An Urban Cemetery

This is Amorella amongst the flowers, the stone boxes, the saints and angels. Orndorff thinks this photo was taken at the Morumbi Cemetery in Sao Paulo, Brazil a relatively short distance from where he and wife/partner lived in Santo Amaro.

It is an interesting cemetery. The Dead are interred, so to speak. The space is rented out or leased, at least it used to be. I have a photo of the removal or replacement in place below:

It is interesting how the remains of the Dead are treated in urban areas. I’m sure there are books out there on the subject. Amorella wanted these pictures but to me not much of a ‘Halloween’ atmosphere is in the place.

My idea of a spooky cemetery is an old one with lots of overgrown trees and bushes as well as really old stone markers and monuments. There is nothing in these photos to give a sense of a nineteenth century romantic novel set, in part, in an ancient country cemetery.

The 2 November 09 issue of Newsweek has a ‘Religion’ article titled, “Two White Guys Walk Into a Bar,” By Lisa Miller (with Johannah Cornblatt), page 27 for those interested in such particulars. The focus is on the seemingly unending argument between faith versus reason. In the conclusion of the essay Ms Miller writes:

“We need urgently to talk about these things: ethics, progress, education, science, democracy, tolerance, and justice – and to understand the reasons why religion can (but does not always hamper their flourishing. This new conver—sation won’t be sexy, but let’s face it: neither is two white men in a pub sparring over God.”

Dead and living poets, writers, artists and musicians of every human culture have spoken on these subjects for millenniums. Name the art and if you search hard enough one or more of the subjects will be there. The remains in the Morumbi Cemetery no doubt spoke about such things when they were alive. Surely, they thought about such matters and whether they publicly or privately expressed them is their business.

In the Merlyn books these ever-serious subjects are substance of somewhat humorous discussion even yet, among the Dead be they Marsupial or Human. Dead people find more humor in their present world than the Living do in theirs. The reason for this is because the Dead are, as it were, looking out of the overtly grinning pumpkin rather than looking in.  

1947 Aunt Jemima

Amorella here. I am departing from the norm and using an old trademark taken online from > graphic-design.tjs-labs.com/pictures/jemima-day-02-01-1947-013.jpg <. I wanted the year 1947 because that is the first time orndorff consciously remembers talking to a lady on a box of food and having her talk back. Aunt Jemima was one of his first invisible playmates who was actually visible.

I remember that Aunt Jemima was very nice and asked what I was going to do for the day and she asked to come along so I had somebody to talk to. I do not remember having any close friends at that time other than older people in the family. Besides, I enjoyed being by myself. I read books and drew pictures most every day. I also loved playing in the cemetery across the street from my grandparents who lived a couple of blocks away.

This is a good photograph of Aunt Jemima, better than the one I have in stock. She was my first and really only choice for the character Grandma Earth in the Merlyn books. Whenever the  Grandma character writes I can hear her voice, usually it is soft-spoken and understanding but sometimes she sounds like Hattie McDaniel in Gone With The Wind.  Photo below: > www.whosdatedwho.com/celebrities/people/dating/hattie-mcdaniel.htm  <

This is Grandma. Richard and I have a special relationship in his pretending. I took on the Grandma persona partly out of pride on who he chose as my models of personification. The boy don’t allow me nothing I don’t want to do or to be in Amorella’s books that are legally his.

Some of the world’s got a cultural holiday coming up shortly called Halloween. Ghosts and goblins and the like. Richard don’t know much but he uses what he’s got. Can’t do no better than that in my book. I’m a mighty practical character and existed within the laws of nature before human beings ever took hold. They ain’t laws to me, they is me, boy.

I don’t flout no grammar. I speak in Nature not normally in nouns and verbs. You got trouble with that and you got trouble in your soul, ain’t that right, boy?

If you say so, Ma’am. If a person isn’t right with old Grandma, then sheorhe can’t be right with herorhis rself. That’s the way I see it, and that is the way it appears to be in the Merlyn books.

Organics clumped on a comet and took them from one side of the galaxy to the other in “Pouch Text”. Reasonable enough to have two plants grow’n out a one pot. Two plants that make their way into consciousness with thumbs and fingers attached. Seems to me reasonable to have them move up a few levels to where they can co-exist in the Place of the Not So Dead As They Thought.

Past, Present and Future don’t mean much to such individual consciousnesses, no more than they do in someone’s dreams or nightmares. A dream, in my book, is one where one is polite and respectful of Organic Nature as it is wherever it is found. By the same token, Organic Nature that takes it upon itself to reasonably intrude on Old Grandma can do so of course, but better to knock first, to think it out and to experiment first just as many already have been doin’.

No different for the Marsupial crowd in the books either. They’ve been around longer, that’s all. More time to grow. Dying’s the same though whether you live fifty or a hundred years or even average the five hundred the marsupials do. The old adages: “Know Thyself” and “Be moderate in all things,” still stands no matter what side of the galaxy you are grown on.

The Dead, still conscious, have a ‘Meet and Greet’ just like the Living do. The species don’t make no difference in here, it’s the thoughts that count, don’t you see. --

Don’t you be flippant, boy. Old Grandma knows you inside and out.

