25 February 2010

Notes & a further editing to Voiced Scenes 3-14 of Chapter 3

        Mid-afternoon. Several errands and lunch at Stone Oven took most of the day so far. You stayed in the car with Owen while the women shopped. You have edited scenes three through ten of chapter three so far and are feeling pleased with the work.

         It is very surprising to think how much this form of editing is so helpful. How did I ever do without it? I love to hear the words spoken even if they are not human. I love the slower cadence I set the program for. I had forgotten stories were originally an oral tradition. And, the scene I just finished on grammar and logic reminds me so much of parts of my old lectures. I hope I don’t get into trouble with plagiarizing. In class I always had the students write down the title and the author of the book from which I lectured, at last as far as I remember. I had used the lecture so long I have forgotten exactly what came from where but most of that used here is from Logic for Undergraduates by Robert J. Kreyche and an older eighties edition of Encyclopedia Britannica.


         You have returned to Heinen’s for more grocery shopping for tomorrow as there are storm and possible blizzard warnings for northeast Ohio from now, sixteen hundred hours, until tomorrow night. You are planning on returning home Saturday after the major roads are cleared.

         You have completed the audio editing scenes, eleven through fourteen of chapter three. Take a break, then work on scene fifteen. We’ll see how it goes from there as it is supper time but Paul has a late surgery.

         Once home, just before supper, Paul looked at your right leg and saw it is swollen to the knee, a new development. Off you and he went to South-Pointe Hospital and as he called in advance they were ready for you in the ER. You had a scan for blood clots and a X-rays of your right foot. You arrived home after twenty-three hundred hours few minutes ago. A splint on your right leg and wrappings and you have it propped up on a dining room chair as you type. Let’s call it a night. Post this as well as what you accomplished today.

         The experience at South-Pointe was supurb and Paul stayed until we finished. He even trucked me down to ultrasound and X-ray. I met several of his doctor friends and residents. It was a great experience considering, and much better that I did not have a blood clot. 






Scene 3
             Sophia stirred from a dead deep sleep to an unfamiliar  epicurean dream-like state which transposed to song throughout Sophia’s aroused mind, and she received a whiff of the John Lennon/McCartney melody of ‘All You Need Is Love’. Sophia awoke fully warm blooded with a youthful passion she had not felt in a very long time

Content, she lay as if she were a scrumptiously healthy breakfast pastry, covered with a syrup of honey and grape sugared petimezi mixed with bits of almonds and walnuts ready to be served and to be sweetly eaten. Quite pleasing, she thought, to have been such a well-satisfying and delicious sweet dream, with an added melody doused syrup over an emotionally warm pie-crusted dough.

Scene 4
             Thales awoke still holding hands with Kassandra who was also beginning to shake off the cold sleep by stretching her robust womanly legs and spreading her long toes.
              As she gently slid her hand from his, she matter-of-factly said, “Feels good to be alive.”
             “I concur,” added Thales. “I am going to see Aeneas this morning. I have some questions about Apollo’s visitation.” Laying in bed he glanced up as she sat on the edge. “You don’t look so con-tent as you did only a moment ago. What’s wrong?”
             Kassandra asked, “I wonder how it is to see a god?”
             He gave a hardy laugh, “I saw a goddess on the path only two days ago.” He paused. “I was more curious than uncomfortable.”
             “You don’t know if it was a real goddess,” she replied demurely.
             “You don’t know that it wasn’t,” he asserted though the latter change of tone side-saddled the declaration into humor.
             “I wonder how it would have been being alive and have a god make love to me?” questioned Kassandra.
             “I’ll ask Aeneas what his father thinks,” replied Thales jokingly.
             Kassandra suddenly remarked, “Why is Aeneas here in this Place if his mother is Aphrodite?”
             “Now, that is a good question,” expounded Thales as he edged over and gave her a peck on her right cheek. “That is a thinking woman’s question.” I wonder if I should ask him, he thought.
             “I have another good question,” she responded, “At one time his father, Anchises feared for his life thinking Zeus would bolt him for being a mortal and having a relationship with a goddess, but Zeus did not.  Anchises is here among us too.”
             Thales replied, “He is, but he is not one of us ten thousand.”
             “Why is that?” she asked.
             “I don’t know. Mother made up the original list,” stated Thales matter of factly.
             Kassandra responded, “Our greater Mother?”
             “That’s what Mario told me.”
             “Thales, why don’t you ask Aeneas about his father.”
             “He might not know his father is not on our list,” replied Thales.
             “Surely he would,” said Kassandra somewhat sympathetically.

