The illusion of direction

The clutter on the desk resolves into a number of mechanical devices, all beautifully machined, tooled and assembled with a Victorian solidity, but the quantity of apparent purposes still leaves a sensation of chaos.
“This is the base for my collection. The first tools for making tools,” the desiccated sliver whispers, apparently addressing the metal itself. “This is our reason for being.” He looks, almost wistfully, through the window onto the unreal lawn outside. “Without it, there is only…” He pauses and looks lost. He wants to indicate what is beyond, but he has blocked it out too thoroughly. “Disorder…?” he finishes weakly, as if a question.
For a moment you wonder if he is asking if you have understood, if you agreed, or if his choice of word is correct.

Things we do not see

She has moved out of your vision, and that is where she is now. Her shape is drawn from the void she leaves. Peripheral flashes that draw your attention to what is not there. The hardest thing is, as you are brusquely washed and treated, dressed in old clean clothes and manhandled down a corridor to a panelled room, the hardest thing is to imagine she ever fitted into this place well enough to leave that void. Any picture you get of her does not resemble that received by your senses. What could she want of the people who had created this? What could she be to them? Stop. Wait and see what comes.
Towards one end of the room is a desk. It looks as if someone has spilt a dismantled car engine onto it and tried to reassemble it into twenty different things. Behind it there is a desiccated sliver of a toad. By way of introduction, he points at the desktop and says:
“This is stronger than man. This is stronger than nature.”

The wicked flee where no man pursueth

In an alien land, someone has created an Englishman’s idea of paradise. The house is shady, lived in, its rooms and corridors offering frequent vistas of the sun-dappled lawn that would make a perfect cricket pitch if it didn’t slope ever so gently down towards the landing stage at the stream (a small tributary of the river they came up on). Somewhere out there the adventurer still senses the jungle, the raging heat, the chaotic fertility, but it is kept at bay by the order of the tall oaks and elms that seem steeped in a foreign history.
And at the centre of all this, wrapped in a well-stocked, panelled library, sat the architect of it all. The President of the Rolling Joint CoLtd.

And sideways

The boat stops. For a moment you cannot detect the changes, but then it rocks dangerously as people step out onto the shore. The girl disappears from your limits of your vision. Hands lift you, carrying you, dragging you. Images of a jungle hacked back to create a clearing. And in the clearing, alien in their civilisation, are the green lawn and cool house you walked during your agony.
No delirium this. You are hauled inside. A voice tells your handlers to clean you up before presenting you. So maybe things are getting better.

Down

You are on a boat, rotting in the shallow-but-stinking bilgewater in the bottom, tied hand and foot, going up a river without end. And no, you don’t have a paddle. The flies and mosquitoes leave you swollen and red, skin cracking and ulcerating. You can see your disintegration reflected on the face of the girl in the bow. Each time she leans forward to swat away the insects, it takes her more to overcome her disgust. Your insides have eaten themselves from hunger and your head slowly, slowly breaks into blazing fragments.
And the river has no end.

Up

The present is all there is. The past is a fiction you have written. The future is not even waiting. The present is all there is….

The present is all there is. The sun sways permanently at its zenith, reluctant to relinquish the position of torture. Dreams have slipped into memories of what may be. The girl is in the garden and the garden is cool. She leans over you, touches you, and you can feel her touch spread through you like seismic waves. Her touch fills you. You take the girl like she takes you. You burn under her touch and the world vignettes. You explode.
At the height of the explosion, you realise why she can have no name.
And you realise why you have no name.

Up and down

In the experience of hell, we can have the vision of heaven. In the days that follow, the adventurer’s suffering blurs all perception. There is nothing to be seen, apart from the chaos of the sky that passes over his face haloed in the burning flare of the sun. The only relief is the occasional sight of the girl leaning over him to brush the flies from his eyes and mouth. But not often. He feels she is watched, not free. Is disapproved of. But by whom?
He retreats into his own personal present. A cool house, sun-and-shadow dappled lawn. Somewhere near there is a small stream. The birdsong competes gently with the breeze to soothe.

