A magic story of the return of spirits in 15 steps.

With seven bell game (glockenspiel) cracks in step 13.

1

(T)here was once a proud iron lid in the street of a city. It was proud of being of solid iron.

Proud of its two great eyes, gazing at the streetlife in the city. Day and night. It lived there for many years.

Deep under the lid was an underground lake, full of fresh water. The iron lid protected the lake from the dirt and dust of the city.

So the people of the city always had clean and fresh water.

2

The iron lid was not the only one. All over the city, like lines in a hand, were motley crews of iron lids.

Mirroring the size of the lake deep down under.

Quietly they shared their lives with each other, gathering dust,raindrops, leaves and shadows of birds.

At night - when the city sleeps - their great eyes observed the moon and the many stars, against the dark cosmic background.

Now and then, carried away by a moonlight shadow, they start joking about rabbit holes for local lunatics, on the dark side of the moon.

They preferred the star-studded pensive and soft night above the eye-hurting sunlight of the day.

3

All their lives these iron lids shared the emotions of the people of the city.

As if all the sorrows and joys of the people - in all the years and all the seasons - left scratches, grooves, notches, dents on the iron lids. Traces in their faces.

They even stored in their solid bodies all the music heard in the streets.

Tunes they fused with the deep groans of the Earth, traveling across the underground fungi webs of our planet’s soil.

Basso continuo tunes to comment as a tragic chorus on the basic instincts of the city’s vanities.

But the people of the city did not notice all of this.

The iron lids were living like exiles in the main streets of the city.

Invisible visibles.

4

On a rainy day, rumours spread about city plans to renovate the streets. The city was growing fast and wanted to design its streets anew.

The iron lids were no longer needed.

This made the iron lids very sad. All these years taking care of the city’s waters and now they had to go.

Soon their lives and histories are lost forever.

Deleted, dumped, dead.

Thunder only happens when it’s raining.

5

Unlike the other iron lids,our iron lid did not panic. Silently it started looking for a new way of life.

A new mode of existing.

Seeing the people in the city busy with their mobiles, it was wondering if the people were willing to take pictures of it.

So the face of the iron lid get saved in a mobile. That way the iron lid could start a new life as an emoji.

Rise, dance, chant.

Break on through to the other side.

6

But how to attrack the attention of the people? These days they were all hooked on their mobiles. Feeding their statistic doubles in the cloud.

Nobody looked down on the streets any more.

The iron lid needed to unveil itself. Become an alluring force.

A strange attractor.

7

On a clear and sunny winter day, news waves of the departure of David Bowie swiftly circled our planet, and reached our city.

Bowie the great Pan is dead.

The man who fell to earth has gone back to his star.

The iron lids - who loved Bowie and his music - were all in grief, like lonely children.

Feeling helpless more than ever, still our iron lid was ready to act.

8

Patiently, our iron lid was waiting for the daily stroller. A town figure well known by all the iron lids.

Because of once arriving on a camel - a share of a family inheritance - for a camel street race along the many pubs in the city, they named the stroller the Camel.

So when the iron lid saw the stroller coming it started whispering: “We could be heroes“.

Struck by this ambient call, a cry from the deep of the earth, the stroller stops walking.

For a moment two pairs of eyes belonged to each other in a mutual encounter.

Inviting the stroller into an unknown adventure.

And yes, cheerfully accepting this role, with one click, the stroller turned the face of the iron lid into a picture for an emoji.

This cry, this call had it passed unnoticed, would never have been revealed on your device, at this moment.

A sign. A future spirit was rising.

9

During these sad days after Bowie’s death, all over the city one could hear the iron lids whispering: “We could be heroes”.

But the stroller was the only person hearing those cries.

Shifting the chocking rhythm of a camel into the smooth and fast moves of a lioness, she tireless roamed the streets of the city.

And with every click she promised each iron lid a new mode of existence.

In the end, these wretched of the earth were all sheltered in the persons mobile.

Saved from extinction.

Panic turned into magic.

10

In the years to come, more and more of the old iron lids get removed from the city streets.

And the person was the only one in the city who felt sorrow to see the streets becoming empty. Losing their trusted iron markers.

And sadly, even more by watching the people in the city streets, profiled by their short-circuiting devices, eating up their brain time.

Their emotions and desires captured and domesticated by new cloud masters from Hell.

These last people of the city ignorant and dis-affected of the real tragedies below their boot-soles.

Even the beloved two black swans of the city had left their vast location. Forever gone!

In one of these sad nights, the person had a dream about an ancient cave and painted figures.

Scenes of birth and death played on stone in an immense crypt.

Time had come to take care of the fate of the iron lids pictures.

These undead spirits, hibernating in some dark limbo in the person’s mobile.

Wondering what is it like to be an emoji?

In the twilight of that sad night, suddenly a flock of bats, led by a white goat, circled above the empty spot of the lost black swans.

As if these bats came straight from the ancient cave, dreamed up by the person.

