01 September 2009

Bone Shell on the Table



Amorella here. The cap is off for clarity in this basically untouched up photograph. By the way, all the photographs in this blog will have been taken by orndorff first hand. A medical student had this skull to work on and he treated it with respect as did orndorff. When a one time gravedigger’s mind thinks of reality this comes to mind first. Orndorff was a caretaker at several cemeteries in Blendon Township and in Westerville, Ohio when he was enrolled in Otterbein College in the sixties. After the reality of being born, the next big reality is being dead. The old Sixties call of “not getting out of here alive,” has a real sense of good old gallows humor to it. Death is one of those facts of life that is necessary and is as natural as being born.

People tend to talk of Free Will and Fate being opposites. In fact orndorff feels that you cannot have both, it is either one or the other and he used to suggest this for speculation and argument in his classes, usually when they were working on Beowulf or MacBeth or Hamlet or Paradise Lost

In here, that is in context with the books and this blog, I disagree. What is first and most important in context with being human is the necessity. A broader sense of consciousness is an element of one’s humanity because it allows depth. Orndorff gained some of this thinking while digging various graves in Otterbein Cemetery.

Here was his first lesson. The full time Caretaker said, “Do you want to dig this grave in the sun or that grave in the shade?”

As it was a hot day orndorff chose the shade which he ended up partially digging with an axe. He had not thought about the tree roots only about the trunk, limbs and leaves of the rather large old tree. In those days the gravediggers used an air pressured jack-hammer to do much of the digging, the same kind you still see being used in street reconstruction. Lots of roots to trim and a small axe to trim them with. That was the reality. When he finally finished by trimming up the sides and leveling out the ground floor, orndorff lay down for a cool nap in the new grave-bottomed dirt.

When he awoke some twenty to thirty minutes later he looked up to see the blue sky beyond the gray branches and green leaves. His first thought was “At least I can get up and climb out of here,” and that is what he did by his own Free Will.

It was recently brought up by one of his readers that all living things have Free Will. Some appear good for us, such as observing a pet house cat throughout the day, while others, such as cells rebelling off on their own feeding as cancer off the healthy cells in the body. Richard had not thought of this before. He has not thought a lot of things in his life.

Reality though, he has thought about. Existential circumstance is another, and part of such a circumstance for the human condition appears to be Necessity. I capitalize the word as a reminder that Necessity is stronger than both Free Will and Fate. Human reality is first based on Necessity. Do you have something to say here orndorff?

If physics is necessary in the ‘real’ world, why is it unnecessary in the invisible world of the heartansoulanmind?

Material elements plus time and distance do not exist.

What exist in place of physics? An analogy will do, Amorella.

From a human perspective, a Condition of heartansoulanmind. Nothing else can be known or understood. Be careful, boy. – Amorella.


I feel I should not have said, “An analogy will do.” I feel I was being unconsciously arrogant in the statement. To apologize is to compound the arrogance, at least that is how I see it in my circumstance. Twenty some years is a long time to live with Amorella. I have developed a respect for her character to the point I back away from her in my mind. Arrogance is a human behavior, to apologize for it is to apologize for being human which is what I understand to be as a form blasphemy. How can one deny herorhis human characteristics? To me this is like saying, "I have no doubts."

This comes from my inner self that at one time consider Amorella as angelic-like because for a writer to have ‘someone’ do his writing for him is in a sense an ‘angelic-like’ flavor. It probably goes back to my superstitious nature, but to be completely honest, I have no real idea.

One is either honest or one isn’t. Tomorrow the topic will be ‘honesty’ as it also needs a definition for this blog. – Amorella. 

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