Probably one to two inches in reality, Amorella. My view is almost always an exaggeration. I guess I like the theatre, who knows. Perhaps I am easily bored and like to spike things up a bit.
I would give you something outrageous to write about but that is not my way orndorff. Your idea of a good time would be, as you used to say in class, to have the sun come up on the west spend the day then sink in the east. Just once, never again. No explanations ever.
It is fun to think about. Once I conjured up the idea of the sun going out for a couple of seconds, then start up again. That would give people something to think about and to write in the papers. I even thought it might happen once, but only for a few days, then my mind was off on something else. Silliness. I had no reason, just a feeling, and an imaginary one at that. Telling an imaginary feeling from a real one is not always so easy. Be it love or hate, sometimes it turns out not to be real, or not as real as you expect that it is. People are funny and somewhat strange that way. Human beings are continually an interesting species. Makes it worth getting up in the morning, to see how the night went and to see what’s in my email and who is saying what or visiting on Facebook. Some of the things I get from good friends and a few former students are out of this world, especially the real forwards. The Internet is a wonderful adaptation of the human mind as a holistic approach to the mind-set and behaviour of the species.
It is a strange thing that from time to time while trolling the web one picks up an naked body or two or even three once in a while and while I am no prude – mostly I find such bazaar situations at least funny. Who are these naked people, I think, but then, to me, it is the mind that stays clothed when the body is as naked as at birth. Our minds are interesting that way. A naked mind discloses much more than a naked body. All most people have to do is look in the mirror to see a naked body. But the mind? Look in the mirror all you want; what is seen is in the mind of the viewer not the one observed. Reality is a tricky business, that’s what I think.
This is indeed a problem, and I bring it up with the Dead in HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither. Naked minds are still dressed just as the Dead prefer to wear the outer clothing of their cultures. Human nature is as it is, with the Living as well as with the Dead in my writings. Sometimes we are on parallel levels of thought, so to speak, and it is easier for me to write about the human condition than you might first think, that is, for a Betweener like myself. – Amorella.
You are so funny, Amorella. What a deadpan sense of humor. You are a very special imaginary friend.
Later, old man. Post this before you lose your courage to do so. It is important that you balance your inner world with the outer one, this is one way to do it. – Amorella.
Mother Eve whispered to Sophia, “It is our turn to consider the next move. Your father is Fate for you but not me.”
Before twenty-two hundred hours and you have completed the remaining scenes in chapter two. Post what you have and tomorrow, if all goes well, we will return to chapter three.
Scene 16
Sophia, with white toga wrapped loosely, lay down alone for sleep and assumed she would shortly be stone-like, but that was not to be, for a mysterious vivid dream she would soon in a golden vision see.
Sophia’s Dream on the Fourth Night
Two classical busts, two heads appeared as floating shades, facing one another unfiltered and belly high above a universe of stage in blue filtered light, a floor of sky.
Mother Eve whispered to Sophia, “It is our turn to consider the next move. Your father is Fate for you but not me.”
Sophia responded, “Thought and memory are all we have here. Experience that was and now is.”
Mother Eve: “We should move to better control the center of the field?
Sophia: “Will that not be expected?”
Mother Eve: “The Supervisor already began this demonstration with the first move. She already is aware of all our moves.”
Sophia: “Then why does she wish to have the demonstration?”
Mother Eve: “We cannot anticipate the Supervisor’s cunning.”
Sophia: “She can anticipate, but we have free will and we are built to use it.”
Mother Eve: “The Supervisor is not a family of gods or even one god. She is here to keep us in our place for our own good, as a parent would.”
Sophia: “Why do we make mischief then?”
Mother Eve: “It is our inclination to question what is.”
Mother Eve: “It is our inclination to question what is.”
Sophia: “I say we move to a flank immediately. She will not expect it.”
Mother Eve: “Right or left?”
Sophia: “Better to stay in the field, move our forces right.”
Mother Eve: “The species is created to bare living children.”
Sophia: “To live beyond freedom and dignity? Mother, we are more than child-bearing machinery.”
Mother Eve raised an eyebrow: “Tit for tat.”
Sophia: “We can be as quick witted as the Supervisor.”
Mother Eve: “Our forces are down one and a Crown will be taken.”
Sophia: “No matter. Supervisor cannot expect our next move.”
Mother Eve: “Even though She started it.”
Sophia: “We thought the Rebellion first.”
Mother Eve: “I feel that She moved first.”
Sophia: “We have to trust ourselves.”
Mother Eve: “To do what, lose?”
Sophia: “Losing is not our purpose here.”
Mother Eve: “I did not know my purpose.”
Sophia: “We find ourselves Beyond; and in a body of ten thousand souls.”
Mother Eve flared: “With a hundred thousand passions.”
Sophia: “We have multiple souls.”
Mother Eve: “Our minds are our purpose in this business.”
Sophia: “And our memories and hearts.”
Mother Eve: “For what is my purpose if not to speak with my children?”
Sophia: “We have no other species to speak to.”
Mother Eve: “Thought needs grammar.”
Sophia: “Our thought slows the Supervisor.”
Mother Eve: “The Supervisor is beyond grammar's construction.”