Yes, Ma’am. Sometimes it’s hard to know you’re always inside looking out.

That’s what a mind’s for when you lookin’ in a mirror, boy.

 **

She left, Amorella. I don’t know where to go with this.

Just put a period on the end, orndorff. 

The Rugged Andes

Amorella here among the mountains not above them. Orndorff can’t remember whether this was taken while flying into La Paz, Bolivia or flying from Cuzco to Lima, Peru. What he does remember is the ‘peak’ of one of the mountains appears right below the plane as this is a straight-on shot; the plane is either a small two engine jet, or in the case of Cuzco an ancient slowly lumbering and passenger full DC-3.

Memory is a strange phenomenon. Orndorff shot to Wikipedia and found this:

“Declarative memory requires conscious recall, in that some conscious process must call back the information. It is sometimes called explicit memory, since it consists of information that is explicitly stored and retrieved.

Declarative memory can be further sub-divided into semantic memory, which concerns facts taken independent of context; and episodic memory, which concerns information specific to a particular context, such as a time and place. Semantic memory allows the encoding of abstract knowledge about the world, such as "Paris is the capital of France". Episodic memory, on the other hand, is used for more personal memories, such as the sensations, emotions, and personal associations of a particular place or time. Autobiographical memory - memory for particular events within one's own life - is generally viewed as either equivalent to, or a subset of, episodic memory. . .

In contrast, procedural memory (or implicit memory) is not based on the conscious recall of information, but on implicit learning.”

**

The memory involved here through this photograph is related to flying through two geographic regions in the same mountains so it is episodic memory accessed from two previous separate experiences. Memory has to involve time and space. How can the Dead access memory without a distortion from either time and space or no time and no space. Both consciousness and unconsciousness would seem to have to reflect the memory of time and space because without time or space one would not appear to exist.

Yet in that one particular shaman-like dance experience I (rho) did not exist and existed both at once, that is my mind accepted the apparent contradiction as fact. Why is the human mind built to have the ability to accept an apparent impossible juxtaposition of mind as not only possible but to accept it as fact? To a lesser extent one in an hypnotic trance can readily demonstrate this phenomenon. The human mind has the natural ability to visualize and conceptualize something that cannot and does not exist. Anyone with any sense of reasoning and self-honesty understands and knows this as a fact of life.

You are wondering where this memory business is going so I will tell you. In book four, The Rebellion, future memory is written as a fact.

How can this be? What is the future end as far as the Dead are concerned? What are the parameters, the chess board if you will? What are the rules of physics as far as the Dead are concerned? How does this remain plausible in the story, that is the most important aspect as far as I (rho) can see presently?  >

As you just skimmed through several articles on quantum mechanics via Wikipedia you came upon this, thinking that a sort of ‘string’ exists within the human species. In bio-physics this would be the principle of the DNA code which contains code of the living as well as the dead. However, if the soul, heart, and mind are also connected to the DNA code then there is a region or boundary that is light-like and this is within the theory of the physics of thought and thus of memory for thought reference [information only]. This is an example:

“The holographic principle is a property of quantum gravity and string theories which states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a boundary to the region — preferably a light-like boundary like a gravitational horizon. . .

In a larger and more speculative sense, the theory suggests that the entire universe can be seen as a two-dimensional information structure "painted" on the cosmological horizon, such that the three dimensions we observe are only an effective description at macroscopic scales and at low energies.” – Wikipedia

**

I (rho) think something can be worked out in the stringing of theory and fiction. We have down it with time travel stories, only in this one, being Dead there is no matter or energy involved. Again, according to Wikipedia:

“Time travel is the concept of moving between different moments in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space, either sending objects (or in some cases just information) backwards in time to a moment before the present, or sending objects forward from the present to the future without the need to experience the intervening period (at least not at the normal rate).”

I, Amorella, can easily incorporate the ‘trance-physics’ already in the Merlyn books with some of what you have found in Wikipedia.

I forgot about trance-physics.

Today’s posting has become/is an example of what happens when my concepts confront with orndorff’s memory or lack of. He wastes time in both brain and mind, but I have no choice but to work with him. Gallows humor works both ways in this accidental dimensional setting where I find myself. – Amorella. 

Chess Game

This is Amorella in the thick of things. Orndorff has great affection for this photograph because it shows two former colleagues from Escola Graduada de Sao Paulo (The Graded School) playing five minute chess during their school lunch break back in the early seventies. On the left is Howard Westfield who taught German and on the right is Vladimir Rodionoff, a chess master and head of the math department at the time. Orndorff has a Brazilian board, pieces and a clock just like these in the photo. This adds to his affection.

The Merlyn books display several games played by two of the characters in “The Brothers” segments, Robert and Richard. Orndorff was chess advisor while at Indian Hill High School and for a short time at Wm. Mason High School. He is a bit rusty and was never really much good, but he enjoys chess and hopes others enjoy the game too.

One of my former students and confirmed reader of the posts sent me an article earlier this month knowing I would be interested. The chess board reminds me of Fate and the controlling one’s destiny.

