Underwater solutions: a theory / missing ocean

[this message following a neotic studies link received from this esteemed agent:]

Perhaps this system of mass could be what the term 'Boston Mass' refers to? Interestingly, I read earlier today that one of the most likely early outcomes of continued global warming is that Boston would end up submerged. This takes me back to an earlier postulation; that the suspected woollen structures were/are being made to absorb rising sea levels. This idea was explained by an insightful investigator to be based on a false premise and that sea levels would still rise regardless of the woollens. It now occurs to me that perhaps the whole Searly operation is based around finding/testing solutions for underwater living in the event of rising sea levels and submerged habitations. The great lakes would certainly be a convenient testing ground for such potential solutions; solutions suspended in a a solution, if you will.

One more thing; in a muppets newsflash from the '70s I watched recently, there was a story that the Atlantic Ocean had disappeared. Investigations found that it had been stashed in a Boston apartment. The idea struck me as possibly relevant to the case, but I have been unable to work out how.

How could the entire ocean be hidden in an apartment, I wonder? Through the use of extra dimensions? Maybe.

The Eleventh Dimension

Was reading last night about how the 11th spacetime dimension is believed to be almost invisibly small [according to some equations, not all]. If it is so, and searly is hiding in there, we have no chance of finding him, at least not this side of a CERN-based revolution.

in response ...

Finings are generally eggwhite or gelatine based. Mine were pretty much just dried eggwhites according to the packet. Didn't work though. Nor did sieving through several layers of cheesecloth. There's something in that wine and i can't gettit out dammit. An abundance of small particles suspended in the liquid, approximately a planck length across. I must consult the old masters of wine production and see what remedies they speak of.

Yes, the case may well be blown wide open; but the question still remains, just who is Ronald Searly?

My man on the veg stall gave me an ETA on the cherries of about 6 weeks. I will be ready with yeast and tannins.

Keyhole Sam

Loneliness of the Long Distance Drummer - a conversational aside

[beginning in response to advanced word of imminent photographic evidence of a UK-based beat group, 'the hum':]

Hope the drummer ain’t obscured by no swaying mic stand or neck of bass…

__

Perhaps ron searly is hiding behind a drumkit in a basement practice room somewhere.

__

I wonder if the psychology of a drummer bears any similarity to that of the long distance runner? alone and steady on the road, alone and steady behind the kit - persistance, consistency and an ability to continue in the productive rhythm unfalteringly no matter how adverse the conditions. these are similarites that immediately come to mind. of course, one involves moving about a lot and one involves sitting fairly still, though i guess a runner's torso is almost stationary and all movement is propelled by the limbs - another similarity.

the question is, do drummers make good runners or do runners make good drummers, or are neither indicative of each other?

__

The post-end pub rock outro final du-dum-pah crash must then be the collapse onto the ground after sailing through the tape at the finishline.

My new disguise as bassist also has me considering bassist psychology. The Quiet Man. The pulse… The low notes approaching the subliminal dialogue and instructions… Makes me think of walking blind through tall grass for some reason, playing the bass. Intuition…

__

I was an ok runner...and a drummer [quality? dunno...].

not sure if it's a definite correlation. but there is a good range of examples of drummers requiring a bit of fitness...

barring mo tucker.

and she didn't look like much a runner come to think of it.

buddy rich though...he had energy.

zzzzz

__

Why I ran, man, Why I ran…

Your comparison is astute. Torso ‘motionless’ – I know what you mean – straightline motion only. Like a donut in freefall. Apparent rest state.

A runner has to keep a beat, certainly. The persistence. The endurance. The heart-rate of a drummer is certainly one of the highest in any discipline. I think beyond what the figures say should be endurable. Over 100 BPM I believe, during particularly energetic fills and syncopations.