We gotta get out of this place
If it’s the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place

(Tragic Chorus)

11

Inspired by this cave dream, the person started composing this fuzzy sets of pictures into a poster.

And called these poster pictures streetmoji’s.

All waiting for proper names for each of them over time.

For seven golden years, these streetmoji’s are living in this poster - up against an empty wall in the person’s room.

And the person is reading in this poster crypt, eye to eye, all the sorrows and joys of the previous people in the city.

Their spirits coming alive like revenances of the dead.

As if the poster spirits were compensating for the lost spirits of the last people in the city.

12

By observing all these traces of emotions in the poster, the person learned to understand the own emotions better.

Gradually awakening from a long slumber of symbolic misery.

The knitted old knot of contrariety finally unfolding.

Silencing the hellhounds in his heart.

A heart of stone, full of bad conscience, fading away.

A new spirit, a new soul, like a child was born.

By magic, everything becomes easy.

Wandering without belonging.

A new rhytm, a new epoch.

A gift from the poster spirits.

13

But the streetmoji’s wanted more in their new lives. To be spirits for everyone.

They yearned to be back in the streets of the city. Hearing new music.

Meeting new people to attach to and help them to love themselves again.

To give people a hand to win back their lost spirits.

By ringing the posterbell, they again wanted the attention of the person to help them with their wishes.

The person, now a child in time, saw in those golden years more and more poster layers unfolding.

Revealing magic hidden things, like tumbling dices.

In an enchanted resonance ring in which child and poster feed on each.

To reveal rapturous CRACKS of SEVEN division BELLS, announcing their vibrant vistas.

You may skip these cracks. Save it for other seasons in your life.
Scroll to step 14 to continue this tale.

GLOCKENSPIEL

(Bell game)

Cracks for a new axial age.
Cracks to open spirits.

First bell

Ambient poster bell tone.

Calling for a a new symbolic order. A new horizon.

The child - dreaming of the big fish - becoming the big bird.

Evocation of three blended and related layers, chaoids:

My wandering Souls.
Faces of the Earth.
Tragic chorus of lost Spirits.

It saw the magic fivefolds of the East.
The magic fourfolds of the West.
All the magic masks of the South.
Northern ice melting.

It followed in 50 steps the 50 years of the Buddha’s 5th and final journey, defying Darth Vader’s heart of darkness. One step for life, one step for thought.

Tat tvam asi -That art thou.
Know your emotions.
Conquer your bull.
Words spent - keep the heart.

Second bell

The child listening and seeing the face of “the man with the child in his eyes”.

Joining some material girls with kaleidoscope, far away and lying eyes - singing siren songs of freedom - around the red, yellow and blue tree of life.

Third bell

Objects withdraw, sink in the background, yet they appear.

That all things are transmitters. Behave like memories. Traces. 10.000 Things sending one another kisses.

We speak. They speak. Revealing all-embracing relations, blowing out wild in the open.
Raw materials becoming terrestrial beings, times, cultures, sciences, negotiations, truths. Senses.
Humanity started with things.

It saw nature hiding twice: between a cipher and a dexterity. Wandering through the heart of the labyrinth.
Every seeing is translation, tuning.
It cast an eye on infinite numbers passing in a jest between finite numbers.

It learned the language of Myth and Math, balancing their knowledge. Guided by Gilgamesh, Clio, and Maxwells demon.
A valley - Translation force traveling as gradients of resistance between chance and necessity. Crossing an axis. The middle of a river, a world. A threshold. Origin to exile. (T)here. A rare place scattered everywhere on the ground, in a map, a tapestry, in the flesh in the soul. Interstices. Cracks. Folds. Third places, between freedom and fate. Third spirits. Valley spirits.

Fourth bell

It shivered by the sound of a lonely bell in Viviers child song.

It heard the last Canto Ostinato touching the center of the poster, awakening the sacred spirits of Prajapati - but not Durer’s grievous angel. Out of work. Out of time.

Fifth bell

The child, now a hero with a heart full of souls, a legion, a fusion of a thousand voices, a thousand faces, a thousand others. Scary monsters.

It saw the five and four elements. The four seasons. The four sentiments. The four causes. The four truths. The four virtues. The four forces. The four horsemen.

It learned to defuse dangerous opponents - cloaking themselves in absolutes - by composing waves of flowing spectra’s.

Enter the excluded magic Third ...

Wander - Chimera. Krisna.
Passing Angels. Charon. Troubadour. Yeti. Joker. Queequeg. Flesh. Quetzalcoatl.
Kassandra, Antigone,Ariadne.
Aomame, Carmen, Lulu. Cyborg. Baubo. Simone. Oddkin. Qubit. Kraftwerk. Jeanne d’ Arc. Praise of folly. Message in a bottle. A duck walk. Is it-this water. Maelstrom. Leaves of Grass. Crossroad. Sunshu Ao. Dreams. 72727. Pharmakon. Homo sacer. Vagabond. Harlequin. Everyone ...

... to anticipate the Third-Instructed Spirits.

