248. On Gladiolus } “the largest blossoming flower.”

Inscribed on the title page of Rikki Ducornet’s Trafik, the following notes: “dreamt I was given a book filled w/ ads from the 1970s & was convinced Dad was in one of the ads. Kept losing the page, trying to find it to show Mom” & “dreamt I was at a show w/ my sister & Dad was there & we both looked at him & thought he looked dark.”

Quiver & Mic arrive on planet Gladiolus, “The surface is white clay; it is all clay.” The people are dolls, made of “local clay.” They are hostile bureaucrats who insist that any visit “will be brief and tedious to the extreme.” In grass cages are dolls holding cages that imprison dolls ad infinitum. That is, “Dolls in cages all the way down.”

Episode 4 of The Cinnamon Bear brings Judy, Jimmy, The Crazy-Quilt Dragon & Paddy O’Cinnamon to the land of the Inkaboos, doll-people cut from blotting paper, ruled by a king w/ a grocery list blotted on his chest & who live in fear of the Enormous Inkwell.

It is true that these all are different stories, but they all ask the same question: “Am I real?”