Encounters In Mind

Notes - Merlyn's 'Holomovement Foundation Analogy' set

2012-02-11T22:38:00.000-05:00

Almost twenty-two hundred hours. You were tired and groggy a good part of the morning and not much better in the afternoon as you had a second nap. You take your blood pressure three times a day and your sugar twice. You did thirty minutes of modified aerobic-styled exercises (as you have been doing most of the week) using your barbells while listening and following the beat of 80’s pop music in mostly arm and leg movements. You have been thinking about the holomovement analogy and Yermey’s comment. - Amorella

One of the problems with Yermey’s comments is that he is thinking from a marsupial’s perspective. The species identifies themselves as runners so they have a ‘nounanverb/gerund-like’ concept of God as a running runner. The multiple-universes and dimensions exist because of and in their Creator’s wake. Humans have a sense of God as “Be-ing”. Similar actually, but our concept, at least one of them, is that God is singular and independent (just as we have a need to be singular and independent). I don’t know about physics and metaphysics intertwined in God’s wake. Who knows what happens when G---D M-O-V-E-S. W-H-A-T is created and stirred? The concept has existential qualities. G---D moves and thus fluidity and things happen within the fluidity of the Wake of G---D. Consciousness is the fruit of the original Movement and Things and Life and Spirit.

Now that you have a setting and foundation for combining physics and metaphysics, Merlyn does also, but his theory would be better discussed in Arthur’s time period, in the seventh century in the Isles. Tomorrow you and Carol are to Columbus for lunch at Bob Evans with Uncle John, Dwight and Mary Lou in Upper Arlington. Afterwards, a stop by Cathy and Tod’s in Westerville if they are home. Post. - Amorella

Notes - analogy of three vortices con't / Yermey: 'God has humor, or, God is humor'?

2012-02-10T17:56:00.002-05:00

Mid-afternoon. You are at Kroger’s on King’s Mill Road waiting for Carol to pick up a few essentials. Earlier today you picked up the lawnmower so it is ready to go in the spring. Last night you were thinking about the “meta-engine” I suggested and came up with an “expander of space and thus time in the forward motion” as far as the natural universe is concerned but you also are coming to the conclusion that what you and others call “metaphysics” is actually a part of the real universe, that is, holistically it is the holomovement, the flux, of the Whole – or in a different context “All Things and Beyond” as the marsupial humanoids view it in the books. – Amorella

That is my thinking. I also agree though with the marsupial-humanoid concept: “Godofamily – God, the Creator of All Things and Beyond” a definition I have in the back of book one, Braided Dreams. I like the separate simplification “God, the Creator” and everything else physical and metaphysical. Of course, as the words of the book come from my own mind what else would one expect? Plus, as an existential transcendentalist the concept is doable. I will go a step further, within context – no, I will have to rely on a marsupial character to give a further explanation here.

Who would you like?

Friendly.

I disagree. Yermey will be better here, but he needs an introduction. Put in “Pouch Text” first chapter, first book, to give the reader an idea of the marsupial-humanoids in action. – Amorella

I don’t really know Yermey.

All the better, he might surprise you. You are in love with Friendly, not a good choice. You will be swept by whatever she says. – Amorella

This is getting too close to home, Amorella. You are making me uncomfortable.

I appreciate your self-honesty. Go with my plan, if you don’t like it after hearing what Yermey has to say you can erase all this and start again with my “Who would you like?” – Amorella

*** *** ***

“Pouch Text”

[From: Chapter 1, Braided Dreams]

Trexer rubbed the dark sweat from his forehead, “Problem,” he said quietly, “we have a captain.” He scanned for his current mate, Hartolite. Pond in my life, where are you? Trexer’s heart poured into an eddy. His reasoning shifted into a conscious flood of trained equations balanced against survival instincts. If Ship remains unmoved, stress will break the machinery. We shall languish until death’s sleep. The antigravobars trickle by Ship’s engine, as does our escape. Ship lies as an exposed withering vine clung on a hollow stump among the stars. Tearing teeth of the natural laws of physics will eat us. Hartolite, where are you? Trexer stood as theatre and raised a curtain of fingers to stop his stubborn tongue. Careless courage jabbed him haphazardly as his bright green eyes swiftly refocused inwardly. ‘I am Tall Trexer, Ship’s master engineer.’ With resolve, he reconfigured himself and said aloud, “Captain, we have a problem.”

“Is blackanot on?” inquired Captain Fargo with fingers dancing while standing barefoot on Ship’s grassy floor. Childhood conditioning reinforced from two hundred years earlier popped into his head, ‘the brighter the berries, the more shade in the head.’ Fargo queried, “Is blackanot on? Is beacontohome on?”

“Yes," said Trexer, reflecting the resonance of his old friend’s secure voice, “but Ship’s not running, and I don’t know why.”

Captain Fargo’s eyes reflected a flashing storm cloud. We are stuckinagray. Is this the event foreshadowed from HomePlanets’ prophets? I am a good runner, a very good runner. Ship is a good runner too, and normally we both follow our homing instincts. My feet are ready for a running, but here we stand and wait. Our fellow marsupials at PrimeThree do not detect us missing. I see Trexer’s eyes set like dead rocks. I am the only one on board experienced with the native earthlings. Why did PrimeThree keep Friendly home? She’s my best friend. She is my companion.

Beacontohome is on. Blackanot is on. Friendly and I had a flawless first trip twelve years ago. His eyes drew to Ship’s living floor. He shuddered - back then we two found the bony remains of billions of earthlings one year dead. Godofamily, I need Friendly here now. Fargo, scratching his cheek with his left hand, and asked Trexer, “How long before our problem is critical?”

Trexer, with eyes as old tree knots, responded, “One week.”

“One week? Time-wise, antigravoskimming is nearly done. We must be near Earth’s sun. Can’t we pushanpull blackanot to off and navigate by sight?”

“We can’t risk exposure. Blackanot remains on,” said Trexer strongly; “besides, we could disrupt solar functions if we are too close.

“Our rules are for running,” grumbled Fargo. He scratched his nose, “We have to run the natural laws.”

“Running gets us home, Captain,” said the thin-lipped engineer as he turned from Ship’s instruments and dug his toes into the well-manicured floor of mixed and trimmed home grasses. I draw my eyes to the rocks between the wildflowers. I stand in Ship’s central breeze and smell the tall and wild-leafed bushes. I view Ship’s blue sky streaked with white spidery wisps; long stretches of spinets set to dim a marsupial Ship’s artificial sunlight. The distant crooked limbs of wild swamp oak stand thirty to eighty feet tall. Trees run only at the roots. Marsupials run by Ship.

Trexer watched for the playful antics of the squirrel-like rodents who lived in the environment. Food, he thought, fish, and furry rodents. Nature sucks us in for the swallowing. Why we worshipped nature, I will never know. Nevertheless, look, see how serene and tree-like the captain now stands, thought Trexer.

I love Ship, reflected Fargo, but the doldrums moving into Trexer’s eyes. “No returning to HomePlanets until we complete our mission,” snapped Fargo. He ruminated - twelve years ago, Friendly and I made HomePlanets’ first direct contact with Earth natives. We found two women and two men after a plague killed more than six billion. Now I return with a crew of three. The survivors did not want our help except for medical supplies. Friendly and I scrutinized our biochemical probes and found no hint of the problem that lead to those billions of quick deaths. Each of the four surviving natives had to have a genetic mutation that allowed herorhis survival, but we never have discovered what it was.

Our clergy had foretold we would have a similar plague years ago, but nothing happened. One malcontent even predicted our sun would darken for a second or two then re-flame. Where do our peoples’ outlandish fears come from?

Our marsupial species is educated. We know better than to believe in the implied injunctions of our clergy. Yet, here is Trex terrified at the prospect that we are stuck in the mythical gray, in an eye blink between this universe and another. He thinks we are in a doomed voyage, that we marsupials, like the Earth natives, are the lock and key of a long foreshadowed calamity. The minds of the earthlings and our own are as alien to ourselves as we are to each other.

“I’m checking Ship’s machinery,” said Trexer. “If we survive, this will be my last hop-and-skip from the other side of the galaxy.”

“We have a week,” muttered Captain Fargo. “We . . ..”

“We have a working Shuttlevator believe it or not,” interrupted Trexer.

“Good,” grinned Fargo, “Shuttlevator will take us to Earth.” The captain double-checked instrumentation. “Shuttlevator is not functioning, Trex.”

***

“Fargo’s right,” Hartolite, “we can’t afford to disrupt the gravity of a sun or planet when we do not know where we are.” She slid her hands into her pouch through the slit in her overalls. “What do you think, Yermey?”

“We should be within a day of Earth,” [Yermey] ruminated, “There should be a way to check this without blackanot off even for a nanosecond. There is no sense of adding to the possibility of our discovery.”

“I don’t think there is,” replied Hartolite, “after all there are only a few living on the planet. We might have a solution to navigation through a side door though.”

Yermey gave her one of his finest disgruntled looks, “Fine, Hart,” he replied, “what shall we do? Shall we run to the basement systems and work up, or shall we climb to Ship’s roof and venture to the basement?”

The man is tremendously arrogant. “I think it is a timing problem. For some reason we are here early or late and Ship’s debating.”

Yermey beamed, “We have a week, I’ll think of something. Lighten up.” He mind muddled. Hartolite is always like this when she sleeps with Trexer. He is the youngest of our small group on board, but his head always sees half-empty masts even when we are on a full sail.

Hartolite continued, “Surely PrimeThree’s ParentsinCharge will direct Ship Two to search us out.”

Yermey the agnostic reflected on the ancient story of Marsupials’ Great Fall. I don’t believe the myths, or our clergy - yet old stories hint at truths. Why the few natives not die? Hartolite needs to study the genetics more closely. There is a close connection between our concept of Godofamily and the natives’ own concept of God. The earthlings have similar ideas and concepts - even the story of the fall of the angels from Grace before creation of the universe. These far seeded myths must be genetically predisposed. I am positive higher consciousness is a condition of natural law though not metaphysics, not philosophy. Science is rides one track and Philosophy another and never the twain shall meet.

Hartolite deliberately interrupted old man Yermey in his thoughts, “I told Fargo you would solve Ship’s problem.”

Yermey frowned, and pushanpulled the chute for his clothes, then, frustrated, he scratched himself unperturbed. He looked directly at Hartolite and said, “We’re close to Earth, and I can calculate it in my head.” He paused to scratch his nose, “Where are my overalls?”

“We can fix the Shuttlevator,” stated Hartolite confidently. Chuckling, she added, “You are a cutie, old and naked, but still the cutie.”

“You women think we marsupial men look cute naked with twig curled and dangling. That’s the only reason.” He [Yermey] broke into laughter with her smile, and commented, “We partners know why you and Friendly want to visit Earth. We know the women talk at home after Friendly returned with a box of paper soda straws twelve years ago.” What a humiliation for us males.”

Breaking into a broad smile, Hartolite replied, “You men are a crumpled lot, with a squatter-bush of pubic hairs constantly in need of scratching. Scratching what? The mighty bendable twig, the soft and the slow, the uncalculating and uncurling of a twiginatwig. When Friendly pulled a straw of the box, folded it in half-inch segments and let it dangle there I thought I would die laughing. When she told me what earthlings used them for, I lost my breathe in the humor. Within a week, the women on all three planets knew the joke. We had a plague all right, just like the clergy had predicted, but it was one of humor, at least for half the population.”

“Yeah,” he [Yermey] responded sarcastically, “you enjoy our fingers crawl-to-pouches though, and luckily we have fingers more easily aroused.”

Hartolite feigned a blush and said, “You mostly arouse our patience.”

“Yeah, well,” he [Yermey] grumbled while slowly dressing his cock-of-the-walk slow legs, one at a time into overalls he had found in the chute of clean clothes.

***

That night when the two were laying alone together Trexer whispered, “Hartolite, I don’t like this situation any better than you. You keep staring at our suicide capsules on the nightstand as though you are about to take one. We have most of a week. Yermey will solve the problem.”

Hartolite gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and replied, “Yermey can’t solve a stuckinagray. You said so yourself not more than ten minutes ago.” I’m the psychiatrist, she thought. I’m debating which one is the quick suicide and which is the terribly sick pill. We take them both and become terribly sick. What a way to end our lives anyway. Yermey knows the difference in the two, I’m sure of it, but no one else on our three planets has a clue.

