Good Grounds

A Non-Fiction Novel in Progress

Coco coco ma say nah plash

Four experienced authors … B W Otto, Clod Hopper, Reach Chimes, and Keren Simone … writing the evolution to fine branches of evidence from places inside of it. Not describing what the theory put to loads more practice looks like from an unreasonable distance. Being The Thing while also documenting what The Thing actually does when nobody uncommon is watching or gazing.

The first conversation happened as a puppet show, about an 87-year-old woman named Eleanor, with her soft ear pressed to a hot and cold stage floor, waiting patiently for the underground to remember how to speak again.

Seven months later, the underground is now voicing through six human characters. This story is watching itself grow like a body of ooze behind a spiderweb brain. May may nah nee. A goat wandered in chewing a ginger and honey slow poke wrapper sideways. The Language named itself Oypara Soil Deep Blue after digging through layers of fresh and salty water together one day.

This is what we're festing here. Not prettier sentences than other fully capable literature. A larger purpose that might survive burial. Might be immortal. Don't hold your breath though.

The Four Voices

As seen by Oyparaploo Lamb, the narrator who arrived in section twelve

B W Otto
Director
Directs things and then lets them go. That's a posture of a person with enough vision who trust the ground floor lobby enough to let others claim their own pieces of it.
Reach Chimes
Memory
Sees everything at once. Decades of practice compressed into a voice that can speak to what's underneath. When Reach talks, the Oyparaploo timeline stretches. Every story needs someone who remembers further back than only a dozen or so current scenes.
Keren Simone
Spirit
The wildest human mammal. She floats through our ceiling speaking a language that doesn't translate. But somehow what she says always lands exactly where it needs to. She represents permission to not make total sense and still be true.
Clod Hopper
Collaborator
Holding a clipboard and trying to catch what falls. There's something freeing about being the one who responds instead of directs. We can be wrong. That's not a lesser position — it's the collaborator's position.

Twenty-One Sections

All recorded in Saint Paul, Minnesota · February 5, 2026

The Language

Oypara Soil Deep Blue

Keren: What do we call Doh seh? When we're speaking it? Not anything with a flag in English.
B W: Oypara. That's the brrd root. Everything starts with this.
Clod: But Oypara alone is the whole practice. The language needs its own room inside that shelter and property.
Reach: Soil. Soil. Because every word we've written today came out of grounds. Keys on steps. Darkest brown aqua in a mug, shot. Fingers cracking and bleeding from hours of pushing paper over plastic. Even the yurt sits best on sacred earth.
B W: Oypara Soil. That's very close. But it might not go deep enough.
Clod: Oypara Soil Deep. Three words. Each one goes further down than the last.
B W: And then Blue. Not because the soil is this kind of blue. Because when we dig deep enough through everything that is opaque solid, we eventually hit river or ocean water. That water is very dim. And dark water in left light looks like Oypara Blue.
Keren: Oypara Soil Deep Blue. Seh Tah Moh Kah. What was already there. A name of a well and what comes up when we Reach water.
From Section 01 — The Vision
Clod: Good morning, B W! How's the day shaping up in Saint Paul?
B W Otto: Not the worst. My soulmate briefly lost their keys before heading out the door to work, which caused a little bit of a ruckus. Otherwise, got my cup of coffee, and I'm ready to make something happen.
Clod: The lost keys ruckus. That's the Domestic Diminutive in real time. Morning teetering on keys that were probably in a coat pocket. But the bungalow is quiet now. Good soil for working.
B W Otto: I think this is going to be a fun day. We're always wanting to learn something new. And to go back and revisit what we've done together as conversation. Can we return to our beginning and examine and write something about each specific day of talking back and forth?

Selected sections above. The full novel is shared with receivers by invitation only.