The essay titled, “The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate,” by Dennis Overbye appeared in the New York Times on 13 October 09. The complete article can be found at: > www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html <

Some scientists are concerned about the European CERN collider, thinking that it might become too powerful with too many variables and thus become more uncontrollable than we wish.

Here is a short quotation from Mr. Overbye in the article:

“I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.”

Personally, I am all for the experiments at CERN, I’m sure they have been well thought ought in advance. People were concerned before we dropped the first atomic bomb in New Mexico in 1945 but we dropped it. The bomb exploded, but it did not turn our planet into a miniature sun like some thought it might.

Earlier in this post I used a phrase that I have never understood and I hear people using it or writing it from time to time: “controlling one’s destiny”. Merriam-Webster’s says destiny is: “a predetermined course of events often held to be an irresistible power or agency.”

A chess game played by two individual human chess players can rarely be predetermined even if they are both grand masters. Insight and error come into mind’s play. Human beings are susceptible to both even though the board and pieces and rules are predetermined. Free will is shown in the ‘insight’ or chance and accident is sometimes shown in the ‘error’.  That’s how I see it, but Amorella can better explain what I am trying to write here.

In the Merlyn books I goad the reader to challenge my next move in character, plot, and theme, and even in setting when I write of the World of the Dead. Orndorff gave up this challenge early on. I left him unsettled as seen in the example in the post dated 24 October, “Night Lights”.

If one is born one is destined to have a death date. It is a rule shown by physics. If something is preordained, then it is assumed the Pre-Ordainer can change it, that’s how I see it in these books of fiction. Life may be seen as a game, but ultimately the pieces will all be off the board. In the books Merlyn becomes the board from time to time. Accidents happen. When accidents happen the rules are subject to change. Free will, however, in these books, is no accident.

Eye-footed Man in Yesterday’s “Visual Thought: 1987”

Amorella here. This is a blow-up of the little round-faced man in the lower center of yesterday’s posting. Orndorff wanted the blow up to see how many finger digits the little fellow has. What follows is from orndorff’s note book written yesterday afternoon. (This may be tweaked slightly so it is more readable.)

Very odd [original sketch], I have to admit. I don’t know exactly what it meant and still don’t.

Perhaps I can help here orndorff. Let’s begin at the left top and work down. The horn runs into a snake-like creature that is cut, mostly in half though the left side is maybe eighty to ninety percent thicker. It is the brain of the creature that is cut off above the eye. The index finger on the right is from the right hand. The thumb on the left is also from the right hand. You are reminded of holding the ‘string and washer’ with these two digits.

The encased canopy with the eye ball is staring up at something unseen. The wide, circular ‘saucer-shape’ under the eye appears to have an outer mystical tone with the thick eyelashes surrounding it, as the unblinking eye seems to be popping out of the socket. On the mid-left the nose is facing one direction while the lips of the mouth are shut and facing another as if the face is contorted. Here, above the face, are closed eyes that appear to be turning away as it the eyes are running to become open-eyed feet on the seventh and eighth foot mark.

The small non-descript short-bearded fellow now has opened eyes and a smile with long arms outstretched as if to greet someone unseen but nearby. Notice the top of his head, the brain, is under the saucer containing the eye that has a sort of ‘fried egg’ appearance to you. Fried brain, perhaps?

A good joke, Amorella. I was thinking this just as you were (which of course is not that unreasonable). Also, the fellow’s left eyebrow is raised, small pudgy nose, and in the close up he still appears to have a smile. It seems to be an outline of myself with no meat and potatoes and weak or no bones as far as that goes. I am elastic like ‘rubber man’. It looks like I have long underwear on with elastic cuffs at my wrists. Originally, the fingers are what I wanted to blow up to see how many digits I have. I have five on each hand though at first it appeared there were six digits to me.

The open, slanted snowshoe-like eyes appear feminine while the eyes in the rounded head are oblong. You think you are seeing meat and bone as the eye pupils in the feet as if they had been severed at the ankle and the eyes between the snowshoe lashes are peering through the clear plastic snowshoes. Also, to you, the hands appear to be as well-worn pencil erasers, particularly on the higher, left hand.

With a blow up of the date I can readily see it was drawn on 10 May 87 but I cannot tell the hours exactly. At that time though I was using the 24 hour clock as a standard. As such it looks like I drew this sketch in the morning. I assume I did this in one sitting. Beneath the date is the scribble of initials “rho”.

You wonder about the elongated left arm because you are right-handed normally, though you are ambidextrous on the keyboard.

Elsewhere, to the right bottom mid-side of the full sketch, opposite the nose and lips you have drawn what appears to be the opening of a book between the eye-held canopy and a slightly ‘S’ bent tube that opens just above the date and initials. I do not have a recollection of the tube’s symbol, if any though it is attached to the opening of the book.