“Do you need a little action, Trexer? It’ll be the first time in seven months.” She noted his quiet smile and slid his right hand into her pouch. She whispered, “You are sixty years younger than any of us. You were the best patient I ever had. We held hands for the whole time he recovered from the thinking fevers.”

“You want me to play dead,” panned Trexer, “like one of our tree rodents?”

She turned closer to him and dropped her right hand to his upper thigh, stroked down to his knee and back up. Let’s see what I can get cooking,” she said gleefully.

“I’m not really in the mood,” he asserted, “I’m tired and under too much stress.”

“You silly boys are never in the mood,” giggled Hartolite. “Don’t you feel good when I do this?” teased Hartolite as she leaned down and kissed his stomach. “Too bad you boys don’t have pouches too.” She blew a kiss further south, but it might as well have hit his toes for all the difference it made.

Trexer muttered, “What would we do with pouches?”

“Well,” she said coyly, “I could slide my hand further in and down.”

Trexer’s voice took on an obstinate boyish tone, “We’re all pouch babes. Hand in a pouch is not much different than holding hands.”

Hartolite whispered, “Not true, Trex and you know it.”

Trexer stubbornly sat up, “We all share one another privately,” he said. “You are in my bedinabox. What else are we friends supposed to do? You should respect my being tired.”

Hartolite teasingly whispered, “Trexer,” and a private joke.

Trexer suddenly nurtured a deep, sexual laugh. “So you have decided to bed each of us, playing away, hoping it will induce a creative means out of our situation.”

Hartolite rolled over rakishly. “Not quite, but I thought it would do you some good,” she retorted. Then she returned to her outwardly nature. “Rub my back, will you, Trex, and my thighs too.”

He begrudgingly complied, and quickly adopted his unpretentiously contented and sanguine smile. He whispered intimately, “Okay, let’s try the physics again so we can cuddle asleep.”

***

The next morning Trexer awoke to find Hartolite gone. He got up and pushanpulled bed into the floor. “Friendly is always upbeat and positive like Yermey. I can never move her to gloom.” Hartolite is a good cuddle babe. She is no doubt manipulating old Yermey, Fargo and me. Women. Sex is Godofamily’s private joke. We men would just as soon do our public works in peace then sit around and tell man adventures. The women pop us in those pouches when we are tiny babe crawlers and never let us go. Men grow up to always expect at least a hand in a pouch. The women never seem to tire.

***

Later after a day of consideration and some attempted options, the crew sat at the small communal table for dinner. Trexer looked at Fargo, “I’m sure the problem is in Ship’s machinery.”

Hartolite quipped, “This is yet another reason for Ship to be referred in the male gender, even with new gravoengines, middle-aged Ship is like you men. I am the sole woman on board to get you men to work. Friendly would get you cracking. We need to stand Ship on the top of his non-navigating head and turn him over for a quick kiss and tickle. That’ll wake him up from this stuckinagray sleep of his.”

The men laughed in a childhood glee. Fargo ragged, “We jog to solve a problem and end up nearly dying of exhaustion, perhaps Hart’s right, we need to do a kiss and tickle.”

“I’d rather work myself to death,” commented Trexer dryly.”

“I agree with Trexer,” responded Yermey. “We need a solution before the untimely one is made for us. Our sole woman on board will slight us until we do something.” He took time for a long yawn, then continued, “Why don’t we close blackanot, and head home on the Shuttlevator, it’ll get us there in a pinch.”

Fargo muttered, “Shuttlevator will not move because Ship thinks he’s home.”

“Ship thinks he is home,” replied Yermey, “but I think he is nearer Earth than we suppose. Something is running against the wood grain here.”

“Can’t we trick Ship then?” asked Hartolite. “Ship’s an entire computer and ego-bionics system combined. He has an animal-like consciousness. Ship knows to run for home when things are not right, and if he thinks he is home like Yermey said, then why would he move?”

After ten minutes of silence Fargo commented, “Ship thinks two opposites are true, ‘Ship is home. Ship is not home.’ He has developed schizophrenia. This stuckinagray may be as Hart suggests, a psychological not a machine malfunction.”

Trexer added, “Ship is what he is. Ship hasn’t the brains to think in a hidden self-referential or a paradox. Maybe he is deliberating what do to and has not decided.”

Hartolite raised her left eyebrow, “I agree, Trexer. Ship has slipped into a Hamlet-like mood.”

“Can’t we give Ship a perspective he does not have?” asked Yermey. “Perhaps, a sense of conscious freedom will arise, and he’ll naturally run. It’s built into his brain frame. We have been focusing on the Science. Perhaps it is philosophy, though I cannot come up a reason for a philosophical consideration in Ship’s navigation. ”

“That’s good, Yermey,” recited Hartolite as she turned to Trexer.

Yermey smiled confidently and began philosophizing, “Marsupials used to be cannibals; we shared the bodies of the dead to survive the Great Starvation. What was that historical struggle for?” Yermey paused, thinking of Friendly, the first marsupial to make herself known to an earthling. “Darkansoul,” he muttered, “We need to busy ourselves. As a last resort, before pill time, I am willing to turn blackanot off and hope the antigravobars don’t do a loop. We are runners. Stopanstill is not for the marsupial species. Let’s remake Ship’s grammar so he’ll be fluent enough to finish his sentenced objective and ours too.”

Fargo smiled; the crew will now work on a plan, to Earth followed by a period not a question mark. Hartolite was right. How can women be right most of the time? It does not make biological sense. If men are wrong-minded as they say, then why are we men folk here at all? Women don’t need us to have pouch babes. Some wanted an all female culture. I don’t know why they all didn’t. We men wouldn’t mind. We could do what we wanted to do - sit around, play games or work. His memory drifted - when Friendly and I did our first study in human history we concluded our original trip would be somewhat analogous to the first European explorers making contact with the American natives. We were sure the native peoples of Earth would think of us as conquerors as the Native Americans came to think of the Europeans.

We have better built and more lasting machinery. Our goods and knowledge would sway the earthlings our direction whether they liked it or not. The earthlings would grow to dislike us. The natives would fear our colonization and our possible diseases. Humans would fear the loss of their worth and dignity. Self-identity would dry up. Our secret fear was that earthlings would eventually stand together and fight us tooth and nail. Our arrogance, they would say, that you people could dominate us with your culture and ways. We have regional rights. Leave us to our own business, they would shout. We have seen enough of foreign empires in our days. Money and power are as a mosquito and its bite. We have endured enough. We need to rid the world of more foreign tyrants.

Fargo scratched his left ear, and then rubbed the back of his neck. He sat in continued contemplation. Earthlings would stand and fight while we would run. We are not pedantic European settlers, and the Earth cultures of today are not analogous with the indigenous Americans of yesteryear. When we finally arrived on Earth that first time, there was no one to greet or to destroy Friendly or me.

Fargo suddenly beamed and said, “I am a shy and slow man with a twig of manhood as Hartolite knows. She knows the three of us all too well. Women teach and raise us up with their deliberate and measured methods. We need to work this stuckinagray problem in a woman’s subtle manner. We need Ship’s immediate psychological profile, and we must provide him with a broader perspective than he has at present. We must toy and humor him as you would either marsupial or human.” He paused, “perhaps Hartolite, you could whisper sweet nothings in Ship’s masculine ears, and he’ll perk up on his own.”

This is the marsupial Friendly already near Earth. Unknown to Fargo, Yermey, Trex and my dearest Hartolite I sit directing a Class A Shuttlevator from Homeplanets through a quick slide of antigravobars to stop near the orbit of Mars. My objective was to land on Earth with blackanot on and wait for Fargo and crew before setting out to discover the remains of that once populated human colony.

I had hoped I would not cause any unusual solar activity when this highly modified class A Shuttlevator shut down the antigravobars. Shortly, instruments on board focused on human life signs. Data filled on data and instruments quickly shut down. Shuttlevator’s machinery froze near Earth’s moon. I arose from my chair cautiously and thought, ‘I am not where I am supposed to be. Blackanot is on.’ I pushanpulled the manual blackanot defaults, but Godofamily - data showed billions of human people existing. How could this be? The large city near the lake appeared a good target so I set for it.

I pushanpulled switches and maneuvered Shuttlevator to Earth near a small grove of trees. A few homes lay on the edge of the tree line. ‘I can ease in and hover invisibly just above the trees. Blackanot is on. Billions of these people died.’ I decided not the run.

PrimeThree has sent a directive to wait for Fargo. Where are they? The new datum flashed before me. The Earth date: 14 June 2000. Fargo and I first arrived here on 14 June 1988. This is thirteen years after the great Earth plague, and exactly twelve years after Fargo and I first arrived and found four human adults and a small baby alive on the planet. Whatever plague occurred in 1988 has not happened here in the year 2000. Billions of people are alive at the very time I said to myself, ‘these living humans beings are dead and don’t know it.

***

- Hello. I am the Soki, and I will have some observations about this story in most every chapter. The marsupial crew is presently stuck in large Ship of their own making. People everywhere are stuck in an identity also of their own making. The individual has a voice to speak his mind. As a floater between the Living and the Dead in this, the first of three books, I have discovered that the Dead have limited rules concerning theatre too. Each has to prepare for herorhis own private Court appearance. What are the theatrical rules for a genuine non-being, a floater like me? Presently, I have only a vague notion. -

*** *** ***

It is strange to read over this selection of chapter one. I have forgotten much of this.

You haven’t thought about this first selection of the books with the marsupial-humanoids, orndorff. It is not a matter of forgetting. Bold ‘Yermey’ for the sake of any reader who may be interested. – Amorella

I have done that but cannot think of the question I was going to ask. I really don’t know what to ask Yermey. He knows too much. He makes me feel very inadequate intellectually. This is because I modeled his character on a dear colleague of mine when teaching at the private American school, Escola Graduada de Sao Paulo in Brazil (1970-1972), Vladimir R. He was so gifted and intelligent and a wit to boot. I can still see the sparkle in his eyes when he would talk about things (of interest or not). Such humor.

Post for now. You can talk with him later. Besides, it is about time for supper and the news. Isn’t that something the real Vladimir might say in this circumstance? – Amorella

Actually, it is, which makes this rather creepy for me to think on.

About time for bed. You and Carol spent the evening relaxing and watching a couple of programs on the DVR. Here’s one of your old characters drawn out by yours truly. We’ll give him his own font, Courier.

- This is Yermey. You asked a question about the Marsupial definition of Godofamily in your book: “Godofamily – God, the Creator of All Things and Beyond”.

God in concept is similar to earthlings’ concepts. We have had time to simplify. “Creator”. Your computer dictionary says:

(God) a gift from God: the Lord, the Almighty, the Creator, the Maker, the Godhead; Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh; (God) the Father, (God) the Son, the Holy Ghost/Spirit, the Holy Trinity; the Great Spirit, Gitchi Manitou; humorous the Man Upstairs. - Oxford-American

Creator-in-the-House-Runs-with-the-Gauntlet-on is the Marsupial meaning of “Creator”. All Things and Beyond move behind the Creator-in-the-House-Runs-with-the-Gauntlet-on. The “meta-machine” that you speak of is an extension of “Running” which is what Marsupials do. Running is the movement between the Beginning and the End. Without movement the heartansoulanmind cannot continue to exist.

You see, Richard, Marsupial-Humanoids and Human Beings think parallel. We do not consider this an accident any more than being on the opposite side of the same galaxy an accident. The closest thing to an “accident” is both of our species, and as such, God: the Creator of All Things and Beyond has Humor or is Humor. Most Marsupials would say “has Humor” a few of us say “is Humor”. – Yermey -

I do not agree with Yermey, somehow he sounds sacrilegious.

These words come from a self-professed agnostic. Post, orndorff and go to bed for a good night’s sleep. - Amorella

Notes - analogy of three vortices /

2012-02-09T14:42:00.001-05:00

Mid-afternoon. Scott and Eric are working on the foundation in prep for the new rubber filament to be put in place to prevent any more water leakage. Down to the bare bones and build it back better. You are relating to their work outside to the Steve Jobs biography you are reading inside – up to chapter twenty-eight after the introduction of the ‘new’ iMac that you and Carol proudly bought that same year.

