THREE BROTHERS ⋅ A NEW GOD ⋅ CITY OF SALT ⋅ LAKE OF DREAMS ⋅ SUSPENDED! ⋅ THE TWO STREETS ⋅ ON THE EDGE OF THE MARSHS ⋅ BLACKSUN ⋅ DEMON ⋅ GAZELLE ⋅ THE HARDRIIM ⋅ RIDER ⋅ THE FLYER ⋅ ARABIAN NIGHTS ⋅ THE EMPTY MIRROR ⋅ THE SOLDIER ⋅ THE BICYCLE ⋅ THE CROCODILE ⋅ THE THREE TRAVELERS ⋅ OCEANSONG ⋅ THE FLUTE ⋅ THE TREE ⋅ THE TOWER

By official decree, within the City of Salt, the right to use any of the following words and terms is suspended until further notice: henceforth nothing shall be deemed circular, infinite, innumerable, ancient, mysterious, endless, eternal, abstract, recursive, obscure, invisible, ambiguous, ludic, visionary, crystalline, dark. The following words shall be used only in discussing the objects they represent: mirror, labyrinth, dictionary, encyclopedia, library, lottery, memory, city. There shall be no more permutations, items will not be twinned, entwined, veiled, wrapped, or subject to repetitions, there shall be no hršnir. One shall not combine unrelated items into single terms such as wind shirt, memory gristle, or pique clans. No terms or strategies derived from the following languages: German, Latin, Manx, Cornish, Gaelic, French, or dialects such as hobo, hillbilly, west country. No lists (where necessary, all items shall be linked by and); no travelogues, parables, myths, or anthropological descriptions; no exotica. It is forbidden to depict the following occupations: metaphysician, lexicographer, historian, librarian, poet, hero, archaeologist, detective, bogman, pastry chef, shaman, ethnobotanist. There shall be no discussions of desolate landscapes such as deserts, bogs, marshes, moors, tufa fields, corn barrens, or bellylands. The City of Salt will not extend recognition to nations composed of more than four parts marsh or desert to six parts agriculture (eg., Iceland, Scotland, Morocco), or to city-states (Monaco), or to former city-states (Venice), or to the City of Salt.
Acceptable words: shit, excrete, piss, urinate, fuck, copulate, consume, eat, mouth, lick, vomit, sleep, hate, envy, hit, kill, die.
Or perhaps not: he was unsure if he had the courage to purge himself of this armature. It had served him well over the years, provided for his family and amused many of his erudite friends. The armature was useful (recombine any element, twist and contort until unrecognizable), and yet somehow it always tasted the same. Other devices had been found and quickly chewed upon, dissected, and embalmed. Any creation that somehow managed to be born free from these associations would find itself quickly dried and salted and smoked until it too fit within the abandoned city of ideas. How long had he been wandering in this open plain, his mind parched, his diet consisting solely of old stories thrice regurgitated? Weakened by the sparse food, he fell into a stupor. His mind raged with self-doubt, yet he could not move, frozen into a rictus of rethoughts. At last he began to dream. He was on a wind-mined sandy bed, miles from anything he knew. All his thoughts had tumbled and split, ground down to the finest powder, until nothing remained but the letters themselves. A silence of letters, too small to form words; and with this, a strange new freedom. He felt suspended, above his past, above all the crutches he had relied upon; above the very notion of thought itself. It was all dust beneath him. And yet he knew, even without thinking it, that in time this too would become merely another labyrinth . . . -home-