Imaginational Dabrowski’s Book of Imaginal Musings

Little Plump Jo loved ordering stationery and art supplies online. As Artisan in Residence at Malory Tennyson’s Cloudbank Cabin for Arthurian Studies, she regularly needed to order boxes of paper and inks for her printer and folders and crates for storing her works. And she always liked to add in a pretty notebook. It was a treat she could afford to give herself.

Attractive notebooks were also a treat that other people could afford to give Jo for birthday, Christmas, Secret Santa and thank you gifts. Jo had gathered so many notebooks that she had begun regifting them. But there were some notebooks that Jo was reluctant to give away, but hesitant to start using, because they were so beautiful that she felt they needed to be used for something significant. So, she still had a stack of delightful notebooks on her shelf, just waiting for her inspiration. She swore that she would not include another notebook in her future stationery or art supplies orders.

Little Plump Jo had brought her five canine writing companions, the Dabrowski Dogs, with her to Cloudbank Cabin. Jo had the ability to communicate with animals and fictional characters. The presence of the Dabrowski Dogs enhanced Jo’s communication with the fictional characters. While Border Collie, Intellectual Dabrowski, was focused on research and providing Jo with information, the cute little Bedlington Terrier, Imaginational Dabrowski, was a dreamer, imaginative and speculative. He loved cloud watching and engaging in pareidolia. He would sit beside Jo on the bank of the Fog Lake at the foot of Cloudbank Cabin and point out all the pictures he could see in the clouds. Sometimes Jo thought she could actually see them too and even took photos of them. On one lazy afternoon Imaginational pointed out the ice-cream castles in the air from Joni Mitchell’s song Both sides now and stated that it was Cloud Camelot. Jo could not see it herself but Imaginational was insistent; so Jo took the photo. And there it was, in the photo, clear as day, Cloud Camelot!

The next time Jo ordered business cards and postcards online, she was presented with the upselling ploy of adding extra items to her cart. One of the options was using one of her photos as a cover for a luxe notebook printed on high quality paper. And, in spite of her resolve, Jo added a notebook to her order, using the Cloud Camelot photo for the cover. And she knew exactly how she would use it.

Imaginational Dabrowski often introduced Jo to new characters and ideas. Some of his ideas had been incorporated into her Arthurian writings but others were on completely unrelated topics. Jo decided to record Imaginational Dabrowski’s musings in the Cloud Camelot notebook.

“Wouldn’t it be great to have a character called Cliff Hanger, who comes swinging in on a rope at the end of an exciting unresolved chapter!” Imaginational had yelped. “He could come along in any genre. In a comedy about an inept Australian Outback tour guide it would be ‘G’day folks. Cliff Hanger- here to rescue you!’ while he pulled the bumper bar off the car he was attempting to tow and backed his 4WD over an endangered animal.

In a suave spy story it would be ‘The name’s Hanger -Cliff Hanger!”

Jo added Cliff Hanger to the Cloud Camelot notebook.

The very next day, a man knocked on the door of Cloudbank Cabin and introduced himself to Jo. “ I will be your neighbour for the next couple of weeks. I will be staying up the road in Deer Run Cabin and going hiking and rock climbing. I’m Clifford Hanger. You can call me Cliff!”

“Wow! What are the odds of that happening?” Jo asked.

“Very minimal, I would have thought” barked Intellectual Dabrowski. “I could attempt to calculate the odds for you if you like. First I would need to ascertain how many people in the world are named Cliff Hanger. That would be the percentage of Cliff Hangers in the whole world population. Then it would be: what is the chance of one of those Cliff Hangers being in this location at this specific time? With all those variables, it could take a long time to calculate.”

“Don’t bother. It was a rhetorical question” Jo said.

“But it does raise a very important question” barked Intellectual. “Did Imaginational naming Cliff Hanger call him into existence? Or was he there already, just waiting to be called out by name? This has vital ramifications for your writing about the Arthurian re-enactments happening in the Fog Lake.”

“How so?”

“Little Plump Jo, you often get accused of causing The Glitch in the Fog Lake by changing the stories. We have always maintained that Jo only records the action she sees in the Fog Lake as a journalist would. She does not make any changes. It is not her fault that the climate, landscape and order of happenings are in turmoil now.

I attribute The Glitch to characters going off script themselves. Elaine of Astolat refused to die of unrequited love and Sir Lancelot tried to avoid his role in the downfall of Camelot. Jo recorded the actions Elaine had already made; but she could not write an alternative story for Sir Lancelot or for King Arthur’s villainous son, Mordred.

But Imaginational has introduced several new characters, such as Portly Scribe Aforementioned and Thurifer Dwarf the Exwyrminator. So far they have not actually caused any large deviations to the plotlines, because they are not major characters and they were there already but not named. But all those Tavern Folk who participated in the Names and Backstories Protest March have changed their own stories dramatically by actually having names. They have discovered wealthy titled relatives and landed important positions in trade and state affairs. They have created a whole new monied middle class. They were all there just waiting to be called forth by having a name.

But what would happen if Imaginational introduced a completely new character, one that had not just been waiting in the wings, so to speak? Could it change the whole story?