Design is important in my life. I look at products that I have bought because of design – my 1965 dark green Volkswagen 1200; Sony radios and televisions; Bose systems and speakers; my 1985 red VW-GTI, the 1986 Ford Taurus and later Mercury Sables, the iMac and blue clamshell iBook and other assorted Apple products. I remember how neat I thought it was to peer into the innards of that iMac, to see how neatly all the chips and paraphernalia were placed. The unseen insides are just as important as the outside design. I wholehearted agree with Steve and the others at Apple on this.

Getting this old leak fixed correctly by tearing out and starting over will cost more I am sure, but Carol and I will feel much more comfortable with it. Come to think of it, I even like the design (inside and out) of the new toilets they installed a few months ago.

The insides are of as much value as the outsides, I agree, orndorff. This is the reason the notes and blogs are as important as the books produced. You cannot help thinking of the ‘heart’ and ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ as parts of a singular machine that may perhaps survive physical death. However, there is more to it than that and the surrounding quantum mechanics theoreticals laced with Chaos theoreticals, i.e. probability shows randomness is not necessarily random in computer models.

Picture the dual trailing vortices in yesterday’s posting, think of them as a movement of heartansoul, add an imaginary third below and under the two and consider it the movement of the mind. The real meta-machinery, if you will, is up ahead providing the ‘exhaust’ of heartansoulanmind. – Amorella

This is an analogy for me to think on.

Figure 1

As well you should, boy. Post. - Amorella

It is difficult to imagine a meta-machinery that could produce (or allow for) a 'holomovement' of heartansoulanmind. However, I find the concept intriguing. (Wait. This might parallel the analogy of the DNA strands that are already in the books.)

Good.

Notes - more on the David Bohm concept of wholeness /

2012-02-08T17:55:00.000-05:00

Early afternoon. Two small cavities filled in the morning, later lunch at Panera, for you soup. Scott of Schmidt Construction and his assistant Eric are again working on the leak caused partly by the Gilkey Windows sliding door and also by a section of the original deck flashing (1993) that was not extended far enough. Carol is at the doctor’s picking up a prescription. So, it is you, the cat who is upstairs in the bedroom, and a bit of noise from carpentry tools.

Indeed, this is the day in a few words, Amorella. There was about half an inch of snow this morning though and it stuck to the multitude of tree limbs so it was quite strikingly winter upon awakening. Now though, most snow is off the gray-like limbs of trees and bushes as well as fast disappearing from the grass below the somberly gray February Ohio sky. We missed the full moon that was quite spectacularly almost full Monday night.

Late afternoon. Last night you wrote about David Bohm’s concepts but as you were just reading the Wikipedia article again you found more pertainent information that may be usable for ‘backup’ concept in this present chapter, eight.

** **

Further edited Selection from the Bohm Wikipedia article:

“In Bohm’s conception of order, then, primacy is given to the undivided whole, and the implicate order inherent within the whole, rather than to parts of the whole, such as particles, quantum states, and continua. For Bohm, the whole encompasses all things, structures, abstractions and processes, including processes that result in (relatively) stable structures as well as those that involve metamorphosis of structures or things. In this view, parts may be entities normally regarded as physical, such as atoms or subatomic particles, but they may also be abstract entities, such as quantum states. Whatever their nature and character, according to Bohm, these parts are considered in terms of the whole, and in such terms, they constitute relatively autonomous and independent "sub-totalities". The implication of the view is, therefore, that nothing is fundamentally separate or autonomous.

Bohm 1980, p. 11 said: "The new form of insight can perhaps best be called Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement. This view implies that flow is, in some sense, prior to that of the ‘things’ that can be seen to form and dissolve in this flow". According to Bohm, a vivid image of this sense of analysis of the whole is afforded by vortex structures in a flowing stream. Such vortices can be relatively stable patterns within a continuous flow, but such an analysis does not imply that the flow patterns have any sharp division, or that they are literally separate and independently existent entities; rather, they are most fundamentally undivided. Thus, according to Bohm’s view, the whole is in continuous flux, and hence is referred to as the holomovement (movement of the whole).

From: Wikipedia – Implicate and explicate order according to David Bohm

** **

I found an image that conveys the vortex in the flow in the SPIE Digital Library [SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics.]

** **

Figure 1

Figure 1. Trailing vortices behind aircraft wings.

The main hazard associated with a trailing wake vortex occurs when the aircraft behind happens to fly along the stream's axis of rotation. A disadvantage of airborne Doppler sensors is that resolution is low in the angular scanning range near the flight axis. Moreover, the axial Doppler shift due to air turbulence must be extracted from the much stronger shift owing to the aircraft movement itself. Finally, the time needed to scan a full image frame over the vortices typically lasts several seconds, which leads to severe distortion in the geometry of the resulting image.

From: /spie.org/x14493.xml [13 June 2007, SPIE Newsroom. DOI: 10.1117/2.1200706.0615]

** **

You appear to have a sense of the material to the extent I can put it to use in an explanation of Merlyn’s ability to be in two or more places at once. This is the ‘spirit’ of Merlyn, his ‘heartansoulanmind’. Almost time for supper and the news. Post. - Amorella

I have an 'understanding' yes, but still I cannot fully articulate what my understanding of Bohm's work means to me as the theory goes deeper within and I am sure I am editing and revising the concept to meet my needs for internalization.

Notes - preliminary setting up of scene six / implicate and explicate orders theory

2012-02-07T16:47:00.001-05:00

Dentist this morning and tomorrow morning for you to fill two very small cavities. Lunch today was at Victory’s Bakery and Grill. You both had shish kabobs, a beef for Carol and a chicken for yourself. Excellent! You will be back. You also picked up a Greek salad to go for supper and two Greek desserts. You split one and will split the other after supper. You discovered the place looking at West Chester restaurants in the UrbanSpoon app. Great reviews for the place even though it only has four tables for dining. Next time you will probably take out. One of the reviews that struck you was “New York City needs a place like this.”

It was fun to try a new place for a change. We lucked out with Victory Bakery and Grill. The owner is friendly and for a different New York Jewish deli sort of ambiance the television was on a non-English Egyptian news channel. I will have to write a review.

In scene six Merlyn and Arthur continue their conversation in the evening after Arthur bungles in his courage to see Guinevere. We need to set some coordinates on Avalon, at least the area around Leed’s Castle. No Greek bar and grill like in Elysium. They sit across from one another along the far end of a long wooden table sipping on ale and snacking on hand torn pieces of a small loaf of crusty brown bread. Each periodically dips a finger piece of the brown bread into a small bowl of what look like the leftovers of steak and kidney pie. This is how the food appears and tastes to the two even though from an outsider’s perspective the eating experience may easily be an adventure in voice, pantomime and individual memory.

Carol is cooking Alta’s Arizona turkey soup for supper and you have not done your exercises today. Later, dude. Post. - Amorella

After twenty-two hundred hours. You just finished watching a DVRed show called “Touch” and find it intriguing. Why is that? – Amorella

After watching the show I checked out a few reviews online and found that the thesis of “Touch” relates to works by David Bohm. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the subject (not the TV show).

** **

Edited Selections from the Wikipedia article:

According to David Bohm’s theory, implicate and explicate orders are characterised by:

In the enfolded [or implicate] order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order. These ordinary notions in fact appear in what is called the "explicate" or "unfolded" order, which is a special and distinguished form contained within the general totality of all the implicate orders (Bohm 1980, p. xv).

. . .

A common grounding for consciousness and matter

The implicate order represents the proposal of a general metaphysical concept in terms of which it is claimed that matter and consciousness might both be understood, in the sense that it is proposed that both matter and consciousness: (i) enfold the structure of the whole within each region, and (ii) involve continuous processes of enfoldment and unfoldment. For example, in the case of matter, entities such as atoms may represent continuous enfoldment and unfoldment which manifests as a relatively stable and autonomous entity that can be observed to follow a relatively well-defined path in space-time. In the case of consciousness, Bohm pointed toward evidence presented by Karl Pribram that memories may be enfolded within every region of the brain rather than being localized (for example in particular regions of the brain, cells, or atoms).

Bohm went on to say:

As in our discussion of matter in general, it is now necessary to go into the question of how in consciousness the explicate order is what is manifest ... the manifest content of consciousness is based essentially on memory, which is what allows such content to be held in a fairly constant form. Of course, to make possible such constancy it is also necessary that this content be organized, not only through relatively fixed association but also with the aid of the rules of logic, and of our basic categories of space, time causality, universality, etc. ... there will be a strong background of recurrent stable, and separable features, against which the transitory and changing aspects of the unbroken flow of experience will be seen as fleeting impressions that tend to be arranged and ordered mainly in terms of the vast totality of the relatively static and fragmented content of [memories].

Bohm also claimed that "as with consciousness, each moment has a certain explicate order, and in addition it enfolds all the others, though in its own way. So the relationship of each moment in the whole to all the others is implied by its total content: the way in which it 'holds' all the others enfolded within it". Bohm characterises consciousness as a process in which at each moment, content that was previously implicate is presently explicate, and content which was previously explicate has become implicate.

One may indeed say that our memory is a special case of the process described above, for all that is recorded is held enfolded within the brain cells and these are part of matter in general. The recurrence and stability of our own memory as a relatively independent sub-totality is thus brought about as part of the very same process that sustains the recurrence and stability in the manifest order of matter in general. It follows, then, that the explicate and manifest order of consciousness is not ultimately distinct from that of matter in general.

Wikipedia – Implicate and explicate order according to David Bohm

** **

The above is what is of interest as it seems to be the groundwork of the basis for the plot of “Touch”. I have an example of this in a work of art by William Blake:

Ancient of Days

The above work by Blake represents, to me, the essence of the selected words in the above Wikipedia article on implicate and explicate order but without the words. I ‘understand’ a connected ‘truth’ between the article and the painting. I sense this connection in my heartansoulanmind not my mind alone. Heartansoulanmind in this context is ‘discovered’ by my freed consciousness within.

The above is your attempt at a response to my question: “You just finished watching a DVRed show called “Touch” and find it intriguing. Why is that?” – Post, orndorff. - Amorella

Notes - Canterbury, the Muse and Scene Five, Chapter Eight

2012-02-06T23:22:00.000-05:00

Carol gave blood today so it was a good excuse to go to Longhorn for lunch six-ounce sirloins, salad, potatoes with cooked mushrooms and onions for topping. Carol is walking in the park, you are waiting and will do your exercises at home – a cold clear day – arthritis is acting up. On another subject, lately around bedtime you get the vibes, mostly a wish to see the muse dancing within – assume she is, boy. Place her from soul to heart. Let her dance around the lit candle set on the stone floor. – Amorella

I am thinking of my Canterbury Cathedral photo of the candle placement at the mark of Saint Augustine’s Bishop’s Chair or the Shrine to Archbishop Thomas Beckett. Perhaps the chair and shrine were placed at the same location at different times.

The point is the dancing muse, boy, not the saints. – Amorella

For my own clarification Wikipedia says:

“Those . . . suggest that [the cathedra: the chair] may have been used to crown the kings of Kent. Canterbury Cathedral, in which the cathedra is housed, maintains that the chair was once part of the furnishings of the shrine of St. Thomas Becket, since dismantled. Since antiquity, it is always used in the triple enthronement of an Archbishop of Canterbury.”

From: Wikipedia

** **

Carol is going upstairs to watch Hawaii Five O while DVRing Castle and Smash. This is after you both watched several shows on the DVR.

I want this scene to be what I want all the scenes to be.

** **

Scene 5, Chapter 8, Book 4

Merlyn took two stealthy steps forward and with his left hand and astutely touched the back of Arthur’s right shoulder.

Surprised, Arthur turned, “Merlyn. How do you do this? Catching me unaware.”

Merlyn pointed, “Let’s sit on the stone and talk my young man.”

Quickly settled and glancing towards the foliage and the water trickling down into the far end of the wee pond, the two sat appearing as two unidentifiable old men on a bench in a far from natural setting.

“You manifest a troubled mind, Arthur. Care to talk about it?”

“I cannot bring myself to see Guinevere.”

Merlyn grinned with understanding. “Women are as troubling in a man’s death as well as they were in his life.”

Prefacing with a laugh Arthur shot forth, “I see it is the same with you too, Merlyn.”

“Only a moment ago, my king. A moment ago I brushed my lips at Vivien’s stilled veins and brought us both to the thoughts of life.”

“You startled her as well?”

“I was the air and enveloped her whole in the enchantment.”

He mischievously joked, “Did you used your mouth to swallow her from foot to head?” Were I a shaman, thought Arthur, what wonders could I do to touch good Guinevere’s heart.