The joy of travel

So he wakes up after an unknown amount of time, squelching in the bilgewater of what seems to be a canoe and tied hand and foot. Absurdly, his first thought is that he has missed his appointment with the girl from the theatre. Then he sees that, somehow, he hasn’t, as she is sitting in the bow of the canoe, her face still hidden by the wide brimmed hat. Then he becomes aware of his headache. He looks up at the sun that drills into his throbbing skull, and reckons that they are probably headed upriver. He wonders if anyone is going to send him some chocolate.

Late breakfast

Finally driven out of bed by hunger and thirst, the adventurer, telling himself he need go no further than getting the information, asks the innkeeper about the Rolling Joint CoLtd. To be met with hostility, suspicion and curtness. All he will respond is:
“They packed up and left.”
“Left? Why? Where?”
“Maybe your friend can tell you more.”
“Friend?”
The innkeeper nods to the doorway. The brown man with the flower tattoo is standing there, staring at the adventurer. He finally says:
“You ask a lot of questions. Maybe it’s time for you to give some answers.”
Which is a problem. Because the adventurer doesn’t have any.

Dreams

During the night the sleep of the adventurer is riddled with dreams. Playing cards that walk and talk and people that don’t. Drifting on a river with a thick undergrowth of forged iron on the banks that hold the direst threats. A laughing man with tattooed eyelids, who pinches him with a clothes peg and pricks him with a fang, then turns into a laughing woman with no face, who then holds up a mirror to show him the face of a thousand faces, constantly changing like a cloudscape, changing before they have time to register. And through it all, a voice intoning:
“The president has the answers. Do not forget, he is a man fearfully acquainted with the secrets of Nature.”
In the morning, he is tired and despondent. He doesn’t want to get out of bed. Certainly not to look up the president, which is what seems indicated.

Information

Back at the inn, the adventurer decides to question the innkeeper about the man who had given him the card. Who claims ignorance with what is obviously professional discretion. He searches in his pockets for the card to see if it acts as some form of validation, emptying them as he goes. The innkeeper’s eyes fall on the bundle of leaves the old woman had given, and he duly indicates that he believes they may be good for the memory. The adventurer pushes them across.
“He sometimes calls himself an explorer. He and his men … er … explore upriver and usually find things of … value. Things you wouldn’t maybe expect to find upriver, if you get my drift.”
He goes on to describe an ambitious, reckless character, but one with panache. A womaniser.
The adventurer goes up to his room feeling a little depressed. Maybe he should have asked about the-one-whose-name-cannot-be-known as well, but for the moment he’s had enough.

You are not he

“He sent you? Of course, he wouldn’t come himself. He couldn’t”
Is this bitterness in her voice, or passion? She goes on:
“It just wouldn’t be wise.”
You say nothing, neither admit nor deny. And, if you have read this fragment of the story correctly, in a way he did send you.
She looks intensely at you.
“Not now. Not here. Something has come up. Tomorrow in the park outside the East Wall. In the evening. At six.”
And she is gone.

Circles

The gambling rooms are divided into two circles. The outer is an ordered salon, sprinkled with tables, airy, quiet but for a buzz that penetrates by intensity rather than volume. The inner circle is a set of dark, clamorous rooms, where the croupier’s role is more that of a bouncer and the atmosphere gives the idea that the stakes are more than money.
The girl from the theatre is waiting in the outer rooms, but the adventurer has the feeling that for some time now she has belonged in the inner. She approaches, and says:
“It was difficult for me to get away. It is you, isn’t it?”

Hearts

The little man jumps off the stage and runs, hissing and spitting like an angry goose, to the adventurer.
“Get out! Leave her alone.”
His hands flap like washing in the wind. He points to the card.
“So she owes you money? Well, let her work and maybe she’ll have some to pay you.”
The adventurer points to the writing. The little man reads it and shakes his head, looks up at the girl at the table, who seems lost in thought and oblivious.
“That’s not her writing.”
He seems close to tears now.
“It’s a sickness with her. She can’t help it.”
He nods at the card.
“Anyway, she only ever gambles on the two of hearts.”
He turns round, the audience finished, scampers back onto the stage and begins fussing around the girl again. She slowly comes out of her dream and, wearily, tries to listen.

