curios_begin_again red ribbon curios when i walked through the gate, i was stopped immediately by a man on a white horse that oddly reminded me of The Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Dudley Do Right. "always willing to help a citizen in need!" he announced, removing his hat with thumb and index finger. 140517 ... red ribbon there was something typewriter-written familiar about this man, as if he had once been a created friend of mine, but was now so altered and destructed that the connection could no longer be made. i think it was the bright red uniform. "thanks," i said. "i'm just going to my cell like always. by the way, your horse is very cool." "hold on. do you have a marox_pass?" he asked, putting his hat back on. "of course," i said, chuckling. i showed it to him. he looked at it for an uncomfortably long time, as if he was trying to find an error. 140518 ... red ribbon "changes have been made at curios," he said, putting my marox pass into his breast pocket. "first thing you'll notice is all cells are locked." he tossed me a combination lock. "you need to create your own number." i caught it and gave it a quick study. "why are you keeping my marox pass?" i asked, looking back up at him. "you'll get it back," he said, clicking his tongue to his horse. "there are some things i am wary about and need to investigate." "excuse me," i said as he was about to ride off. "are you the owner of curios?" he looked at me and raised an eyebrow but did not answer. his horse whinnied and raised up on its back legs and then he left me alone. 140519 ... red ribbon the place was a ghost town. the kiosks were gone. i saw only three stands and their offerings were basic and banal, except for one stand that seemed exotic, perhaps from a potager. i definitely wanted to check it out. i reached my old cell. all of the raised stone beds and paths were full of weeds. my locust wood fence was falling down. i tossed the combination lock he gave me into a five gallon bucket. and took a walk down to the cell of fyn_gula. his door was metal painted green with words brush scripted, like maris_den_cie and rynomari. i held his combination lock in my hand. i checked my old texts for the numbers he sent me. i worked 1357531 into the lock. it failed. i tried 35553. it popped open. 140520 ... red ribbon there was a faint odor of onion when i pushed the door open. not an assault, more like the fragrance of a spring harbinger when a scallion is pulled from the giving earth and the soiled fingers possess the lingering essence. i knew fyn to be unkempt, so looking around the cell, i was surprised but duly impressed to find things in order. the work space was clean. tools, microscopes, beakers, flasks, and implements all in their places. hundreds of onions were packed away in wooden crates and stored on wooden shelves. however, there were two things that immediately troubled me. 140521 ... red ribbon first of all, and the most obvious, was the fact that the cell had been crudely divided in half by a cardboard wall. a door had been cut into it without hinges. a handle was absent but two holes had been knife gouged and a chain inserted with another combination lock. although the cardboard was unpainted, there were two letters sprayed on, one on each side. H and then J. the red paint ran like blood from a wound. just as i considered trying to open the lock, my gaze was unexpectedly diverted to the upper right corner of the half cell. i could see a bird's nest, but then something horrific hanging down from it. stepping over to it and giving it the closer attention it was demanding from me, i was stricken to discover a robin hanging dead from one wing. fishing line was wrapped around it as stark, immutable evidence of the tragic story nature was telling of a mother bird, in the process of building the nest for her future hatchlings, she chooses to use an item that ultimately kills her in the process of bringing new life. grabbing a wooden stool. i stood up near it. every one of its feathers were splayed out in a final, desperate attempt at freeing itself. i choreographed this unfortunate danse macabre in my imagination, feeling the tears well up hot. i cut the line, one tiny snip of a pruning shear separating it from survival. its body so lithe in my hands. i touched her belly and thought of the cloudless sky blue eggs inside of her that were also lifeless. i brought her down and wrapped her in a piece of tissue. i dug deep into one of fyn's composted onion beds and buried her. 140522 ... red ribbon i worked 1357531 into the second lock on the chain, figuring it would pop it. i was right. i pulled the flimsy cardboard divider apart enough to step inside the other half of fyn's cell and looked around. holy christ. 140523 ... red ribbon where do i begin? my burning eyes? the rotten onions stained all colors of the palette smashed into the walls and littering the floor? or the straw-filled replica of fyn_gula, (his giant papier mache head like michael fassbender's new character in the film called, "frank" slit at the throat and bleeding red paint? 140524 ... red ribbon i managed to find enough water to soothe the sting in my eyes and then examined the bizarre faux fyn. after kicking a mess of onions out of the way, my first attempt at moving him turned out to be surprisingly revealing. his head came off and where the neck had been attached with a few crude stitches, a jagged hole was created and several 1" x 1" tiles, similar to the game of scrabble pieces, tumbled out. each one a letter. black on white. intrigued, i stuck my hand inside and realized the whole head itself had been stuffed with them like a pinata. i shook it and they trickled out, at least a hundred. 