“My wind laden lips barely affected the small hairs on her smoothly feminine neck. I wished to raise them straight out, but she possesses her own heartansoulanmind, not I.”

“It must be strange for one such as you who can control the ends of heaven and earth but cannot master a this single woman’s desires.”

Smiling devilishly Merlyn replied, “With this affliction no man is alone, young Arthur.” He paused, setting a darkening tone, “I control nothing but my own self. This World of the Dead is as disconcerting as is the World of the Living. I live one foot in each every moment.”

“How is this, Merlyn? To be two places at once?”

“I am more than many places in the moment. It lends to no speculation and imagination cannot be born in such an exercise.”

“Are you talking with me in your mind as you talk with Vivian in your heart? Is that a small bit of how it is?”

Merlyn quietly laughed at the innocence of the suggestion, pointed to his dark eyes and said, “I can enclose a page and metaphor, alone, with these two immortal novelled sockets on either side of this nose that no more exists than you do, my liege; yet here we are in a conversation that began with women, the echoes of sex who put us here in the first place.”

Arthur drew on the dawning sobriety and asked, “Where have you been, Merlyn? What do you do to stir a rebellion only rumored of in Avalon?”

***

There you are, boy. Not what you expected I see. – Amorella

I thought the Muse would dance more naked than this.

Your passions grow deeper than you like to imagine, my living friend. Post. - Amorella

Notes - today's commentary

2012-02-05T23:08:00.000-05:00

You are sitting at the Kroger lot on Kings Mill Road waiting for Carol after an afternoon ride down around the Little Miami gorge – a little bit of West Virginia not more than fifteen minutes away. Mid-afternoon, and people are scurrying around picking up lots of party packs for tonight’s Superbowl football game.

It is a good afternoon, a little chilly but a clear blue sky – awesome for the first week in February. I cannot believe all the drinks and snacks people are picking up. You’d think it was an Ohio State v. Michigan game. I can only relate by thinking back some forty years when Cleveland Browns were playing the New York Giants in the playoffs. Those were the days of football. Now I am an old coot and don’t give a damn either way; don’t begrudge them any though, people need an excuse to party and socialize so this will do in this country. We have had really good weather overall and Europe has been pounded with massive snow storms this winter.

You have had a busy few days. Wednesday afternoon Kim called saying Owen was ill. You and Carol immediately drove up, arriving around twenty-two hundred hours. You cared for Owen while Kim and Paul worked Thursday and Friday, then you drove home Saturday. It has been busy catching up with household chores today, and you watched the Superbowl game, at least the first half and halftime with Madonna. – Amorella

We did. I was surprised. I even got into it a little, great first half but I don’t know how it turned out. I loved the halftime. Our next door neighbor’s daughter, Lauren, a college student in Indianapolis, was in the choir backing up Madonna. That is so awesome for her. There was no way to pick her out.

You still have a secret crush on Madonna. Why don’t you want to admit it? Amorella

I have always admired her spunk and intellect as well as her talent. It is silly for an old fellow like me to admit I get a kick out of her, but I do. The woman still has the talent. She is an entertainer inside and out. She holds herself well; she is in charge of who she is. I respect her for that.

Think of Merlyn in the same way, in charge. Arthur, however, has issues, just as he always did. When you are dead in these books life is similar because you are too. It poses interesting questions of character.

Back to Sartre and “hell is other people,” with the addition “yourself included.” That’s the humor in it.

Good way to end today’s commentary. Post, orndorff. - Amorella

Notes - what difference does that make?

2012-01-31T22:45:00.003-05:00

A visit with Dr. Bajaj this morning. Soup and salad for lunch at Olive Garden. You spent the afternoon working on updating and clarifying your health files and appointments for Medicare, Aetna, the family doctor, three specialists and an eye doctor as well as blood test results, prescriptions, payments and the like. Then to Kroger’s to pick up more supplies. Tomorrow Scott is coming to replace the outside basement door and frame. A surprise for the budget. – Amorella

Lately, the real world has been showing itself and I am preoccupied the household obligations rather than wonderings and imagination. At least it has been unseasonably warm – today it was up to sixty and tomorrow fifty-eight, not bad for the end of January. No snow shovels either. We will take February one week at a time. The first week is supposed to continue mild with rain showers now and then. If we can get too March without snow or at least much of it, then next month will be a lot easier to handle – even if we have a big snow it won’t stay on the ground forever.

This scene with Arthur and Merlyn will bring in some horniness – that is, imagination, as they talk about Vivian and Guinevere and the way it was in life. – Amorella

That seems childish. I mean, they are mature men and dead, why would they want to talk about such things?

Men or boys, alive or dead, the human condition remains in these books. Remember David’s thoughts in Grandma’s Story?

I had forgotten this little story. I remember being concerned writing about David and Bathsheba because they are Biblical and I was concerned it might be offensive to G---D. It was/is my upbringing. Mother instilled in me at a young age that the Bible was/is sacred. I think she believed it was the direct word of G---D written down – like the Ten Commandments or something. Always a conflict growing up. A lot of pressure to fit in the norm. I don’t know why. Mom and Dad were fairly independent themselves.

** **

Grandma’s Story – Chapter Eleven [Braided Dreams]

We return to three thousand years or so before the present, to a King and Queen in the Middle East. One summer day King David stood on the roof of his palace, and he noticed a woman with dark hair and dark features in a bath on a roof over what would be almost a city block away. Beauty is not the word he would have used. Perfection immediately came to mind and elsewhere too. How is this, he wondered, that perfection is so close to me when my perfection has now departed to G-d. Perhaps this perfection is a gift from G-d, he thought. I am king in his name, or I should be. I have done good works. I am of the loins of Abraham and Sarah. I am as Abraham still living. Perhaps she is a gift.

He quickly found who the woman was. Bathsheba, wife of his good and loyal general, Uriah the Hittite, who loved soldiering and war more than anything else in the world. I have to touch this woman, thought David, she is heaven sent for a king no question about it.

David felt justified as king that G-d would give him a present. It seemed the natural thing for G-d to do, to help him through his recent personal sorrows. When she arrived as ordered, David touched her and surprisingly, Bathsheba touched him back. She was not perfect. Perfection would elude even a king. His intuition about the woman below on a neighboring roof was quickly set straight in his mind and elsewhere too.

Lust rushed in and stuck in his mind as an enemy spear. David became instantly terror struck. Lust is a present from G-d? I am stronger than that, he thought, and he sat and he confessed to this woman he had never met before what had almost over come him.

Bathsheba sat with him surprised at his unpretentious manner and understood how it felt to have lost a love as she once had years before. She held him in her arms as he cried like a child. He dismissed her at her own bidding so he might have some privacy and she too. This feeling of attachment was new to both of them.

When they met again, this time in secret, they made love in a passion that neither expected. They bathed in a mist of passion so fine that both could see the same rainbow in their heart of hearts. The unexpected happened, as did the expected.

A few weeks later, she called on David and he responded immediately. “I am pregnant with your child, David,” she said. “I will be stoned to death for adultery.”

“Have you not slept with your husband?” he questioned.

“No. He is busy soldiering and will not be bothered.”

“I will not have you stoned, with or without my child,” said King David without thinking. “I will come up with something.”

It was then that Bathsheba realized she was in love with the king. He would not let her die even if the child was not his or her husband’s child. “I love you,” she said abruptly and without forethought.

“I love you, too,” he responded. Again, he thought, this woman commanded the situation. She will make a good queen. How can this be? She is my general’s wife. I have many wives, but he has only one. I cannot take her from him, and I will not. It was then that he thought on how Bathsheba could still be God’s gift to him. Only if the general dies a good death in battle will I wed her. If he does not I shall allow her compensation and protect her from stoning. I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

Very soon, almost too soon, there was a battle afoot and brave Uriah, the general was up front with his men as always. Uriah was a good and loyal general through his last battle. Thus, it came to be that Bathsheba married King David. Their son died young. Nathan the Prophet, told the king his son’s death was partial payment for the king’s adultery, but David asked, “if this is so, why did G-d take my son and not myself?”

“For further punishment,” hailed Nathan the righteous and the wise.

“How do you know this?” commanded King David, “That G-d should speak to you before he would speak to me in private.”

This was a loaded question and Nathan quickly reassessed the situation. “I do not know, my king,’ he responded somberly.

“We shall have another child,” snapped David the King.

Nathan was verbally bruised and dismissed.

It was then David realized the depth of his love for Bathsheba. He realized that G-d may have been talking to him through Nathan because he was a powerful prophet, but David did not know that G-d was not also talking to him the king.

Years later, Bathsheba asked a much older David, “Will our son be king?”

“Yes,” he responded with no hesitation. “I shall do as you wish, Solomon will become king while I am still alive to see it.”

Bathsheba smiled, but knew she had no need to thank David for what his heart had told him to do. From her point of view, from that time long before when she told the king she was pregnant, she had come to realize a truth about love. Love, like true beauty, works from the inside out not the outside in. She was content with the king’s response that Solomon would be king. David was content that she was content.

Solomon saw this joint contentment in his parents and said to himself, ‘true wisdom, like true love, must come from the heart first and the soul must concur. The absence of one from the other will lead but to a shadow of wisdom and not wisdom itself.

That’s Grandma’s story. I had to do some telling in this one because that is how people have heard it. Grandma smiled knowingly and winked in delight.”

When Grandma’s story is done there’s a wake that will follow,

In the river of deep thoughts and its shallow;

The great bend in the river between the slave and the free,

With a marked separation where you may want to be.

A guilt for being born human causes much strife,

And the free human unshackles this slave in their life

By accepting what one is, a piece of humankind --

Filled with imperfect sails for the strong winds in the mind.

Words flow free as small letters by Merlyn’s own hand

Across a crammed flowing fiction carrying earth, floaters and sand.

From Braided Dreams by rho

***

I know where some of this comes from and it is not the Bible. It is not a memory of lust either. Sincere emotions. Memories, some real some tangled with wishful thinking and other imaginations. I think where I first had this sense was in the fifth or sixth grade when I read Mark Twain and Tom being stuck in the cave with Becky. Wow! That jogs the mind.

A Google for the thought and a quick online re-read.

** **

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain

A Selection from Chapter 31

A frightened look in Becky's face brought Tom to his senses and he saw that he had made a blunder. Becky was not to have gone home that night! The children became silent and thoughtful. In a moment a new burst of grief from Becky showed Tom that the thing in his mind had struck hers also— that the Sabbath morning might be half spent before Mrs. Thatcher discovered that Becky was not at Mrs. Harper's.

The children fastened their eyes upon their bit of candle and watched it melt slowly and pitilessly away; saw the half inch of wick stand alone at last; saw the feeble flame rise and fall, climb the thin column of smoke, linger at its top a moment, and then— the horror of utter darkness reigned!

How long afterward it was that Becky came to a slow consciousness that she was crying in Tom's arms, neither could tell. All that they knew was, that after what seemed a mighty stretch of time, both awoke out of a dead stupor of sleep and resumed their miseries once more.

Tom said it might be Sunday, now— maybe Monday. He tried to get Becky to talk, but her sorrows were too oppressive, all her hopes were gone. Tom said that they must have been missed long ago, and no doubt the search was going on. He would shout and maybe some one would come. He tried it; but in the darkness the distant echoes sounded so hideously that he tried it no more.

From: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

***

That was the place I stopped to think out the situation. Then I thought of the two girls I would have liked to have been stuck in the cave with. I wouldn’t know what to do, just as Tom didn’t know. Love was complicated already and I had no idea what love was. I still don’t know what love is, but I don’t think love is the be all and end all of human matters. It is an important part, but the whole of humanity is greater than the emotion of love. I didn’t use to think this but somewhere along the line I changed my mind. In this sense I am not the romantic I once was back in my younger days.

The point here, boy, is that you have not lost how it was being in the fifth or sixth grade being absorbed in Tom Sawyer. Here you are sixty-nine years old and you can remember such a moment in your life. Allow the same for Arthur and Merlyn even though they are long gone from this world of the living. And, maybe they never were, perhaps both were fiction from the beginning. What difference does that make in your heart, boy? You tell me. Post. - Amorella

Note - something is rotten /

2012-01-29T15:49:00.000-05:00

Mid-afternoon. Carol has been cleaning closets for Vietnam Vets who will be around tomorrow to collect. She found lots of slightly used but usable goods and kitchen equipment like a very nice coffee maker that we only used (sometimes) when company or family comes.