__

indeed. a drummer also takes the song somewhere - from beginning to end. an intro could be described as the song's startline, the outro the finish line. the song/run is the journey in between. a drummer can also build natural rests into his rhythm if required and the 'sprint finish' is analogous to the pub rock ending. in fact, now i think about it, my half marathon training of circa 2004 probably prepared me more for my current role of drummer than 15 years of guitar playing and other musical practices ever did. left, right, left, right, breeeathe, tom fill....

[conversational aside ends]

Katty Black

good detective work, detective.
both explanations seem eminently plausible to this investigator and thus i can indiciate no preference for either theory. Members of fringe groups are generally outsiders who struggle in the early years to relate to their peers due to developing at a different rate to the average child [either faster or slower than]. This leads to them drifting away from the pack, often becoming 'outsiders' and developing obscure interests. This idea is reinforced by the fact Searly is obviously involved in some kind of fringe movement, so it seems likely he was either a precocious child or a late developer.

Late development would fit the first theory; a precocious child, the second. A selection of Beefheart's recordings include the sound of a child's voice, laughter or other noises. Could this be a yound Searly we are hearing? If so, the question remains; how did a two-year old fall into Beefheart's circle? How did they become aquainted? Perhaps the pulse/veg dietary regime was installed in the band to allow food to be easily pulped into babyfood as required. Perhaps the captain thought that a toddler held the answers he was searching for in his art and, at this time, was actually taking guidance and direction from the child?

This investigator has been rather distracted from the case recently but intends to shift focus back to it throughout the week.
One thing: I cannot remember if I informed all members of the team of a contact made by email a few weeks back. I received a message from a 'Katty Black' which simply said 'I like this blog'. The similarity to Black Cat is remarkable. Is this someone trying to contact us with useful information regarding to the fabled experiment, or is this someone from the Black Cat team just letting us know that they are aware of our investigation as some form of taunt?

Walt Whatman?

The Uncomformity

I have located an apparent anomaly in the geotemporal record. If Searly really had a close acquaintance with Captain Beefheart during the timeof pulse diet adherence, this could not be the same searly as the teenage poet who released Octopiithagoas in 82.
Or could it?
Two possibilities occur to me, which could maintain the supposition that both events occured and involved the same man, without upsetting the timeline with anachronicity.
The first is that a much older Searly entered the poem in thecompetition. If so, the psychological profile of Searly would change - a 25+ yr old writing such a poem, or just entering such a poem that hemay have written while teenage, would be a very different person fromthat envisaged before, perhaps a late developer, or an individual havingthe syndrome which results in childlike (or in this case teenage) tendencies and mentality into adult life.
(Or alternatively, the poem may have been written by a teenage Searly and entered by someone else who had acquired the poem. I personally dismiss this for now.)
The second possibility is that a teenage Searly did write the poem in 82, and an infant Searly spent time with Beefheart in say 69-72. I imagine a 2 year old Searly telling the captain 'no, captain, don't do it that way...'. The influence of a 2 year old Searly could explain much of Beefheart's output during that period.

Despatches from Gloucester

currently in gloucester. lush and green indeed. i think a lot of rain falls here.

just set up a 'test election' asking voters to pick a candidate based on the question 'who is ronald searly?'

zac happy seems to be leading in the current vote stakes. it had crossed my mind that he was searly on the DL.

on the way down here, drove past droitwich. must only be about 20 miles from there as i type. eyes are peeled for examples of re-use and extreme fixes.

more later. maybe.

hugh laurie lee

Good Earl Bad Earl: Subtle Psych Treatments

Good earl bad earl
If any real patients heard anything they shouldn’t – who would believe them anyway?