Instructed spirits to turn the scale of The Great Chain of Being in favor of The Great Chant of Being's.

Sixth bell

It imagined the three Graces, Billie, Janis and Amy, sharing a halo between prime twins.
Carmelita, Camerado hold me tighter, I’m sinking down on the outskirts of town ... Tragic Chorus

Seventh bell

After the goldrush. The desert grows.

Fragile Earth Zone
Revenge of the many-headed Gaia
Tough bitches

It feared the Reaper biding his time, with the Minotaur and the Sphinx - Guess or you will be devoured.

Stone ripples in a pool. Flowers on a Paris grave. A star banner fading out. A shotgun falling in a garage. Celestial chants rising from a death bed.

Here we are now.
The road to nowhere. Is this the End. No. No panic. One day you will leave your labyrinth of loneliness and return to our sacred Earth. New ideas grow. New fourfolds of grassroot commons will arise, containing multitudes.
Suddenly we feel that we are no longer the same forced laborers.
Infinite capacity, infinite melody, infinite care. Immanent power of creation continues.
Our Earth will not desert us, as long as we take away what harms the wild horses ...

If we restore Earth, Earth will restore us…incarnate its inmates again in its critical zone. A Halo, a single embrace of all the elements.
A sign, a call to bring mortals to the path of thinking, poetizing building.

Fragile child
Many hard road’s searching the way
The valley spirit never dies

*******

With this Glockenspiel we leave this magic tale behind.

The magic diversity of the valley becomes a symbol for the divinity of our Earth.

Magic turned into a flow of grace.

From this mosaic poster, this translation table, this grail of infinite meanings, this matrix of new messages, this open spot - one day, powerful spirits of joyful wisdom rise and fly all over our planet.

Like the blue Bird in Bowie’s last song.

14

More and more the poster, like a trickster, is sending glitches. Morphing it’s creator. It’s observer.

Growing old to become young.

That’s why instructed through this poster gifts - initiated by the seven bells - the person started writing this poster tale.

To share its poster gracious and generous powers with all the readers of this tale.

A tale still playing shine and shade on your screen.

A tale about a city in a rapid technological transition and its shifting spirits.

So, if in a dark and moony summer night, the city is waking up by the howling of wolves ...

... may this city, who’s famous labs once composed the first electronic poems, become a benign host for these new inmates.

New spirits.

15

May this poster tale, like a wicked witch flight in a starry night, light up your spirit to express new signs, new patterns.

New unknown potential vista’s. New poster tales.

With all this new stories, the streetmoji’s are no longer exiles.

At last they can share their emotions and histories with the people and visitors of the city.

And maybe in the future the streetmoji’s speak in your language, in your tale, to all the inmates on our planet.

And may these posters symbolic and diabolic revenants give its genius to the youth of our planet

... youth, who are - as all young generations - rebellious, lazy and enslaved to everything -

its genius to seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of Hell, are not Hell.

Resist or break away from the spell of these fake cloud masters from hell.

Create or find your own waves of time, space and values.

Rise, Dance, Chant.

Break on through to the other side.

Only from frictions with the physical, bodily and analogical dimensions of human existence can love for the world arise.

May your analog poster on your wall in your room on our planet, guide your body and soul, in a new vibrant reality.

Help you to leave your exile labyrinth of loneliness and return to our sacred Earth.

But if you do not appreciate it, it risks sinking away. It needs your care to prolong its path of life.

To renew the faces of the Earth.

Find the cracks in the current society and work towards a real free world.

Start with dreams and stories, because they are the enjoyment of living values.

Cracks without panic, towards a natural religion of our Earth. Towards a new axial age.

Coming back down to the soil of the Earth.

Find the cracks where it sings.

What good is living, if no one ever enchants the universe?

How many unlived lives does your history hide?

We are all streetmoji’s. We all need stories to survive.

We all need a tragic chorus to resonate with our feelings.

To guide us through these turbulent times. To wander in time.

To understand yourself and the world around you.

Your poster will help you to fill your time more then your space with stories.

More longing in time makes us free, and the Earth habitable.
Makes life fuller.

In open casual time, you can start anew anytime, without exhausting our planet.

Back to the delaying grace of story telling.

Like Sheherazade, we have to win the future for ourselves and our planet every day.

Till one day more than a 1000+1 new poster tales, songs, strips and puppets are to illuminate our lives, like a starry night.

Starry nights: a common revenance for all the lost spirits of our planet. Our tragic chorus.

Inspiring a new symbolic community for all spirits, all beings, to express a common garden.

Just as you feel, when you look up from your device, to watch the starry night, so I felt.

Underfoot the divine soil, overhead seeing the cosmic fourfold.

Anticipating this new epoch of thinking, caring and poetic force, child and poster left their cave, on the second floor.

To descent and remain faithful and loyal with all the inmates - the ten thousand things - of Earth’s critical zone.

A halo that bathes our sacred Earth.

(T)here.*

- - - - - - - - -

* Note: This poster tale was original composed in the vulgar tongue Anglo - Brabanto mixtus.