Some boys dream of becoming sailors or pirates. Others dream of following in the footsteps of fathers or uncles and becoming artisans. Still others don’t dream at all, but simply wander through life, taking what fortunes fall their way, or enduring what hardships greet them. Some boys follow their dreams into manhood and become sailors or pirates. Others, of a pedigree scarcely understood, find life in the offshore Autonomies where strange magics belch steam into daytime air, or odd, diaphanous glows into the night. The Autonomies are new. They occupy old and abandoned places: air factories, observatories, and desalinization plants as old as humanity’s presence so far from the Ancestral Planet. There are twelve such artificial islands just north of the city: none serve their original functions. One is extinct. Boys who dreamed of becoming pirates grew into men who moved there. As pirates, they raided and pillaged, and in retaliation, the city destroyed them, scattered them; and now—if they exist—they dwell elsewhere, and in harsher conditions. We do not know what they are likely to become, or if we will ever see them again. The world is rich in mysteries older than humanity itself and the vanished pirates are a part of those unsolved puzzles. In truth, the Autonomies are equally difficult. They are independent of the city, but friendly (or at least neutral) to it. Some say that scientists live there, that alchemists have claimed the ancient machines and set them to work in ways only an alchemist might understand. Some say that the city is a mistake and that those who live on the artificial factory islands are attempting to correct the disasters humanity has wrought on the face of this world. In the long run, it doesn’t matter. There is the city and there are the remote island factories, alive in ways no city-dweller might understand. The world is a mysterious place and only the future will reveal the direction in which these mysteries flow. --Renzo Ven Unpublished diaries * After an accidental hiatus from posting (and doing anything creative) I’m glad to be back with…well…with whatever this is. A fragment to be sure: a part of something that may (or may not) grow into a larger piece. This is a composite image of…Lake Michigan ice and a power plant photographed in that remote/southern part of Chicago that turns into Indiana when you aren’t looking. It’s an odd, industrial region of the city, a bit dirtier than Chicago admits to being. I was quite taken by the power plant, and not so taken with the Jewel supermarket standing in front of it, declaring itself as only an overpriced supermarket might. Rather than edit the sprawling grocery-store on steroids out of the initial photograph, I just took the power plant out and transplanted it. I like the incongruity of a power plant in the middle of Lake Michigan. I like the possibility of new tales sprouting from this piece, like…well…like fuzz on a fungus gone reproductive. I’ll be interesting to see what happens in the future. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope as the weekend evolves, that I can catch up on viewing and commenting.