Escape portal]]: Then the world seemed none [[so bad|Heavy rails]], And I myself a [[sterling lad|Innocent lives]]; And down in [[lovely muck|Porpoises]] I've lain, Happy till I [[woke again|Egress]].// And then realizing that: //Heigho, the tale was all [[a lie|Escape bar]]; The world, it was the old world yet, I was I, my things were wet.// Houseman, A.E. 1896. Terrence , This is Stupid Stuff. Terence, This is Stupid Stuff by Alfred Edward Housman (poetry.com) </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> In these types of tales, there is usually a coda, a sound bite that contains the entire meaning. When Finley had been forced to read these texts in school, he often wondered why the authors didn’t just say what they meant to say in the first few words and be done with the whole thing. The answer was always something no one could teach him. [[The End]] </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Finley stayed with the caravan master that night and many nights after that, plodding through the endless deserts and simply staring at the stars he could not reach and noting their patterns, which had nothing to do with humanity in the first place. “Ah Finley-Seedee,” the caravan master intoned as they both lay on the warm sands cooling into the night, “what do you envision as the end?” Finley did not answer for a long time. He stared up at night skies instead, watching the silence of the galaxies spin above him in an infinite dance. Finally, one of them spoke: “There is no end in the end. Our very souls continue either here again or there. The universe we see is but an invisible dust mote for someone on some other plane, a tiny grain of sand in a larger desert, swirling about in complex patterns we can only guess at here. And that larger desert in turn has its skies, its galaxies, its universes and may well only be a tiny grain in a yet larger desert and on beyond infinities of infinities.” “Or perhaps this galaxy is the dust mote in the center square in an unimaginably immense chess board.” one of them continued after a time. “I would not go that far,” the other replied. [[The End]] </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> The caravan master stirred slightly in Finley’s arms, weak from the loss of his blood, which was now covering most of Finley’s filthy Djellabah and running down the camel’s side. Finley pulled the dagger from the caravan master’s back. The blood, which had been sluggishly clotting, now streamed out freely once more. Finley ordered the camel to kneel and climbed off of its back. He stood over the camel and laid the caravan master onto the low kneeling back of the camel, turning him over so he could face the sky, face the east one final time. “I had a purpose once,” the caravan master whispered, so softly that Finley could barely distinguish between his words and the wind. “I no longer do.” Finley nodded, even though the caravan master’s eyes remained glued shut from sweat and could take in nothing more. “Finish my life for me,” the caravan master continued, gurgling now and gasping for breath. Finley nodded again, unable to speak as he did so. [[The End]] </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> It could have been any war, or no actual war at all. For the fevered dream of glory is always so distant from reality. And it is only in poems that the quote// “[[dulce est decorum|Dulcet tones]] est por patrium mori”// has any meaning at all. This is a snippet from [[someone else|Innocent ideas]]’s [[dream|Red King]], but it will serve for his as well. //He had, of course, [[dreamed of battles|Mistress of distress]] all his life—of vague and bloody conflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and [[fire|Mistress of undress]]. In visions he had seen himself [[in many struggles|The Whale Watch]]. He had imagined people secure in the shadow of his eagle-eyed prowess. But awake he had regarded battles as [[crimson blotches|Dear Brutus]] on the pages [[of the past|Mistress of the past]]. He had put them as things of the bygone eras with his thought-images of [[heavy crowns and high castles|Budapest]]. There was a portion of the [[world’s history|Ozymandias]] which he had regarded as the time of wars, but it, he thought, [[had been long gone|Before the war]] over the horizon and had [[disappeared forever|End game]].// Crane, Stephen. 1895. //The Red Badge of Courage//. Chapter 1. The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>Enchanter's face</h3> I knew you would [[navigate|Innocent tides]] [[here|Cleveland]]. [[I wrote|Innocent ideas]] [[that you would|Enchantee]] want to see the face [[behind it all|Waking]]. [[And this is probably|Mistress of undress]] [[not the one|The inconstant sea]] [[you are|Lonely closings]] [[searching|Ozymandias]] [[for|Ikigai]]. [[Click on|Consider the Sea]] [[his golden|Red lips]] [[blue|Innocent deaths]] [[augury ball|Enchantment]] [[and travel again|Budapest]]. (set: _allPassages to (array: "Consider the sea", "Cleveland", "Budapest", "The listless sea", "The Sea-Limits", "List seaward", "List landward", "List starboard", "Dreaming", "List to port", "List your skills", "CV", "List your strengths", "Red King", "List your interests", "List your accomplishments", "The inconstant sea", "Inconsistent excuses", "Inconsistent fathers", "Brick streets", "Inconsistent laughter", "Inconsistent narratives", "Cuyahoga River", "Euclid Avenue", "Monument", "Inconstant directions", "Inconstant faith", "Inconstant memories", "Inconstant fear", "The seducing sea", "Sweetheart of serials", "Cloistress of innocence", "Innocent voyages", "Mistress of undress", "Mistress of distress", "Hennin", "Mistress of ceremonies", "Mistress of the past", "Red lips", "Before the war", "Mistress of the future", "Mistress of joy", "The heaving sea", "Gray’s Armory", "Heavy romances", "Heavy woods", "Heavy rails", "Log and Line", "Heavy expectations", "Heaven waits", "Heaven forgets", "The Cast-away", "Heaven notices", "Heavenly bodies", "The escaping sea", "End game", "Plodded", "Escape artist", "Terminals", "Escape arguments", "Ozymandias", "Peroration", "Escape bar", "Looming", "Scrimshaw", "Conclusions", "Escape portal", "Whisky berbers", "Stupid stuff", "Egress", "Escape doom", "Seedee", "Coup de grace", "Escape questions", "Coda", "Escape clause", "Parting words", "University", "No escape", "Lead the way", "Waking", "The lonely sea", "Lonely closings", "Lonely streets", "The monkeys tale", "Lonely shades", "Not there", "Lonely letters", "Danube", "Lonely purposes", "Porpoises", "Lonely hearts", "Lonely cities", "Lonely openings", "The enchanting sea", "Enchanter", "Enchanter’s face", "Enchantee", "Words", "Enchantment", "Enchantress", "The Too Ancient Mariner", "An orphan’s curse", "Sea chantey", "Sea chancey", "Incantation", "Invocation", "Dead Man’s Chest", "Saucy Sailor Lad", "The innocent sea", "The Whale Watch", "Achievement", "Achievements", "Innocent tides", "Dear Brutus", "Innocent times", "Innocent ideas", "Insane", "Innocent ideals", "Innocent lives", "Cyprids", "Innocent deaths", "Anchors of the Church", "Innocent obsessions", "Rose garden", "Dont you see", "Orizon", "Innocent possessions", "Brain colors")) (link-goto:'<img src="enchanterface.png" alt="a similar figure to the captain with a curly long gray beard. He is dressed in blue, holding a ball and wand. Behind him are the masts and crow nests of two sailing ships and he is leaning slightly out of a circle that glows." usemap="#map-enchantersface">', (shuffled: ..._allPassages)'s 1st) (link-goto: "... or click here to go to a random passage.", (shuffled: ..._allPassages)'s 1st) </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> The captain (in a different life, but still compelled within [[his own story|Innocent ideas]]) and the [[Parsee|Enchanters face]] (who some scholars have termed the devil, but who the captain had brought on board anyway and was probably just a [[passing pirate|The enchanting sea]]) were whispering on the deck, searching [[the stars|Heavenly bodies]], the [[universe|End game]], for some recognition that they would live [[beyond this moment|Ozymandias]]. The Parsee started to [[prophesy|Wheel]], and this is their conversation. //“But I said, old man, that ere thou couldst die on this voyage, two hearses must verily be seen by thee on the sea; the first not made by mortal hands; and the [[visible wood|Heavy woods]] of the last one must be grown in America.” “Aye, aye! a strange sight that, Parsee:—a hearse and its plumes floating over the ocean with the [[waves|Heavy rails]] for the pall-bearers. Ha! Such a sight we shall not soon see.” “Believe it or not, [[thou canst not die|Egress]] till it be seen, old man.” “And what was that saying about thyself?” “Though it come to the last, I shall [[still go before|Parting words]] thee as thy pilot.” “And when thou art so gone before—if that ever befall—then ere I can follow, thou must still appear to me, to pilot me still?—Was it not so? Well, then, did I believe all ye say, oh my pilot! I have here two pledges that I shall yet slay Moby Dick and survive it.” “Take another pledge, old man,” said the Parsee, as his eyes lighted up like fire-flies in the gloom—“Hemp only can kill thee.” “The gallows, ye mean.—I am [[immortal|Enchanters face]] then, on land and on sea,” cried Ahab, with a laugh of derision;—“[[Immortal|End game]] on land and on sea!” Both were silent again, as one man. The [[grey dawn|Innocent possessions]] came on, and the slumbering crew arose from the boat’s bottom, and ere noon [[the dead whale|Achievement]] was brought to the ship.// <A HREF="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm">Melville, Herman. 1851. Moby Dick: Or the Whale. Chapter 117. The Whale Watch.