 Scene 5
             Salaman readied himself to meet Mario shortly at the Mikroikia eatery on the corner of Lyceum and Eleusis before heading down to the bridge construction site at the Styx. The rectangular temple at the entrance is pure theatre, he thought. The whole thing is a sham, a trick, like Hades isn’t going to figure this out if he hasn’t already. He and Zeus are probably laughing up a storm on this entire guise.

Our whole human family is the genetic shambles of deception gone wrong and we are the instruments of its continuing concept even after death. We march a stone and wood viaduct of hope across the vast sea of a river separating the great divide between us and the living remnants of what we used to be.

             He refocused into more guarded thoughts – what is the Supervisor up to? He allows us our free will to be wasted on imaginary strategy. Why? What does he gain from this? Does he suck energy from us? Are we the battery of Zeus’ bolts? And, why is Hades so content here when he could have Olympus as his own? Are we the value, the coins in the coffer. He smirked, perhaps we are the more valuable territory. Our stubbornness, our arrogance confounds even the gods. Could it be so? Are we really the match for this contest and don’t realize it?

Such strange things people saw in life – twists and turns of Fate and Circumstance. Yet we all survive Here, we ten thousand plus hundreds of thousands of others scattered in towns and villages of Dead, all for what ends? Is this all to please the whim of our natural Mother? Is that what this is, nothing more than Mother’s whim or Mother’s defiance?

Scene 6
             Thales sat down at a front table overlooking Eleusis Street at the northwest corner of Lyceum at The Mikroikia and the old server Aranos strolled over and sat with him. “Who are you waiting for?” asked the old man.
             “Aeneas.”     
"Spooky fellow,” commented a grinning Aranos.
Thales laughed aloud and countered, “We are all a bit spooky these days.”         
 “He’s protected by Apollo you know,” suggested the server known for his conversational appetizers.           
“I thought Leto and Artemis did Aeneas’ protecting,” said Thales with a shrug. “The gods are never around anyway, what would they protect him from here.”         
“Losing his dignity and reason,” whispered old Aranos. “Nothing worse in a place like this.”          
Thales eyed Aranos and that knowing sparkle in the server’s eye. “You see a lot of dignity tossed around in this convoluted diner don’t you?”         
“Aye, I do, Thales. That’s part of my mission here to toss some dignity, but it is for a good cause.”         
“What’s that?” smiled Thales thinking a good joke was coming.          
The old man kept his seriousness, “To keep the mind from getting too uppity – got to keep a balance you know. The Dead who are cock sure of something are bound to take a tumble.”         
 “Just like the Living,” mumbled an understanding Thales.          
Aranos gave another grin. “Another table filling up, I have my duties to perform,” he said. “I’m sure Aeneas will be here shortly. He’s a man of his word Aeneas is. He’ll do us honorably.”          
Thales reflected the old man’s smile and waved him off in a friendly manner. He stared down at the ancient table then glanced out to the sparse crowd on the street. The moving of stone and wood bridge construction traffic was continuing as well as the everyday traffic of people heading out to visit friends one place or another.
Not an unsettled face out there, he thought. Everyone appears to be heading to one or another public or private purpose this morning. This is a good sign as far as I can see.  

Scene 7          
Aeneas found himself walking slowly from east to west on Lyceum to where it intersects with Eleusis. Three more blocks to go, and I am still not feeling good about this meeting with Thales. His logic can leap from one point to the next, thus it is hard to follow his actual thinking. Friends say he dances too close to madness, even though he is quick thinking at times, and other times he is almost prophetic.              

Apollo must rest in Thales' heart but the gift of prophecy stops there. I assume he wants more information about Artemis’ power supposedly within me but I can only assume it is hearsay as I have never felt it that strongly. Too many earthly stories. More stories of adventures than real adventures. Artemis gazes on Zeus from all directions. How is it to be a goddess with eight eyes on her father and on others too?           

He stopped thinking until he had one block left to walk. Why, I wonder, does Artemis need so many eyes focused Zeus’ direction when Zeus views Athena as his greatest prize not Artemis. How does Zeus the Wise react to our Protest? Zeus has already put his older brother in this Underworld. Zeus is who we humans need to deal with. The others of Olympus will be kept as they are by Zeus. He is the King of Olympus and all realms below. Aeneas surmised it is not possible for any god to be above the mighty Zeus.

