I’m currently programming a new search engine called Ask Colonel Hickory (no relation to Andrew Jackson). Not really, but it would be fun. Ask Colonel Hickory is not a boolean, tag, or relational search but deals instead with a sense of irony.

“Colonel Hickory, will we ever win the war on terror?”

“Georgie,” the Colonel would respond, “the war on terror will only end if you stop being freakin terrified. By the way, there’s a spider on your neck.”

Where will Wally catch up to the Colonel on his romp cross country?

Ask Colonel Hickory.

Wally Rorschach fell in love in English. His wife fell in love in Spanish. They never really reconciled the linguistics of love. Nevertheless, they were able to raise two children. In English.

He remembers the land of Benito Juarez, Oaxaca. She did too, but was consoled by southern New Mexico, then struck dumb by the Connecticut River. They met at the south side of Monte Alban, Zapotec country.

“She once said that you should wish to stay at night there and listen for the age of the wind. How things go. You can see for miles there,” Wally said.

Swellman closed his eyes.

Wally Rorschach has been on my mind a lot. A related subject came up in the fiction course yesterday. It has a lot to do with my smoking habit, which I’ve gotten away from. The torture continues and continues but it makes sense. I’ve had a few smokes in the last month but have basically given up the habit. It feels good, my lungs feel cavernous, and my energy level–with some strange alterations in brain chemistry–is up. But cold turkey is still torture.

But what if you’re seventy some-odd years of age? Wally isn’t. He’s in his 60s; he’s lost his wife; and he’s basically tired of his adult children, who’d rather worry about his problems rather than about their own. He’d quit smoking years ago, but has decided to take up the habit again. Why not? What can his children argue?

A women is accosted by her own children; she’s 80, tired, sick, and about to be hooked into a nursing home.

“Mother, you’ve never used that kind of language before.”

“I’m taking up cussing,” the woman says. “I’m giving you cussing for Christmas, Shitforbbrains.”

She understands her gardens; rolls artery marbles with her fingers in sleep; she remembers Arlington; she can still smell her husbands homecoming(1944). She’s lucky that she has a batterypowered wheelchair. She decides to take off in that chair and head down the highway. Where will she go? Why not depart? And what about that couple she meets at a rest stop? A man and a women who smile a lot and offer to strap her and her cart to the top of their van.

“For the wind,” the woman says.

“I remember the wind,” the old woman says.

Wally wont know what to make of this image. But it will be something he can follow. Why not?

“Things with wheels,” he says.

“Right answer,” says Swellman. “But what’s the difference between running away and running into?”

“Maybe I can show you,” Wally says. The knuckle he taps against a coffee cup sounds like cavedrip.

“How old is that sound?” Swellman asks.

“What are you looking at?”

Swellman turns away from the big window, smeared with morning handprints.

“That women on the van the other day.”

Wally smiles. He reaches across the table and taps Swellman’s temple with a knuckle. “I need a pair of socks,” he says. “I don’t like muddy socks.”

Narrative to character tie-in. It is Wally who wonders about sunpower. Why? Because he has an “I’m being chased” personality. All his life. Had he been turning his head all this time because of an impression of foot-falls at his back? Maybe. Or maybe it’s something else. It’s not an “I’m being chased” it’s a “chase me” thing.

He turns to find out, “Am I being followed?” If not, why not? If not, “How to cause? And when I’m caught, then what?”

He knows he’s covered lots of ground in multiple dimensions. At Machu Picchu, he encountered a past and a present and a future and each must be “chased,” “known.” He carries all of these on his old back, even as he falls.

There’s lots of ground to cover. South to North and across the country. His daughter, Wanda, will follow, get close, loose him again, entering and exiting figures, symbols, birds, coiled snakes.

This log’s going to be dealing a lot with space of mutiple kinds and a man named Wally Rorschach over the summer months. Wally Rorschach is the protagonist of a novel titled The Man who Fell into the Sky, which I’ve had on the back burner for a couple of years. Mentally speaking, at this point (there’s the spatial element) Wally is standing on the side of a road in Arizona wondering why one of his mates is laying naked on the south going lane, having already been “run over” by a truck and a semi. His name is Vesuvius. But no matter that. See the “subject” link Rorschach to follow along where the log goes on the subject of Wally.

Really, Wally fell into the sky. His son and daughter don’t like that idea at all. Nor do they like that there’s some guy in Ohio/Wyoming on a John Deer considering the notion of driving it cross-country. At this point (there’s that spatial thing again), I have no idea why. This log will attempt an answer in some cogent way.