An Incomplete Report of the Events of the Past Weekend in the City of Crystals, somewhat near the Washington Which is Taxed But Without Representation.

Sun 9 Nov 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Posted by: Gavin

We set out on Wednesday, October 8th, 2014, with eight mules and two packhorses. The mules carried our pineapples, books, and other items of domestic needs (couches, toasters, &c.) while for the most part we walked or sometimes lay down and let the ants carry us. We slept wherever the early sunsets found us: Springfield, Bridgeport, Baltimore, other places that are forgotten except for the bottles of brandy imprinted with their names and the somewhat happy memory of exchanging a carton of relatively new books to a M. Sturgis in New Amsterdam for a fine pair of shoes.

We arrived in the Crystal City and joined a parade of Readers, Writers, Publishers, Editors, Artists, and All Others Associated With the Fantastical Arts, that was heading to the Regency Hyatt. A time portal had been erected in Union Station, wherein we could also acquire timely appurtenances for a weekend in the Regency: wigs, collars, clothing, and so on. One Ms. Valentine advised us on our wardrobe and was kind enough to dispose of many of the inappropriate outfits in our trunks.

Once through the portal a TaxiFunicular took us all through the city and showed us many of the night sights before retracing its way back to our rooming house. We thanked the driver politely. Our rooming house had a cold box which puzzled us. But we used it to store our new clothes overnight and were most pleased by how refreshing they were in the morning.

Refreshed and ready to join the celebrations of the fantastic in literature, instead we immediately fled everyone we ever knew and spent the next two or three months two floors beneath the earth in the subterranean caverns where the purveyors of literature had been banished. Of course somewhere over our long journey down from our Northern home a carton or two of books had been misplaced so we applied for and were granted a special case one-time use telepathy license. We gathered many friends and strangers and sat in a helix pattern on the richly carpeted floor and sent messages to whomsoever might hear to ensorcell flights of herons to deliver replacements for our missing books. M. Berry in Amherst, Massachusetts, and M. Brown of Consortium in the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis in Snowlandia were projecting their spirits into the aether and were able to magick the herons. Many, many thanks are owed to them!

As to one M. DeLuca who helped us time after time. Thank you, M.

Sometime in the first month we began to meet up with friends and associates from city gatherings past. It had been many years since last we’d attended this particular traveling convention of like-minded readers and we shook many hands, drank many toasts, hugged many people, bought many books, ached and ached and talked of our so-long-missed late friend Jenna Felice, admired the art, sold many more books, and were generally astounded and amazed by how many people there were, how many we saw, and how many we did not.

Early one morning we took a mule with us and we went out into the city of Arlington and found that the government in this city there is entrenched in every aspect of life so much that they even control the grocery markets and severely limit what can be sold. The market stall we found would only sell us strongly fortified drinks from the far southern parts of this country such as Kentucky or from that beautiful northern outpost of civilization, Scotland. We begged and pleaded for solid sustenance and they put bags of chipped and fried potatoes or small sacks of boiled peanuts in our hands. Was this really Regency life, we wondered. We filled our panniers with tiny bottles of these highly flammable drinks and walked hungrily back to the rooming house. It was just breakfast time when we returned and a Ms. Jennings directed us to the stairs and after happily tramping up eighteen flights we found there was food aplenty after all and, as many others were, we were well looked after by the Saints of the Penthouse Suite.

The weeks passed and we were informed there was an outpost of Thai food little more than a day’s walk north. We did not even try to resist and found that although sober noodles could not be found, the drunken noodles sufficed.

One M. Rowe and Ms. Bond illustrated to us how to drink Kentucky Mashed Spirits and we found ourselves more and more happy to be educated in these esoteric spirits. Late one night we were shown the what was claimed to be Debbie Harry and Michael Lee Aday in a film together but how could we believe that such a thing existed that we’d never heard of? We did not.

As winter turned to spring we went forth less and less to the outside world. Down in the basement there were books, friends, fortified drinks full of cheer, energy, and future headaches, occasional snacks, tables to sleep under, and the never ceasing florescent lights. When high summer came one or two of the braver bookdealers packed up and took off for conventions that, so the rumor said, had bookrooms with windows. We were busy weaving our new pink T-shirts and did not pay attention and so we missed our chance to escape the basement.

Autumn came and one dark evening we were blindfolded and led to a charabanc. I do not know how long or how far we were driven but when it stopped we were all relieved to be taken into a house of Grecian wonders and our palates were amazed by four seasons of tastes. We were reminded of times and travels passed and also that we had left our families at home. We spent a week feasting and then the charabanc reappeared as if called by magic and we returned, as always, as if by a magnet in our souls, to the Regency. Oh that I could write of the wonders of the Regency. Even without a swimming pool it was a wonder of the world. Surrounded on all sides by huge and slightly similar rooming houses it stood silent and ready to stand down, waiting for the real monarch to appear, but always in place, ever ready to do the job thrust upon it.

By now we realized we must either fish or cut bait. Neither choice attracted us so we looked around and considered whether we should spend another winter in the Crystal City. We had by now found (and ridden and re-ridden and re-re-ridden the glass elevator) and had shared our excitement in it with the Rolling Thunder convention. We had sold many books, finished weaving the shirts and sold many of them. There were rumors: of Caribbean food in Union Station; that perhaps this fine convention might be winding down; that the time portal would close; that we had been outbid in the art show; that crystal miners were going to descend upon the Crystal City and mine it for crystal unicorns to sell at a thousand malls across the country. It was time to return home.

We said our goodbyes — and as always realized that we had missed many people: there are at least as many conventions as there are people — and packed up our last boxes of books. I will miss sleeping under that table but seeing the sun again more than made up for it.

After tears and hugs and promises that we will meet up again in some other past or future, Regency or otherwise, convention, we traded what we had left (tuppence and a pen that didn’t leak too badly) for seats in a nonfunicular Taxi and this time were sprinted directly to Union Station. We found the excellent restaurant and carried with us a feast.

We set off on our return trip, this time on a train, to Massachusetts at 12:30 pm on November 9th, 2014. Awards were given out while we traveled and the train was in a complete uproar of joy that only calmed once we reached Connecticut. They say our train is approaching Springfield and that in seventeen minutes we will be allowed once more to step on land. I hope we can still walk on the still and solid earth after all these weeks on this train. I hope my sense of time returns before tomorrow. It is very very dark and the train hurtles (of course) through it. We ride on rails and there is no stillness. Our hearts are full from the days, weeks, months away, and we miss everyone already. Goodbye, goodbye, hello, we hope to see you again soon. We go home now, so tired, but full of joy.