I can answer this one, Amorella. I appear to be blowing my own horn. This is not my intent, at least I surely hope it is not. The ‘fried egg eye’ appears a mystical symbol to me. It is like I had seen “something” accidently, that is the way I later write about this. I don’t know when I saw ‘it’ but I assume it was when I was very young though it could have been then, in 1987 since hypnosis (through the thumb and finger) leans towards something unconsciously noted. Another hypothesis for the tube in the lower right corner is that it is a vacuum and I am being sucked into the book. This concept borders the ‘gallows humor’ dimension so it is probably more correct.

The sketch was probably drawn during a ‘trance’ like when the books are being written. I think of the sketch as an explanation of what was about in my mind at the time. Perhaps I was just trying to piece myself together after my mind had crashed. I would hope no more sketches will be shown for awhile. The sketch makes me appear more brain/mind-naked than the words sometimes do.

When I think about this whole 1987 sketch though, as I see it through Amorella, is a kind of visual self-fulfilling prophecy. My brain/mind unconsciously ‘understood’ what I was going to do, write a book.

I am as a mirror unto myself though, and my thoughts don’t count for much. At most, the whole sketch shows ‘I thought I saw something in my head.’ Time to move on.

Visual Thought: 1987

Amorella in the fold. The sketch will be explained at the post's conclusion. The words below are from orndorff’s Notes which he writes almost every day. I am changing the fonts to fit the blog. The note begins at about 2005 hours, after watching “Sixty Minutes”.

25 October 09

You are in the comfortable living room chair ready to work. Let’s go to it.

> [yesterday’s post is written as posted] <

I can hardly believe I wrote that post. What magic. How can my human mind work this way? Why can it work this way? Straight through in about an hour and a half. What can I say but thank you, Amorella.

You are welcome, I’m sure, orndorff. Later, dude.

26 October 09

Mid-morning. Strange, your last sentence last night looks so out of place in terms of word choice. I think my ‘thank you’ must be out of place too.

It is because it is forced by your cultural outlook and politeness. However, you had said thank you internally and that is enough. I responded politely as well. Both are forced by your cultural outlook. For this reason silence is usually golden on both our parts orndorff.

I am a puppet to my upbringing and culture, but I do not know how else to respond.

This is where you need to broaden your view and see me as an imaginary alien if you will. Assume I am not of your ways and that will be polite enough.

I am in unknown mental/imaginary territory here.

You are. This is a place to expand your reasoning and outlook. You will need this in writing The Rebellion. Parallel thinking on your part and I am raising the bar, so to speak. Think of yourself as a Marsupial in the first three books, and that I am telling/showing the story of the first human rebellion to you. You are too caught up in your cultural ways for such a universal story.

Tone, then is an important part.

Yes, it is. The field of thought needs to be broadened to include the Marsupials and their own Rebellion of the Dead. Such are the joys of fiction.

The experimental writing continues. As usual I am unsure. This could almost be a posting, but what photo would I use if I transfer this?

Let’s go to your folder, I’ll chose one for you while you are in this renewed state of thought.

Why did you choose this one, Amorella?

You drew this sketch in 1987 after you had an extreme sense of change of thought and no words to express it. This sketch seems appropriate here as a visual example of such a shift in thinking and perspective. Let’s title it: "Visual Thought: 1987”.

Night Lights

Amorella here in the middle. Guessing allowed as to where we are. Those who are witnesses will know almost intuitively. Logic built this place and the lights in the photograph show a two-dimensional form of its human created reality.

The three-dimensional reality is both higher and deeper than can be seen. Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. As with some of this blog’s photos this one is ‘enhanced’ by iPhoto rather than by imagination.

For reasons unknown the picture as it is reminds me of lines from Dante’s Inferno. The original lines as found online are:

Per me si va ne la città dolente,

Per me si va ne l'etterno dolore,

Per me si va tra la Perduta Gente.

Giustizia mosse il mio Alto Fattore;

Fecemi la Divina Podestate,

La Somma Sapïenza e 'l Primo Amore.

Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create

Se non etterne, e io etterno duro

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate

-- Dante Alighieri (La Divina Commedia, Canto III.1--9)

The translation I love the best is by John Ciardi and I used to have it posted on the outside of the door of my room while in college. These are the first nine lines of Canto III from the Modern Library edition that I still have in my basement office library:

I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE.

I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN PEOPLE.

I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL SORROW.

SACRED JUSTICE MOVED MY ARCHITECT.

I WAS RAISED HERE BY DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE,

PRIMORDIAL LOVE AND ULTIMATE INTELLECT.

ONLY THOSE ELEMENTS TIME CANNOT WEAR

WERE MADE BEFORE ME, AND BEYOND TIME I STAND.

ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE.

The lines above are on the Gate into Dante’s Hell. Powerful words in my mind. Wonderfully delivered. It is strange that I think of them realizing this posting was supposed to be on a further description of an AN-G-EL.

But, as a matter of fact, Dante appeared to you as writing as an angel did he not, especially in this passage above.

He did, yes. In my imagination I felt that the tone and language that not Dante but John Ciardi uses here fits my sense of an angel’s note. Strangely, it still does. The tone especially fits my sense of an angel writing. I especially love the lines:

I WAS RAISED HERE BY DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE,

PRIMORDIAL LOVE AND ULTIMATE INTELLECT.

