Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, dangerous to travellers. Here lives the Old-Man-of-the-Sea, who sits and waits, dressed in leaves and wearing a sad look, for an unfortunate person to come his way. Should a traveller, out of pity for the Old Man, carry him on his back, he will become the Old Man's beast of burden for the rest of his days.
The Old Man will twist his legs-black and rough like the hide of a buffalo-around the travellers neck, squeezing it with his feet until the traveller becomes unconscious. He will then beat the traveller on the back and shoulders to make him realize who is the master, and will force him to carry him around the island to pick the best and ripest fruit. Night and day he will sit on the traveller's back, adding to the discomfort by urinating and defecating in situ.
Sinbad the the Sailor wrote an account of this place, explaining how he managed to escape the Old Man. Though Sinbad describes how he killed the Old man, his death has not yet been confirmed and travellers are advised to proceed with caution....

(Anonymous, The Arabian Nights 14th-16th cen. AD)

I'd like to thank the one who came and played last month, we had wonderful entires!( hehe you know who you are )
I am hoping that we get much more activity this month!
I found it to be a most.......interesting place from The Book..
Happy creating!


=Iriesurfinchick & `lyastri

Journal by =bewarecalamity, =LikeGravity, and *BewareGravityCSS

Beersheba, a city of uncertain location.

The inhabitants believe that, suspended in the heavens, there exists another Beersheba, where the city’s most elevated virtues and sentiments are poised, and that if the terrestrial Beersheba will take the celestial one as its model the two cities will become one. The image propagated by tradition is that of a city of pure gold, with silver locks and diamond gates, a jewel-city, all inset and inlaid, as a maximum of laborious study might produce when applied to materials of the maximum worth. True to this belief, the inhabitants honour everything that suggests for them the celestial city: they accumulate noble metals and rare stones, they renounce all ephemeral excesses, they develop forms of composite composure.
They also believe that another Beersheba exists underground, the receptacle of everything base and unworthy that happens to them, and is their constant care to erase from the visible Beersheba every tie or resemblance to the lower twin. In the place of roofs they imagine that the underground city has overturned rubbish bins, with cheese rinds, greasy paper, fish scales and dishwater, uneaten spaghetti, old bandages spilling from them. Or even that its substance is dark and malleable and thick, like the pitch that pours down from the sewers, prolonging the route of the human bowels, from black hole to black hole, until it splatters against the lowest subterranean floor; and from the lazy, encircled bubbles below, layer upon layer, a fecal city rises, with twisted spires.
In Beersheba’s beliefs there is an element of truth and one of error. It is true that the city is accompanied by the two projections itself, one celestial and one infernal; but the citizens are mistaken about their consistency. The inferno that broods in the deepest subsoil of Beersheba is a city designed by the most authoritative architects, built with the most expensive materials on the market, with every device and mechanism and gear system functioning, decked with tassels and fringes.
Intent on piling up its carats of perfection, Beersheba takes for virtue what is now grim mania to fill the empty vessel of itself; the city does not know that’s its only moments of generous abandon are those when it becomes detached from itself, when it lets go, expands. Still, at the zenith of Beersheba there gravitates a celestial body that shines with all the city’s riches, enclosed in the treasury of cast-off things: a planet aflutter with potatoe peelings, broken umbrellas, old socks, candy wrappings, paved with tram tickets, fingernail cuttings and pared callouses, eggshells. This is the celestial city, and its heavens long-tailed comets fly past, released to rotate in space by the only free and happy action of the citizens of Beersheba, a city which, only when it shits, is not miserly, calculating, grasping, greedy.


(Italo Calvino,Le citta invisibili, Turin)

I'd like to thank everyone who came and played last month, we had some great entires!
Welcome to the New Year! `lyastri has chosen our first new theme of the year! We can't wait to see what your imaginations will bring to life with this theme. Dig deep my friends dig deep!
Happy creating!



`lyastri and *Iriesurfinchick

Journal by =bewarecalamity, =LikeGravity, and *BewareGravityCSS

Living Island, a country inhabited by mythical beasts and talking boats and clocks, cigar-smoking fireplaces and animated musical instruments. The mayor is a friendly dragon called H.R. Pufnstuf.

Travellers can visit Witchiepoo Castle, once owned by a scientist of the same name, who accidentally blew herself up after an unsuccessful encounter with Jimmy, a small boy whose flute she had tried to steal.

Should travellers meet a witch during their visit, they are best advised to look angelic, as angels are anathema to witches on Living Island.

(Pufnstuf, directed by Hollingsworth Morse, USA, 1970)

Pufnstuff Wiki


We're off to a late start after some crazy delays, but we're still here! We can't wait to see what your imaginations will bring to life with this theme. Happy creating!

Peace out

^lyastri and *Iriesurfinchick

Journal by =bewarecalamity, =LikeGravity, and *BewareGravityCSS

We'd like to thank everyone who has joined, and all those who participated in our May theme of Neverland. We're glad to have you all within our merry little family. If you would, go show some extra love to our darling Irie, she's been through a lot. And come pay a visit to the chat, which is open once more!

Now on to a late starting June, which will run into July!



`lyastri and *Iriesurfinchick


Jabberwocky Wood

Jabberwocky wood, probably located somewhere in England.
The only information on this place is contained in an Anglo-Saxon poem published in "Looking-Glass Land" and reprinted many times since. According to the poem, the wood was the scene of an epic battle between a young man and a monstrous creature, the Jabberwocky, feared for its eyes of flame, its catching claws and its biting jaws. The creature's severed head was preserved and its skull can now probably be seen as an exhibit near the Wood. Two other creatures, the bandersnatch and the jubjub bird are known to be dangerous and should be avoided.
Near the edge of the wood lies a green lawn on which a sun-dial has been erected. On the wabe (the grass plot round the sun-dial, so called because it goes a long way before it, a long way behind it and a long way beyond it on each side) live a number of other animals. The toves, lithe and slimy creatures, a cross between a badger and a lizard, with pointed noses like corkscrews, make their nests under the sun-dial and feed only on cheese. The borogroves, thin shabby-looking birds with feathers sticking out all over, like a live mop, are known to be flimsy and miserable. The raths, a sort of green pig, bellow and whistle when they lose their way and assemble on the wabe. The only plant species worth noting in the Jabberwocky Wood is the tumtum tree, of which not much is known.

(Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, London, 1871)

Jabberwocky Wiki

Journal by =bewarecalamity, =LikeGravity, and *BewareGravityCSS