[100 Challenge] Ocean_52

Octopus (French typewriter version)

Adult remembers his or her twin, many specific memories of play in childhood, then an inexplicable disappearance of her, then doubt as to her having existed at all, then either she re-emerges or there erupt hints of her existing though she never reappears.

“We don’t pray for love we pray for cards” = the contradictions in the idea of ‘Luck bless me’ [story where old card player tells of being seduced by Lady Luck and having the run of his life]. = Love as toxic; gambling as less-so.

“Of the many wonderful tales Moor told me, the most wonderful, the most delightful one, was “Hans Röckle.” It went on for months; it was a whole series of stories... Hans Röckle himself was a Hoffman-like magician, who kept a toyshop, and who was always “hard up.” His shop was full of the most wonderful things—of wooden men and women, giants and dwarfs, kings and queens, workmen and masters, animals and birds as numerous as Noah got into the Ark, tables and chairs, carriages, boxes of all sorts and sizes. And though he was a magician, Hans could never meet his obligations either to the devil or to the butcher, and was therefore—much against the grain—constantly obliged to sell his toys to the devil. These then went through wonderful adventures—always ending in a return to Hans Röckle’s shop. —Eleanor Marx, on her father Karl’s bedtime stories”  -David Graeber

“Mystic" character realizes he is only a literary character, called up to me, the author, speaks in signs, seeks my language– this teaches me, asking if various scenes are messages to him, asks for signs, wonders if he dis-exists in scenes where he is not written in, or if he has existence between scenes, an existence that neither his author, nor his author’s audience, sees. He attempts experiments, but cannot prove whether I wrote them (“fate”) or whether he chose his own actions (“free will”). He cannot confide his realization to other characters; doing so would obligate his father to then compose a sequence of scenes wherein he’s seen as "crazy.” But then– the author must be composing his very hesitancy! "Why do you toy with me so!"