</A> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> The caravan carried [[ancient scrolls|Ozymandias]] from across many lands, a traveling litany of ideas that Finley had never come across in his upbringing in [[Cleveland]]. The words contained so much more than his father’s [[newspaper clippings|Inconsistent laughter]]. And in one dusty, vibrantly colored scroll, Finley finally found what he was looking for. A map to his true purpose in life, something that he could bury in his [[very spine|Heaven notices]], something to hold true in his soul for his entire life. Maybe even something he could leave behind for [[future generations|Deaccession]]. The concept was so foreign to Finley because his native language did not hold this thought, this strand of life. And yet it was so simple. Every person has an innate purpose, an innate passion. They find themselves [[in tune with it|Innocent obsessions]]. They create a song they can [[dance to|Sea chantey]] and infuse joy and meaning in their lives. They live, in short, long and purposeful lives. The Ikigai-ness of his role in the [[universe|End game]]. The scroll informed him that there is a purpose in every life, which lies at the intersection of what you love, what the world needs, what you can be rewarded for, and what you can become skilled at. And Finley knew this was [[the truth|Conclusions]] he had been seeking. Thus, he stole the scroll. He opened the only present that the [[captain|The listless sea]] had ever bestowed upon him: his [[scrimshaw carving|Scrimshaw]] set. Tenderly, he lifted his [[knife|Coup de grace]], his [[barnacle shards|Innocent deaths]], his [[bone|Dead Man’s Chest]] pieces and put this scroll beneath them all. With these treasures firmly lodged in his pack, Finley went off to explore the interstices of his existence, [[whistling all the way|Saucy Sailor Lad]] in. <img src="ikigai.png" alt=a venn diagram of four circiles: Love with the nearly transparent face of the seductress, need with the impaled body of Finley, Skills with the desert camel and what may be the caravan master with Finley and reward with the enchanters face.these circles intersect to form a true life purpose> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> His core being seemed listless, languid, and unmoving. He could never [[wake up|Waking]], never move, never progress in this mad quest for [[purpose|Porpoises]], but only sleep. He shifted in his sleep, finding a more comfortable knot in his hammock in the creaking [[fo’c’sle|Heavy expectations]] or amongst the [[soft sheets|Innocent possessions]] of his childhood or even a [[less worn place|Lonely streets]] on his mattress in the traffic on [[Euclid Avenue]]. It was times like these that he was never sure if he wanted to remember [[Cleveland]] or long for [[Budapest]] [[before the war|Before the war]]. He slept on, paralyzed in [[indecision|Escape doom]] and [[imprecision|Innocent possessions]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> This, too, is a [[different story|Innocent ideas]] of a [[man marooned|Innocent ideals]] in the endless seas, unable to [[land|Escape portal]], unable to [[live|Ikigai]], unable to [[dream|Dreaming]], unable to [[wake|Waking]]. Like the [[captain|The Whale Watch]], he is obsessed with his crimes. //And I had done a [[hellish thing|Dulcet tones]], And it would work 'em [[woe:|Crimson badge]] For all averred, I had [[killed|Coup de grace]] [[the bird|Dear Brutus]] That made [[the breeze to blow|The listless sea]].// Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1834. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> These [[immortal|Budapest]] and [[enduring questions|Innocent voyages]] were always answered in his head by an earworm, the ending of a long choral [[story|Saucy Sailor Lad]] he had heard once about a zookeeper arrested for tranquilizing and stepping over some lions to get [[baby birds|The Too Ancient Mariner]] to calm [[erotically sporting|Mistress of joy]] porpoises. //But officer, what’s the charge? Transporting young gulls across sedated lions for [[immoral|Mistress of ceremonies]] porpoises// PDQ Bach, S4-1 Knock, Knock Cantata For Soloists, Chorus And Orchestra (hey, it played well in [[Cleveland]]. Even got a laugh). </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> “Ahh [[Budapest]] before the war. When the Kaiser was [[happy|Words]].” [[She|Mistress of the past]] would always proclaim, right before they kissed. This was the place she dwelt in, the colored-in memories of its [[high gray bricked streets|Brick streets]], its [[universities|University]] musty with centuries of unread books. This was the city of ancient, curving streets, of roman baths still flowing in warm mosaicked patterns under the streets. The smell of pastries with their inevitable [[cherry-red|Mistress of distress]] fillings that spilled over into your best white shirts, the [[gray rain|Grays Armory]] falling straight down and running through the [[carved steps|Brick streets]].” Surely, she said to him, smoothing his hair and running his fingers lightly down his back. Surely you remember this. [[Her memories|Cloistress of innocence]], [[his dreams|Dreaming]] of course, were [[completely different|Dont you see]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Whatever his actions had been, he regretted them now. Someone had told him of a Twitter bot that searched out regrets and turned them into egrets. But Twitter had died centuries ago, well before newspapers had come on the scene. Or even television or the internet for that matter. Honestly, he got his centuries confused with his millenia, which were hopelessly entangled in his knotty thoughts of a moment ago. In any case, the media was dead now. You could turn regrets into egrets into egresses with what you have, he sternly admonished himself, almost as if he were the captain. Carve your own way out of this mad mess. And so he took his scrimshaw set and carved there, in the desert, a beautiful egret from his tears of regret. He then created a few curved lines and behold, he had his egress. Which he then used eagerly. [[The End]] </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> //Oh, come my own one, come my fond one Come [[my dearest|Mistress of ceremonies]] unto me, [[Will you wed|The seducing sea]] with a poor sailor lad That's just returned from [[t’sea|The heaving sea]]? O you are dirty, love, you are ragged, love, And you are dirty, [[love|Mistress of undress]], So begone you saucy sailor boy, So begone you, [[Jack Tar|The enchanting sea]], If [[I'm dirty|Escape questions]], love, if I'm ragged, love, and I'm dirty, [[dove|Sweetheart of serials]] I've got [[silver|Innocent possessions]] in my pocket, love, And [[gold|Enchantee]] on [[carved shores|Scrimshaw]]. When [[she heard him|Mistress of joy]] say so, Down on her bended knees she fell, She says, I will love my dear Henry, [[I will love|Sweetheart of serials]] my [[sailor lad|The heaving sea]] well. Do you think I am foolish, love? Do you think I am mad? For to wed with a poor country girl, Where there's [[no fortune|No escape]] to be had. So I'll cross the [[briny ocean|The inconstant sea]], Where the [[deserts are so dry|The escaping sea]], And since you have refused [[my offer|The listless sea]], love, [[Some other girl|The seducing sea]] shall wear [[my ring|Mistress of joy]]. I am frolicsome, I am easy, Good-tempered [[and free|The innocent sea]], And I don't care a single penny [[boys|Stupid stuff]], What [[the world thinks|Deaccession]] on me.// Firth c.13(240), Bodleian Collection, H. Such, London, c. 1863-1885. [[Modified|Innocent ideas]]'. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> This is of course, [[an entirely different story|Innocent ideas]] fragment. //I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, [[his sea-chest|Scrimshaw]] following behind him in a hand-barrow—a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his [[soiled blue coat|Enchanters face]], his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, [[livid white|Red lips]]. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old [[sea-song |Invocation]] that he sang so often afterwards: “Fifteen men on the [[dead man’s chest|Dear Brutus]]— Yo-ho-ho, and a [[bottle of rum!|Stupid stuff]]” in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the [[capstan bars|Escape bar]]. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a [[glass of rum|Stupid stuff]].// Stevenson, Robert Louis. 182. Treasure Island, The Old Sea-dog at the “Admiral Benbow” The Project Gutenberg eBook of Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Course of life. Curriculum vitae. The paper that [[defines you|Ikigai]]. //Dos and Don’ts:// [[DO|Lonely streets]]. Make your CV visually appealing. Look at how others have done their CV. Ask for examples. Follow [[the crowd|Cleveland]]. DON’T. Don't be funny. The CV is [[not the place for humor|Consider the Sea]] or being “cute.” Life [[is serious|University]]. [[Button up|Innocent deaths]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> The captain was insane, madly obsessed with his quest for the [[white cetacean|The Whale Watch]]. He saw Mr. Stubb about new lines after [[Chapter 125|Log and Line]], but could not read past that point, that moment of glory. For the captain knew he had to live for [[the boy|An orphan’s curse]]. But that was part of a completely different story, and the words are those I can not change. [[I write|Innocent ideas]] over these weaker lines. I hide them in [[dusty papers|Scarlet]] on the back of the shelf, not willing to call up Ishmael or the maelstrom [[again|Universal thump]] and [[again|An orphan’s curse]] without [[end|Egress]]. Stay on your own side of the story here. [[Stop thinking|Cleveland]]. Stop [[linking|Budapest]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> //These are the words I leave you with//, the small, filthy man in the desert entoned, just before whipping his camel into a frenzy and leaving Finley stranded in the middle of the desert. [[The End]] </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> In this completely [[different story|Insane]], when the cabin boy has just been rescued, after countless days at sea and the captain cries out: //“There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens! look down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have [[abandoned|Heaven forgets]] him, ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab’s cabin shall be Pip’s home henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my [[inmost centre|Ikigai]], boy; thou art tied to me by cords woven of [[my heart-strings|Lonely letters]]. Come, let’s down.” Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in [[man all ill|The Whale Watch]], lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the [[sweet things of love|Mistress of distress]] and gratitude. Come! I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped [[an Emperor’s|Dear Brutus]]!” “There go two daft ones now,” muttered the old Manxman.“ One [[daft with strength|List your strengths]], the other [[daft with weakness|Heavy rails]]. But here’s [[the end of the rotten line|Escape clause]]—all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have [[a new line altogether|Consider the Sea]]. I’ll see Mr. Stubb about it.”// <A HREF="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm">Melville, Herman. 