Scene 8
             Thales caught Aeneas’ eye and gave a half-pronounced wave while watching him cross the street towards the café. Soon they were sitting across from each other in general conversation while watching the bustle of pedestrian traffic coming and going on Eleusis Street.
             Aeneas glanced from the flows of traffic and said, “The truth is Aphrodite is not my mother. I had no goddess’s blood flowing through my living veins.”
            “No one asks you out of politeness, Aeneas.
It is none of our business. Some here were living witness to your exploits and adventures. We know stories are not always true, but that does not mean there is no truth to them.”
            Aeneas fell into a smile of relief. “I like this Elysium. We all heard stories but this is unlike what we thought it would be.”            
“I think the fact that we are here. That we survived physical death,” explained Thales, “is enough for most people,”
             “True” noted Aeneas, “but what is this quiet uproar, this demonstration really about? There is always more to the world than meets the eye, even Here.”
             “Our Mother thinks it is a matter of principle. According to our Mother’s word, we, as individuals and as a family group, have a duty and obligation to care for our parents and our children and their children Here, in Elysium, as we did in life. She believes that is the reason we are here in the first place, because we are heroes, but heroes to Our Mother first.”            
Aeneas countered, “Our Mother, like our natural mothers, has her ideas and beliefs but that does not make them true.”
             “How does a child ever counter herorhis mother?” responded Thales directly.
“Mine was imaginary,” aired Aeneas without a hint of sarcasm or a smile.
 “Our original Mother is real enough, “ said Thales. “We had to begin somewhere and what we bring with us to this Place is our humanity first. We are equal in these Elysian Fields.”
             “It is easier to renounce our differences once dead. Self-interest is a given,” said Aeneas.
“To us, yes,” agreed Thales. “It is. And, we give ourselves to the care and education of our greater family.”
 Aeneas mellowed, “We are allowed to watch the spirit and mind and heart grow in those who died young.”
             “We all continue to grow, Aeneas.”
 A sudden glare arose, and dumbfounded Aeneas declared, “Then Mother wants us to return to Earth to teach the Living to live like us?”
“No. I don’t think so. No one has suggested this.” Thales paused, “I think she feels we have a duty and obligation to help the entire family, the living, as well as we who are dead.”
“These social rules we exist by, they were not given or directed by Zeus then?” stated Aeneas.
“Mother has never said so. She talks that it is a mother’s right to assure her family exists well. She expects each generation to be better at raising children than the previous one.”
Somewhat angrily, Aeneas muttered, “This demonstration or rebellion is raised by a mother’s whim.”
Thales, one of the many older Dead, and far wiser than he was when he first arrived at Elysium, set his face in a considerate smile and said nothing.

Scene 9
             Zeus sat on her-an-his throne staring up at the microscopic hole in the top of the Olympian sky. She-an-He thought, A tiny sliver of Olympian gold is missing. What does this mean?
Scene 10
             This scene is for those who are looking for a sense of perspective and depth with meaning understood.
             The Supervisor hovers in thought, surrounded by the conceptual being She-an-He is. An airy metaphor does not do justice to size and scope of Her-an-His abode of rest. Think of a thought at rest and the grammar will do the resting. Reason is the bones in such thinking.
             According to the ancient Greeks, those who were followers of Plato, reason has form, substance, process and/or movement, and an atomic glue that holds the reality together. In other words, human beings need form, substance, process and/or movement and atomics for the brain to register something. A noun. The dictionary states that a noun is: “an entity, quality, state, action, or concept.”
The ancient Greeks felt that reason, that is science and facts, are stronger concepts than understanding, which contains an hypothesis. Both are forms of knowledge. Belief contains opinion which presents a weaker argument than reason and understanding. Conjecture is a weaker form of opinion. Both are less in solid thinking than knowledge and understanding. For example, would one expect an angelic messenger to be a form of knowledge and understanding or a form of belief and conjecture?
             Some ancient Greeks understood that it is possible that Immortal Forms exist; that these Forms may exist outside of the known universe; that some things cannot be known; that there is no way to explain ‘alien or god-like’ operations outside the universe; and, that therefore, from a human standpoint all knowledge is impossible to realize as substance. With this, the Greeks felt that pure non-existence is impossible to understand; and that anything non-being was only in relationship to something else, for example, the definition of ‘nothing’ or a ‘hole’.
             The above are examples of reason with the added neo-Platonic thoughts. Below are more Aristotelian, more practical, more selected things, nouns as we see them. Aristotle was a what –you-see-is what-you-get sort of fellow.
These nouns are the four basic elements or essences of human reality plus one: Earth, Air, Fire, Water and the Fifth Essence (that which is without decay; golden, immortal).
             To define the abode of the Supervisor, in such a fiction as this, one needs to be reminded of the above as well as this, a definition should be neither too broad nor too narrow; it should not be circular; it should be expressed in positive terms; and it should be simple in explanation.
              Thus, the abode of the Supervisor is as a Platonic Form. Yet, in this case, it is a Form composed of thought that is neither curved nor straight. As this Form appears inconceivable to even imagine, think of the form of the abode as a transparent balloon filled to the edge with consciousness and then place a piece of string attached below. A nearly invisible helium filled balloon with a string floating along and up into the sky. You might also imagine a young child crying to her-or-his most immediate parent, “My balloon escaped! I want my balloon back! I want my balloon!”
             Construct this scene altogether as a grammatically singular noun, and you have a scent, a whiff of the Supervisor’s territorial home. To Zeus, a small sliver of Olympian gold is missing. To the Supervisor, resting solitarily in her-an-his abode, Zeus is human imagination plus a light touch of the missing gold from the top, the navel, of the Olympian sky.     
      