140525 ... red ribbon there was an abundant presence of vowels indicating a strong possibility that this was a puzzle i needed to figure out and it wasn't going to be easy. and so i set them all out to discover if there were any patterns already forming. of course there were. there always is. I M P those were the first three letters to catch my eye. 140526 ... red ribbon i was always able to behold tessellation when i was little. i remember staring at the wood grain in the head board of my bed and getting lost inside of it. and so it wasn't long until the letters spread out on the work table in front of me began to disclose the words they had been deconstructed from and i slowly realized there were statements he was containing in that newspaper brain. here are two of them that took me nearly 12 hours to recreate with breaks to drink a health tonic i concocted: "i am an absurdist human being with an infinite amount of identities." "i am an impersonator in the play i write about myself." ha! there's that word "imp" hiding inside! 140527 ... red ribbon there were some other peevish words, random snippets of flimflam and ambiguous statements regarding the effects of the imbroglio at my feet and smeared into the walls that i was able to make into some working sense. "accusation" "lies" "theft" "misunderstanding" "esoteric intention" "ignorance" "overreaction" "inability to perceive" "selfishness" "usurp" and that was it for the tiles that were inside the head. i thought i would check the contents of the heart. 140528 ... red ribbon i set the papier mache head to the side and zipped the plaid barn jacket down exposing the straw-filled chest and dug about for any semblance of a heart, totally unsure if even there was one present. what do you know? i found one. it was wooden, about the size of a fist and painted bright red, just like the military uniform of the man on horseback. similar to a matryoshka, it opened up, revealing a slightly smaller one inside that was more of a maroon red. that one then could be opened to another of descending size with an increasing darker red color. there was yet another almost purple, and then finally the smallest one was black. when i opened it, there was a bedraggled piece of paper that had been folded up several times to fit inside. it was so weather beaten and flimsy that i feared it would crumble as i carefully unfolded it. 140529 ... red ribbon how long did it take to open it without destroying it? good question. how long does it take to examine the quintessence of a person's intentions? and so it took me that amount of time. it felt like i was there for 14 years. since 2000. there was a day something was written with blood on the fragile, onion skin-like paper. but the words were tears on a cheek, faint traces of things once felt but the sandpaper of life had all but erased. all that remained were individual letters that previously formed words that contained meaning. what would it take to fill in the rest? how would i know? the first word was all but gone, except for, um, is that a "P?" the next one definitely contained an "E" so did the next one. the final one had two words but only one legible letter: "T" _ P_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ E _ _ _ _ _ E _ _ _ _ _ T _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 140530 ... red ribbon i was forced to abdicate. i could not fill in the letters. and so, what was left to do? clean up the mess. it would be a lot of work. i needed help. it could wait a little longer. it's been a long time. a real long time. i put on the papier mache head of fyn_gula and began to dance about like a happy clown. 140531 ... red ribbon there were no holes for the eyes and so it wasn't long before i danced blindly into a glop of rotten onions that had been smashed into the cobblestone at my feet. i slipped with reckless abandon and fell backwards, a hapless victim of my own neglect. 140601 ... red ribbon the papier mache head split right in half saving me from injury. i laughed at myself. 140602 ... red ribbon i sat on my ass for a while contemplating existence. what happened to fyn? where did he go? why? did he make this mess or did someone else? obviously no one else was going to clean it up. someone had to be responsible. 140603 ... red ribbon when i stood, i had a hard time balancing. catching myself from falling became an exercise in a skill i learned when first learning to walk. i slipped again on an errant smoosh of onion and this time i caught myself, foot over the edge of a tall building. we are all afraid of falling. when we do, we hurt others. i fell again. this time i hurt myself. 140604 ... red ribbon i was able to get up on my knees, but a creeping nausea kept me pressed to the floor. the stink of onion overwhelmed me into a series of dry heaves. i sank into a crumpled mess of exhaustion and lost consciousness. 140605 ... red ribbon how long did i lay there? i don't fucking know. what was going through my head? you would like to know because it goes through yours in your own way. i want to know what goes on inside of you. when i finally did open my eyes i was startled to find myself looking into a great big eye. um, gulp. 140606 ... red ribbon turned out it was the white horse of the man in the red military coat checking me out. it was taking a big shit just as i was coming to and the putrid smell of it overpowered the rotting onions! 140607 ... red ribbon why would you let your horse just shit like that? 140607 what's it to you? who go blather from