A psych clinic would undoubtedly be a good enlistment ground for disciples/stooges to use as gophers, message senders, disseminators, rumour spreaders, sleepers or patsies, whether unwitting or not… Recall lone gunmen enlisted and utilised through hypnosis and similar psych ‘treatments’. But then, I think what we have been working with here has been more subtle psych treatments en masse, rather than on specific individuals for specific high impact actions. In the flicks the hypnotist is usually the bad guy – sinister manipulator of the foolish or unfortunate, with the appearance of the charlatan and the slick manners of a snakecharmer. The smooth talker who’ll use you as a brick in some fabulous illusory pyramid scheme then be gone leaving nothing but a gloved fingerprint. I’ve never seen Searly as wearing that cape before.
Perhaps there is a good Searly and a bad Searly. Whether a double act or not. Unless one is real and the other is seen in a magician’s mirror.


Of course Earl Regan may be the UK counterpart of the same man, or just the Searly Doll UK dead letter drop-point for message pick-up.

Ronald's Early?

"Ronald's Early?"

maybe there is no Searly. maybe the above is what i misheard as "Ronald Searly" three mnoths back.

Though yes, being a pyschiatrist would easily allow someone to remain isolated yet contactable to a group. member dropping by to see him and get operational arrangements made, supplying the main man with updates, the whole time passing themselves off of 'patients'.

naturally, if the whole thing got busted [say by a detective's wire] then he could always claim everything overheard was the product of the maddened minds he is trying to straighten out through professional means, and not somehting he is personally involved in. if if we have recordings suggesting he is involved, he could always claim he is humouring the patient, going along with them in effort to get to the crux of their disorder. first class obfuscatia.

up north but based on the west coast, away from operations in our eastern sphere of investigation, but within reach. classic obfuscatia - when they say look left, you better look right.

Mind Games

There is a Ronald G. Early (Girlie?), practising psychiatry in Washington State. This is in my mind too near the canadian border and the high-activity-area of Vancouver to discount as one of those coincidence things. Dr. Early gets to you fast. I am put in mind of the man Earl (Wyndom), semiologically at least. I wonder if Early is Searly? Psychiatry is certainly a rich field for case-related activity. Mind games…

Gold Cogitation

Just cogitating on the gold from Whitby - incidentally, not a millions miles from my own investigation zone. Meanwhile, plan is for a re-visit to Nelson Parks in the Wolds village within the next 10 days. aim to clarify some ideas arising from initial contact and Hexx-d visit previously. If there are any lines of enquiry you have, let me know and I will pursue them with him. also, trying to find the lost/disappeared notebook - or else ply Parks with enough micro-brewed ale to re-sketch them. Also. The nickname, Surly Early sounds too much like a sop to Searly? Too obvious...I'm in no mood to discount anything currently.

The Nebraska Connection

So many elements have recently been attached to the case that this investigator is wondering where exactly he should be focussing his energies. Should I concentrate on closed-loop systems or be looking underground? Should I be looking for leads relating to Stairs' activities in Ohio or be trying identify large areas in the Detroit region with the potential for large-scale liquid storage/absorption? Should I be looking south of the border or walking the statelines? there are so many angles to this case that a 3D rendering of it would be one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever undertaken by man; up there with the Georgia Guidestones or a planet-sized particle acceleration donut. Perhaps Searly already knows how the case will end and is building such a 3D case model in his bungalow on the outskirts of Boston?

With regard to your planet-sized nut theory, I do not know how feasible this is, or what the capabilities could be, but it strikes me now that perhaps donut law applies to Black Cat. Remember, this was an experiment with an unidentified central location - perhaps this central point is as invisible and non-physical as the centre of a donut and as such may never be found. Perhaps it is, as one investigator suggested, actually in space, and therefore 'empty' by common standards.

Last night, while listening to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska LP, I picked up on the following points in the song Highway Patrolman, which I feel echo elements of our case...

The song tells the story of two brothers from Ohio and involves a scene where the patrolman of the title chases a suspect in a Buick through Michigan, deliberately allowing it to escape over the Canadian border as it is being driven by his brother.
Hearing this sequence of events unfold in the song immediately made me think of the case: The chased Buick and activity in Michigan and Ohio having particular resonance, along with an escape over the Canadian borderline.