1851. Moby Dick: Or the Whale.Chapter 125 The Log and The Land</A> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> As he flew on and on through the heavenly stars, the listless seas, the scintillating sands, he radioed the control towers at regular intervals. His engine thumped and sputtered and groaned. But he received no answers from any terminal. And when the radio died with a final faint crackling, he knew he had come to [[the end|The End]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> He had always wanted to have the last word. The final say. But when it came time to make his points, to actually say what he had come to say, to thrill his audience with his audacity, he found himself speechless. He turned and left his story in silence. [[The End]] </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Finley's mother had shouted at him: What [[happens after|Deaccession]] you have [[achieved|List your accomplishments]] [[your purpose|Ikigai]] in life? [[Or|Enchanters face]] [[in death|The Whale Watch]]? </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> At an ordinary auction of works in an ordinary auction house, this [[little scrimshaw|Scrimshaw]] was shown for sale. A passing girl, [[who was not Frances|Mistress of joy]], but who might have been her descendent, loved this [[scrimshaw|Conclusions]] at first sight. As she was the only bidder, she took this home and kept it on [[her bedroom table|Cleveland]], staring into [[the depths|Budapest]] and wondering about [[the mystery that had been his life|Consider the Sea]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Unlike Finley, who had never had [[anyone prophesy|Escape doom]] about him, people already knew that Oedipus would [[kill his father|Dear Brutus]]. After all, it was [[written|Innocent ideas]] in indelible ink across the [[stars|Heavenly bodies]]. And unlike [[Finley’s father|Inconstant fear]], Oedipus’ [[true father|Lonely closings]] did something about the prophecy so that he could cheat [[his death|Coup de grace]]: he pierced his infant son’s feet and tied them together so that he could never [[walk|Plodded]], never sail the [[sea|The heaving sea]], never find his [[destiny|Ikigai]]. And that gave Oedipus his name: swollen feet (from //oidan// "to swell" (which comes to us in proper English as edema) and //ped// “foot”) which we know is quite pedestrian, as the need to [[put one foot in front of the other|Plodded]], to just [[get through life|Cleveland]]. //Sometimes this [[limping|Iamb]] is all we can manage//. Finley thought to himself, centuries later. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> “My father read [[newspapers|Inconsistent laughter]]. He was a [[father|Lonely closings]] on [[television|Inconsistent excuses]], in the nineteen fifties, which were [[gray with nebulous fog|Innocent possessions]], like the [[coasts|Lonely letters]] or like [[brick streets|Brick streets]] of [[Budapest]] in the rain.” He explained this on more than one occasion. Sometimes he went on to elaborate that his father had been on radio in the 30s or always in the [[newspapers|Inconsistent laughter]] in the teens [[before the war|Before the war]] was a famous novelist in Victorian times, publishing cliffhangers in [[serials|Sweetheart of serials]]. The times were inconsistent, the stories [[wilder|Enchanter]] and [[wilder|Enchantee]] each time he told his tale or [[rolled the die|Enchanters face]]. For he could not find [[a footing|Ikigai]] in any real [[place or time|End game]]. The truth, as he sometimes remembered it, was that he lived in [[the now|Sea chantey]], and his father lived in [[the then|Sea chancey]]. <img src="brick.png" alt=Google map image closeup of a corner of a cathedral with an unlit lamp. There is a vague figure of a man sitting on the stone steps of the entrance way, ihs face blurred.> <A HREF="https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5023414,19.0344741,3a,75y,181.92h,73.92t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1svy1w8WGWRXtT640laICapw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3Dvy1w8WGWRXtT640laICapw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D165.22456%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu">Google Maps</A> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Finley [[met the monkey|Lonely streets]] again one Thursday night in [[the bar|Escape bar]], in a glass cage set up high above the window. The monkey was small but highly trained: already it had stolen a car and killed the driver. The monkey weighed in at two kilos, the driver at 73. The monkey had thrown the man out of the car, then had gleefully sped over him and then reversed, doing it again. Afterwards the monkey became a legend. He had won the car chase, and had spent his time in a run down hotel on [[Euclid Avenue]] in [[Cleveland]], waiting for an opportunity to slip out unnoticed by the police and run away with the [[circus|Mistress of ceremonies]]. He had managed that in the middle of a parade down the street to [[Grays Armory]], when the police were otherwise occupied. He hopped [[pirate vessels|Enchanter]] and [[desert caravans|Escape arguments]], traveling the world. Once he had reached [[Budapest]] he sought out the circus and attached himself to [[Frances|Mistress of joy]]. The monkey enjoyed the circus. He dressed in a [[silvery gray|Innocent possessions]] tuxedo, with the customary [[scarlet|Scarlet]] cap rode behind Frances as she strutted about in her [[electric red|Mistress of distress]] sequined bathing suit and waved from the trained horse. When she did a handstand on the saddle, He jumped up onto her feet and danced a hornpipe. Later, after the show, she would let her fingers drift through his fur and spoke of the [[sea|The seducing sea]] and the sharp clean tang of the salt water, the hardness of the [[barnacles encrusting|Innocent deaths]] [[the decks|Heaven notices]]. Frances lent him to [[the bar |Escape bar]] every Sunday night to be caged and displayed as some sort of private joke, but the monkey never knew or cared who or what was [[behind the joke|Inconsistent laughter]]. The monkey drank his cocktails and stretched his arms out to grab peanuts whenever he could. He stayed silent, his small beady eyes (quick with intelligence) on [[Frances|Mistress of joy]], watching her long fingers as they twisted Finley’s hair (which was not quite a [[flaming red|Mistress of distress]] in the bar light, reflecting off a neon sign proclaiming a beer he could not read.) </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> When he returned to [[Cleveland]], he was told that the river burning was a myth, or that it had been a common enough occurrence in those days and was not worth writing about, or obsessing over. He himself did not go to look at the river as it was now, even though it was only a few blocks from his rundown hotel at the end of [[Euclid Avenue]], where the [[Soldiers|Crimson badge]] and Sailors [[Monument|Monument]] held sway. His [[imagination|Budapest]] could not stretch [[so far|University]]. <img src="riverburning.png" alt=Image of a river on fire, the only color is the fire on the water, and the reflections of the fire. The bridge seems to lead us directly into the flames.> Ohio Central files </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Like [[barnacles|Innocent deaths]], some medieval devotees or penitents or sacred souls would be called to [[prayers forever|Orizon]]. They sought to escape their lives by being walled up into the stone cells of the [[church|Inconstant faith]], never leaving their sanctuaries, even after [[death|Achievements]]. They were “//anchored under the church like an anchor under the side of a ship to hold the ship, so that waves and storms do not capsize it. Just so all of the [[Holy Church|Heaven expects]] (which is described as a ship) should anchor on the anchoress, for her to hold it so that the devil’s blasts, which [[are temptations|Innocent obsessions]], do not blow it over.//” Wellesley, Mary. 2018. The life of the anchoress. British Library. <A HREF="https://www.bl.uk/medieval-literature/articles/the-life-of-the-anchoress"> Quoting from Ancrene Wisse: A Guide for Anchoresses Based on Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 402, ed. and trans. Bella Millett (Exeter, University of Exeter Press, 2000), p. 56.</A> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> The captain had often crossed over into [[this unhappy tale|Enchantment]], and this is the secret reason he [[rescued any orphan|Log and Line]] he could. //An [[orphan's curse|Enchanters face]] would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is the curse in a [[dead man's|Coup de grace]] eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that [[curse|Enchantee]], And yet I could [[not die|The Whale Watch]].// Coleridge, Samuel Talylor. 1834. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> The iconic princess cap is more properly termed a “hennin” was what he had learned on a tour of the [[University in Debrecen|Escape clause]]. It had only been popular for a few years in the 1400s, but the cap figured prominently in his imagination. Possibly because it would have been easy to construct it, [[easy to knock it off|Mistress of undress]] and the iconic princess cap took him out of his own time and into [[the fantasy that never was|Mistress of distress]]. <img src="hennin.png" alt=a medieval illustration of a demure woman dressed in red, looking downward. Her tall princess cap is a richly embrodiered creation, and translucent folds fall down to veil her face in sunlight.> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Bequeath us to [[no earthly shore|Escape portal]] until Is answered in the vortex of [[our grave|Dead Man’s Chest]] [[The seal’s|Porpoises]] wide spindrift gaze toward paradise. ... Infinite [[consanguinity|Crimson badge]] it bears— This tendered theme of you that light Retrieves from sea plains where the sky [[Resigns a breast|Cloistress of innocence]] that [[every wave|Heavy romances]] enthrones; While ribboned water lanes I wind Are laved and scattered with [[no stroke|The listless sea]] Wide from your side, whereto this hour The sea lifts, also, [[reliquary hands|Anchors of the Church]]. Crane, Hart. 1926. Voyages II and III. From White Buildings: Poems. United States: Boni & Liveright. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> This is of course, an [[entirely different story fragment|The Whale Watch]]. //I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, [[his sea-chest|Scrimshaw]] following behind him in a hand-barrow—a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his [[soiled blue coat|Enchanters face]], his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, [[livid white|Red lips]]. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old [[sea-song |Invocation]] that he sang so often afterwards: “Fifteen men on the [[dead man’s chest|Dear Brutus]]— Yo-ho-ho, and a [[bottle of rum!|Stupid stuff]]” in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the [[capstan bars|Escape bar]]. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a [[glass of rum|Stupid stuff]].// Stevenson, Robert Louis. 182. Treasure Island, The Old Sea-dog at the “Admiral Benbow” The Project Gutenberg eBook of Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> The captain saw Finley idling on the deck, exhausted from scraping the shells of barnacles from the oakum ropes that pricked his fingers, from the [[rails|Heavy rails]] and [[scuppers|Heavy woods]] from the ship’s splintered figurehead of a [[circus tightrope walker|Mistress of ceremonies]] holding onto a [[monkey|The monkeys tale]]. “My boy,” he boomed, clasping Finley roundly about the throat, “you [[need an occupation|Ikigai]]. Something to pass these long and boring hours of life.” He stomped up to his cabin and came back a moment later. Shoving the battered box at Finley, he took off for the helm. “Make [[something of yourself|Achievement]] with that, boy.” He gave his [[parting words|Parting words]]. Finley opened the box to find a scrimshaw set: a carving knife, a black pencil, a honing stone, ink applicators, and a steel-point scribe. It was a handsome set and he would [[treasure|Conclusions]] it all of his life [[and even beyond|Legacy]]. The first piece he made, from a rib bone of a passing pirate’s skeleton, was too fragile and broke. But the thigh bone made a beautiful carving of the one [[he imagined he loved|The seducing sea]]. <img src="scrimshaw.png" alt=an intricately carved bone of a beautiful innocent girl with a skull that might be a monkey or perhaps a pirate lurking over her shoulder. The girl is not smiling.> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> This was probably a [[completely different|Innocent ideas]] [[fantasy|Red King]] entirely. After all, red lips and golden hair are common enough tropes in literature. //Her lips were [[red|Mistress of distress]], her looks [[were free|Sweetheart of serials]], Her locks were [[yellow as gold|Mistress of ceremonies]]: Her skin was as [[white as leprosy|Dead Man’s Chest]], The Night-mare [[LIFE-IN-DEATH|Dulcet tones]] was she, Who thicks man's [[blood|Crimson badge]] with cold.// Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1834. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Part 1. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Finley found his true purpose in the scrimshaw he had been working on, holding through his life. It was right there, carved in his bones. He embraced it and knew his true worth. This was the final conclusion, the only proof he ever needed that his existence was worthwhile. But he could never carve enough, never have enough bone. Whale bone was too hard to find, narwhale too legendary, and elephant ivory had been outlawed a month ago, a millenium ago. He had to think big, to think beyond his lifetime. And so he left both the sea and the sand, both his childhood in Cleveland and his dreams of Budapest in an endless quest for his ultimate work. So he searched for a long time, for a second, for forever, for the long-fabled elephant graveyard. When he had found what he was looking for, he built a tiny hut for himself and stayed there all the rest of his days, carving out an immense, intricate ossuary cathedral from the bone of everything that had gone before him. And he was, for the most part, content with this. [[The End]] </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> In poetry, this is one short foot, one short syllable followed by a long syllable. The Latin is //iambus// and it infers that the walker is a cripple, one short hop on the bad leg, one long hop on the better leg. And thus, like [[Oedipus]] who [[shadows this story|Innocent ideas]], we limp through [[history|Crimson badge]] until [[we have done|Achievement]] what we set out [[to do|Ikigai]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> There are [[some writings|Innocent ideas]] that have steeped so deeply into our consciousness that everyone knows the surface by heart. Yet few delve deeper into this [[conspiracy of immortality|The Whale Watch]]. Cassius is of course, jealous of [[Caesar|Enchanters face]] and his [[accomplishments|Achievement]] and [[blames|The innocent sea]] their fates not on the tides or stars, but in their [[unwillingness to change|Innocent deaths]] their positions with an [[assassination|Coup de grace]]. //Why, man, he doth bestride the [[narrow world|Stupid stuff]] Like a Colossus, and we [[petty men|Inconsistent excuses]] Walk under his [[huge legs|Ozymandias]] and [[peep about|Plodded]] To find ourselves dishonorable [[graves|Innocent deaths]]. Men at some time are [[masters|Ikigai]] of their [[fates|Enchantment]]. The fault, dear Brutus, [[is not in our stars|Innocent tides]], But in ourselves, that we are [[underlings|Lonely streets]].// <A HREF]"https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/julius-caesar/read/1/2/?q=Colossus#line-1.2.142?">Shakespeare, William. 1599. Julius Caesar. Act 1, Scene 2.</A> Julius Caesar - Entire Play | Folger Shakespeare Library </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Finley’s mother tore this out of a [[newspaper|Inconsistent laughter]] and put it under his pillow when she yelled at him to [[get a job|Lonely streets]], to make something of himself. She never knew if he had [[seen it|Deaccession]]. He had kept this passage on the inside of his travelling case forever. He had torn it out of a [[newspaper|Inconsistent laughter]] too long ago to remember: //What [[happens after|Deaccession]] you have [[achieved|List your accomplishments]] [[your purpose|Ikigai]] in life? [[Or|Enchanters face]] [[in death|The Whale Watch]]?// Once he asked the camel what it meant. But the camel answered [[“Blarrgh”|Escape questions]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Finley plodded his way through the desert, one foot, one [[iamb|Iamb]] after another, [[his feet swelling|Oedipus]] with every step, limping ever onward until he reached [[the end of the sands|End game]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Having never studied Arabic, let alone Darija, Finley never knew what the word “Seedee” or Sidi meant. He thought it might refer to a seediness about his character, or maybe that he was a seed meant to be planted in solid ground and not shifting sands or heaving seas. The [[caravan master|Escape bar]] alone knew why he would use such an honorific as Seedee with someone who could not possibly comprehend the [[history|Dulcet tones]] that word brought to the forefront of his mind. In short, Finley could not see himself as a [[Sidi|End game]], despite what others called him. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> A different author asserted this. [[I|Innocent ideas]] am not sure of its truth, but if it is true, then it would be [[universally true|Universal thump]], or at least hold sway wherever you are. //Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will [[infallibly lead you|Ozymandias]] to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your [[caravan|Escape doom]] happen to be supplied with a [[metaphysical professor|Escape arguments]]. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.// Melville, Herman. 1851. Moby Dick: Or the Whale. Chapter 1. Loomings. The Project Gutenberg eBook of Moby Dick; Or the Whale, by Herman Melville </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Finley’s [[work|Conclusions]] did, indeed, [[live after him|Ozymandias]] after a fashion. This piece had been the pride of the Hungarian National Gallery [[before the war|Before the war]] in [[Budapest]] as it had then been ascribed to Lajos Tihanyi. After the war, of course, this was disproved, and Finley’s [[life work|Achievement]] lay in a forgotten drawer marked for [[deaccession|Deaccession]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> In the desert, this is the water of life, the true meaning of life. The flavor from the [[gunpowder|Crimson badge]] green tea gets stronger as the tea steeps, and the caravan master used to [[croon this saying|Sea chantey]] every morning and every evening as he saluted the sun with his Whisky berber: //The first glass is as bitter as [[life|Innocent obsessions]], The second is as strong as [[love|Mistress of undress]], The third is as soothing as [[death|Coup de grace]].// This is how he made the tea, a ritual handed down from his father, who was nothing like [[Finley’s|Inconstant fear]] and who had never been written about in [[newspapers|Inconsistent laughter]] or anywhere else. Put chinese green tea, fresh mint and fresh wormwood into a pot scrubbed out from sand. Add saffron and star anise only when you have had a successful run and are wealthy enough to afford these luxuries of luxuries. Pour the water strained in camel hair and boiled over the dung fire into the pot. Put near enough to the fire to foam in the heat but not so near as to expire from it. Pour in the sugar into the cup, a miniature sandstorm [[encased in delicate carved camel bones|Scrimshaw]], wrought over with golden swirls. //The sweeter the tea, the sweeter the guest// he muttered under his breath, pouring in an indeterminate amount. No matter what, this ritual [[always ends|Coda]] with a toast:[[To life|Innocent lives]]. [[To lies|Escape bar]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Finley found his true purpose in the scrimshaw he had been working on, holding through his life. It was right there, carved in his bones. He embraced it and knew his true worth. This was the final conclusion, the only proof he ever needed that his existence was worthwhile. But he could never carve enough, never have enough bone. He had to think big, to think beyond his lifetime. And so he left both the sea and the sand, both his childhood in Cleveland and his dreams of Budapest in an endless quest for his ultimate work. Then he set out upon his quest for the long-lost elephant graveyard. He searched the byways. He searched the highways. He searched the low ways. He went deep into jungles. He went shallow onto beaches. He asked everyone, but no one spoke with him for long. And yet, he found it. When he had found what he was after, he built a tiny hut for himself and stayed there all the rest of his days, carving out an immense, intricate ossuary cathedral from the bones. And he was, for the most part, content with this. [[The End]] </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> The gardens are laid out in a triple compass, with colored roses [[marking each direction|Consider the Sea]]. This [[directional, circular pattern|Dont you see]] would recur throughout his life. It was here that he first studied his Othello and tried to memorize and understand Iago’s (the [[purported villain|Enchanters face]] of the piece’s lines). Of course, the beautifully laid out garden did not help [[his reasoning|Innocent obsessions]]. // ’Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. [[Our bodies|Innocent lives]] are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners. So that [[if we will|Escape doom]] plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry, why the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the ⟨balance⟩ of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most [[prepost’rous|Enchantment]] conclusions. But we have reason to cool our [[raging motions|The heaving sea]], our [[carnal stings|The seducing sea]], ⟨our⟩ [[unbitted lusts|Mistress of undress]]— whereof I take this that you call love to be a sect, or [[scion|Inconstant fear]].