More than any other, AAA has shaped my reality, shot my shadows. We've never met. Not face - to - face. Not verbal.
Rather through written, through abstract silence. It is enough. You have read the center and the extent - you too have eaten the strange - it is enough for us, our burning bodies.

Radix. From Firstness to Untelling to trying to function as a human after words. Raw, filters blown wide, naked to the singularity. Input input input. I can't stem the inflowing of lines - of Linergy. It's changing me, waking me, calling me to Being. Iz . Streaming. Energy wild, outflowing. What means solid? What means? What!!!

Relax, let go the viscera, the mammal gap-logic, the density routines. Silence now. "All is nothing." Laughter.

Was your experience similar? Are we shared? I can't hide from the forgery that was I. Attanasio's words have cored me, redefined me. Against such spelling there is no mercy. Tenderness yes. Compassion yes - for we still operate within this fleshy suit of space, the frailty of which is a common enough theme across AAA's vast originality. Be it the rending of said flesh ( gutsacks torn to bloody entrails, ribcages flayed open in gruesome savagery ) - the madness of mind inflicted on those in trespass - or of spirit - we are sympathy met in our human condition. Although not always where we expect it.

And yet, even the gods, angels, demons, 5-space aliens - beings of a far greater magnitude - are made to suffer utterly in measures attanasic. Whether fallen bitterly into the despairing muck of humanity or striving to elevate the same appalling wretchedness in hope of return to higher graces, their measure becomes ours for a time. Bearing witness. Bearing the story.

High stories. Dark transcendency. Accomplished light.

FEEL DEEP

Wyvern. A jungle sorcerer walks ahead. I follow. Stepping soundless for my feet are not. The jungle steps me. Fugitive to all but for this moment, this clarity, as the rough bark of a passing tree speaks gently, lovingly. I caress the Life deep within its high story. It is too beautiful. All over me I feel.

I have yet to walk through jungle in Borneo - let alone as an apprentice to a native sorcerer. The experience though is as close to me as my breath. I have felt Wyvern whispering remembrance to my blood, accessing my ' i ' with it's deep fiction. AAA reaching across that infinitely long instantaneity with his magiks. Pressing the deepness close. With each tale, intimate revelation of our dependence.

Sumner Kagan, Neter Col, Matubrembrem, Asofel, Ellen Vancet, Baat, Mr. Charlie, Ripcat, Ieuanc 751, Nox and so on, are all names that fit their characters so well that it is difficult to imagine any other. There's a certain unconscious rightness to them. An intrinsic resonance.

There are however some unlikely exceptions:

Ned O'Tennis ( The Last Legends of Earth ). Slightly unusual - almost clumsy in a way. What it prompts is 'notice me'. Yes, much like a tennis ball, Ned's journey takes us back and forth, back and forth across the court of time that spans Chalco-Doror. Let's look a liitle deeper - notice his initials? N.O.T. = NOT. So Ned is really a NOT. A not-ned. A what? A not doing? A kNOT in time? A NOThing? Read the story again with this NOT in mind - backwards and forwards across the expanse. Know-Where-To-Go.

* incidentally, look at the letters Know Where To Go backwards until coherent words form. oGOTerehwWONk. GOT WON. A confirmation of Gai's optimism? ( Now try it on Aesirai. )

Sitor Ananta ( Solis ). A name well suited to the character. Retains a slight inventive air but otherwise fine. Let's look shall we. Ahhhh, for the exception of a couple of letters, the name is an anagram of Attanasio. And while we're playing with letters, Solis backwards is Silos. Add a couple of letters and we have Silenos - the name of Captain Pym's ferocious avenger. ( Wyvern )

Dren ( Hellbound ). The Author's Note makes no mention of the nomenclature Dren. I'll make the assumption that it is derived from the surname Draven ( The Crow ). DRavEN. Further, Amy's surname Darien is seemingly another clever derivative of Draven.

Chan-ti Beppu ( The Last Legends of Earth ). A gorgeous name. It looks and reads well. Sounds out well when spoken too. Reminds me of shanti. Rearrange a couple of spaces in her first name and you end up with Chant i. Lovely. However...yes indeed, it's deepening time. Time to really break it down. Stay close now...

Attanasio is presumably an Italian name. In Italian, 'ch' is more commonly pronounced as a hard 'k' sound. So something like Chan-ti would be pronounced Kan-ti or Can-ti. With me? Ok, here comes the rest:

Chan-ti Beppu = Can-ti Beppu = Cant i Bep pu = Can't I Be Poo? :)

The answer is a resounding YES ! of course you can AAA ! Although you'd have to try really, really hard :)

CURSES ~ SOILED AGAIN

Now, humorous as this little discourse may be, Poo is another of those recurrent themes in AAA's wanderings. It pops out in small doses here and there:

In Centuries, when Rafe was in his music writing phase he would compose:
"...of whatever caught his attention, from the exalted to the vulgar, from the praise of God to his daily offerings to the toilet."

Hellbound, and the demon Dren cowering in the city's sewers:
" - he floated with the sewage in the subterranean pipes. He listened to the seethe of lives, the thoughts of people in their bathrooms, surrendering their waste. He heard much of the soul's remoteness, the banal concerns of humanity in its thousands and tens of thousands."

Insideout's initial experience of human settlements in Arc Of The Dream :
"The dolphin-sized, narrow-shaped beings filled all the river crevasses and plains of the planet, cluttering the surface with their concrete and electrical excrescences."

"...Building the mineral kingdoms, fitting together the life forms, instilling awareness in these hungry shit-makers, that's all madness. It's going nowhere. Break it all down, I say." Azael's (a demon) criticism of form. ( The Perilous Order ).

The name of the charmwright dwarf in The Shadow Eater anyone? Blue Tipoo!

Undoubtedly, the most blatant confirmation of it can be found within In Other Worlds where there's a grand, majestic motherlode of the stuff just steaming to be used by alien means. *whispers* ' is this the one you want to be? '

But returning to Centuries and some concluding words with Rafe (Sunny) and Karla's ghostly forms:
'He's the ideal poet for you, Sunny. My favorite of his goes, "Where there are humans you'll find flies - and Buddhas."'
Her laugh was harsher this time. 'I suppose we are flies - all of us lingering phantoms.'
'Buddhas would have gone ahead into the unknown with the plants and animals,' Rafe agreed.
'But we're preoccupied with unfinished business - like flies.' She pointed ahead to a vague brightening almost obscured by the glow of her pale arm.
'Space-time lies in that direction.'

Wonder powerfully in your design,
Solis