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Blather

It's that time again:

Blather
So in a tryce came the documentary depicting many a Chinese doll and also the three wise men (who may or may not have been kings) that needed sixty-two dollars between them to redeem the coupon, which offered up solace and not a little irony to anyone who hadn't yet seen the crew chewing on leaves that weren't tobacco, but might have been sage and still left horrible stains in the dirt floor of the lean-to where I left my ski poles after the overnight with the cranes that were kept on the lake domestically for the purpose of tourism but who could also speak Latin on occasion when prompted by offers of cheese or jerky -- though not just any jerky, it had to be salmon jerky -- which isn't always easy to come by when you've agreed to leave before closing on summer days in the springtime of your life, which has been known to last longer in people who aren't concerned about under-inebriation or over-intoxication or both: it's the balance which is everything when nothing else will do and no one else will participate in the extravaganza that's been created by the giant invisible flying monkey brain that is modern life in the Twenty-First Century, counting since the (approximate) birth of Christ -- as long as the lack of the number zero doesn't disturb your math sensibilities as, frankly, it does mine, though I like to think I've made peace with that and with the Skrull too, since I haven't picked up an issue of that book in about nine years, which wasn't an intentional or explicit act of cold turkey so much as a sliding away followed by a none-too-impressive epiphany -- far from the best epiphany I've ever had, say, compared to Tintagel or Lego, not to mention the birth of certain children, which couldn't get more personal than the zany antics of the semi-erotic flea circus, which used to travel the stars waiting for an invitation to land at your door, since you are the personal target of the extra-lunar probe that counted all the seahorses that Aquaman used to make the giant seahorse that he could actually ride, though no faster than he could swim himself on his own power -- and no, we're not talking Super Friends here, but something older, more primal, something that was born back when the Ptero-whatever streaked across the sky leaving behind contrails made not of smoke but of pure and unadulterated grace, a commodity in which we are sorely shy as a planet, and yet which we find in the most unlikley of places, including but not limited to contracts which dictate how we will interact with each other but do it in such a way that no normal human being could possibly wrap their heads around the language and internalize the meaning, which we declare to be progress or civilization and which is not meant as a criticism so much as a detachment of troopers marching on a hill that you wouldn't pay five ducats -- FIVE! -- to buy yourself, or so I told myself and Hamlet night after night, but now Hamlet is a Thief on FX and I haven't seen him face to face in over twenty years, which sometimes seems quite normal but sometimes blows me away, not that I want to move backwards at all, though I'm not sure that I'm truly moving forward and I'm convinced I'm not moving sideways, though the metaphor of the sidewinder is appealing, not in the cliché sense of something sinister and left-handed, though I do throw with my left hand, I can bowl just as badly with either hand, and even though I'm 42, I quite prefer to have bumpers instead of gutters, where the rain gets backed up and sometimes flows over the lip and creates leaks in the roof and drips, drips, drips down into the shiny metal bowl that's usually used for something much more pleasant like mixing cookie dough to create chewy wonderful ... well.. cookies (I mean "duh") that taste a little bit like home even when you are home and it is raining, or maybe ESPECIALLY when you are home and it is raining and the water overflows and the ocean fills and the giant seahorse peaks out and winks at the cranes, which is exactly what the documentary crew was hoping to capture when they first took out their cameras and shot the whole thing from three different angles across six different days and still never saw the giant invisible flying monkey brain, because it was, to put it mildly, invisible.


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Phil writes...

I'll volunteer to be one of the first to ask a question. I'll be picking up my copy of the comic this afternoon, so I can't comment about that. But I want to ask about your "Blather" ramble.

When you first posted it a year ago, many were mystified and confused, but I recognized it immediately as a secret message just waiting to be decoded. I spent several months working on it, but to no avail. So I gave up.

Then, a few months ago you posted it again in the comment room. This cemented in my mind that there is some kind of meaning to this. Otherwise, why would you bother? So since then I have renewed my efforts to make some kind of sense from your Blather, still with no success.

Here are my questions:
1) Am I wasting my time? Is "Blather" just an entertaining but ultimately meaningless exercise in stream-of-consiousness writing?
2) Is there some deeper meaning in "Blather"? Is it a coded message that perhaps reveals a heretofore hidden tidbit of Gargoyle lore?
3) If the answer to number 2 is yes, could you please offer some kind of a hint or clue? I feel like I've been down every dead end at least twice. I'm not looking for an answer; just point me in the right direction.

Thanks for the time you put into the fandom. I'm looking forward to picking up issue 6 today!

Greg responds...

1. Well, it is stream of consciousness. But it's not meaningless -- not to me anyway. Whether or not you're wasting your time isn't for me to say, though.

2. Blather is only tangentially connected to Gargoyles. It does have a number of secret messages -- and I hope a deeper meaning, but it won't tell you, say, the name of Lex's mate or anything like that. It's not in code.

3. No, I think you are heading down the wrong path. It's an interpretive piece. There's no hard key or hint that I can give you. It's... art. (I'm not saying it's great art -- though I am somewhat proud of it, but it's function is artistic.)

Response recorded on October 11, 2007