This brings to my mind the idea that perhaps Searly was 'allowed' to 'disappear' intentionally by at least one individual or some small splinter group within the larger operational group. This would imply different members of the group had/have different agendas. The most likely explanation for this is, as suspected, that both an independent group and the military were working in the same area of operation; either working to the same aim but with a different agenda, or working in a similar field with different aims.

I am leaning toward the idea that either the military started the operation, recruiting help from academia circles who, somewhere along the way, began to use the operation for different ends to the military's intention, or the Michigan craft club started proceedings which the military subsequently became aware of and infiltrated for their own purposes. Of course, the two groups could have had the same idea independently at the same time. Perhaps this is the case and Project31 is related to the Black Cat experiment[s] in this way.

As explained here, the Nebraska LP is actually made from the Boss' own 4-track home recordings rather than been done in a studio. Such an approach ties in with Costa's recroding methods, as heard on the mixtapes so far discovered. The song is set in the '60s but was actually written and released in the early '80s, which would have been an influential period for members of the Michigan soft-core, many of them being in the adolesence at this point. More details of the song's content can be found here. As explained here, the song was used as the basis for the film 'The Indian Runner' released in 1991, again a likely period of influence for Project 31 members.

Springsteen hails from New Jersey, which falls within the bounds of our theorised North-eastern donut of activity and is a likely candidate to have had influence on members of the Michigan group at a critical period prior to the project's beginnings. With Neil Young being from Canada and Dylan from Duluth, it would seem that we are looking in the right area, musically speaking. Even Monk hails from North Carolina, which borders on the South-eastern edge of our theorised donut of activity. I'm sure even this great jazz pianist has held a harmonica to his lips on occasion.

Festival Circuitry

This investigator took the weekend off the case to indulge in some much overdue sunshine of impressive intensity and only now has he picked up the impending development in the case, ie. the immediacy with which BSS are 'touring' from Canada to California.

This strikes me as pertinent for the following reasons - we have already established that festivals and musical touring circuits are ideal ways to move people and goods around the continent in a fairly undetected way. We also know Costa is either in BSS or has close links with them. This suggests to me that Costa may use a BSS tour as a means to achieve her own ends, with or without the band's complicity (she is a known Obfuscationist, remember, and as such would have no problem hiding her true intentions while being close to the band).

The band may even be a front to hide less universally accepted operations, such as the promotion of wool-based lifestyles or products of closed-loop synthesis, with promotional methods possibly adapted from those used by the Minnesota thinktank (I recall Costa being quoted in a marketing journal from years ago, which suggests she either worked in marketing or pretended to work in marketing to gain knowledge of their obfuscatory techniques [i strongly suspect the latter]).

It seems to me that the BSS tour is likely a smokescreen to transport a portion of the Michigan operation (people or products) down to California for some purpose, or perhaps to collect something from the southern state to bring back north. The California connection cannot be ignored - Searly's act of philanthropy at the Reno Steak-n-Cake suggests the California route has been active for sometime, and Melinda Packett is registered to a Bay Area address.

The California connection could well be a base or stop-off point for managing the South American connections - this investigator for one is definitely aware that products made from llama wool are readily available in the fields designated for corporate-sponsored rock festivals, though how popular such things prove to be in the california heat, this northerly located investigator cannot confirm.

Timeline

Timeline has now been produced, ranging from formation of the earth through the pre-cambrian, the cambrian, the pleistocene, the age of atlantis, into the dawning of the age of aquarius, to current modern times, taking in the construction of the water-weathered sphinx and the great pyramids, calanais and stonehenge, the guidestones, and the assumed beginning of construction of soft Michigan. Also taking in Ronald Searly’s poetry competition and the often forgotten ‘bin-fire’ incident, of 1982, at which the probably teenage Searly claimed no involvement in said bin-fire. An incident in which I have great interest.