The theatre

Frankly, at this point he would leave it, if he had something else. But a whim has set him on a course, and, Newtonian, he will continue on that course until something interferes.
He finds the theatre easily enough, though it looks more like a tavern, a sign of a mask swinging outside. The whole edifice is peeling and crumbling. Nobody is at the door, so he walks in, finding himself directly in front of the stage, in a dirty, littered pit that smells of spilt alcohol and greasy food. On the stage, a small elflike man is dancing around a girl seated at a prop table, his hands constantly moving, adjusting. She is wearing a large hat that hides her face. They look up on hearing the adventurer, and the little man demands:
“Ye-e-e-s?”
in an irritable (and irritating) voice. The adventurer holds up his Queen of Spades.

Figurines

“Well, this is the South Gate, love. What’s wrong? She not here? It’s nowhere near midday yet.”
“I know, but….”
“You’re sure it’s this South Gate, love?”
“There are others?”
The woman lists them: the gambling rooms, the tavern, a theatre, the South Gate to the palace, … The adventurer looks down at the small cloth with the little stick figures. He takes the figurine from his own pocket and gives it to her as a token of thanks. The woman stares at it, then cries with strange feeling:
“Oh dear! She looks all sad! She’ll be happier here with me. If I were you, love, I’d try the theatre. She sounds a bit dramatic, doesn’t she?”

You can call me Lucy

The South Gate leads to the waterfront, and is obviously an iniquitous area. Approaching the flow of the shabby multitude passing through, the adventurer sees there is a static point. A woman of indeterminate age, who in another time and place would be described as gin-raddled, is standing there. In front of her is a small cloth with figurines laid out on it, either a small, sad way to make a living or an excuse for her real profession. He goes over and hands her the card. She takes it and looks at it for a moment, then smiles. The smile is almost shy, and totally lacking in the artifice he might have expected.

“Hello, love. You can call me Lucy.”
She hands the card back, then adds:
“There’s writing on it, but I can’t read so you’ll have to tell me what it says.”

The South Gate

So the adventurer wakes – if not with confusion, with an unfocussed feeling of optimism. After his ablutions, while filling his pockets with provisions for what the day may demand, he first finds the queen of spades, then discovers that there is writing on it, in small, neat letters that do not seem to go with the group of the night before. It says:
“The South Gate at midday. Please do not let me down”.
He puts it back in his pocket, together with the things the old woman gave him.

Points of view

To wake to strange sounds and smells is disconcerting. What comes after that depends on you – your personality and your circumstances. If you have nothing to do, the day can present itself as an adventure, time and space to be explored. But if you have an agenda, well, then the day can appear an obstacle course, slices of time linked to tasks like a picture to a jigsaw puzzle, all to be done in a context of which you understand nothing. And sometimes it can appear a 'boundless' tayl, where everything is different and everything the same and there is no direction other than the one you are walking in.
That first moment can dictate everything that follows.

The Queen

Suspecting this is not the place or the people for subtle intros, the adventurer goes over to the group and asks directly:
“Who’s this, whose name can never be known?”
There is a silence, a B-movie, stranger-in-the-bar-western silence. The man who was speaking before looks around his henchmen, as if looking for the snappy reply he has lost. He tries to laugh, fails, and covers it by saying:
“It’s just a sailors' legend. Only the name of a card. Here. A keepsake for your travels. Once she shows her face the game’s over, anyway.”
And he flicks the card across the table.
“Maybe someday you’ll someone who can tell you the story.”
For some reason, the group laughs at this, and the laugh becomes a dismissal as they turn their backs and begin small talk among themselves.

High stakes

Later he goes down to the bar for food. He sits at a rough wooden table as close to a corner as he can find, and is brought some meat, cheese and bread. There seem less people in the room now, but it is still heavy with smoke and odours. A group of men occupy one side, laughing, drinking and cursing their luck. They form a semi-circle around one man sat against the wall, sunburned and lined, with a tattoo of a flower on his hand and a missing eye-tooth. Now, this man shouts the hearty laugh of the winner, throws his cards on the table and points to them.
“There she is lads! The one whose name you’ll never know, not even in your dreams.”