// <img src="rosegarden.png" alt=a 1930s picture from a higeht of the formally laid out garden. There are Model T fords on the street and people walking in the gardens. The gardens are laid out as a double compass, but with an almost phallic addition.> Digital Commonwealth Boston Public Library <A HREF="https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:8s45qw085">Leon Abdalian Collection</A> Rose Garden and Museum of Fine Arts, Fenway. Abdalian, Leon photographer. Taken June 14, 1934 ([[before the war|Before the war]]) <A HREF="https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=othello&Act=1&Scene=3&Scope=scene">Shakespeare, William. Othello Act I Scene 3</A> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Because of course, [[none of them|No escape]] had ever taken this course, //Anxiety and Its Germanely [[Fabuliac|Innocent ideas]] [[Liaison|Sweetheart of serials]] to [[Loneliness|The lonely sea]]// in Hungary, in Debrecen (which was not quite close to [[Budapest]]). It was (if:visits is 2)[[[never offered|Smiled]]] (if:visits is 1)[[[never offered|Sneered]]] at a convenient time, after all. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Indeed, this [[other author|Innocent ideals]] goes on in this superfluous vein: //I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in [[much the same way|Coda]]—either in a [[physical|Innocent tides]] or [[metaphysical|Heaven forgets]] point of view, that is; and so the [[universal thump|Ikigai]] is passed round, and [[all hands|Enchantee]] should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and [[be content|Words]].// Melville, Herman. 1851. Moby Dick: Or the Whale. Chapter 1. Loomings. The Project Gutenberg eBook of Moby Dick; Or the Whale, by Herman Melville </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> As Finley now did not even have the price of a [[whisky berber|Escape bar]] in his pocket, he recalled the words of a similar character in a [[completely different tale|Innocent ideas]]. //Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for [[my destined port|Budapest]], it became a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and [[cheerless|Innocent times]]. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces [[of silver|Saucy Sailor Lad]],—So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a [[dreary street|Cleveland]] shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north with the darkness towards the south—wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to [[lodge for the night|Euclid Avenue]], my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don’t be [[too particular|Lonely streets]].// Melville, Herman. 1851. Moby Dick: Or the Whale. Chapter 1. Loomings. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Even in this landlocked place in [[Budapest]] there was a port for him. He had read about the [[still, calm|The listless sea]] river waters that did not rise and fall with the [[tides|Innocent tides]] but had stayed stable throughout the centuries. On this river, which you could reach through the blackest, darkest seas of [[dreams|Dreaming]], you could sail into castles and spires. You could go up rivers of time and find the most fantastical architecture. But of course, there were people living [[ordinary lives|Cleveland]] inside those walls. He knew this instinctively. But sometimes he chose to [[forget this|Heaven forgets]]. View across the Danube to the Grand Parliament building, Budapest. <img src="danube.png" alt=a Google image of the Grand Parliament Building across from the Danube River, with a docking port. The building is filled with fanciful spires and windows. In the foreground is a rusty red roof of a church with a round window, reminiscent of the round window in the Cleveland home.> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> He had read once that a human brain was mostly white, black, and [[blood red|Mistress of distress]] while alive and pulsating in time to the pumping lungs, the beating heart. It was only gray after death, and the darker [[the gray|Innocent possessions]], the more neurons that part had harbored when the brain was alive and active. Having never seen his own brain, or any other living brain for that matter, he was forced to believe this without looking into the silvered gray depths of a mirror. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Had Finley been a student and the captain a teacher, Finley would have gone immediately to [[the internet|Heaven expects]] to research. He would have dutifully reported back that the proper term for baby barnacles is //Cyprids// and that //Cyprids// have only a single mission, a single purpose in their infancy: to find a good place to settle down. They do not [[fantasize about an impossible life|Budapest]] filled with [[purpose|Ikigai]], as they only want to survive the [[predations|Porpoises]]. What they really would like would be an undersea equivalent of [[Cleveland]], a stable place with plenty of food and very little change so they can [[wall themselves in for life|Anchors of the Church]]. But as they can not eat, they have only the energy they were born with. Thus, the longer they wait for that stability, the more energy they lose, and they will settle for being [[underlings|Dear Brutus]], for being anything at all, even a passing ship that will never reach its [[own dream|Red King]], or an airplane forever in search of a [[terminal|Terminals]]. </div>

<div class="background"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> And so you reach the end. We all get there, one way or another. No one comes out alive in this. But we had our memories. And we always leave with so much more to explore. We keep trying to escape [[Cleveland]] but we just end up over here. You can simply [[circle back|Consider the Sea]] and try again. Or you sit back and sigh “Ahh. [[Budapest]]. [[Before the war]]. If only we could go back there.” (set: _allPassages to (array: "Consider the sea", "Cleveland", "Budapest", "The listless sea", "The Sea-Limits", "List seaward", "List landward", "List starboard", "Dreaming", "List to port", "List your skills", "CV", "List your strengths", "Red King", "List your interests", "List your accomplishments", "The inconstant sea", "Inconsistent excuses", "Inconsistent fathers", "Brick streets", "Inconsistent laughter", "Inconsistent narratives", "Cuyahoga River", "Euclid Avenue", "Monument", "Inconstant directions", "Inconstant faith", "Inconstant memories", "Inconstant fear", "The seducing sea", "Sweetheart of serials", "Cloistress of innocence", "Innocent voyages", "Mistress of undress", "Mistress of distress", "Hennin", "Mistress of ceremonies", "Mistress of the past", "Red lips", "Before the war", "Mistress of the future", "Mistress of joy", "The heaving sea", "Gray’s Armory", "Heavy romances", "Heavy woods", "Heavy rails", "Log and Line", "Heavy expectations", "Heaven waits", "Heaven forgets", "The Cast-away", "Heaven notices", "Heavenly bodies", "The escaping sea", "End game", "Plodded", "Escape artist", "Terminals", "Escape arguments", "Ozymandias", "Peroration", "Escape bar", "Looming", "Scrimshaw", "Conclusions", "Escape portal", "Whisky berbers", "Stupid Stuff", "Egress", "Escape doom", "Seedee", "Coup de grace", "Escape questions", "Coda", "Escape clause", "Parting words", "University", "No escape", "Lead the way", "Waking", "The lonely sea", "Lonely closings", "Lonely streets", "The monkey’s tale", "Lonely shades", "Not there", "Lonely letters", "Danube", "Lonely purposes", "Porpoises", "Lonely hearts", "Lonely cities", "Lonely openings", "The enchanting sea", "Enchanter", "Enchanter’s face", "Enchantee", "Words", "Enchantment", "Enchantress", "The Too Ancient Mariner", "An orphan’s curse", "Sea chantey", "Sea chancey", "Incantation", "Invocation", "Dead Man’s Chest", "Saucy Sailor Lad", "The innocent sea", "The Whale Watch", "Achievement", "Achievements", "Innocent tides", "Dear Brutus", "Innocent times", "Innocent ideas", "Insane", "Innocent ideals", "Innocent lives", "Cyprids", "Innocent deaths", "Anchors of the Church", "Innocent obsessions", "Rose garden", "Don’t you see", "Orizon", "Innocent possessions", "Brain colors")) (link-goto: "Again.", (shuffled: ..._allPassages)'s 1st) </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Rest in peace <A HREF="http://www.deenalarsen.net/DTC354">WinSton</A>. There is [[no memorial|Monument]]. </div>

<div class="background"> [[<img src="title.png" alt=a nine-patch showing the 9 compass roses of the main portion of the story. Each of these will be described and expanded upon in their proper sections.>|Consider the Sea]] <h2>Consider the Sea</h2> [[''Deena Larsen and Rob Swigart''|Author page]] who gratefully acknowledge Jenn Nguyen, Evan Leyden, and Quinn Carrick. //[[Begin|Consider the Sea]]// [[<img src="Nothing.png">|The requisite Jane Space]] </div>