You watched ‘Grimm’ one of your favorites to take it off the DVR. Otherwise, your morning was spent mostly sleeping as you have been out of sorts the last couple of days. That and you are feeling really self-conscious about the blogs.

I am. I don’t seem to care about writing, and it bothers me because it is one of the few things that give me dimension in life.

That is an odd way to put it, boy. – Amorella

It is odd because a writing is two dimensional in its nature. I cannot work on two blogs at once. My mind just doesn’t work that way. I am ready to scrap “Amorella, Diplomat and Me”. When I think about Arthur and Merlyn I cannot help but think about Bob and me and I find myself saddened by his loss. This is not an excuse. Perhaps I am more concerned about losing my sense of secret passion, maybe it is nothing but passion for myself. That sounds horrible and arrogant and self-centered. I think about the Sartre quote to Camus Richard D. sent me: “You are free to think what you like.” It is true as anything anyone ever wrote but the limitations, it seems to me, are on imagination alone. If it cannot be imagined then it cannot be thought. Somehow I find this very depressing – a reminder of our limits as a species. Alas, as I see this on the screen I think it has more to do with self-pride, my own and for our species. Not a good sign when humility can easily defeat this sense of pride.

Not bad, orndorff. You solved this bit of idle/idol melancholy on your own. – Amorella.

Something is rotten within my own state.

The Bard’s play at humor returns. Post and relax, old man. Later. - Amorella
Then I am not done with the writing and the blog?
Not unless you want to be, boy. - Amorella

Notes - the species sometimes makes me tired

2012-01-27T22:01:00.000-05:00

I am thinking about our present politics and how argument appears to evoke at least one of the traditional seven deadly sins (pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth) and one or more of the following logical fallacies: over-generalization, thin-wedge, name calling, cause & effect, false analogy, appeal to authority, statistics misused, appeal to the crowd, circular argument, self-evident truth, black or white, and guilt by association. – As the author Kurt Vonnegut proclaims in a slightly different context in one of my favorite books, Slaughterhouse-Five, “So it goes.”

Checking Wikipedia I see that now there are seven holy virtues. This is I did not know.

** **

Each of the seven deadly sins now also has an opposite among corresponding seven holy virtues (sometimes also referred to as the contrary virtues). In parallel order to the sins they oppose, the seven holy virtues are humility, charity, kindness, patience, chastity, temperance, and diligence.

Wikipedia

** **

I like the concept as it brings an order to the universe of metaphysics. Sadly, I wonder why it is we crave such order? Is it for knowledge or a supposedly understanding? In either case it appears to be connected to our basic moral sense of fairness and/or justice. If such a perceived moral sense is innate, what does this say about our species? I swing down to Golding’s Lord of the Flies and across to Slaughterhouse Five. What a themed pendulum with a return to Lord of the Flies. So, is the gear work of this biological/species ‘clock’ forever to move our face in an existential mode? A four-faced clock tower with no exit. It is no wonder the species invented hope, it had/has no choice but to do so. There is a humor in this, a long shadowed lingering humor, but humor nonetheless. It can’t stay for long in consciousness though timeless here it sits with a slight and clever grin.

You are the very sunshine beyond the clouds today, boy. Such an enlightenment. - Amorella

I hope a good night's sleep will help.

Post. - Amorella

Notes - says you

2012-01-25T22:37:00.001-05:00

The new countertops were attached yesterday and the water was hooked up today. The only matter left is adding the limestone squares to be added to the walls as backsplash.

We like the granite slab on the desktop and Carol is fixing the space for more efficient use. It is fun to see her working on the project. And, it will be fun redecorating/upgrading the kitchen decor with objects we have had stored in the closets for twenty or more years. I spent more of the day reading the Steve Jobs bio. I enjoy the easy writing style and reading Walter Isaacson’s Chapter Sixteen on the Gates’ and Jobs’ personalities – great contrasting descriptions. And it is fun to read the relationship between Jobs and Sculley. I am glad Jobs lived long enough to see his earlier 1980’s vision for the computer finally come to pass. He did change the world, a very rare feat indeed, especially through vision, drive and invention instead of through politics and acts of war.

You are thinking the Steve Jobs would have made a very good marsupial-humanoid in the books but that is not the case. The Bill Gates personality would better fit that bill. – Amorella

How would that combination of personalities have worked on ThreePlanets?

Something for you to consider for later in book six. – Amorella

I have nothing else to say; drawing a blank.

Time to post then. – Amorella

Normally consciousness has a gravity to it, a flow towards or away from something, but other times I just seem to be floating within a complete lack of immediate environment.

Says you. Very funny, orndorff. What a humor. Time for bed, boy. - Amorella

It was a statement not a joke, Amorella.

Notes - not before / continuation of sc 5, ch 8

2012-01-23T16:13:00.002-05:00

Today is Carol’s birthday; the skies are blue and the sun is shining. – Six hours later, mid-afternoon. The sun stopped shining five hours and fifty-five minutes ago. It is warm though.

You received a call from Wayne early on and tomorrow they are taking out the countertops and putting in the granite. So, you have had a busy day cleaning out the countertops as well as the kitchen and desk drawers so the men can do their work. You had a late lunch at Panera/Chipotle and a Graeter’s child’s scoop in a cup for dessert. Presently you are at Kroger’s on Tylersville – the regular routine. Alta’s best turkey soup for tomorrow as there will be no hook up for Kitchen water.

I have been reading on in Steve Job’s bio but am ready to work away on scene five. I have no idea how or when we are transitioning back to the Greek counterparts but I’m sure there will be civilized way to do so.

It would be interesting to see a biography on everyone alive. The semi-private life, friends and colleagues who have influenced, the interest (passions) as well as contributions. I think of all my friends who I am close enough to for envisioning such a biography – they would all be an interesting read to see how their life has moved along with their ages. Everybody is who they are.

Richard, that is the purpose of the Grandma’s stories, biographical vignettes – a remembrance the person had once dead. – Amorella

Oh. I didn’t think about that. Nobody will ever notice that stuff, Amorella. I didn’t even think about it myself. I like to think of writing as an art form – and it is for some; but for me it’s a hodgepodge – a really serendipitous hodgepodge for binding. Am I trying to be secretly clever? I hope not because if so I am not doing well at it. Besides, cleverness takes forethought and direction.

Don’t concern yourself, boy. The forethought on the books and blog are mine, not yours. If you eventually complete book six you will sense the completeness of the Merlyn’s Mind series, not before. – Post. Amorella

Nearing the usual suppertime culminating with the national news, usually on NBC and you have found additional images from Wales, Scotland and Ireland to use as descriptive backdrops to Avalon.

***

Early continuation of scene five:

Arthur sighed, still wondering about Guinevere when he noticed a small leaf down to the right of the slight waterfall begin to flutter as if it were waving to Arthur’s own illusion of life. He focused sure that at home on Earth he would have spied a small insect or two causing the commotion. The thought charged an instant reminder of where he was and why. He smiled to himself thinking, ‘when I was alive it was the same, I was king but when alone I had my doubts any of it was really real – an illusion by a great magician, by God himself.

“Hello, my young friend,” said a familiar though hesitant masculine voice from the flat stone above the foliage within a dead hand’s distance of the now arrhythmic leaf.

***

Tomorrow will be busy. Post. - Amorella

Notes - death's twin

2012-01-22T21:57:00.000-05:00

Banana and skim milk for breakfast as you are having an early lunch with Mary Lou then, depending on the movie, the three of you will see one.

We had lunch at Smashburgers and saw the new “Mission Impossible” at the Regal off Mason-Montgomery Road in Deerfield Township. It is the best action movie of all the MI film series. Wonderful fun. The fog has come in and lingers – Mary Lou headed home and Carol is on the phone with her sister Linda. All is normal and well.

Bedtime. You spent the evening reading on the Steve Jobs biography.

I have. I think the MacBook Air was Steve’s dream way back in the eighties but he did not know how to articulate it because the technology had not yet arrived to create the machine. The MBA is a piece of art. Form and function at its present best. I would say this even if I did not own one. I own one because I have thought this for a long time.

Simplicity may be the best design but the Merlyn books and blogs are not designed as an art form. We come into the world messy and many of us leave it the same way, messy. We can create the art though as Steve and thousands and thousands of others have shown. Consciousness – what realms do we have yet to explore?

All for tonight, boy. Sleep on it, that’s what everyone does from time to time, sleep. Death’s twin as the ancient Greeks used to say. Don’t you agree, orndorff?

No. I don’t. Time to post a good night though.

Notes - setting / dream characteristics / intro to sc 5, ch 8

2012-01-21T12:01:00.001-05:00

The yard is covered with white but it is ice not snow – it will melt later today and thunderstorms tomorrow. So far this winter no use for a snow shovel or snow blower.

You were up earlier than usual and finished your exercises in short order.

Looking over those photos last night brought back memories of the trip with Craig and Alta back in 2007. We had a great time. For Carol and myself it was the second visit to Leeds Castle and on to Canterbury and the coast. I don’t think the photo in yesterday’s posting was an actual spring but I’m making it one and taking the iron fence out of course. Leeds is a very idealistic setting worthy of Avalon. At one end of the island though there have to be hills as one would find in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Dead need to feel at home in similar geography, or it seems to me they do.

As HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither is conjured up by the collective mind of the community allowances are made. We can throw some hill country in easily enough but the focal point will be the areas you have photos of – all taken in England. Remember, even The Rebellion is Merlyn’s version not a factual-like history even though you would like that better for authenticity. Dreams have an authenticity all there own and these books are no exception. What makes a dream authentic, orndorff, you tell me. – Amorella

I checked online. I don’t know if I have ever thought about dream characteristics as such before. Here is a summary of relevant tidbits I found.

Instead of a summary why don’t I edit the material for what is useful within context of the Merlyn series. – Amorella

That is fine with me.

First, I edited the work below from the world of lucid dreaming dot com. Emotion, logic, and remembering the dream are controlled by the grammar in writing them down. The Merlyn dreams are open-minded because I am doing the opening. Thus the characteristics also include an altered state of consciousness similar to that found in traditional hypnosis.

** **

Characteristics of a Dream:

The characteristics of dreams have long fascinated scientists and philosophers. However it was only relatively recently that dreams came under rigorous scientific analysis. One of the most famous dream researchers is the American psychiatrist, J Allan Hobson, who identified five basic characteristics of dreams in 1988:

• Dreams often feature intense emotions. Despite the fact that your waking life may be pretty cushy, it's quite normal to have highly evocative dreams featuring extreme emotions. Whether you dream of intense fear (being chased by a crazed axe murderer) or public humiliation (finding yourself naked on stage). Hobson's dream research found that the three most common dream emotions are anxiety, fear and surprise. 

•

• Dreams are often disorganized and illogical: When you dream (non-lucidly) certain parts of your conscious brain are shut off, allowing fantastical thought processes to run wild. The resulting dreams are rife with illogical scenarios and disorganized content, which, upon waking reflection, can make absolutely no sense. J Allan Hobson formally identified that dreams contain "illogical content and organization, in which the unities of time, place and person do not apply, and natural laws are disobeyed". 

•

• Dream content is accepted without question: Our dreaming minds fully accept the bizarre and illogical characteristics of dreams due to our powerful emotional state. According to Hobson, we create strong emotions and perceptions in the dream world that support what we're experiencing, not matter how strange. When dreaming, we do not have the capacity to reflect logically nor overcome emotions.

•

• Dreams often contain bizarre sensory experiences: In dreams, your mind has to "let go" of the experience of lying asleep in bed and submit to a full range of sensations produced internally by the dream world.

•

• Dreams are often difficult to remember: REM sleep is characterized by low levels of serotonin and high levels of acetylcholine, making dreams difficult to store in short term memory.

•

Dreams - Transparent or Mysterious?

Through his extensive dream research spanning three decades, Hobson emphasizes the role of neurochemicals in the brain and random electrical impulses originating in the brainstem. He does not say that dreams are purely the random firing of neurons - but rather the brain's cobbled attempt at making sense of them.

He later acknowledged the increased activity of the limbic system (a primeval part of the brain which produces emotions) during REM sleep.

Was Sigmund Freud right to suggest that dreams symbolize our repressed fears and desires? Do our dreams contain our darkest secrets just waiting to be unlocked?