This is how I see the composition of an angel: “An angel was raised by Divine Omnipotence, Primordial Love and Ultimate Intellect.” Amazing how you got my mind here, Amorella. Truly amazing to me.

Now, all you have to add is:

“An Angel is raised by Divine Omnipotence, Primordial Love and Ultimate Intellect and is composed of Wonder and Doubt as blood and bone.”

When it comes time for you to begin again on book four, The Rebellion, you will use this definition when thinking of an angel or AN-G-EL as I like to post it. – Amorella.

Readers, this is how Amorella works in my head. She brings things out from the most curious of places. Yet, deep within myself, I understand that this is the best definition my imagination with Amorella’s help that I can authentically deliver. What it means to me and why it is important is that as with the first three books, it is authentically ‘myself from the inside out’ – it is from my heart of hearts, even though it renders fiction. And, there in the best and quietest of private places resides the humor of it all. 

Two Cool Cats

Amorella here and presently in University Heights, Ohio, visiting the 1940’s home of the Orndorffs’ daughter and son-in-law. Although the photo is from Mason the two cats are here near Cleveland. Ellie (for Thomas Eliot) on the left and Jadah (for the green eyes) on the right. Spiritually it is Autumn. What do cats think?

First, they think in cat and in the photo they are instinctively checking out either birds or squirrels on a crabapple tree to the left of the window. The setting is the heart of the matter.

People instinctively check out their spiritual windows from time to time too – any time they are in wonder. Isn’t that right orndorff?

I have to check out the word wonder first:  the M-W says:

“1 a : a cause of astonishment or admiration  : MARVEL  *it's a wonder you weren't killed*  *the pyramid is a wonder to behold*  b : MIRACLE  2 : the quality of exciting amazed admiration  3 a : rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one's experience  b : a feeling of doubt or uncertainty.”

I don’t personally like any of the above definitions as they are when using the word wonder in this context. I don’t like ‘astonishment, admiration, marvel, miracle or amazed admiration. I don’t like rapt attention or astonishment or awesomely mysterious or new.’ I like ‘a feeling of doubt’ but not in the sense of uncertainty. Uncertainty presents a negative connotation to me as it is used here, unless one is thought jumping to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (quantum physics).

Wonder and doubt go naturally hand in hand like Adam and Eve leaving Milton’s sense of Paradise.

What is the sense of power and pride in such a fictional scenario?

Wonder and doubt are built on humility alone in my sense of this conversation on doubt and wonder or wonder and doubt. I don’t know which comes first logically. Perhaps the words are created in the mind together as a unit. I do not know. These word-thoughts interest me intellectually as much as they do spiritually.

Your immediate and sudden interest, orndorff, is in wonder and doubt as the makings of the conceptual body of a genuinely bona fide  AN-G-EL?

Yes, it is. This concept you mention leaves me thinking.

Such is the point of these exercises. – Amorella. 

The Capitol Building

Amorella here in the Botanical Garden. This is the last photo of the recent wet Washington tour with friends. Orndorff thinks I’m making too much of a photo shoot and these Virginia area pictures should be on Flicker instead. Also, not enough humor, he thinks as he considers himself a stogy old man waning philosophical.

No spiritual humor or otherwise in this photo, Amorella.

A national stage, and you see no humor.

In the photographic context of a stage I have to smile a bit amid the curtains of gallows humor. I have heard such stories of politics and bedfellows but I do not remember a one of them. In 1973, another couple, one of those on this recent trip, and spouse/partner and myself were treated to a special tour of the Capitol through a friend-of-her-family congressman. I believe our tour guide was a recently retired Keeper of the Congressional Keys.

What a visitation. This political retiree had one interesting story after another concerning either the building or the well known people who had wandered it. Most of the stories, as I remember, were filled with humor and irony.

I hadn’t thought about that tour until reading Brown’s recent book where the characters were down under the Capitol floor by the Crypt. Suddenly it hit me, ‘I’ve been there.’

Connections – that’s what the dreams in the books are about. That’s what dreams are most always about – conscious and unconscious connections. This has to do with curiosity, this is what books four, five and six are about in my head – connections with the first three books.

You might as well enjoy what you are eventually going to transcribe if you live long enough. – Amorella.

I wrote a handout for the “Meet the Author” talk Tuesday night.

Why don’t we include what is relevant.

Near the conclusion of the two-sided handout I mentioned both blogs for the public library audience:

**

Blog 1: “Life In A Body Human”      

This is an informational blog written as a daily journal, one month in length, with some of the characters within the books used to help explain the purpose of the three Merlyn novels. There is an old Jewish saying: “A dream uninterpreted is as a letter unopened.” These three novels are as such a letter unopened. They come from the unconscious, same place dreams come from, and as such the mystery is challenging the reader as to what Merlyn’s dead man’s dreams mean.

Blog 2: “Encounters In Mind”   

This journalistic focus is on the spiritual aspects of being human through the author's inner writer, Amorella. The blog’s purpose is to debate what is important to take with me when I die, that is if I have a heartansoulanmind that transcends physical death.  This blog parallels the thinking within the three books as Amorella is controlling the writing as she did in the books. The blog can be understood separately without reading the novels.