</div>Washington State University at Vancouver, Washington, Digital Technology Center, Digital [[Storytelling 354|Jane Space 354]]. I sincerely promise never to do that again. [[Title Page]] </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> The image font is in Algerian, close to the [[main port|Escape portal]]. Fonts are your average net fonts. Nothing to [[write home about|Lonely letters]]. Colors correspond to the main [[compass|Incantation]] points of the [[story|Innocent ideas]]: (text-colour:#EB7D45)[''North: ''][[The inconstant sea]] a burnt orange, which branded the first telecommunications company in the 50s, which Finley's father never claimed to be [[a part|Inconsistent fathers]] of. (text-colour:#5F4F75)[''Northeast: ''][[The heaving sea]] is a purplish gray, the color of [[seasickness|Heavy rails]]. (text-colour:#4874A9)[''East: ''][[The enchanting sea]] is a blue not quite the color of an evening sky between clouds and an almost match to the faded teal of a pirate's denims or [[an augury ball|Enchanters face]]. (text-colour:#6e601d)[''Southeast: ''][[The listless sea]] is a bronze olive, a burnished glossy hue that tarnishes in the calmest seas [[without winds|List your accomplishments]]. (text-colour:#b47e42)[''South: ''][[The escaping sea]] is the color of sands, the deserts beyond the sea's furthest [[ends|Escape doom]]. (text-colour:#A7491E)[''Southwest: ''][[The lonely sea]] is a rust-brown the color of Finleys shirt as he travels through time, and echoes the orange delusions of his father or even the scarlet of his lover, seeking [[those connections|Lonely hearts]]. (text-colour:#8f1000)[''West: ''][[The seducing sea]] is the [[scarlet|Scarlet]] of her robes as she dances through [[his imagination|Mistress of undress]]. (text-colour:red)[''Northwest: ''][[The innocent sea]] is the pale gray blue of the froth on the wave, where the innocent [[search|Innocent lives]]. Footnotes are where the story strayed from the path and became a gray dotted line into [[tales|The monkeys tale]] that [[lie|Dulcet tones]] far outside of [[this one|The Whale Watch]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> This may or may not have been on the back of the paper he had used to write his [[urgent missives|Lonely letters]]. In any case, it is probably a completely unnecessary and unrelated story, used here solely to cast [[metadataical aspersions|Escape arguments]] on both the [[colophon|Colophon]] and her character. She deserves better than this, but he could [[not articulate|Peroration]] it any further. //In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, I had hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of dingy paper, around which it had been twisted. This I now opened, and had the satisfaction to find, recorded by the old Surveyor’s pen, a reasonably complete explanation of the [[whole affair|Mistress of distress]]. There were several foolscap sheets containing many particulars respecting [[the life|Sweetheart of serials]] and [[conversation|Before the war]] of one Hester Prynne, who appeared to have been rather a noteworthy personage in the view of our ancestors. She had flourished during the period between the early days of Massachusetts and the close of the seventeenth century. Aged persons, alive in the time of Mr. Surveyor Pue, and from whose oral testimony he had made up his narrative, remembered her, in their youth, as a very old, but not decrepit woman, of a stately and [[solemn aspect|Anchors of the Church]]. . . . Prying further into the manuscript, I found the record of other doings and sufferings of this singular woman, for most of which the reader is referred to the story entitled “The [[Scarlet Letter|Crimson badge]]”; and it should be borne carefully in mind, that the main facts of that story are authorized and authenticated by the document of Mr. Surveyor Pue. The original papers, together with the scarlet letter itself,—a most curious relic,—are still in my possession, and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced by the great interest of the narrative, may desire a sight of them. . . . I must not be understood as affirming, that, in the [[dressing up|Mistress of undress]] of the tale, and imagining the motives and modes of [[passion|Mistress of joy]] that influenced the characters who figure in it, I have invariably confined myself within the limits of the old Surveyor’s half a dozen sheets of foolscap. On the contrary, I have allowed myself, as to such points, nearly or altogether as much license as if the facts had been entirely of [[my own invention|Innocent ideas]]. What I contend for is the [[authenticity of the outline|Lonely openings]].// <A HREF="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25344/25344-h/25344-h.htm">Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. The Custom-House: An Introduction. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company. 1878.</A> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> XII I asked [[no other thing|Words]]— No other—[[was denied|Coup de grace]]— I offered [[Being|Dont you see]]—for it— The Mighty Merchant [[smiled|Before the war]]— Brazil? He twirled a Button— Without a glance my way— "But—Madam—is there nothing else— That We can show—Today?" Todd, Mabel Loomis and T.W. Higginson, ed. Poems by Emily Dickinson. <A HREF="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12242/12242-h/12242-h.htm"> Gutenberg file</A> </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> 621 I asked [[no other thing|Ikigai]]— No other—[[was denied|Legacy]]— I offered [[Being|End game]]—for it— The Mighty Merchant [[sneered|CV]]— Brazil? He twirled a Button— Without a glance my way— "But—Madam—is there nothing else— That We can show—Today?" Johnson, Thomas, Ed. Emily Dickinson. 1955 edition. </div>

<div class="background"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> On the Triangle Touren in Norway for the DAC conference in 2000, Rob and Deena began to fantasize about a structured hypertext that centered on elemental strategies and had an elaborate four part structure. They went their ways and failed to produce this work. Now, more than two decades later, they actually [[accomplished|List your accomplishments]] something. Namely, this [[metalogical|Escape arguments]] mess. Deena Larsen began writing storytelling poetry after her teen-age love affair with Spoon River Anthology. This morphed into <A Href="http://marblesprings.wikidot.com/"> Marble Springs (Eastgate 93)</A> and led to a decades long addiction to electronic literature. Winner of the 2023 Electronic Literature Organization's Maverick award, she has been leading the community in and out of surreal situations for longer than it is good to remember. Deena wrote most of this work as part of her Artist in Residency at <A HREF="https://dtc-wsuv.org/cmdc/">The Digital Arts And Culture Program</A> at Washington State University, Vancouver. Rob Swigart began writing poetry and satire (Little America) and went on to write science fiction and other novels. In 1986 he designed and wrote Portal, an interactive novel for Activision, which is now being <A HREF="https://dtc-wsuv.org/projects/data-entry-portal/">reimagined in VR</A> by the <A HREF="https://dtc-wsuv.org/wp/ell/">Electronic Literature Lab</A> in Washington State University, Vancouver. He is, a futurist, and an archaeology writer as well. Consider the Sea’s ([[Listless Chime|The Sea-Limits]]) was [[originally presented|Original words]] at his mentor Bill Sylvester’s retirement. He could have written it for his own as he has lived many of the adventures told in the story. He is still looking for his purpose. They were and are both founding members of the <A HREF="https://eliterature.org/">Electronic Literature Organization</A>. No funding dollars or escaped [[porpoises|Porpoises]] were used or harmed during this writing exercise. [[<img src="authors.png" alt=an animated Rob and Deena discussing a work they planned out in Norway 24 years ago and never quite got around to actually doing.>|The requisite Jane Space]] </div>

<div class="background"> <h2>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h2> //''Consider the Sea’s Listless Chime''// Rob Swigart Some time ago, in the nineteenth century or perhaps a little earlier, he ran away to sea, where he would always be a stranger. He discovered, too, that the sea was huge and often [[heaving|The heaving sea]]. “Finley,” the captain said, puffing gray smoke around the stem of his clay pipe. The gale would be blowing. “Finley, the sea is a [[wet mistress|The seducing sea]]. Never forget that.” The sea was also gray, especially along coasts where the seagulls wheeled. The seagulls along the coasts always [[wheeled|Wheel]]. Finley wondered what they had done before the wheel was invented. Did they bludgeon? Auger? The gulls were also gray, and the coasts often wet, with cliffs and chaotic heaps of black rock and shingle beaches gray with salts and seagulls wheeling in fog and mist. Running away to sea turned out to [[be a mistake|The inconstant sea]]. He realized that. It was no way to end an argument with his folks. He realized that. No way at all. His folks were just that, people, folks, ordinary in their squalor, their pallor, their despair. The captain was not his father, after all. He should have [[joined the circus|Mistress of ceremonies]]. Elephants, the Big Top, trained monkeys, beautiful ladies standing on their hands in spangled tights while their huge white horses galloped slowly in circles. Their breasts would be generous, bound tightly in the spangled suits, upside down. She (the one [[named Frances|Mistress of joy]], as it turned out) could lift one hand from the broad back as it rollicked in complex gyrations, up and down and side to side in an easy rhythm. Her other hand, palm down in the lightly sweating horse hair, held her up as her back arched delicately. Upside down she waved to the crowd. Her smile, almost upside down (her head tilted and turned to the audience as the horse galloped slowly round and round) was brilliant. Finley was enthralled. Later, in her dressing room, they smoked thin cigarettes packed with Bolivian tobacco and spoke of [[the future|Mistress of the future]]. She was older than he, a woman of [[maturity and vision|Mistress of ceremonies]]. He felt larger than life when he was with her. She was blonde to the roots (and there she was dark, although not gray, like the sea, especially those distant coasts.) He would, from time to time, sit at her feet as she let her long fingers drift delicately through his hair, and kiss the sides of her knee. Her knee was muscular. Her arms, too, were muscular. She could do a hundred pushups without apparent effort. One-handed. Either arm. This frightened him. [[He considered returning|Inconstant memories]] to his folks. They fought, from time to time, as if he were a character in a story. He was small and grieved. [[He was always late|Inconstant memories]], a messy child, an unruly child. Children were unruly then, and could develop a bad character. They could be messy and late. Some