Instead, Hobson takes a Jungian approach: dreams reveal far more than they hide - and can actually be highly transparent.

From: www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/characteristics-of-dreams.html

** **

I do not see anything above that would show Merlyn’s dreams are any less authentic than anyone else’s though he is currently as Schrödinger's cat, the theoretical half a cat living, half a cat dead. Merlyn steps beyond in his dreaming, as well the character of Merlyn should.

Indeed, the books are from Merlyn’s vaulted mind (actually your own which is substantially vaulted through my sense of dimension/reality). Post. - Amorella

Chores have prevailed today but you have first drafted an introduction for scene five of chapter eight:

Scene Five

Arthur rested himself on a carved sitting stone focusing on the nearby thin runnel of water flow across a stony flat piece causing four naturally spaced falling streamlets in a half surrounded wood parceled pond of what would pass as pristine water were the whole setting of Avalon constructed of true earthly qualities rather than the spiritual druidic character of those whose minds created and molded this geographic transcendence.

***

It's only a start.

Post anyway. Enjoy supper and your DVRed shows. - Amorella

Notes - the old fogey / images of Avalon setting for A & M

2012-01-20T17:22:00.001-05:00

Late afternoon. You are sitting outside the Walmart Superstore on Mason-Montgomery Road in Deerfield Township waiting for Carol to pick up sundry items. Earlier you had blood work done by Phil at Bethesda North Outpatient and you have an appointment with Dr. Goel next Thursday. Also on Thursday Gilkey Windows is sending out a technician to check the leak at the sliding door after Scott confirmed where Tuesday’s leak was yesterday. Mary Lou was coming down tomorrow but tonight you are under a ice storm warning until noon tomorrow.

Everyone is scurrying around like ants after a sugar lump. I hadn’t thought about my marsupials and their weather on ThreePlanets. I don’t think I ever mentioned the weather – that is not too good. I was more interested in the terrain, so much for realism.

They were Merlyn’s dreams, boy. You picked up a double whammy of irony this morning on your Facebook page. – Amorella

Yes, it was funny. I had put up an article about how science shows lectures are not a good learning tool and commented on whether I should apologize to my former students or not, then I said that if they weren’t listening to my lectures they didn’t learn anything, or something to that effect. It was a dark-humored attempt at a joke. I signed it, “Mr. O the old fogey.” I got on this morning and looked over all the positive comments and was somewhat embarrassed because I wanted them to see the subtle irony in life that one sees from time to time if you live long enough. The experience was enough to remind me of how lucky I have been in my life to have had so many kind students over the years. Even one of my comrades at Indian Hill, Jim P., concurred – I had forgotten he sat in on one of my lectures on Beowulf. I enjoyed working with him in those years. We still communicate, mostly on line but not always. I told him later I had been somewhat depressed when I first read a similar article on Laney’s FB page. But, today, I think of all those people who defended the flat earth concept and those who had given their professional lives to the concept that the sun travels around the earth (that is what it looks like). Anyway, my bit of glumness is rather trivial. Like I told Powers, I enjoy a dark sense of humor – I would like to find something funny or ironic in having a noose hung around my neck for a one time only event.

Showing your true colors, boy – Cyndi Lauper could give you an added wink just before your hanging. – Amorella

Love it, Amorella, sounds exactly like something my old friend Bob Pringle would look at me directly and say in a droll monotone (in this conversational context) over lunch.

Post this, buddy boy. - Amorella

After twenty-one hundred hours and I sit with sorted descriptive images of the location of Arthur and Merlyn on Avalon. I have been staring at an image from Google Earth some 200 meters directly above Stonehenge. I have photos from Salisbury Plain country looking northwest from Stonehenge, I believe towards Wales.

Carol just headed upstairs and so did you. Take a look at some of your photos of England. You’ll find one. – Amorella

It took a while but I found twenty photos from England that I will use for descriptive purposes for Avalon. Most are from the grounds of Leeds and Warwickshire Castle grounds.

The Spring of Avalon

This is where Merlyn first meets Arthur in Chapter Eight. The surrounding landscape below:

South of the Spring of Avalon

There, you have your setting. Time for bed. Post, orndorff. - Amorella

Notes - Papa John / remembrance / Bronowski (again)

2012-01-19T18:00:00.000-05:00

Late afternoon and you just finished “linner” at Longhorn Steak House. Running errands – Home Depot and Kroger’s before heading home. Last night you had Papa John’s and you told the manager, Homer, who has been with Papa John’s for ten years, that you can’t understand why anyone would go anywhere else for take out pizza. He smiled and you could tell he always appreciates the long time customers – in your case, longer than they have been at their present location at Tylersville and Rt. 42 (Reading Road). You used to drive twenty minutes to their earlier location. You have always been more than satisfied with their pizzas. – Amorella

I told Homer that if they ever wanted an endorsement I would give them one for free. I guess this is it. I want to work on this next scene with Merlyn and Arthur. I am not sure what ages to make them.

This scene five will focus on a remembrance or two, then Arthur will ask how all this works – the past and future. He is not prying, only natural curiosity. In some ways Arthur will be like Dr. Watson is to Sherlock Holmes, a counter-point whereby the reader can glean some information that would otherwise be unknown. And, this will be in juxtaposition with Merlyn and Vivien where the reader will also gain more insight on Merlyn’s ‘way’ in and around HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither. Readers like to ‘understand’ this so called metaphysical universe.

I will like this too, Amorella, in that I don’t know/understand any more than anyone else. Merlyn’s ‘dreamtime’ certainly has ramifications.

This will also add insight to the first three books. In some ways it will be similar to Joseph Bronowski’s Accent of Man series. – Amorella

I have a poem about that series. It seems appropriate to add it here. This is another of the poems in the unpublished Take Two by Robert Pringle and myself. Maybe I have had this poem in this blog at one time or another, but it shows my intuitive receptiveness, if you will, to the series.

***

BRONOWSKI IN A 1984 RERUN

Based on the "Knowledge and Certainty" Episode

of Joseph Bronowski’s 1970's Ascent of Man, PBS Series

In reader now time a God proud and small human tall

righteous majority thunders like Thor

and, gravity swings razor-like down

a Bible belt, bone thick and America wide

whipping Capitol bottoms

raw

(some better are equal more, by Christ!)

methinks, rethinks, unthinks, hummm.

A videotaped Bronowski

with shoed feet in a puddle standing --

death reflects up

like flames invisible

onto the bi-speckled scholar

who bends slow

at old German death camp grounds;

band, by his stretched arm pushed

into the silent ghost muddy pool

Faith-full people prance and shout

knowing, they say, what God's about --

we so do sins, all-know, a-men.

Life grows to kiss an is mirror --

for Flesh is God, now don't you know

and God is a stern Father, don't you see?

Crusading we the world unHoly, don't you agree?

methinks, rethinks, unthinks, hummm.

Bronowski,

his wet fingers claw up a pool scraping,

European ash four million bodies deep;

ash forged by arrogance and dumped by dogma.

Watch me preachers, mouth like court lawyers

and try to get God to high step with their tongues.

Believers look down, knowing and certain.

Tolerance be nailed up in designer style

without the mess of blood to ash --

clean death laughs hell hot

in the gnashing of multi-voiced noise --

methinks, rethinks, unthinks, hummm.

Meanwhile,

old man Bronowski, a Jewish witness,

pleads humility and tolerance.

He pulls up an earthy gray bit

and touches people. . .

like only one other time in life

(when Kennedy died)

I rethinks --

watching the old man talk to the dead.

Brain is struck dumb -- me are

so quiet I hear my soul turn,

In reader now time Mind and I

try an unthink,

but an idea we got hooked on

snags us barbwire tight.

Pulling a think, I mental rip bloody;

a hell vision --

shrouds of arrogance dressed proud in dogma

marching in gray glory to a sorted resurrection.

***

It makes no difference if you included this poem before. This is in a different context. It also shows why I chose to mention Bronowski in the first place. In another post you also showed his headstone at the London cemetery.

I love Bronowski’s mind as it sets in the Accent of Man. I cannot imagine ‘unthinking’ his PBS masterpiece. I also cannot imagine how the Merlyn, Arthur, Vivien and Guinevere relationships will fit into the totality of the series.

Later, orndorff. Post. Relax with some more of Steve Job’s bio. - Amorella

Notes - PC's / "motorcycle" /

2012-01-18T17:10:00.000-05:00

Mid-afternoon. Busy morning with house problems – with the heavy rain yesterday Carol noticed water seeping through in the basement from under the sliding door in the kitchen and the basement outside door. Scott was called and you are getting a new door and frame for the basement and a water test tomorrow to determine where the leak is coming from under the door. Scott thinks it is from the pitched roof of the family room just to the left of the door. Time will tell. The important aspect here is that it is being fixed. Yesterday you and Carol went to the Stone Works on Cox Road and picked out how you want the granite pieces to be cut for the kitchen. You are glad you went because Don, one of the owners of the place helped you to show off the unique aspects near the sink as well as the kitchen island top. Today you have been reading more of the bio of Steve Jobs.

It is funny. Jobs and Wozniak were making a real computer while I was using domino chips and such to create a mock computer board model to be used in my first novel, Anno Dominae. We were both reading the same electronic magazines and had the same interests but mine were purely for plausible fiction. And, on our block, Majken Place in Mason, Bud C., Rich G. and myself were into Atari gaming. Both were software/hardware engineers so I saw some real RAM chips and boards along the way and I tore down a few old electronic gadgets to use for chipboards in my make-believe computer that had spider control of the Web at the time. I am a lot like Wozniak philosophically and would have loved to have been a geek. I like scientists and engineer-minded people. Alas, I have never had any ability in mathematics.

I remember tapping the keys of an Apple II at school and I really wanted an Apple IIc but they were thirteen hundred dollars and I could not afford it. The IIc really caught my attention. I loved the clean lines as much as anything else. I used one at school whenever I could. I really had a craving for such a machine.

Apple Iic

I ended up with the British-made Amstrad 1512 of course. It costs three hundred dollars at Sears, and I could barely afford that in the mid 1980’s.

Amstrad PC 1512

I put in the photos because I still am attracted to the initial concept of keyboarding. I can’t include these two without my less than a year old MacAir. Amazing how far the world has come. If I ever have a headstone they can bury one of my keyboards under it.

MacBook Air

Not to digress here, orndorff, but today Kim sent you a short video of Owen from her iPhone and you and Carol saw and heard him pronounce his first four syllable word: “motorcycle”. – Amorella

I wrote Kim: “I hope Owen has as great a love for words as his Papa O has.” Owen was quite delighted with himself to say such a complex word and said it over and over with glee radiating from his face. I can’t help but love the boy – I wanted to give him a kiss and hug and open a dictionary and begin to show him what all the excitement is about.

Post. – Amorella

Notes - gallows humor /

2012-01-17T09:26:00.001-05:00

Up before light, which isn’t saying much this time of year. You are sitting in the black chair in the bedroom and Jadah the Cat is sitting on the scanner above and to your right, and looking very regal-like. – Amorella

Yes. She reminds me of the Egyptian sculpture of such a cat. Very cool.

** **

The Egyptians viewed their gods not as spirits but as intelligences that could be personified in a body. The earliest evidence of cats as deities comes from a 3100 BC crystal cup decorated with an image of the lion-headed goddess Mafdet. The goddess Bast was originally depicted as a fiercely protective and warlike lion, like Sekhmet, but as Bast's image "softened" over time she became more strongly associated with domestic cats.

As cats were sacred to Bast, the practice of mummification was extended to them, and the respect that cats received after death mirrored the respect they were treated with in everyday life. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that in the event of a fire, men would guard the fire to make certain that no cats ran into the flame. Herodotus also wrote that when a cat died, the household would go into mourning as if for a human relative, and would often shave their eyebrows to signify their loss.

Such was the strength of feeling towards cats that killing one, even accidentally, incurred the death penalty. Another Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, describes an interesting example of swift justice imposed upon the killer of a cat: about 60 BC, he witnessed the chariot of a Roman soldier accidentally run over an Egyptian cat. An outraged mob gathered and, despite pleas from pharaoh Ptolemy XII, killed the soldier.

From: Wikipedia

** **

Jadah is no goddess of course but the critters do have a refined animal intelligence: an easily noted (by humans) sense of practical observation along with a balance of not always so practical sense of curiosity. Besides, she is cute and cuddly. Uh, I think I have lost my point.