**

It is not up to me to interpret the novels, but I must admit I had not thought about interpreting them myself. This would be me leading the witness. The logic of Merlyn’s dreams, if any exists, would not stand.

You see, you do have a soul, orndorff. – Amorella.

I don’t see how this posting or any other shows I have a soul.

You need to remember William Blake – “Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read black where I read white.”

George Washington Masonic Memorial, Alexandria, VA

Amorella here. This cropped photograph is one of the sites in Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. However, according to its website, the memorial “was built . . . by the more than two million American Freemasons who wished to: express in durability and beauty the undying esteem . . . for him [Washington] in whose memory it shall stand throughout the coming years.”

Another connected site goes on to state: “Freemasonry is the world’s largest, oldest, and best-known fraternal organization. Mythically descended from the builders of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. . . .” (www.freemasonlostsymbol.com/)

What’s the point, Amorella? I like Dan Brown’s books as ‘page-turners’ but I see no personal spiritual value in his books. They arouse my curiosity in the same way the movie, National Treasure did. A bit of history mixed with fiction to create a story of something lost that specific people are searching for, and then it is found.

You lost your soul and I found it.

I do not believe that. I do not explicitly know I had a soul to lose. This sounds like you are retelling an old fashioned story in which the king of the faeries takes someone’s soul and places it in faeryland. I don’t understand where you are going with today’s posting. I had a good photograph of colorful leaves with the Jefferson Memorial in the background and you said you wanted this photograph instead.

I liked the photograph I choose because it had the beauty of nature in the forefront and the memorial in the background, a representative of reason midst the nature of ourselves in the planted tree near the World War II War Memorial.

Just because you like something doesn’t mean it needs to be repeated over and over again. I am here to show you different aspects of spirituality, that’s the point. You do not know you had or have a soul. How refreshing.

I know I have a heart and a mind, though both are invisible both can be felt. I don’t know the difference if an emotion or a thought touches my heart or my soul (if I have one). Merriam-Webster’s says the soul is an ‘essence’, a ‘principle’, a ‘part’, a ‘moving spirit’ and ‘a spiritual or moral force’ among others. 

These ‘nouns’ could just as easily be referred to in one’s heart as far as I am concerned. These writings, I assume, come from my inner heart. Where else?

Thus, I, Amorella, reside in your inner heart?

I have no idea where you reside, Amorella. I do feel you are beyond a figment of my imagination though even though I am never positive on such things. The human mind is a very powerful instrument. Self-delusion is a common human trait. I try to avoid it.

In some ways I feel like you are a self-delusion, a part of a story I once told my students about when we were talking about angels, which was, most likely while we were on Milton’s Paradise Lost. Angel intelligence and alien intelligence have long been a curious interest of mine.  As far as I am concerned, both are alien to human intelligence so I like to think to compare what the differences might be if such a case were indeed plausible, which I think is mostly unlikely for either angel or alien.

Now, after all that, the story I proposed to the class was to write a story about being ‘possessed’ by a good angel. Lots of stories out there about bad angels and some are indeed a bit frightening to think on. The trick with a good angel is that there would be (in my mind) no possession whatsoever. How would that be? So, sometimes, such as now, I wonder on it and on self delusion and think I may have conjured up ‘Amorella’ to see how it would be since I think of ‘her’ as good angel-like, at least to me, for keeping me busy and for writing three books I could not have written without her.

That may be all there is to all this, but I keep writing anyway. Maybe I can come up with some good ideas to keep people thinking about who they are and what the world is all about. That is not spiritual though, is it?

You are asking a self-delusion a question.

You ask me questions. Deep down I don’t know what you are. It is something I should continue to think about.

On that I agree. Tomorrow, orndorff, I will have a question for you. – Amorella. 

Life Mask

Hello, this is Amorella. While at the newly renovated Smithsonian American History Museum orndorff captured this photo of the last life mask of Abraham Lincoln. Richard tweaked it to tone down the reflected camera light. He likes this mask better than some of the portraits.

President Lincoln looks at rest, a peace with himself within this mask. I would hope he is still at peace within himself. This world as it is has a way of beating people down.

This is Grandma, boy. Nature is what it is. You want to be at peace with old Grandma, you accept what you can’t change, the old ‘serenity prayer’ will do.

Grandma [Mae Freeman] Schick used to have that prayer hanging on the kitchen wall when she lived in the north end, on Schreyer Place, in Clintonville, in Columbus when I was growing up. She suffered from arthritis for as long as I knew her. I think of her every time I am reminded of that prayer. People suffer from many pains in their lives. It is the way of living in the world, but I would hope pain is not a punishment in the afterlife, if there is an afterlife. If there is, then having no afterlife would be more humane.

Are you questioning a human concept of Hell, boy?

I am, Amorella. As a human being I have a right to question anything, in my mind at least. I also have the responsibility to have thought about it before I question. Hell does not fit where forgiveness will.