Scene 11
             Thales and Aeneas were about to leave the Mikroikia eatery when Mario and Salaman showed up. They readjusted the seating for four and settled in.
             “Good we are all here,” uttered Mario gravely. He glanced at Aeneas, and added, “Do not get up. We may need you on the team.”
             “What’s this about   Mario?” asked Thales.
             “Salaman and I don’t like what Sophia and Mother are up to. This is all Mother’s idea and she wants to push this into an out and out conflict if need be.”             
             “I can’t imagine Sophia wanting such a thing. She has been insisting this is a peaceful demonstration. What does she hope to gain?”
             “Mother considers us the most loyal,” replied Salaman.            
“We are,” interrupted Thales with an obstinate glare.            
“She thinks we are better than our station,” remarked Mario.
             Thales admonished Mario with, “This is what good parents do, they try to raise us up to higher human standards.”
             “That’s true,” agreed Aeneas. “When she asked me to meet with the Supervisor she made it clear that it was to be non-confrontational.”            
“Like you were going to confront Hades,” belittled Thales.            
Salaman asked, “It was just a dream? You saw nothing?”
             “I thought I would at least be aware of Apollo. I am sure he protected me.” Glum raise up and shadowed his face, “Nothing but a powerful, a lucid dream.”
             “What is the immediate feeling the dream brought    Aeneas?” questioned Salaman.            
Mario wondered aloud, “Was it from your heart or mind?”
             “Or, soul?” suggested Thales.
             Aeneas sat dazed and staring at the table. The others took a swig or two of their favorite drink and waited, hoping for something more from Aeneas supposedly close encounter with the Supervisor, some forgotten or misplaced insight gleaned from the proximity of the meeting.
              “Do you remember something about Apollo,” commented Mario. “How did you come to realize Apollo was protecting you? What was he protecting your from? Why did you feel you needed protecting?”
             “These questions are quite difficult. If gods took form or gave forth reason, it would be easier to recollect.”
             Silence ensued until Aeneas began to feel very uncomfortable. The others watched as he slowly vanished from a shade of himself into nothing.
             “We went too far,” said Thales. “I think he was about to make something up to appease us and then he couldn’t bring himself to do it.”
             Salaman was about to counter Thales when Mario intervened. “We are in serious trouble here. By this time the day after tomorrow, we may have begun the actual construction of the temple gate and perhaps even the erection of temporary wooden beams for the first span of the bridge.”
             “Even as a bluff we may be crossing the line,” suggested Thales.             
 “I don’t think Zeus would have let us get this far,” retorted Salaman. “I don’t think he will allow Hades to stop us.”
             Thales broke into a wishful smile, “I think Salaman is right. Zeus probably wants to see how this will work out. This may even be giving him the pleasure of a contest.”
             “But it is a team effort on our part,” said Mario. “Zeus likes individual contests.”            
 “Like Aeneas doing battle with the Supervisor,” suggested Salaman hastily.
             “True,” said Thales. “Perhaps Apollo was protecting Aeneas from seeing Zeus, not the Supervisor, Hades.”
             “It will be difficult to outthink the strategy of the gods,” said Salaman. 
             “It will be impossible,” noted Thales sadly.