The Pride of Alaska

Befuddled by the multitude, the adventurer’s sight locks on an inn sign that reads “The Pride of Alaska” as if he were seeing it through a telescope. Although not knowing what significance Alaska has, should have or will have to him, he steps through the door with the relief that comes from recognition of the slightest familiar thing when nothing else is. Going along the low corridor to the stairs, he passes a doorway (with no door) to a room full of the smoke and noise of people playing cards and drinking. Bending his head, he carries on up the stairs to the attic room he has been given. Then, sitting on the bed, he remembers that nothing can be familiar, that any path is unknown.

The city

Before the city come the vegetable plots, the parks, the gardens. The adventurer finds himself approaching the walls along a path through flowerbeds and fountains, trimmed lawns and bandstands. A small stream ripples over pebbles. If night were not falling, he would stay to rest, to enjoy, to remember how to travel. He passes through the gates to the city almost without noticing. There is only one official standing there, who pays him no attention, maybe because he carries no goods. But within two streets he knows he has made a transition. The horde of people push him indifferently this way and that with insulting carelessness, and the noise of an incessant movement deafens him after the peaceful simplicity of the wilderness.

The Alchemy of Nature (R.J.CoLtd. (2))

He next comes across a clearing within the clearing, a near-circle devoid of plants and machinery, only a column of granite about three metres tall. If all the wrecks scattered around had been made of stone, the adventurer realises when he sees the column, then he would suppose this place to be a ceremonial site or burial ground. But so much industrial metal? A scrapyard? No, all this had been abandoned at the same time, had shared a common purpose, whatever it was. And why are there no plants growing in this centre, this concentric waste within a waste?
He walks round the column, finds a face on the other side that makes it a statue. The face has a benevolent smile, but a crafty eye. And the metal it is made of is different, not tarnished in any way. At the bottom there is a plaque:
“President of The Rolling Joint CoLtd”.
Why are there no plants here? Finally, he leaves the statue, muttering to himself:
“A man fearfully acquainted with the secrets of Nature.”
He keeps on. Maybe he can reach the city before nightfall.

Bayalora

Entering deeper into the clearing, he sees what looks to be a hut. The wood is rotten, the walls half-collapsed, the ceiling gone. Unsure as yet of poisonous fauna, he is reluctant to go into its overgrown shadows. He backs out into the light again. On the floor just inside the door he sees a book. He picks it up, but it falls apart in his hands. He tries to read a scrap on the floor and can just make out the book’s title printed at the top of the page and a few words in the middle:

A Bayalorian Primer
… contains the word “tayl”, signifying something that cannot by nature – that of the language or the ‘other’ – be described in the language. (Note:- it has a more familiar function signifying vagueness or unwillingness to be more precise, the use of which is becoming more common). The unique features of this word are further complicated by its indiscriminate use as verb, noun or adjective, offset slightly by the curious irregularity that it maintains its root form, regardless of the context, thus avoiding the complex conjugations that make this language so challenging.

He stands stiffly and moves on, trying to discern a path through the rotting metal figures.

The Rolling Joint CoLtd. (1)

Maybe not forty days in the wilderness, but it has been hard going, the progress constant but slow. At times it seems more of a wait than a journey, like at sea, when looking at the wake it becomes unsure if it is the ship or the water that is moving. The books only hint at how much patience an adventurer needs. Finally, on small rises, or where some natural feature breaks the vegetation, the adventurer makes out in the distance what may be his destination, the regular shapes of towers and walls. But well before he can close the distance, he finds a vast clearing littered with rusting machinery and slabs of metal. And in the newer grass and shrubs, what looks to be a surprising amount of weathered bones. He walks around the first crumbling, overgrown artefact. It is clearly a machine, but he cannot even begin to guess its purpose from its shape. On one plate, beneath the corrosion, he can still read stamped into the metal:
“The Rolling Joint CoLtd. Dunwich”.