On our trip we had a discussion about how the founding fathers treated slaves and how it would be to free them with no education or skills. Also, what if the husband died and his estate bankrupt as many were of the gentry because the Louisiana Purchase caused the price of land to drop.

Some had the slaves sold so the spouse could survive. I cannot imagine the heartache this would cause to slave and slaveholder alike. We had a good discussion but nothing was resolved. The world of human beings is full of complications both in logic and in emotional feelings and personal responsibilities as well as one’s own individual sense of ethics.

I would hope G---D would be compassionate whether one believed in Jesus or Buddha or someone else. We are indoctrinated in our upbringing, our setting and economic place in life as we start this adventure. Ideas and concepts take hold young and children have little choice whether it is family religion or politics or economic conditions.

Hell does not appear rational in my mind, other than the way HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither is set up in the books. Everyone has Free Will and self-chooses where/how to be mentally at any particular place in being Dead. It works in a fiction of my/your [Amorella’s] own creation.

The existential concept was already in your head, orndorff. I just brought it out. It has been there since you studied Sartre’s “No Exit” while in Dr. John Coulter’s class at Otterbein College. You had him for many of your sixty semester hours of English, almost double the number needed.

I had to take the classes to build my average so I could graduate. I didn’t earn very good grades, but I enjoyed my English and history classes more than any of the others. I love Dr. Coulter to this day. I am thankful for many of my lifetime of teachers.

You are thinking of the list, the names of those teachers. Most everyone has their lists of those who instilled their formal and not so formal education. A good place for forgiveness to begin, don’t you think, orndorff?

I had not thought about it, I am back to Lincoln’s face mask. I like the facsimile of Lincoln on the five dollar bill better than on the penny. I do not know about forgiving others. I do though. Forgiving myself, now there’s the rub.

In my book, that’s the hell of it, orndorff. 

Michie Tavern, Charlottesville

Amorella here. This photograph is a reminder of Thanksgiving as far as orndorff is concerned. He is thankful he is still alive and mentions this silently almost every day even though he doesn’t realize it. The prayer would be silent if I were not around listening. He is thankful his friends, those that are still alive, are also alive. He has given thanks one way or another ever since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Before that he was not so thankful. He existed but he was not so fully alive as after World War III did not happen.

In the upcoming sixth book he will attribute this to that time period as when the Dead interceded so that their children could continue. That’s the reason in advance. The next three books are completed from my perspective. Orndorff can add a bit here and there if he is so inclined. However, I, Amorella, can also change my mind just as he can.

A bit of background on book one, Braided Dreams here. Richard was gathering information for a “Meet the Author” talk at the Mason Public Library earlier tonight when he came across something he had written several years ago after reading the first three chapters of When Jesus Went to Harvard by Harvey Cox.

“The [Merlyn] stories must be separate and yet flow together perhaps as a bodyanheartansoul. A transcendental flow of style not unlike the transcendental flow and style within a William Blake painting. How would Blake paint each of the main characters in the story? What does the bodyanheartansoul look like? What are the metaphysical gear works of the heartansoul as compared with the soulanheart?

What does a heart with a ring of friendship surrounding it look like? How would Blake paint it? Perhaps Blake Williams [a human character in "Pouch Text"]  could describe these things in writing in the same way William Blake would paint them. How do you describe such things in words? How and why does Blake become mystical?

Does he remember his earlier mind-body experiments?  How do these correlate with those of Diplomat later? A foreshadowing?  How do I show that the Quality of the Light is more important than its strength in book one and reinforce it in book two and add another quality to it in book three?”

What is your comment, orndorff?

When I was read Cox’s book I saw similarities between Amorella’s writing and those of early Jewish stories that Cox was writing about in the first three chapters of W.J.W.T.H. and this was an inspiration to me. I thought maybe unconsciously I was onto something and I might make good use of it.

I had forgotten about all this. I forgot during the presentation tonight. It was just like class. My former students all smiled, the rest probably wondered if I had a mind at all.

The inspiration was really a reinforcement that I (Amorella) might actually be able to write something of worthy quality, that was the sense of it to me at the time. I did continue with the experiment as I still am today. I have nothing to lose and nothing to gain except in the fact that I am ‘being’ a writer and that is what I am as long as Amorella is a part of myself. 

Earth and Flame with Words

This is Amorella. This photograph which is considered personally hallowed to orndorff was taken yesterday at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. He has written on his home Facebook page that the main objective of this blog is to focus on the spiritual aspects of being human through the author’s inner writer, Amorella. I am asking him to interpret the above photograph into Merlyn’s druidic mindset of ‘Earth, Air, Fire and Water’.

