calling all mapmakers

a horn for amateur botanists

acting troupes

painters of bugle hues and whistling line

cartographer! cartographer!

bombastic oceanographer

thou compass setters

magnetic meddlers

I would like to extend an invitation

join me, cordially, for the making of a world

what it will look like

how 'twil heft

I'm not so certain

I'm hoping it will contain elements

none of us have conjured yet

but I have stories wriggling in the fur

some of which emerged from dreams

some of which emerged from neglected gardens

newly pissed on

the story I begin with is in no way the beginning

I think of it sitting somewhere in the middle

reeling out and reeling inward

right there in the mess we're soon to map

nets ballooning, full of phantom

surfing under the eversong

this is a brief tale about people following each other

roundward and roundward

perhaps without knowing it

if one wished to attach a metaphor to these proceedings:

walking panes of glass, clean or uncleaned

depends on how you wish to peer through them

you could also try:

dirty bits of mirror, bumping into themselves

or never touching at all

shortly before writing this story

shortly after quitting his job

the author arrived at the following, simple image

the pictographic of a burgeoning plot?

doodlebug?

esoteric relation to a cosmic order

of not-just-anyone's choosing?

pleasure or displeasure on the eyes

despite how things reek

the author is not performing a literary feint

when they speak

this prelude is not a gloss on a directionless fiction

wherever there is speech

it is, itself, an attempt

to make a bit more sense

of a story emerging

in short, we all make our circular way in this world

without quite knowing what it is

we are walking into

or after

the characters you are about to receive are

in this, at least

not entirely detached

from what one is pleased to call

the real, living thing