“Ooh, ooh, let’s try it!” yelped Psycho Motor Dabrowski, bouncing enthusiastically.

“I don’t think we should” cautioned the English Springer Spaniel, Emotional Dabrowski. “What if it works and changes everything for the worse?”

Sensual Dabrowski sat there, scratching his neck with his back foot, unsure of what to suggest.

But Intellectual’s curiosity had been aroused. “I propose An Experiment.

My Hypothesis is that there is an imaginal space in which previously unimagined things exist and that Imaginational Dabrowski is capable of making things appear in The Fog Lake dimension by imagining them.

“Nooooooo! Noooooooooo!” howled Emotional. “That sounds like black magic!”

“The Method” continued Intellectual, building on his idea, “Imaginational Dabrowski will envisage a character, creature or event which has never appeared in the writings of Sir Thomas Malory or Lord Alfred Tennyson and Little Plump Jo will record it in the Cloud Camelot notebook. We will observe whether the item appears within one week of being recorded. Well, what will it be Imaginational?”

“A tall tree where there was no tree before.”

“Can you be more specific. Make it easier to identify as new and unique.”

“Yes it is a tall slender tree with only a few branches and no foliage at all.”

“And ? What else?”

“It is blue – a bright ultramarine blue!”

Little Plump Jo recorded it in the notebook.

And there it was two days later. It was not exactly IN the Fog Lake. It was on a mountainside behind the Fog Lake. It was probably many miles away. But it was highly visible because of the bright blue colouring.

“That is not unique but it is new!” Jo said. “There are quite a number of them around. They are dead trees that have been painted blue as a symbol of support for Rural Mental Health. That is probably just a newly painted one.”

“Try a character next, Imaginational. It must be a character that Malory Tennyson would not include under either of his pen names.”

“Try this. King Arthur is under attack from a Giant who has conquered thirty kingdoms already. This Giant has a force five times greater than King Arthur’s. And Sir Lancelot, who could maybe make a difference is away somewhere doing something else. But there is a Knight in red armour who fights very valiantly for King Arthur.

The Giant thinks the Knight in Red is great and does not want to kill him. So he offers King Arthur a year to gather more troops and they will fight again then.

By the next year King Arthur still has not made other allies or increased his troop numbers. Sir Lancelot is still missing and the Red Knight cannot be found either.

But on the day of the battle a Black Knight turns up and fights valiantly for King Arthur. At the end of the first day King Arthur is devastated to see the Black Knight has been poached by the Giant and is going off to his camp with him.

The next day the Black Knight is fighting for the Giant and the battle is going the Giant’s way. King Arthur is on the verge of surrender when the Giant goes to King Arthur and pledges his fealty to The Round Table.

Turns out that the Red Knight and the Black Knight are both Sir Lancelot and the Giant who conquered thirty kingdoms admires him so much that the Giant agrees to surrender to King Arthur because Sir Lancelot requested it.”

“I do hope you have not yet written any of that in Imaginational’s notebook” Intellectual Dabrowski barked.

“I had only got as far as ‘King Arthur is under attack from’ then I could not keep up” replied Jo.

“Oh, thank heavens! That is NOT an original story.”

“Nothing new under the sun” quoted Emotional.

“But more importantly it is certainly one that Malory Tennyson would not want you to write. That story was not included in Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur or in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Malory did not approve of the implied homoerotic themes in the story.

A few days later Little Plump Jo met Cliff Hanger while she was out walking. He looked dreadful. “How high above sea level are we here?” he asked.

“Only about 300 feet, I think” Jo replied.

“So it was not altitude sickness or oxygen deprivation then…”

“What is it, Cliff?”

“Yesterday I decided that I would climb the tower shaped rock. I hiked toward the base and found that before I could start the climb I would need to cross a bridge over a fast flowing river. The bridge was very narrow and flimsy looking. It seemed to be swaying with the wind. It did not look strong enough to support my weight.

As I was standing there looking at it, a strange person came up and said ‘The only way to cross it is to crawl. If you try to stand up you will be blown into the river.’

He extended his hand to me and said in a French accent “You are Cliff ‘Anger, n’est ce pas?”

“I said ‘Yes. Do I know you? Have I met you before?”

And he said, ‘Oh yes – many times!”

“So I looked at him properly. He was a handsome guy dressed, get this, as a medieval knight!”

“I’m sorry, I said, I do not remember…”

“He seemed a bit offended by that and said “Lancelo. Lancelo du Lac. Or maybe you remember me as Le Chevalier Mal Fait?”

“I said to myself ‘Lancelo? Lancelo?’

“So you are Sir Lancelot” I said, thinking this must be the local nutcase. To humour him I asked where I had met him before.

And he said, get this, ‘Do you not remember? The most recent occasion was just a few weeks ago. You were coming down The Tower on your rope as I was climbing up to the window to meet with Her Majesty. I had cut my hand pretty badly on the iron bars and I was feeling a bit dizzy, as if I could not hold on any longer and would fall to my death. You shared your rope with me for long enough for me to climb in through the window and get my breath before …..the next chapter!”