The main new lead I have from laying out known knowns upon an axis of time, is as follows:
In the mid nineties, a Canadian Religious Studies student went from North America to the UK, and there left a map of the great lakes seemingly questioning the location of ‘Keegan and Rosta’ (Regan and Costa). Previously we had surmised that this implied a disappearance of Regan and Costa at that time (in advance of the main soft core disappearance around 2005).

However, it was not until 2004 that material was released by Broken Social Scene, which we know to have been penned by Costa. Three theories could explain this. Either, Costa disappeared in the 90’s, but her material was in the hands of the Toronto music scene before then, later being released by BSS, or Costa disappeared in the 90’s but nonetheless disseminated material to BSS after her disappearance, OR Costa did not ‘disappear’ in the nineties at all. On this third theory, which I favour, the following scenario is possible:

The Canadian RS student, possibly already acquainted with Costa (and Regan) directly or indirectly, is seeking out Costa and Regan, in the UK. She travels there specifically to find them. Whether she succeeds or not is unclear. Costa, possibly with Regan, possibly also with the Canadian RS student, returns to Michigan, and is involved in ensuing road trip activity as part of the beginnings of the soft Michigan project. Costa is also involved with the Toronto music scene directly or indirectly, in years/months directly leading up to the 2004 release of her material by BSS. It is then not until 2005 that Costa becomes untraceable, either from retreating into Soft Michigan, or else from going ‘underground’ to evade various groups, eg. military Project 31 operatives.

I must however check dates suggested by recent Boston contacts including Zac Happy. Did anybody disappear in the 90’s? Melody? When did Zac say the travelling mix-tape couple stopped coming by? When did he say the road trip activity began?

Ethan/Evan

This massless gravity you describe could well be the phenomenon the term 'Boston Mass' refers to. The concept of an empty centre and the idea of something that exists, but isn't seen are both applicable to the case. Also, A donut could be described as a closed loop. I now presume that Boston may operate as a hollow centre for (at least some of) the operations. This would explain why evidence of Searly has been found in the surroundings of Boston, but the man himself is not there. The ring of habituations arcing from Nova Scotia to Wisconsin should be examined in more detail. This would extend north through Canada and down to the mid-Eastern states.

Incidentally, while working a case at the request of Bob Palindrome in Croatia back in 2006 i met a guy called Evan (or maybe Ethan, details are sketchy) from Wisconsin, a happy-go-lucky type. I was gathering evidence of a music festival which was relatively unknown at the time and attracted maybe less than a thousand young European revellers. Two things struck me about Ethan the evening I met him at an open-air bayside restaurant, one - he was the only American at the festival I had met, two - he appeared to be there completely on his own - quite unusual for a foreign festival-goer. He possibly wasn't even attending the festival, just happened to be in the vicinity.

His behaviour was described by some people in the group I was shadowing as 'friendly', while others referred to it as 'annoying'. Being a tolerant man, these attributes eventually led to him spending quite a lot of time talking to me. He did strike me as an interesting character, slightly out of step with the rest of the crowd. I remember eating grilled tuna steak while he told some elaborate tale of how he came to be there, involving mis-dated work contracts and holiday leave, but I fail to recall the details. In fact, all I remember concretely is him teaching myself and Kingsbury PI the vogue-ish hand sign which accompanied the territorial phrase 'Wisconsin Baby!' favoured by the local youth there. See attached picture for reference.

I have no further memory of anything Ethan told me, as it did not seem pertinent to the case I was working back then. Had I been handed the Searly case earlier, I could have used this opportunity to ask 'Ethan' of the local wool subculture. Such misfortune can only be attributed to poor aim by the arrow of time.