Perhaps she is your needed “cat scanner” orndorff. Post. – Amorella

I did not get the joke.

Obviously, and what practical sense does this show you have? – Amorella

A slower sense of gallows humor, at best.

Notes - more with Merlyn & Vivien

2012-01-16T22:59:00.000-05:00

Late morning. You are concerned about Merlyn and Vivien and show the introduction from Tennyson below. You are dropping “wily” from Tennyson’s description and need go no further with Tennyson’s concept of their traditional relationship.

“Merlin and Vivien”

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

A storm was coming, but the winds were still,

And in the wild woods of Broceliande,

Before an oak, so hollow, huge and old

It looked a tower of ivied masonwork,

Merlin's feet the wily Vivien lay.

Vivien and Merlin Repose

Gustave Doré

Gustave Doré (1832-83). "Vivien and Merlin Repose." from: The Doré Gift Book: Illustrations to Tennyson's Idylls of the King. London: E. Moxon, 188-. [Images]

***

I like a good mystery. I like their developing relationship in The Rebellion because it adds an intimate human dimension to Merlyn’s character. Human relationships are a mystery in their own right. What ever is the combination of attractions that draw one to another in friendship? Love and marriage do not draw the same combinations though mutual trust [certainty, assurance, conviction, credence and reliance] is certainly a validity that covers both aspects. This is my reasoning: Vivien was never attracted to Merlyn for his ‘powers’ because she has always realized that she is the key to the ‘powers’ he further developed in life. I will not have Vivien idolizing Merlyn either because that was never in the cards. Now, are their original attractions the love of Druidic ways? It seems a good place to begin as I have to have a fully developed relationship between the two in mind.

Almost time for bed. You both got a lot done today in terms of kitchen work – it has been measured and you now know the costs – you have chosen your sink and fixtures as well as a new disposal – in two or three weeks they will be working.

We have been seven years off and on thinking about what we wanted and now it is about to take place. Very exciting. Also, I have been researching more on what ancient Druidism was all about. It is just reinforcement of what I already have in the books. I know this Druid business well enough.

I agree. Spiritual qualities come first. The relationship between Merlyn and Vivien and Merlyn and Arthur will show this on a more personal level. People who write on such things, as far as I am concerned, spend too much time on the nature of the soul. The dance is mostly between the heart and mind in real life. The ‘embrace’ of two souls solidifies – it is a very deep anchor which is where you are with the Muse and where you were with Bob. – Amorella

It is sad to me that you say, “were with Bob”.

“Were with Bob in life,” how’s that? – Amorella

Better. I miss the man.

When you are dead do you think you will miss your Muse? – Amorella

If I have memory and consciousness, then, yes. I will miss my family and friends.

See, you have reasoned it out. Post. - Amorella

Notes - Merlyn and Vivien / ch8-sc4 / a dance step

2012-01-15T12:33:00.018-05:00

Late Sunday morning. The usual routine; plus the added delight of seeing a column by John Bridgeland, a former Indian Hill student, in the Enquirer’s opinion section today.

Such matters light up small areas of self-pride, I’m afraid, but teachers know of such things when a former pupil does well in her or his chosen endeavors. I have many such former students in all walks of life that do me proud to have known them along their and my way. Facebook now asks me to choose between closer friends and acquaintances. I cannot with former students; they are all friends as far as I am concerned. At one time I knew (most) each of them better than they themselves. Another small delight echoed through the profession. When their words were honest and true to themselves they gave themselves away in secret – I enjoyed seeing their growth when it occurred, and sometimes before they were consciously aware of it – one of the private joys of a teacher of the expository essay.

Last night, in bed and preparing to sleep, you interloped on the mental connections between your mind, your imagination, and the muse who helps tailor the books and blog.

I am always interested in the true mysteries, the underground ‘connections’ between specific people. Having had two living muses in my life the speculation drills deeper into romance of the heart I assume. Some people speak of lovers or former lovers as soul mates, but though the souls may embrace from time to time as I feel they do, the muse has to do with a toying romance in the heart that this ‘dance of friendship’ becomes who a person is. Friendship anchors one. In this sense I see my agnostic self-desiring to be in a kind of limited friendship with you, Amorella, as a more mature version of make-believe childhood friend, the image of Aunt Jemima. Friendship is, in my mind, more complex stability than love because it has, to me, seemingly less volatility. One may trust a friend more than a lover. I would. I would rather have a friend than a lover, but the best would be a friend and lover with the friend aspects coming first. In my mind it would be easier (less taxing) to be a solid friend after death than a lover or even a friend and lover combined after death.

You are toying with Merlyn’s relationship with Vivien here, boy, whether you realize it or not.

I have been rereading Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s selected version of Merlyn and Vivien and cannot help but think of Eve’s confrontation with Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost. I do not want Vivien and Merlyn to be that way in this book. I would rather she be Merlyn’s friend and muse, even lover need not be as he is much older than she.

Such a serendipitous end rhyme rings true to your heart of hearts and so it will be to make Vivien Merlyn’s heart’s friend and mind’s muse in this, The Rebellion. – Amorella

And what of the soul; how goes Merlyn to balance his heartansoulanmind in such a worthy and dignified accord?

That, my young friend, shall forever be the mystery woven within the lines of the Merlyn’s Mind series. Post. - Amorella

Chapter 8; Scene 4

Avalon sets surrounded by the River Styx. Other islands also exist where the River appears as wide as oceans. The River is vertical in places and crosses itself at least once as far as these Merlyn series books are concerned. A figure eight is as good as any basic vertical schematic would show and the horizontal is another figure eight which would appear as a figure eight with sides –8– , a four-leaf clover with a twist from a human perspective, which is not as it would be exactly because the human brain from which the mind radiates is not built to see everything; it is built to survive first.

The sea blue skies set between small puffy white clouds driven by an easy warm southeastern breeze such might be the setting of Glastonbury, England on a mild summer day. Moon and stars at night appear in their naturally ordered patterns by the unconscious control its inhabitants, the Celtic Dead. No sun. No wandering planets or comets. No one knows why but overall life in Avalon appears good, very much like that of their neighboring Greeks, down and under or up and above the great crossed circle of bordering Styx, the ever looping Grand Divide between the Living and the Dead of similarly developed species of higher consciousness.

The Shaman of the Board announces: “I am air,” and Merlyn is transparently flowing within his mystical being before a period can form. The calming breeze cools the Apple Isle. Vivien glances skyward as she senses the slow rush of fresh air tickle her bare feet and ankles.

“Enchantment,” whispers Merlyn as he lightly kisses her right earlobe and neck.

I feel pieces of my flesh grow through a series of black and white squares. “Who might you be old man to rush one so fair as I?”

“You have raised me up from the folklore. I see you, my charming Lady but you cannot see me,” he teased.

She smiled a peacefulness through her eyes and replied, “Nor is it my need, Merlyn. I feel you passing.”

Merlyn rolled near her left ear in a slow swirl, “On the way to Arthur, my Vee.”

***

I did not know what to expect, I hope it is to the point. Perhaps it is too short.

Merlyn does not wish to overstay his welcome with his Lady Vivien – one foot in and one foot out, a slow though melodious step. What is that she holds over him? That is the trail to follow. – Amorella

He needs her for the wrong reasons?

Not at all boy, his heart feeds his mind. He does not know the connection; so sad, for Merlyn the shaman who understands much but cannot penetrate the heartansoulanmind of his Lady Vivien nearly so far as she can roll her way through his. Post. - Amorella

Tidbits / Owen's birthday / Grandpa Paik /Muse

2012-01-14T17:20:00.000-05:00

On Thursday (12^th) to Westerville, saw Fritz for lunch at Bob Evans, his treat, very nice, I got the tip. Stopped at Cathy and Tod’s, she was at the doctor’s so Tod and I had a good chat. To the library to look up old friends who were not in our high school class but were in the classes of 1958, 1959 and 1961. Then to Jimmy V’s Grill and Pub at the corner of West College and State in Uptown Westerville for our bimonthly gathering. It was a very good day.

Friday (13^th) we picked out the light gray limestone for the walls under the new granite countertops. Next week they come out to measure. Tomorrow, if the weather is okay we are to Dublin for Owen’s birthday party at Chuck E Cheese.

This afternoon (14^th) I sit in the busy Tanger’s Outlet (I-71 & Rt. 35) parking lot while Carol shops at Pottery Barn for Kids and Chico’s. I am pleasantly surprised the outlet now has free wireless.

You drove up this morning to the Chuck E Cheese off Rt. 161 in Dublin. On the way west from Rt. 315 (River Road) you passed, Paul’s father’s [Sang Ki Paik’s] second Tae Kwon Do Academy.

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Owen’s Grandpa Paik:

Grandmaster Sang Ki Paik is an 8th Degree Black Belt with over 45 years of experience in martial arts. He was born in Taegu, Korea and began his training in martial arts at age nine and continued throughout the time he lived in Korea. He served an internship with his instructor, Master Nam Do Choi.

Grandmaster Sang Ki Paik attended Young Nam University where he graduated with a degree in pharmacy. While he was in college, he was on the Tae Kwon Do Team and won a gold medal in the National Tae Kwon Do Championships. He was also a member of the National Tae Kwon Do Team.

Grandmaster Sang Ki Paik served as a Master Tae Kwon Do Instructor in the Korean Army from 1967 to 1969. He served in Vietnam in 1969. He received an honorable discharge from the Korean Army as a First Lieutenant.

Upon request from the United States, he came to America in 1973 to begin instructing Tae Kwon Do. He graduated from Ohio Northern University as a registered pharmacist in the United States. Today as an American citizen, he has Paik's Tae Kwon Do Academy in Columbus, Ohio. Grandmaster Sang Ki Paik is married and has three children.

To summarize the Grandmaster's achievements in Tae Kwon Do to date: Member of the Korean National Tae Kwon Do Team, Gold Medal in the Korean National Tae Kwon Do Championships, international referee, American and Olympic referee, U.S. Tae Kwon Do National Team Coach, and U.S. Tae Kwon Do National Team Manager. Languages: English / Korean

From: www.yellowpages.com/columbus-oh/mip/paiks-martial-arts-school-457918396

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Owen’s great uncle (Paul’s uncle, the brother of Paul’s mother) is also a grandmaster in Tae Kwon Do.

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Grandmaster Hong Kong Kim

9th Degree Black Belt; President of the United States Kumdo Association; President of the Ohio Taekwondo Association; President of the International Martial Arts Federation; President of The Federation of Midwest Korean American Association, USA; 1st Class International Referee

Other Accomplishments

2007 United States Martial Arts Task Force; 1992 U. S. Olympic Team Coach; USTU Vice President for two terms; 1988 Seoul Olympic Games Evaluation Committee member; 1988 Seoul Olympic Games Technical Advisor for the US Team; 1987 Pan Am Games Head Referee;

PATU Referee Commissioner for 10 years; USTU Technical Contest Rules & Referee Certification Committee Chairman; 1978 World Games Coach; 1977 World Taekwondo Championships Assistant Head Referee 1967 through 1969; Instructor for the U.S. Green Berets in Vietnam; Instructor for the U.S. Special Forces in Vietnam; Instructor at the Vietnamese Naval Academy; Instructor at the Vietnamese Air Force Academy; 1966 All Asian Champion; 1965 All Asian Champion

From: www.hongkongkimtkd.com/instructors/grandmaster

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You did not ask permission to put this on your blog but as it is public knowledge online I see no problem with it, boy. – Amorella

I am excited for Owen as Paul has a 4^th Degree Black Belt himself and did well in the art while in his earlier through high school days. I’m sure Paul and his grandfather will teach Owen the arts and it will do him well in his early physical and mental growth. He had a good birthday party today and the little fellow cried when we left. It is great to be a grandfather.

Post. More later as you are thinking on your muse as well as Merlyn and Arthur.

My muse drives me from the deeps. Our connections are intertwined in mysterious ways.

She is snuggled within the books and blog, boy – there is no getting around it. Someone besides yourself moves those many windows and doorways within. This is a human condition and has broader implications. Post.

Notes - a walk on the wild side / Merlyn's authenticity

2012-01-10T12:36:00.001-05:00

Yesterday afternoon you took the mower in for a tune-up and a fix, then you both headed to Panera/Chipotle for your late lunch. The last couple of days you have been corresponding with Ann, Kay’s twin. You mentioned this to Carol at lunch and how you had written to Ann’s husband, Rich, as you discovered he and his brothers lived in Minerva Park and went to Westerville High just like you did. - Amorella

I did not know him in school but we shared an old elementary/junior high friend besides the twins. I’m sure he is one or two years older than I am. I cannot believe I do not remember him or his brothers when we lived Minerva Park. We both share an affection for one of our old teacher’s though, Mrs. E.

