February's Final Report

I doubt I will have the opportunity to post anything again in February. I realize that this disappoints exactly no one. Nonetheless, consider yourself notified.

February--despite some frosty temps (yet none of my beloved sub-zero temps)--has returned to its boring coldish cold and semi-sunshiney ways. This of course, makes my a tad angry:





And, of course, the island, the city (and I use this term--city--very loosely here) goes about its non-madcap way:









Yes.


And yet the people--the ones who consider this island their home and heritage, who do not question why they cannot connect to the outside world or where that world would be or why it exists or how it could exist if it even exists, do not question anything other than what they are told to, lest they end up in one of the many secret and transportable prisons or, worse, end up in Stalag Ranville--those people--have kept their happy faces:

Visit Soybean Island

How?

Ask them, not me.

I continue to hang on in this precipitously absurd world I find myself in. An abstract existence in a cosmos of institutionalized complacency where deception and triviality are encouraged, the result of which is a melange of petrification and surreality:







A place where Good Drainage Makes Good Neighbors. Where up is up yet down is also up and sideways is a way of life. A place--this place--may I never say, "My place"--whose worship of mollusky gastropods--cornu aspersum--is summed up in this oft-quoted island motto:

And the Snails Shall Inherit the Shopping Mall:





Thusly, for all impractical purposes, this is my Final February Report.


#1957 over and out

Goodbye from Soybean Island

Darkness, Fear and a Toilet

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog . . . that is, no one in the entire free world . . . know that one of many fears here upon this prisoner-isle is being spirited away in the dark of night.








Yes. By who? By who else--The Apparatus!

So it was much to said fears that that's sort of what happened recently.






Yes the authoritative authorities came knocking at my authority-provided apartment and demanded that I go with them.

At least I got to get dressed (and grab my beloved camera) before we set out in the very-cold cold of very-early early morning.

I was taken to Apparatus Headquarters--or at least the Prisoner Interrogation Wing of their ever-shifting quarters. I do not know how many buildings The Apparatus owns on the island, or even within Soybean Island City. I do know where their main or home office is and have never posted a photo of it (except obliquely) due to the secretly-sancrosanct and seditious nature of it and doing so. Etc. Anyway , . . .

Once at the location, I was promptly left alone for a spell.

Here is what I could, surreptitiously, record:





And:






Also:




What surprised me and yet it should not, no, indeed, not, nothing should surprise me, was that even at one of the many floating detention and interrogation centers of The Apparatus, there was artwork:





Ah. As a distraction, I contemplated what to make of this sculpture. What critique could I offer? . . . From this vantage it had somewhat the look of a Steel Seal balancing a ball with its flippers. I do not know if seals or any other aquatic mammals live along the coast of Soybean Island, as I--like all citizens and the prisoner class--have not seen the coast, or even a hint of the sea. It is disallowed. But the sculpture no doubt portrays a more sinister concept than that of a seal at play. Certainly. My guess that it depicts some poor poor soul about to be crushed by an iron cannonball of great heft and density, the captive's arms outstretched hopelessly in order to catch or vainly divert the three ton behemoth that will end his/her/its life.

Yes. I can see that.


After a bit they--who they were or are is not important and of course I could not describe them or, for that matter, even look at them in order to describe them--they took me to a room where they asked gentle and ungentle questions and confiscated my dear camera.

Wah. Wah.

That was all I could tell them.

They again warned me not to stray too far about the island. Not to lose my job as An Object of Curiosity.

They did not return my camera, but when they allowed me to use the bathroom this is where I found it:





Ah.

Another sculpture!


But now that I am back to my usual unsafe and unsound haunts, I realize that I must report this report and encounter-with-The-Apparatus to my new and even more secretive boss', the Eye-Nye-Hab Descendants. The Anti-Snailians who have taken me--or forced me--under their wing in order to foment a revolution.


So, I shall have to hunt them down to inform.

Consider yourselves informed.


Goodbye from Soybean Island

A Frosty Cold One

Ah and Ah-ha. It appears my meteorological complaints have been answered:





Yes. Winter--real winter--finally showed up upon the island:








Frosty and almost-zero-fahrenheit cold:




Definitely below freezing, if not quite my desired subzero.

Which is so pleasant. So apt. So me, I suppose.

And there was snow:









Ladders of snow . . .

And ice:

Visit Soybean Island

Indeed, indeedy, indeedly . . .

How lovely to have this place frozen and sterile and blank. A measure of its inherent banality put forth upon the landscape, in the very air of this airless society, this mishmash of quiet oppression, dumbfounded acceptance and subtle horror.

Ah. Winter. Real.

More?

Yes:










The obtuse light:









The need for secrecy and inconspicuous photography:




Just a little further . . .





And then I am done:




My frostbitten days, how I will miss them when the flowers sprout and the birds flock and the people come out to watch my every move.


Oneninefiveseven, over and out and . . .


Goodbye from Soybean Island

Bellobruto In Winter

Yes. I have come back to the Lake:

Lake Bellobruto, that is:

In all its inglorious non-glory.

Yes, not only is winter a disappointment, what with its sunshine and mild temperatures and forgiving lack of cruelty, but I am a disappointment as well, as I have succumbed to a walk around this disturbingly banal body of water.

At least it had some ice:

And some sticks trapped in ice:





And this:




Some type of ice hammer . . .

Ah, but I digress, or depress.

What worries me is that I turn to this non-lake lake, this pedestrian pond, to walk its circumference and cogitate upon my fate, or lack of fate. And I do this with a peck of admiration for what I see. This is what now frightens me. It's as if I have become inured to this place, this island, these people, this prison and its invisible all-seeing overlords. Egad! I am like a yokel. I come here and am pacified.

If only it were truly winter--mean, frozen, hard, sanitary in its blind rigid iciness. Then I would not be walking, be out and about to a place like Lake Bellobruto . . . Yet, since I was, I did take a few more photos:





Nice. Circular. Almost cold.

And then there were the birds:




These were crows. Crows who stood upon the ice and poked little holes into it with their beaks. Then they got out fishing poles and worms and coolers with bad American beer and listened to American football playoffs as they fished, warming their wings in their crotches now and then.

Ah.

Other birds:

















Well, the same birds gathered around an ice hole. Standing around dumbfounded by life here on Lake Bellobruto much like the local denizens are dumbfounded by life here on Soybean Island . . . Or, at least like me.


These dirty and controlled waters brought, no took, me back to my sailing days. Yes. Days (and nights) of vast freedom upon vast waters, full of wind and worries about wind and worrying tides and depths and food and fresh water and pirates and, well, many worries about weather and leaks and ripped sails and de-mastings--but they were carefree days. Yes. Carefree. And one was always looking for the Green Flash. That mythical whomp of color at sunset when the earth made its turn toward night and the ocean's surface and the very sky would explode into a great green laser-treasure of verdant light . . . Except for the fact that it never did. Ever.

But, lo and behold, what did I see in this measly and mealy little tub of water?

This:














Soybean Island's Green Flash!

Wow.

Wow and Wondrous!

Moving on . . .


I also saw this: Or, these:



Murdered tree.




Evidence of a bad winter--sprout growing upon the face of a murdered tree.





A spy silo--full of the remains of murdered trees, no doubt.



Well.


What else?


?


This:






And there you have it.

Lake Bellobruto in Winter.






Goodbye from Soybean Island