Empty Centre

The paradox of the doughnut and the pie that you raise cuts to the very heart of this case so far. The empty central space of the doughnut is the virtual centre of the object’s gravity, yet is massless, and in effect gravity-less. It is the eye of the rotating storm. Imagine a hollow planet. If you reach the exact centre, you could float in the perfect equilibrium of opposing pulls from every direction. It is like the donkey who starves to death unable to decide which of two identical bails of hay to eat from.

I feel Searly has conducted, or is conducting, or plans to conduct, the perfect crime. He has rotated the object, but as you so aptly ask, was it a doughnut or a pie?

Nb. A doughnut can be rotated in various ways without conducting larceny. I could provide diagrams. It can be spun as a coin is spun, rather than as a flying saucer spins. However this requires finding said doughnut balancing on its edge, or else possibly hung on a string. Alternately it could be rotated about a point on its edge, or about any point containing doughnut dough.

I feel it was definitely a nut that Searly was/is spinning. The coastal ring around the great lakes themselves form a doughnut ring around a central emptiness (water as the void area).

There is a definite theme of space and non-space developing – groups trying to dwell outwith normal space. The gaps in the jumper that you correctly identify – the source of its strength and power, yet an absence. It is the air in the wool, not the wool itself, that is of importance.

Donut or Pie?

Indeed you are as insightful and correct as ever. The snooker or pool hall is a breeding ground for low level hoodlums and criminal activity. Something to do with providing men too young to drink a place to hang out and smoke, I have always thought. In fact, if such premises were to keep a signing-in book, it would read as a veritable who's who of minor street criminals. Such activity, left unchecked, could easily develop into capers such as bank robberies and grand larceny.

Incidentally, the charge of larceny contains some interestingly subtle clauses, for example (this is a classic example taken from an old law book which resides in my library)

'...the thief must not only gain dominion over the property he must move it from its original position. The slightest movement, a hair's breadth, is sufficient. However, the entirety of the property must be moved. As one commentator noted critically this requirement is the difference between rotating a doughnut (larceny) and rotating a pie (not larceny), as all of the donut is moved through rotation while the pie's exact center remains in the same place when rotated.'

This leads me to ask the following metaphorical question - is Searly rotating a donut or a pie? I have been digging into his past for clues and have theorised the following: Searly grew up in the NE corner of America, most likely Milwaukee of Pennsylvania (going by teenage poetry submissions). Both of these locations border on the Great Lakes; either side, in fact. Searly probably gained knowledge of the lakeshores and surrounding areas through family picnics and camping trips during his childhood.

My guess is that his father was a military man who favoured the outdoors and tried to pass this prediliction on to his son. Military fathers are known for their strictness and desire to see their offspring suceed along pre-determined paths. My guess is that Searly went to University in line with his parents wishes, but once away from their immediate presence, he began to drift into fringe circles and most likely dropped out to pursue his own aims, but kept in contact with academic social circles. Became involved in some kind of political network and oversaw operations involving fabric experiments in some capacity, either for the government or an independent subversive group. His knowledge of the local area and the Great Lakes soon made him a great asset to, and central figure in, the group.

His role would seem to be more strategic than operational, possibly becoming so after the incident with the Buick in Maine causing a scare that he may have gone too 'overground' and was in danger of being discovered. Since then, he appears to be more or less invisible, yet is present in everything. He is like the air pockets between the fibres of a chunky home-knit.This of course, is all just my own speculation based on a re-examination of my early case notes in light of post-Boston revelations. It should also be noted here that I failed to locate the Bungalow registered to Searly on the SE edge of Boston, so am no closer to revealing what he is building in there.

Brave Man in Pink Tie Dye

It is a brave man who wears pink tie-dye in full view. Circa 1994 would be around the time that the soft-core group is believed to have risen to prominence, increasing in stature for a few years before the 1998 disapearances. Perhaps you have previously been closer to the Michigan set than you dare to realise. Perhaps not - the same idea independently manifesting in two separate places at the same time has already been discussed as being possible. Your talk of a swerveball reminds me of your description of the whorling lines witnessed in your dream. Why is is that sporting metaphors are so widely applicable? Searly, as a sports fan, must know more than most about this.