This morning you did your dumbbell exercises. Yesterday your walk and today before lunch you are taking another walk in the park. You have your continual problem with honesty and politeness but this is something you have learned to accept because it is a part of who you are.

I am grateful for friends who can accept this shortcoming. I am thinking on Merlyn this morning – a beautifully large golden moonrise last night – much like an October moon in January. Very cool. The other day next door neighbor Tim thought he saw the owl about but I have not seen it – I like to think of it as good sign as far as Merlyn is concerned. In looking over Nikolai Tolstoy’s The Quest for Merlin I find the following lines on pages 119-120.

Many people have felt instinctively that there is something ‘special’ about the Island of Britain; that there may be something in William Blake’s claim in his Jerusalem that “All things Begin and End in Albions Ancient Druid Rocky Shore”. Describing the assembly of the Gaulish Druids at their Sacred Centre in the territory of the Carnutes, Julius Caesar noted that:

‘It is believed that their philosophy (disciplina) was discovered in Britain and transferred thence to Gaul; and today those who wish to study the subject more deeply travel, as a rule, to Britain to learn it.’

A similar belief that the mantic arts originated in Britain is expressed also in the ancient Irish epic tale, Tain Bo Cuailnge. There Queen Medb of Connacht encounters a prophetess, Fedelm, who informs her that she has been to Britain to acquire her prophetic skills. This and other evidence has given rise to speculation that Druidism was adopted by the Celts from pre-Celtic inhabitants of Britain. Pliny noted in the first century A.D. that Britain was given over to magical ceremonies as was no other province in the Empire, and more than five centuries later Gildas recorded a tradition that idols proliferated in pre-Christian Britain, ‘almost surpassing those of Egypt in number.’ . . .

Behind the darkness of history and cloak of legend, we may dimly perceive a sacred place, ‘the fairest isle that is in the world’, set apart in the ocean and ‘poised in the divine balance which sustains the whole earth’. It was beneath the sun a place of rare beauty; it was also a theophany – Merlin’s precinct – with its Thirteen Treasures, archetypal symbols of Forms of Otherworld perfection and profusion. And at its Centre was Merlin: to be seen as Trickster and Master of Beasts, Lord of the Wild Hunt, psychopomp and devil; and, emerging from the wilderness chaos the Incarnation of Divinity, Guardian of the Grail, and sacrificial Saviour and Victim. (Chapter Eight, 119-120)

The above is by Nikolai Tolstoy, a distant cousin of Leo Tolstoy, and writer of several other books on Celtic mythology. (Wikipedia) The lines invite you into a particular mood to reintroduce Merlyn before he meets with Arthur. You have errands, chores as well as lunch. Post, dude. - Amorella

Lunch at Penn Station, half a chicken teriyaki and fries. Last night, watching Masterpiece Theatre’s “Downton Abbey” you thought about how terrible Somme was for the British.

The English lost 95,675 men, 350,000 were wounded. (Wikipedia) The mind conjures up matters on its own. I was reading about Steve Jobs earlier, and his trip to India and return to find enlightenment – there was a good line on finding a Zen teacher, something to the effect, ‘you go great distances in search of a teacher and you find one at your front door. The mind is a busy place but to calm it down you have to leave it or head to the periphery near the heart, at least I do. Similar to Zen, I suppose, though I think ‘satori’ can be found lying in the bathtub of hot water as easily as in a sitting position.

You are next to nothing, orndorff. When you are at that place you find enlightenment.

True, next to nothing all that is left is what I can take with me if consciousness survives physical death. That’s my intuitive sense of it. The condition is not enlightenment though, and I circle around to Sartre and self-deception. Below from Wikipedia on Being and Nothingness:

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Part 1, Chapter 2: Bad faith [from Being and Nothingness]

Bad faith or "Self-Deception", as translations vary, can be understood as the guise of existing as a character, individual or person who defines himself through the social categorization of his formal identity. This essentially means that in being a waiter, grocer, etc. one must believe that his or her social role is equivalent to his or her human existence. Living a life defined by one's occupation, social, racial or economic class, is the very essence of "bad faith", the condition in which people cannot transcend their situations in order to realize what they must be (human) and what they are not (a grocer, etc.). It is also essential for an existent to understand that negation allows the self to enter what Sartre calls the "great human stream". The great human stream arises from a singular realization that nothingness is a state of mind in which we can become anything, in reference to our situation, that we desire.

The possibility of playing is afforded by time and situation. In any light, the difference in existence and identity projection remains at the heart of human subjects who are swept up by their own condition, their "bad faith." One of the most widely discussed examples of projection (via Freud's conception of the human mind) that Sartre uses is the café waiter who performs the duties, traditions, functions and expectations of a cafe waiter.

"[W]hat are we then if we have the constant obligation to make ourselves what we are if our mode of being is having the obligation to be what we are? Let us consider this waiter in the cafe. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tight-rope-walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand. All his behavior seems to us a game. He applies himself to changing his movements as if they were mechanisms, the one regulating the other; his gestures and even his voice seems to be mechanisms; he gives himself the quickness and pitiless rapidity of things. He is playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a cafe. There is nothing there to surprise us."

Sartre consistently mentions that in order to get out of bad faith, one must realize that his or her existence and his formal projection of a self are distinctly separate and within the means of human control. This separation is a form of nothingness. Nothingness, in terms of bad faith, is characterized by Sartre as the internal negation which separates pure existence and identity, and thus we are subject to playing our lives out in a similar manner. An example is something that is what it is (existence) and something that is what it is not (a waiter defined by his occupation).

Yet, Sartre takes a stance against characterizing bad faith in terms of "mere social positions"; I am never any one of my attitudes, any one of my actions. The good speaker is the one who plays at speaking because he cannot be speaking. This literally means that, like the cafe waiter, the speaker is not his condition or social categorization, but is a speaker consumed by bad faith. Thus, we must realize what we are (beings who exist) and what we are not (a social, historical, preoccupation) in order to step out of bad faith. Yet, existents (human beings) must maintain a balance between existence, their roles and nothingness to become authentic beings.

Additionally, an important tenet of bad faith is that we must enact a bit of good faith in order to take advantage of our role to reach an authentic existence. The authentic domain of bad faith, is realizing that the role we are playing is the lie. The goal of authenticity can be traced back to Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. Dostoevsky has been called "The Grandfather of existentialism." To live and project into the future as a project of a self, while keeping out of bad faith and living by the will of the self is living life authentically. This is perhaps one of the main goals of Sartre's opus.

One of the most important implications of bad faith is the abolition of traditional ethics and morality. Being a "moral person" requires one to deny authentic impulses (everything that makes us human), and allow the will of another person to change one's actions. Being a moral person is one of the most severe forms of bad faith. Essentially Sartre characterizes this as "the faith of bad faith" which is and should not be, in Sartre's opinion, at the heart of one's existence. Sartre has a very low opinion of conventional morality, condemning it as a tool of the bourgeoisie to control the masses. Examples include a "Keep Off The Grass" sign, which derives its being from a bourgeois need but hinders the need of the masses for play and relaxation.

Bad faith also results when individuals begin to view their life as made up of distinct past events, like the "perfect moments" or "adventures" from Nausea. By viewing one's ego as it once was rather than as it currently is, one ends up negating the current self and replacing it with a past self that no longer exists (as illustrated by Anny in Nausea).

Wikipedia – from Being and Nothingness concepts [slightly edited with underline]

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Merlyn as a character must live authentically, but his past and future self still exist. That’s the crux of it. Said on a full stomach of left over Papa John pizza. Perspective adds me a sense of humor, Sartre not withstanding.

Post. - Amorella

Notes - you are not Merlyn / good stuff

2012-01-08T11:54:00.004-05:00

A sunny Sunday morning. Merlyn looms. – Amorella

Merlyn looms like the waxing moon.

Looms: [ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: probably from Low German or Dutch; compare with East Frisian lōmen ‘move slowly,’Middle High German lüemen ‘be weary.’ – Oxford American]

Waxing: [ORIGIN Old English weaxan, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch wassen and German wachsen, from an Indo-European root shared by Greek auxanein and Latin augere ‘to increase.’ – Oxford-American]

The flash of intuition runs deep with ‘lōmen’ and ‘weaxan’. Merlyn’s mind is ancient and medieval, a reflection of which is not my own. I don’t think he approves of our new ways though he enjoys the mechanics, the physics of modern times.

I cannot imagine how it would be for a mind to ‘know/realize’ such a distance in time, the rising and setting of human consciousness over the millenniums. It does not seem natural for a human mind to be placed in such a circumstance.

For Merlyn it does not seem natural to have modern convenience. It does not seem natural that HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither rooms consciousness of the once Living.

How would Merlyn discern between a heartansoulanmind of a once marsupial-humanoid and the heartansoulanmind of a once human being?

Shared or unshared memories, for example, the rising of the sun would be shared, the rising of the sun out of the north would not be. – Amorella

How would it be having our sunrise out of the north? Confusion, I think.

Confusion in the heartanmind would do for both parties, marsupial-humanoid and human. That is my point. The reasoning in the mind and the emotion in the heart would have a twist, as to feel a warm or cool breeze from an unnatural weatherly direction. – Amorella

I had not considered such a phenomenon.

You are not Merlyn. Post. - Amorella

Mid-afternoon. You and Carol are on a side road near I-71 and Western Row Road sitting in the car and relaxing in the sun and looking out at the bare trees and thistles and the like while listening to ‘oldies but goodies’ on 103.5 FM – WGRR Cincinnati.

Very relaxing – reminds me of 1958 – tooling around listening to the radio, sixteen years old with nothing much on the mind.

You had a nine year old two door gray V-8 Ford sedan with 130,000 miles on it, cloth seats, a stick shift, with an AM radio and the main focus of your life was finding a decent speaker and switch kit to wire under the rear window. It was old but faster than most any car a kid in class owned outright, most of their personal cars were stick like yours but sixes not eights.

It is another very pleasant afternoon with a few thin high-layered clouds coming in from the southwest. I fixed the bird feeder the squirrels tried to destroy before we left for Florida. Two pairs of cardinals have begun looking for food though the nearby field looks full of bird treats waiting to be taken. Last year this time I think we had had snow on the ground for about a month. Shoot, we have the windows up in the now cooler 48 degrees but the moonroof is back and open; listening to “Keeps me searching for a heart of gold” and now, “That’s the way I like it”. It has been a good day all in all, and tonight Carol is looking forward to a return of new episodes of our favorite TV shows including the new year’s episodes of Masterpiece Theatre’s “D. Abby”. Carol is reading Newsweek, she is almost always more productive than I am. I should have brought one of the Merlyn books. The first prerequisite though is to always bring my MacAir when we are off in the car.

Nothing is going on in your head though. – Amorella

“Glory days, we just sit around and talking about the old times, glory days, they will pass you by,” those are lines running into my ears from the car radio, so something is going on in my head, Amorella – a small humanity of memory. What’s wrong with that? “I got the feeling something ain’t right, here I am stuck in the middle with you,” good stuff, music on a Sunday afternoon.

Later, dude. - Amorella

Notes - jumping the gun/

2012-01-07T11:28:00.002-05:00

Late mid-morning. You are surprised at Diplomat’s comment as you were not ready to introduce her yet.

No, I think she is jumping the gun. I have been searching for a good image of the Milky Way to put at the beginning of the blog, but so far nothing seems to work. This is the one I wanted to use but on the blog it is too small. I have a good one but it is not the Milky Way galaxy. Plus, last night, while almost asleep I had this ‘rush’ of thought about the brain scratching as the reason for the red and white background. I knew it was Diplomat ‘thinking’. I just didn’t expect it today.

Got to keep you on your toes, boy. She’s still a handful, but it adds to a fictional authenticity – about all you can expect from a blog such as this. Post. - Amorella

I like the above because it shows where things are (though not clearly).

Diplomat is adjusting, orndorff. The new blog will move along on its own. Now you need to be thinking about Merlyn and Arthur. – Amorella

It is difficult doing two things at once.

You’ll get used to it. Later, dude. - Amorella