Scene 12
             Aeneas sat on a plain wooden chair next to his bed. Another chair, empty, sat near him on the same side of the bed, one personally built by himself for himself alone. This high stone walled place has an average wooden door and no windows. No ceiling is needed and the floor is a layer of thick comfortable grass so he might leave his sandals just outside the door as a sign he is in need of privacy. Shelves and wooden hangers line the walls giving the room an atmosphere of much later nineteenth century American Shakers, and austere Presbyterians would come to admire. He sat comfortably given the stark furniture, analyzing his feelings with his sense of reality.
             Aeneas thought, the dream of the tree in the circles of stone and the length of the eighteen city blocks - the human citadel of continuity sinking only to rise again. Who were they, who rose up as one voice? And, what did the one voice declare.
             I took the dream as a sign, but Salaman asked a good question, what was the feeling behind the dream? Confusion comes to mind first because I didn’t see a correlation between Mother, the tree, the stone circles, and the one voice of humanity. The one voice should have made me feel jubilant or exhilarated. I was curious and dubious. Uncertain. I should have been enthusiastic. The event ended as though a contest was won, but perhaps I wasn’t on the winning side. I did not feel bitter though, or angry, or even annoyed. I was a witness, an observer a part from this contest. I don’t even know what it meant. Maybe it didn’t mean anything.
             Would either Apollo or the Supervisor clothe my emotions in such a way? Perhaps I chose Apollo first because the dream seemed prophetic.
              I may have jumped to that conclusion because it was a dream therefore I thought prophecy as dreams sometimes appear that way. I may have been over-generalizing.
             Perhaps the dream was our Mother’s prophecy and being close to Apollo my mind became entangled with it. I do not like the fact that this demonstration we are putting ourselves on the line for is based on our good Mother’s self indulgence. Intuition does not always a good mother make. I know this as a fact.
             The rush of anger subsided. Where did the dream come from? Again, Salaman. Then, was it from my heart or soul or mind, as if the three were separate. This is how we thought in Life. Here we think of heartansoulanmind, a whole unit. That is what we are, we exist individually as a unit of heartansoulanmind. I cannot think to separate them. To do so I would become three in one, a trinity of self.
             This is a complication that fits more with Hades, who is one of three brothers, Zeus and Poseidon being the other two. If the Supervisor passed by my heartansoulanmind would that evoke such a dream.  I did not expect to see the Supervisor as no one ever has, but surely I should have felt such a powerful god, the Supervisor, one who is the older brother of  Poseidon and the oldest brother of Zeus.
             An epiphany struck him as a thunderbolt. Our main avenue, our street from Mother’s, from the tree and stone circles, is named Eleusis. The bridge across to the Living is to be built as an extension of Eleusis Street. Hades consort, Persephone. Demeter, her mother. When Demeter was looking for Persephone she took the form of an old woman at Eleusis. Eleusis’s king asked for Demeter’s help and she nursed the king’s son to health. Something wrong happened, and instead she taught Triptolemus how to farm. The people of Greece learned how to plant and grow crops. All because Demeter was searching for Persephone who was living Here with Hades.
             Immediately, Aeneas became optimistic, enthusiastic and proud of himself for understanding a truth. It was not Apollo who stood by him on the crevasse but the Supervisor himself. The Supervisor did not want a confrontation. He would bargain as he did when he allowed Persephone to return to Earth with her mother Demeter and the crops would flourish and the Greeks would survive better so their children also would survive better than they did before they had learned agriculture from the friendly goddess Demeter. Eleusis Street is indeed a major key in this dream's mystery, the road from Mother's north to south line to the Styx and then on south to Home, to Earth.

Scene 13
             Supper in the back room at The Mikroikia. Aranos quickly fixed two small tables together for the six in attendance. Sophia sat first, followed by Aeneas to her right and Mario to her left. Thales sat across from Mario with Kassandra next to him and across from Sophia and Salaman to the left of Kassandra and across from Aeneas. Habit had their favorite cups of wine already on the table when Sophia said, “Aeneas has discovered the meaning of the dream he had while awaiting the Supervisor and he feels it is a good sign. Let’s let him speak first then we can debate.