things never change. “I [[hate|Hate]] you,” he said. “I hate you, and I hate [[Cleveland]].” He could not have said, not then or later, why he had developed a dislike for [[Cleveland]]. At that time he had never been there. His mother shouted, “[[Why don’t you|The heaving sea]] run away to sea, then?” She shouted it. “Because it is huge and heaving,” he might have replied. In a more rational time, when his father was not in the room, he would say it. “The coasts are gray, and the seagulls [[wheel|Wheel]] [[and cry|Sea chantey]].” He was [[often sick|Heavy rails]]. It was the heaving, probably, although the hugeness, too, made him feel ill. [[Endless days gliding|Heavy romances]] over the water, flat and calm, other endless days eternally rolling from side to side, up an incline only to tip down the other slope as if they were troughs and peaks under a turbulent gray sky as endless as anything else. The sails snapped in the [[gust and blast|Heavy woods]]. The ship creaked. It was the sound of wood separating from other wood, as if the trees, once so stately and green, were flying away from one another in this alien place. As if the trees were fighting one another now they were no longer home. As if they were drowning, each one alone, crying out to be saved. The sound made him queasy. It was the [[romance|Heavy romances]] of the sea, especially, that nauseated him. The strange places, the exotic ports, the swarthy peoples of the tropics or the remote pale ones of the northern climes. [[Once|Trade in]], probably in the arctic, the sea was full of big chunks of ice the size of, oh, houses. Some people bundled in furs rowed out to the ship in a small boat made of skins and offered their wives in exchange for rum. When the sailors saw the wives they knew they’d been had. The coast nearby, when they were probably in the arctic, was gray. Low clouds flew overhead, defiant and free. From time to time the clouds would spit a sky full of cold rain onto them. The wives smelled of rancid fat and urine. Their skin was gray, and they were huge and heaving. It was better in the circus. He could fold himself up very small and be the last one out of a tiny [[choo-choo train|Training circuses]] that had previously disgorged fourteen others of varying sizes into a ring where the huge white horses rocked around and around. His father [[read the newspaper|Inconsistent laughter]]. His father was a famous actor who appeared in a television situation comedy in the nineteen fifties. His father appeared in black and white and many shades of gray. The newspaper was black and white. It was also, his father told Finley, read all over, like an embarrassed zebra. The joke was never funny. He never laughed. It was the [[kind of joke|Porpoises]] they would tell in [[Cleveland]] “It’s read all over, Finley. Never forget that.” He sat in a bar on [[Euclid Avenue]] Avenue, which is in the city of Cleveland, and drank draft beer. It was dark outside. Not far away, [[the river|Cuyahoga River]] was on fire. Several people had already left to go watch the river, which burned with a cheerful orange glow in the dark night, underneath clouds that would be, in the daytime, gray, but which were, because of the darkness and the flames, orange. He did not go to look at the river. “Remember [[World War I|Before the war]]?” he asked. The woman from the circus, whose name was Frances, did. “That was the one with the round hats, wasn’t it?” Her long fingers played with his hair, this way, that way. “The round hats, yes,” he said. “And the ones with pointy tops. They were made of metal.” [[“How... quaint,”|Mistress of the past]] she murmured, her long fingers scratching lightly at his scalp. He kissed the side of her knee. “My father read newspapers. He was a father on [[television|Inconsistent excuses]], in the nineteen fifties, which were gray, like the coasts.” “Yes,” she murmured dreamily. “The seagulls, [[wheeling|Wheel]] in the mist...” There was a [[monkey|The monkeys tale]] in the bar, behind glass. It was small but highly trained: already it had killed a man. The monkey weighed in at two kilos, the man at 73. It was hardly a fair fight and afterwards the monkey became a legend, waiting for an opportunity to run away with the circus. He squatted, his small beady eyes (quick with intelligence) on Frances, and watched her long fingers as they twisted Finley’s hair (blue in the bar light). The monkey watched. The bar was filled with smoke. On the other side of the room, the captain puffed clouds around the stem of his clay pipe. The sea, he knew, was [[a wet mistress|The seducing sea]]. “Also fairly chilly,” he told Finley. “Never forget that. You can catch your death.” Finley nodded, wishing he had never run away to sea. Even Cleveland would have been better. The captain’s face, framed by whiskers, which were gray, was seamed from years of staring into the gale. He wore a hat which was neither round nor made of metal. The ship rolled up one side of a wave and down the other, and the captain smoked on, immobile, implacable, and for all practical purposes, [[insane|Insane]]. Finley ran for the rail, but the sea, far below, [[heaving|Heavy rails]], threw indifferent spray into his face. This was no place for a lad whose father was a father on television. So he said, [[“Excuse me,”|Inconsistent excuses]] to Frances, and went to the bathroom. The monkey saw his opportunity, broke the glass of his cage, jumped down and slipped under Frances’ still-caressing fingers. [[The bathroom|The bathroom]], which was in Cleveland, was vast, like the sea. At the far end a train was just pulling out. The sound of its whistle echoed off the tile walls, the solid floor. Puffs of gray steam rose around the wheels, into the doors between cars. The thumping of the engine, the clouds of steam, the screech of the wheels struggling for a purchase on the shiny rails, all started slowly, with long pauses in between, then gathered speed. The captain shouted, “All ’board!” and Finley raced down the platform and leaped through a cloud of steam to the metal steps, the metal rail. He pulled himself up as the car cleared the end of the platform and plunged into darkness somewhere beneath Cleveland, city of the [[blazing river|Cuyahoga River]]. The train ran shrieking through the night. The metal wheels clattered and turned. Smoke puffed into the darkness and disappeared. The whistle groaned, rising and falling. The mail bag, snatched from its metal post, contained a letter. When the director handed the envelope to Finley’s father, he sliced it open neatly with a letter opener. That, after all, was what letter openers were for. He sliced it neatly open, and pulled out the letter. The paper was stiff and [[crisp|Crisp returns]], and made a stiff, crisp sound when he unfolded it. [[The envelope|Lonely letters]] was postmarked [[Budapest]], where gray stone bridges spanned [[the river|Danube]]. The river in Budapest did not burn with a cheerful orange flame. This was a disappointment to the mayor of Budapest, who wished his town could be more like its sister city, Cleveland. [[“Say, dear,”|Lonely shades]] Finley’s father said. His face was gray with good humor, with concern, with interest. “We have received a letter from our son, Finley, who ran away to sea.” “Where is the letter from, dear?” Finley’s mother said. She had always felt a little guilty, since it was she who had urged Finley to run away to sea. “It is from Budapest,” Finley’s father said. “Or perhaps Cleveland. It is difficult to tell at only 525 lines of resolution on television and 30 cycles per second in the nineteen fifties in black and white, not to mention many shades of gray.” The train [[roared on through|Running through]] the night. Finley settled back in his seat and watched the dark flee past. He had left two mistresses behind: the wet mistress of the sea, and the upside-down mistress who waved and smiled as her huge white horse heaved itself in slow gallop around the ring. When the train pulled in to Budapest station, he saw the station was vast and gray, the ceiling high as the Big Top , though made of glass. The train spilled onto the platform in Budapest jugglers, and large muscular men who ate fire and swords, and animals from Africa and the orient. The music was sprightly and cheerful though the city was gray. This was before the war. The monkey enjoyed the circus. He rode behind [[the woman|Mistress of ceremonies]] in the sequined bathing suit as she stood on one hand and waved. He jumped up and down, chattering and shrieking, his beady eyes quick with intelligence. Later, she let her fingers drift through his fur and spoke of the sea and the sharp clean tang of salt. [[Finley landed in a port|Escape portal]]. Port Said. Port-au-Prince. Port Arthur. Some of the people wore hats, others did not. Behind the port was a desert, [[vast|Ozymandias]]... huge. And heaving, too. The sands were gray and endless. They heaved into waves, into swells. He may have taken a camel in a caravan across the desert, with [[occasional stops|Coup de grace]] at an oasis where the water was gray and a few palms, bearing dates, drooped listlessly. The air would have been filled with alien curses (this would have been in the late nineteenth century, if not a little earlier) and the sound of camels screaming. The air would have been hot, and the master of the caravan, an unsightly fellow in filthy djellaba with one eye and a greasy beard, would have said to him in his heavily accented voice, “The desert, Finley-sayyid, efendi, sahib, the desert, [[she is a dry mistress|The escaping sea]]. Never forget that, Finley. A dry mistress. You could catch your death.” He did not do this, however. [[He did not|No escape]] take a camel into the desert to run Enfield rifles to warring tribes in exchange for women or gold. The gun-running season was nearly over. He was a character in a story, the one about the lad who runs away to sea. He was older now, and not very much wiser, unlike the hero of that story, who learned things. He had [[a fight|Escape arguments]] with the captain, who was [[obsessed|Insane]] with his eternal hunt for the [[giant white squid|The Whale Watch]]. “Why don’t you take off into the desert, then?” the captain shouted, jabbing the stem of his clay pipe in Finley’s direction for emphasis. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry,” he shouted. Spittle flew from his lips, bedewing his beard. “Don’t forget that, you... foreigner.” When they got to port, Finley [[jumped ship|Escape portal]]. He sat in a bar and drank beer. It was draft beer, and it was warm. Outside, flies swarmed in the heat. They swarmed over the dung of camels, who brayed and complained. The captain was insane, madly obsessed with his quest for the white squid. Finley drank his beer slowly, as if he had nothing else to do. “[[Your problem|Escape doom]], effendi, sayyid, bwana, sahib, is that you have no purpose.” A small and filthy man with a squint was seated in a rattan chair, his feet neatly tucked underneath his filthy robes. His filthy face grinned, or possibly leered, at Finley. “No purpose?” Finley asked, his curiosity piqued. He had never felt anything like this before, this piquing of the curiosity. It was a not-unpleasant sensation. “You have,” he said gratefully, “piqued my curiosity, oh my filthy vagabond, ami, amigo and traveling companion.” “We are not traveling just at the moment, bwana,” the small man pointed out, reasonably. “Not you, perhaps,” Finley explained. “But I, I have been traveling for a long time, an endless time. I ran away to sea, you see,” he explained. “Where,” he added, “I was a foreigner.” “Nonetheless, my point remains,” the small man said. Finley expected him to remove his neat small feet from beneath his filthy robes and perhaps jump to the floor, perhaps drawing a long curved dagger from beneath his robes and executing a complicated dance step, something of the wild nomads of the desert, swirling the long curved blade in the air. But he did not. He merely said, “My point remains,” allowing the words to die there, gathering sinister implications, before toppling forward off the chair. The dagger stuck into his back had a pearl handle that gleamed with many colors in the cool darkness of the bar. So Finley [[took to the air|Escape artist]]. It was the only thing left to do. The captain had said, “Why don’t you take off into the desert?” and so [[he did|Terminals]]. The huge rotary engine roared into life. Clouds of gray dust and exhaust flew out behind as he taxied to a flat place in the desert. He tested the controls, the ailerons, the elevators, the rudder, the magnetos. He pushed the throttle forward and the biplane, painted a bright red, the red of some vast bird of hell, slowly gathered speed and lifted, at last, into the air. It wheeled around and finally dwindled away to the east, where the gray desolation extended itself forever. “[[I will find|Consider the Sea]] a [[purpose|Ikigai]],” Finley exclaimed. “I will travel the world from here to there, seeking until [[I find|Scrimshaw]].” [[Finley’s father|Lonely letters]] took from his jacket, which was gray tweed, a pair of steel-rimmed reading glasses and adjusted them carefully over his nose and before his eyes, the corners of which crinkled with kindliness. “Here, my dear, is what our son Finley has to tell us from Budapest, a large city in central Europe which spans a river, which is called the Danube. Remember Budapest, before the war? The ancient streets, the smell of pastries, the gray rain falling straight down?” He smoothed the letter, the crisp, firm paper, the sharp creases of its folds, on his knee. This forced him to bend over slightly, as he was standing at that moment in the all-electric kitchen of his home in a small town in Indiana or Ohio, one, perhaps, not too far from Cleveland as the crow flies, although miles from there in culture and attitude. “What does he say, dear, our son Finley, who ran away to sea?” Finley’s mother asked. Her face, too, was crinkled with kindness and concern, despite being gray and having thin horizontal lines across it. The lines could only be seen from very close up “He says... ” Finley’s father gazed at the paper for a long moment, his forehead creased in concern, in kindliness. He lowered the page and said, his voice choked, very slightly, just a small catch in it, really, not a big sob of grief or despair, but a turn, a small snag in the smooth flow. “He says the coasts are gray and wet. He says there are many places distant from our small town in Indiana or Ohio, and times very far from the nineteen fifties. The nineteen eighties, for example, or the eighteen twenties. He says that the gulls wheel in the air, crying, and that the coasts are desolate and dark. He says the sea is a mistress, and the desert is dry. He says that somewhere, just over the nose of his airplane, lies a treasure beyond price. He asks if I read about him in the Wall Street Journal. He wants us to know that he’s sorry he ran away to sea, and that while he left Cleveland after only a few hours, it was not quite as bad as he thought it would be.” Finley’s mother threw her arms around her husband’s neck. “Oh, darling,” she said. “I’m so happy! We have remained here, but somewhere in the world our son Finley, who ran away to sea, has found purpose, meaning, and fulfillment.” [[News of her|Enchantress]] happiness reached Finley. The man who brought it wore a gray suit and a white shirt. They sat cross-legged over small glasses of red tea in a dim green room somewhere in the world. Above them the air shrieked. “Tell her,” Finley shouted over the noise, “that the sea rings its [[listless chime|The Sea-Limits]], which, among other things, is time’s self made audible. And it’s no place for strangers.” </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> The [[seagulls|The heaving sea]] along the coasts always wheeled. Finley wondered what they had done before the wheel was invented. Did they bludgeon? [[Auger|Enchanters face]]? [[Prophesy|The Whale Watch]]? The gulls were also [[gray|Innocent possessions]], and the coasts [[often wet|Mistress of undress]], with cliffs and chaotic heaps of black rock and shingle beaches gray with salts and seagulls wheeling in [[fog and mist|Lonely shades]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> “I hate you,” he said. “I hate you, and I hate [[Cleveland]].” He could not have said, not then or later, why he had developed a dislike for [[Cleveland]]. At that time he would have sworn on a stack of [[Bibles|Heaven expects]] that he had never [[been there|Before the war]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> Once, probably in the arctic, the sea was full of big chunks of [[ice|Innocent times]] the size of, oh, houses. The coast nearby, when they were probably in the arctic, was gray. Low clouds flew overhead, defiant and free. From time to time the clouds would spit a sky full of cold rain onto them. Some people bundled in furs rowed out to the ship in a small boat made of skins and offered their wives in exchange for [[rum|Stupid stuff]]. The wives smelled of rancid fat and urine. Their skin was [[gray|Grays Armory]], and they were huge and [[heaving|The heaving sea]]. When the sailors saw the wives they knew [[they’d been had|Peroration]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> It was better in the [[circus|Mistress of ceremonies]]. He would [[carve out|Scrimshaw]] an existence here for himself. Maybe keep the carousel running with its fantastic [[carvings|Egress]]. He would be a clown and fold himself up very small and be the last one out of a tiny (or was it [[vast|The bathroom]]?) choo-choo [[train|Escape clause]] that had previously disgorged fourteen others of varying sizes into a ring where the huge white horses rocked around and around. He had no idea where this [[enchanting idea|Enchantee]] had [[come from|Heaven forgets]]. He would catch the [[monkey|The monkeys tale]] by the tail and she would [[smile|Smiled]] upon him. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> [[The bathroom|Waking]], which was in [[Cleveland]], was vast, like the sea. At the far end, [[a train|Training circuses]] was just pulling out. The sound of its whistle echoed off [[the tile walls|Mail bag]], the solid floor. Puffs of gray steam rose around the wheels, into the doors between cars. The thumping of [[the engine|Terminals]], the clouds of steam, the screech of the wheels struggling for a purchase on the shiny rails, all started slowly, with long pauses in between, then [[gathered speed|Running through]] along the shower tracks, gearing up to traverse the grimy, soot-stained bathroom wall. The captain shouted, [[“All ’board!”|The listless sea]] and Finley raced down the platform and leaped through a cloud of steam to the metal steps, the metal rail. He pulled himself up as [[the train car|Escape clause]] cleared the end of the bathtub in [[Budapest]] and plunged into dark drain sewer somewhere beneath Cleveland, city of the [[blazing river|Cuyahoga River]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> [[The train|Escape clause]] ran shrieking through the night. The metal wheels clattered and turned on the [[slippery tiles|The bathroom]]. Smoke puffed into the darkness and disappeared. The whistle groaned, rising and falling. The mail bag, snatched from its metal post, contained [[his letter|Lonely cities]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> [[The train|Escape clause]] roared on through the night. Finley settled back in his seat and watched the dark flee past. He had left two mistresses behind: [[the wet mistress|The seducing sea]] of the sea, and the [[upside-down mistress|Mistress of ceremonies]] who waved and smiled as they [[tumbled out|Training circuses]] into the ring, with [[her monkey|The monkeys tale]] on her shoulder as her huge white horse heaved itself in slow gallop around the ring. When the train pulled in to its [[final station|Terminals]], he saw the station was [[vast and gray|The bathroom]], the ceiling high as the Big Top , though made of glass. The train spilled [[its contents|Innocent ideas]] onto the platform: jugglers and large muscular men who ate fire and swords, and animals from Africa and the orient. The music was sprightly and cheerful thoughthe city itself was entirely [[shrouded in gray|Cleveland]], shaking foggy drops through the air--almost as if it were trying to [[be gay|Budapest]]. This was, of course, [[before the war|Before the war]]. </div>

<div class="footnote"> <h3>(print: (passage:)'s name)</h3> There are other ways this [[could have|Sea chancey]] happened. The letter [[could have|Innocent possessions]] come from across the desert, dry and crisp as old [[dusty|Scarlet]] leaves. The [[caravan master|Escape doom]] could have handed the envelope to Finley’s father, and he could have sliced it open neatly with a letter opener. That, after all, was what letter openers were for. And so in this world, he sliced it neatly open, and pulled out the letter. The paper was stiff and crisp, and made a stiff, crisp sound when he unfolded it. The letters scrawled on the paper [[may or may not|End game]] have been the [[same ones|Lonely letters]]. </div>