Most writers, I suspect, keep a few note books… Some more than others. Some may scribble down the odd idea once in a while, if they remember. Others may carry a note book pretty much all the time. Or have merry little notebooks scattered about their home or work places. Of course in the modern age many will make verbal notes on there phones, or type them out into a notepad file of some description on one hand held device or another.

The there are the mad ones, the ones that are a tad obsessive and keep note books by the bed, the sofa, there desk, on the kitchen table, in the car, in the smallest room…. And keep voices notes shouted at ‘Alex’ at 3am, and in notes files on every conceivable device backed up to the cloud on something like one note , and folders full of word documents and transcriptions of the diseased uttering of an incoherent mind… And have been doing so for so many years now that they frankly have no idea where all the notes are or what inspired most of them or whey they were noted at all…

Occasionally these mad individuals find themselves stumbling through the notes, trying to make sense of often incoherent gibbering.

Hello. My name is Mark, I am a note-a-holic… Here’s some very random short scriblings (bare in mind these are not even first drafts, they are at best the equivalent of an artists sketch, trying to get an idea out for a first draft to follow, they are rough and ill-formed. Welcome to some of the odder bits of my mind…

In the space between universes, the emptiness of nothing, there is something all the same. If only the possibility of something. Islands of potensality for want of another word. Think of them as the soft places. The places in between. No more real that a dream, except they are real none the less, and there are those who dwell within them. 

But there are other things too.Things that come from elsewhere, from places that could be described as here, or there. Bleedings out of reality, if you will. Bleeding out into the soft places. To a place where nothing can be, from the place where everything is.  

One such soft place is the garden of the lantern maker. Don’t ask me his name, if he ever had one it was forgotten before your universe was born. That may seem impossible to you,  not that it matters, but you are thinking in the terms set by what you call reality. You need to step beyond them, the soft places exist between. Beyond if that is the better word. Time does not exist there in any sense you understand. Time and its passing is a product of reality after all.  

He is known by his actions only, he is the lantern maker, that is enough. It is not what he does that matters so much of how he does it. His lanterns you see are weaved from human souls. Well not just human souls, the souls of those things which inhabit what you call the universe. I only said human souls to grab your attention, but all that which exists has souls, humans, elephants, lions , the smallest of ants, a blade of grass. Though the lanterns of ants are dull lights at best. Even the souls of your dead, human, make for only the tiniest lanterns in his garden.  

The souls of of the living though, they shine brighter than stars. Thus the lantern maker coverts those more than any other. 

I have no idea, so don’t ask, a note with the file says PP2 which would imply this was part of my early plotting for the sequel to Passing Place I may eventually write one day. If so it bears no relation to the actual plot notes for the sequel to Passing Place I may write one day… Its also not entirely coherent even within itself…

Its odd ,the little details you remember. Like the book I was reading when Lorne came into the cafe. Perhaps it was because it wasn’t my usual fair. A crappy sub-errotic detective thriller called Blindsided By Beauty, it was trying its best to be 30’s noir updated to a more modern setting with sexscene just the right side of the censors knife. It was trying to be classy, while wrapped in a brown paper bag.  

It was failing on all counts. I vaguely remember enjoying it, though beyond that carefully alliterated title I can’t remember a thing about it.  

Lorne looked strung out again. But there was little new there, she had been working for Frankie at the eleves until her habit got too firm a grip on her. Now she plied her trade in less surlobrious establishments . Frankie had warned me she was a shitshow but she was also another old friend from back in the day. Back when we were kids shopping up west with a fine fingers discount. I knew her mum who had known my mum both of whom would not be happy with the turn her life had taken. But what are you gonna do , and when she was sober she was fine company  

 Not in the way you are no doubt assuming 

 Well not after a couple of drunken tumbles . but let’s not go there. She was good to talk to. 

Anyway, she had been tying to straighten out and I had thrown a little work her way of the none horizontal kind. I had clients that didn’t like to meet men in uniform and she was a good go between .  

But right now Lorne was strung out about something  

Fairly sure this was a sketch for a Hannibal short story, though not sure how Hannibal works with 30’s noir. Technically there was still a 30’s in Hannibal’s universe so its kind of works, I have a vague recollection (and some more plotted notes) of where this one was going which was very much followed the noir type plot of the ‘woman gonna do me wrong’…. But still.

Sometimes I wander into the hidden valleys of the mind  

And there , between mountains of improbably size and beneath improbably blue sky I walk 

At the heart of these hidden valleys there is always a temple  

Small but imacilate in concept  

And on the steps of the temple sits an old monk , who always has something to tell me , but speaks only in words whom meanings are beyond comprehension 

And that one is literally in a folder called Plotting, and I have no idea what I was jibbering on about. That folder contains many small bits including this last little aside which which also contains the last of these notes, a short one but one that made me smile… I have no idea why I wrote it down.

Clearly, they were both swinging at the same piñata