From "The Travels of Marco Polo"

...After those three days of desert [you arrive at a stream of fresh water running underground, but along which there are holes broken in here and there, perhaps undermined by the stream, at which you can get sight of it. It has an abundant supply, and travellers, worn with the hardships of the desert, here rest and refresh themselves and their beasts.]…

…Now, if we go on with our journey towards the east-north-east, we travel a good forty days, continually passing over mountains and hills, or through valleys, and crossing many rivers and tracts of wilderness. And in all this way you find neither habitation of man, nor any green thing, but must carry with you whatever you require. The country is called BOLOR. The people dwell high up in the mountains, and are savage Idolaters, living only by the chase, and clothing themselves in the skins of beasts. They are in truth an evil race.

The old woman's story - elements (2)

The old woman now places the following objects:
a small stick with a loop at one end
a glass set square
a tin penny whistle with a plastic mouthpiece
a broken chess piece, hard to say which, and
some dried leaves tied together with twine

When the ritual is over, the gesture is repeated and the adventurer begins putting the things away. He supposes, given the rhythm of the event, that these objects go together into another pocket. He takes the silence of the woman as assent. He waits for more, but there is none. The old woman waves an arm towards one of the breaks in the palisade. The adventurer can see a path on the other side. He stands up, bows to the woman, and sets off. He is a man who knows how to read maps.

Learning

The old woman pushes the objects across to the adventurer, indicating he should keep them. He picks them up, holds up the clothes peg and looks at the woman. She cackles, gets to her feet, places her arms as if holding a dance partner (for a horrifying moment, he thinks it is an invitation), dances a few steps of a waltz, then sits down and cackles again. The adventurer realises he has been given something, although he does not know what. He tries holding up another object, to see if he will get another individual explanation, but the old woman cries out and gestures vigorously. He begins to put the things away, looking for different pockets to put the objects in. She repeats the gesture. The objects must go in the same pocket. These are his first language lessons. Smoke from a fire inside the hut drifts into his face with a smell that is universally nostalgic.

The old woman's story - elements (1)

The adventurer crouches in front of the old woman. When he is still, the old woman reaches into a bag on the ground at her side and pulls out objects, one by one, which she lays carefully between them. They are: a clothes peg, a map of Alaska, a small carved figure of a woman, a discoloured animal fang, very curved, and a shard of corroded mirror.
She holds up a finger, not to indicate a stop, but a pause. He thinks she is telling a story with the objects, but they say nothing to him. He has no past to give them meaning, no language to give them order. He is new born on this continent.

An opportunity to learn.

At first sight, the village is abandoned. The wooden huts haven’t been maintained, the palisade can simply be walked through in places. Grass grows through the packed earth in the central clearing. But inside he sees two things: a washing line carefully hung with coloured clothes and an old woman sitting in the doorway to a hut, almost fading into its darkness. He walks towards her, sensing an opportunity to learn.

First contact

Her name is evasive for you. Every time you get to know one name, another pops up. Each facet has its own name, and the facets are a kaleidoscope of glimpses and whims. Finally you know that you will never be able to pronounce her true name. You know you will never need to. Never even need to know if it exists.

Denying dichotomies

From the beach, a path invites you, if doubtfully, to enter the continent through the dense green. You soon come to a fork. Which should you take, left or right? Then you realise that, of course, (or you recognise) that it is a sign (or reminder) that your place is not on the path. Not this or any other path.
Now you're ready to be an adventurer.
You are ready to meet the inhabitants.

On Arriving

When the tide leaves him beached on the warm sand, and the new continent asks him to introduce himself, he only says:
"Geechie Wiley sang the Skinny Leg Blues."
And smiles.

General Advice

The good adventurer, when drifting, has no expectations or desires. That way, seeing things for the first time, he comes as close as he can to taking them for what they are. Floating there, the shore of the new continent passes by, and he lives everything it gives him.

First Steps

When exploring an unknown continent, all points of reference can be lost. This is the charm of exploration. Following paths worn by another, one unknown, who, sometimes, you think, looks out at you from the bushes, shows you glimpses of his creations.