             Aeneas enthusiastically told them his dream’s revelation and patiently waited for their responses. He was surprised to find them mostly neutral to his concept as each had come to a similar conclusion concerning symbolism and Eleusis Street as the compass needle to home, particularly for our Mother.
             “I am tired,” said Mario unknowingly, “of making reference to our Mother. Why don’t we just call her Mother.”            
 Salaman asked, “How then do we separate her from our biological or adopted mothers?”             
 “I don’t like this,” added Thales. “Mother has got us into something we may not be able to get out of.”
             “Why are you blaming her,” badgered Kassandra. “You men already out to blame a woman for this?”            
 “Do you want me to take the fall on this,” interrupted Sophia, “she thought I would be best for this position,” she turned, “but Mario, if you want it, it’s yours.”
 “Why are you giving in to them?” groaned Kassandra.
              Mario slowly raised his hands off the table and said, “No, Sophia. This is not about you. Mother has more to do with this than we thought. She’s working on intuition here. What is her real reasoning?”
             “I really feel,” responded Sophia, “that she believes that we have a duty to help the Living if we can. We are Here. We help one another. We are living an afterlife. It would help if the Living knew this up front. We can help them.”
             “Is this a belief or a feeling,” asked Thales. “There is a difference.”            
 “A feeling,” she quickly said. “A feeling.”            
 “So, what do we do?” asked Salaman. “Do we continue on with our bluff?”
             “It doesn’t have to be a bluff,” argued Kassandra. “Let’s just do it and see how far it is to cross the Styx.”
             “People expect us to do something,” added Mario. He shrugged his shoulders, “Why not?”
              Sophia turned and asked, “What do you think, Aeneas?”             
 “Build the bridge. Like Mario says, Let’s do it.” He mumbled, “We need to do something.” I know I am right, he said to himself, the Supervisor was there. I felt a ‘presence’ in the dream. We need to follow the road south and build the bridge.

Scene 14
             Sophia and Thales relaxed readying for bed in her privacy chamber. The mood sat somber like a murder of crows were on the top of the stone walls looking down and waiting for a feast of positive soul attraction as well as negative.
             “I need some comfort tonight,” said Sophia. “It is hard to know what to do. I never dreamed we would be up in arms over Mother’s primary decision to go with this protest.”            
 Thales remarked, “It is more than a protest. In our hearts, it is more and I do not know why? It is like we are fighting ourselves.”
             Somewhat flippantly Sophia asked, “Civil war of the heart or mind? What do you think?”            
“It feels like love is the theme of battle but I don’t know whose.” He paused in thought and floundered with, “It seems that whatever it is, it is riding the great white horse of Free Will.”
             She smiled, “I always picture that great horse a thundering black.”
            Thales laid down with the slight smile comfortably, and emotionally exhausted quickly fell into a hug-an-smile; into a waveless water deeper than either suspected. Undisturbed and quiet they lay molding into an effigy of stone seemingly dead to the tirelessly sleeping underworld. Slowly, just before the bewitched hour of another day Thales awoke. He stroked Sophia’s hair until she stirred.
             He said softly, “You need to know something,” as he glanced up and out the roofless top half expecting to find a dark predatory audience awaiting a further unraveling of his mind.
             “What’s the matter?”
             “I am afraid the goddess I saw on the path the other day was Hecate. She was an old croan with a cane, but when she came closer passed me her face shown with such beauty I was stunned, then she was gone when I turned to follow her path. I could not imagine what goddess she was, but the more I have thought about it I am sure that is who she was.”
             Sophia studied his eyes. “You seem upset. Why is this important? Hecate is a good goddess and our cause is about helping the younger generations to learn to live better, just as we help the youth that come to Elysium far too young.”
             He noted, “Hecate can allow good or evil spirits into Elysium.”            
 She replied, “Why would Hecate allow evil in?”
             “I have been thinking that Apollo is on our side in this but his sister, Artemis may not be. People say Hecate takes to a similar dressed state as Artemis, both with long skirts and hunting boots. They may be twin-minded.”
             “We have too many stories, Thales,” said Sophia sympathetically. “We have too many answers. They can’t all be correct, and we know for a fact that they are not.” She rolled on her side and massaged Thales for a few moments. They returned to holding hands as he stared out into the starry night.
             Just before returning to sleep he quietly said, “Hecate is the goddess of the crossroad. For good or ill, I think she is a sign.”
             Sophia squeezed his hand gently but said nothing and she soon returned to sleep.            
 Thales lay in bed staring through the invisible ceiling that covered his mind. I see the stars out there, he thought. I know they are not real. We Dead here are real only to ourselves. Hecate is a goddess of the crossroad. Do we cross ourselves at that place when we find it? Do we double back?
 The more I stare into this sky above, the more I see the center of my own heart, and these twinkling stars out there become nothing but the shrapnel from my most personal of armor. How can I remain honest and true to myself if I cannot discover the seed of what a dead human being really is?
***


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