Il Duomo and Dante (Photo/Theme: 19 November 09)

Amorella here looking up into the interior of ‘Il Duomo’ which is the inspiration for St. Peters in Rome and the U. S. Capitol. Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

“The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore is the cathedral church (Duomo) of Florence, Italy, begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to the design of Arnolfo di Cambio and completed structurally in 1436 with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi. . . .

The cathedral complex includes the Baptistery and Giotto's Campanile. The three buildings are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site covering the historic centre of Florence. . . .  The basilica is one of Italy's largest churches, and until the modern era, the dome was the largest in the world. It remains the largest brick dome ever constructed.”

The photograph does not do the design and art justice, Amorella, but it took a couple of shots to get this one as all I did was hold my arm out with Carol’s camera (a Sony DSC-T90 Cyber-shot) flat in my palm and snapped.

Accordingly, the tower base was built before the dome could be constructed. Richard is impressed that the designers were confident enough that eventually the architectural problems of the dome could be conquered (as none like it had ever been built before).

I am still inspired by the confidence of those in charge. What a time to have been alive and working on such a project. It was a Renaissance of mind as well as art and science. We have had such times. Little is more wondrous in nature than the human mind, that is my feeling, but I do not know of course. We can do such wonderful things, one would be to help everyone grow into and live a more humane life. That is my dream.

It is already worked into the books, orndorff. The alien marsupial way of life.

It could not be in real life, Amorella. Fiction is what it is.

Where is that confidence that inspired you little more than a hundred words ago?

I am content to write fiction. I enjoy the concepts not the probabilities. Alas, my mind settles more in Platonic territory than that of Aristotle.

 I chose the next photo (Casa di Dante) because of your interest in Dante and particularly the Divine Comedy.

I was disappointed Dante’s house was a reconstruction, but still he lived in the area. We visited some of the places had also visited in his life. On one of these nearby streets he said his ‘hello’s’ to Beatrice. What a love story. (If interested check out:

fascinatinghistory.blogspot.com/2006/01/dante-and-beatrice.html)

In college, reading Dante’s imaginary and literary concepts of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven in the Divine Comedy was fascinating, as was Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Virgil’s The Aeneid. Those themes are fun and logically challenging to write about. The themes cover one of my favorite subjects – metaphysics.

So it is that you will enjoy scribing the next three books even more than the first three.

I cannot image such a thing, Amorella. My heart and soul are in those three books even though you wrote through my hands.

For me then, the challenge will be to create such a work that serves your purposes as well as my own.

What purposes could you possibly have, Amorella?

As your inner friend, one would be to show you what you are capable of.

You are kind to me, and I thank you with all my heart for what you have done through writing those books that I can put my own name on, but still, I cannot imagine.

You are a product of your own times, orndorff, not mine. – Amorella.

Sometimes you really make me question what a human being is.

Glad to finally see you put this in print, old man.