Fabrics of the Future

Back From Boston. Arriveded home to discover a package from Kingsbury PI amongst my mail. It contains a document entitled Fabrics Of The Future, which is explained in her accompanying letter as relating to a current Phd proposal by a student called Dan Stairs.

Whilst I was away, Kingsbury PI attended a public viewing of a design competition featuring a selection of Phd research proposal posters. It was here, her letter explains, that she found the document I mention, given as a handout to accompany one of the posters on display. Allow me now to relay a few excerpts for your consideration...

Fabrics of the Future
Dan Stairs (Ohio University)

This practice-led project explores ways of using sustainable textile fibres. Through creative experiments with newly developed natural fibres and closed-loop synthetics, to produce solutions to sustainable textile 'products'.

Aims
To examine eco-design theory, exploring emerging ideas about the life-cycle of textile 'products'.
To design and develop innovative textile 'products', using ecologically and environmentally sustainable fibres.
To research closed-loop production methods.
To disseminate findings in academic and manufacturing environments.

Methodology
...Practical experiment to explore the results of findings and test theories in the area of study, which will lead to realising new paradigms in the field of textile design.

Now, let's examine this; note the opening gambit - 'a practice-led project'. This means actually carrying out what is being examined, not just reseraching it. Stairs is planning on acting out whatever it is he is 'studying'. Next sentence speaks of 'creative experiments'. More action for 'research' purposes of dubious nature. Look at the aims and other ambiguous terms jump out; 'eco-design' 'closed-loop production methods' - what are these? eco-design sounds like designing ecological systems to me and 'closed loop production' is a perfect descriptor for the private network of individuals, who seem to exist outside of normal social circles and communication channels, that we are dealing with.

Note the final aim - 'to disseminate findings in academic and manufacturing environments'. Is this not exactly what Project 31 could be described as doing? the talk of a 'new paradigm' sounds ominous. Why would one want ecologically sustainable fibres for any other reason than creating an environment which would be sustainable with the current natural one? One other thing of note is the use of inverted commas with every mention of 'products'. That is sheer ambiguity - a classic Obfuscationist trait.

Unless I am being paranoid and overcompensating for failing to sight Searly in Boston, this would seem to a good insight into the closed loop soft core network. It would seem that Dan Stairs is an Obfuscationist and a part of the Cargo Corps who has secured funding for the operation under the guise of academic research. The alternative view is that he is a government plant and is monitoring academic reserch in the textile field on behalf of the military. As of writing I am unsure but my gut is leaning toward to former. I was hoping for at least a days rest now I am home, but can't shake the imperative to research Stairs.

Boston (Gravitational) Mass

Interesting. Perhaps the leads I failed to find in Boston will come to you from your local Joni. It seems fitting that as soon as I leave the town, a possibly significant reference to it shows up elsewhere. It bears hallmarks of the Obfuscationist modus operandi; You look right, there's nothing there; you look left and they tell you to look right again.

I was unaware of the Boston Mass and now wonder if this is some kind of religious (or quasi-religious) festival or a celebration of something large in physical scale or scale of production. Or rather, even, Boston Mass is some kind of condition providing gravity through mass to attract all things. Perhaps due to Boston Mass, all things must gravitate toward [or from] Boston.

Your mention of the album title Songs To A Seagull causes me to recall the French artist and funambulist Philippe Petit who, while crossing an illegally rigged highwire between NYC's World Trade Centre towers in the '70s, paused to lie back on his 3/4" cable hundreds of metres above the Earth's surface and carry out a dialogue with a seagull circling a few tens of feet above him. It strikes me now that perhaps Searly is in a metaphorically similar position and is, as such, untouchable by the man of average means. Perhaps we will have to wait for him to cross the threshold at the time of his choosing and once again become accessible in a more general capacity.