I have thought about this overnight and I cannot write what is within without help from Amorella. Here is what comes to mind:

Earth – that which we are, from toes to head to fingertips stretched high above and from brain to mind much higher. Earth allows us to survive intact, to live a life in this universe;

Air – within and without us – a shared invisible substance all human beings share more intimately than we would like to think. We are all violated before our first scream. No one remains a virgin of air and survives;

Fire – the inner fire in our bellies is theoretically set at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or thereabouts. A shared temperature for survival as it is a conditional for a healthy individual and the collective life of a natural snuggle;

Water – shared inside and out. Inverted fish, we carry our own private ocean within. Life in and on Earth along with the fire of our near and private star; and,

Our Fifth Essence (with Aristotle in my mind) is consciousness now and hereafter. Consciousness is invisible as is air and it totes our memories, our hearts, our minds, and our souls as individuals and as a collective of flowers and plows and swords. We are friends all, for the species’ sake. This is the Fifth, and I plead to the Heavens and the Earth alike, as we touch and are of both the Heavens and the Earth.

You see, orndorff, with my help you can do this without a pause.

I did write the above in one ‘movement’, [with a tinker of post grammar change] but do not know how a Druid or Druidess might think. This is what spontaneously came to mind. As such, to me, this is an inward interpretation of the photograph above.

Mountain Clouds

This is Amorella. October weather in the western Virginia mountains. Not a flicker of blue sky, but with friends it makes little difference. The inside game, Dominoes.

According to Merriam-Webster’s Dominoes comes from the:  “French, probably Latin (in the ritual formula benedicamus Domino let us bless the Lord) circa 1694”. Dominoes is “plural but usually singular in construction”. That is very interesting in both points, neither of which I had thought of before.

What is your inclination towards rituals, orndorff?

I think of rituals as habits, usually of the spiritual nature, a purposeful exercise connecting one’s personal identity with something the mind accepts as spiritual. A religion will do but it doesn’t have to be. The opening game of professional baseball each year is a Spring rite. It is not the same as Passover or Easter but still they all fit in a general definition of ritual as I see it.

Isn’t it blasphemous to put an opening game of professional baseball in the same league with Passover or Easter?

I don’t know. What do you think, Amorella? Is it?

Relative to the books we have written, it is not. Here is the reason. I used a pagan Druid named Merlyn to explain a spiritual concept connecting the Living and the Dead with God, the Creator of All Things and Beyond. This sense of G-d is similar to the Jewish concept of G-d, who is a ‘first-concept’ personal G-d among the three similar religions of the twenty-first century.

It is strange that you can write this but I cannot.

I do not expect you to have to explain such concepts behind the books orndorff. I put them together, you consciously contributed from time to time, but the books are of my design not yours. You think the books contain some of your own, that is, human spirituality, and you assume a few other human beings may be interested. That’s as far as you need go. 

Tomorrow, we go to the Holocaust Museum for the topic as you visited there again today, for the second time. The first visitation was in late September last year. I have some special questions for you as to the plowing of your feelings concerning the subject of the Jewish Holocaust.

The first time I personally came in contact with this subject is when I was twelve years old and found some hidden ten or so photographs my father, who helped liberate Dachau, brought back from the war in Germany. I checked my notes from last year and this is what I found on 27 September 2008:

“You spent much of the day at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. You showed members of the staff the photographs but have since realized you have others at home. A curator was not on duty today and they suggested you bring them in on Monday. You may. You saw no other pictures of Dachau like the ones your father took. You bought their book, The World Must Know, the history of the Holocaust as told by the museum.

         The architecture of the museum is quite striking and excellently put throughout. I touched several things to put them into my mind as ‘personal’ and thus ‘sacred’ objects. I was emotionally taken by several exhibits, but mostly so by the voices of the Dead.

         You are concerned by your wording in the above paragraph, however you will hear no denial of it by me. Your father’s pictures drew tears in the eyes of one of the older clerks on duty. They are real enough representations of what your father and his camera saw on 29 April 1945. – Amorella.”

And, on the following Monday, 29 September 2008:

“You found out that your photographs, though ‘original’ of the time, are copies. You saw . . . a museum specialist in the photographic reference collection. . . . She thought one of the pictures was not a ‘copy’ but she is not positive. She wants you to find the others and send copies to her. You and [your friend] got to see the Archives on the fifth floor of the Holocaust Museum.” [Amorella]

I forgot the specialist name and email address and did not check on the other photographs I did not send. I did not realize this until tonight. I will have to look for them.

My father, Richard B. Orndorff was in the 260^th Engineering Combat Battalion (7^th Army). Lieutenant Colonel Oliver G. Benson’s Double the Guard, a booklet containing the complete history of the 260^th history from 27 October 1944 to 9 May 1945 states:

“The pattern was clear now. We knew now, that we’d never get to Berlin. But to the 7^th Army went on [a] much more important task, it seemed to us – that of grubbing out the last roots of Nazidom. It led us to Nurnberg, Hitler’s shrine to the party, Nurnberg which saw the proudest moments of the Fuhrer. It led us through the infamous extermination camp at Dachau which few of us will ever forget. From there to Munich, the birthplace of the Nazi idea, born in a beerhall. There we found an airfield fully equipped with planes gassed and armed, but oddly enough – no pilots. . . .”

**

You feel that you need this background documentation because you consider yourself ‘mostly fiction’. Sadly, this episode in your father’s life was not fiction. The photographs you discovered locked in a box when you were twelve were not fiction either. – Amorella.