Sophia: “How can She play our rebellion?”
Mother Eve: “Like theatre.”
Sophia: “Alas, we do not exist in the real world of the Living.”
Sophia: “Alas, we do not exist in the real world of the Living.”
Mother Eve: “We did. The Supervisor has not.”
Sophia: “The Supervisor’s not living in Life? This is a weakness we can exploit.”
Mother Eve: “The Supervisor has the next move. We have made our play.”
And, with that, the two shaded heads facing one another faded into the dark kettle of Sophia's imaginative memory.
Scene 17
Sophia awoke abruptly. “What was the dream,” she muttered. “Something about thought and grammar and about the Supervisor’s weakness and about our next move.” She sat up on the edge of the bed and stared off into the southwest corner of her private walls. Her eyes moved slowly like a threading machine, from the top corner to the bottom and back again several times.
Sophia said aloud to the corner, “We need to needle ourselves into the Living. We must return to Earth and rise up from our graves whole-bodied. Then the Living would know the truth. We must find a way to raise ourselves up from our very graves.”
She waited for a reply but neither the top, the middle, or the bottom corner had anything to say. None of the four corners replied, nor did the walls, floor or open ceiling to the moon and stars. The rest of her night sat in un-canny silence. Sophia soon collapsed into a stone effigy resting on top of her privacy bed. A full tomb she became, surrounded by the significance of the common silence of the Dead.
Scene 18
Morning, the fifth day.
Today appears as any other among the Dead. To build a bridge is the unifying theme of the day. Mario is in charge of construction. Let’s listen in.
He glanced at Thales in sight of a blink and said, “Which of you want to assist me with this bridge building?”
Thales responded, “I think Salaman is better suited.”
“I don’t get along with Sophia as well,” acquiesced Salaman.
Mario quipped, “None of us get along with her as well as her ladies.” They laughed bravely as well as heartily.
Then Thales with bright blue eyes and a manly grin intimated, “I think we each know her privacy chamber very well.” This was followed with more comradery and laughter.
“Women,” declared Salaman with renewed aplomb.
“Never point a finger at the opposite sex!” hammered Mario. All three suddenly adolescent-like minds flashed on the statement and laughed again.
“Not a finger,” saluted Thales.
“Back to the bridge,” sobered the still wet-eyed with humor Mario.
“I’ll take it,” uttered Salaman ending with the echo of a tightly concealed smile. “How are we linking stones for the lead off tower?”
“Lengthwise one way, and, end stone the next, stretcher and header.”
“We can spend time on the tower entrance and go out two or three arches.”
“You’ll have a fine pier but no fish below,” commented a much more relaxed Thales.
“I don’t think anyone has swum out more than a few hundred yards and back,” said Mario.
“Why not just swim the whole river?” replied Salaman unthinkingly.
Thales responded, “The water becomes effervescent and everything sinks.”
“So we pile the stone a foot or so above the River creating a wood plank as far out as we can to make the next deep pillar down,” stated Mario.
“We don’t know how deep,” lamented Thales, “or how wide.”
“If worse comes to worst we could construct wooden pilings topped with a stepping stone and one could leap from one to another,” proposed Salaman jokingly.
“It has been proposed by the engineers that we make the bridge sixty feet wide at the tower entrance.”
“Ludicrous,” interrupted Salaman.
“I agree. Twenty feet at most,” aired Mario.
“You only need a yard,” reasoned Thales. “You are not marching an army. You only need send one across.”
“Sophia wants more. She wants us to go in mass and rise from our graves.”
“When did she tell you this Mario,” groaned Thales.
“She knocked me up early this morning,” he beamed.
Mario’s two friends razzed and parodied the discrete early morning circumstance almost uncontrollably.
Clearly this is not a good morning for focusing on the project, thought Thales. I am bringing no good to this project. Hades is no doubt listening in and mocking me somewhere in his private chambers.
Scene 19
The same time the men joked in their modest fraternal forum, Kassandra sat with Sophia in the backroom at The Mikroikia discussing the bridge design.
“Which design gives a deeper impression,” asked Kassandra, “ Wooden arches on stone pillars or the effect of the stone arch and pillar moving solidly over the water?”
“Wooden arches would give a military effect and send a message as such.”
Kassandra put forth another, “Do you really think we ten thousand will be able to cross this bridge and return to our graves to rise up?”
“I like the theatre of it.”
“The bridge is only a theatrical symbol, Sophia.”
“I know, but the gods don’t know that.”
Maybe they do, thought Kassandra. She said, “We had talked about gaining Hera’s trust. It would help if we had some goddesses and Apollo on our side.”
“We can move Stone Hill if need be. We can do what we need to do to allow us to go Home.”
“It would help if we understood the composition of the water of the Styx. Some say the river fizzes and foams further out.”
“Rumors. No one knows,” noted Sophia. “It acts like a river but who knows what it is other than a barrier to keep us Here. It is a moat to keep us in and others out. It appears we can’t go further than we are, besides, where else would we go? We have to return to the Living.”
“I agree with you completely on this,” replied Kassandra dutifully. “We have to outwit the gods.”
Sophia reminded, “Zeus and Hera have never lived. They do not know us, whereas we are now immortal and have mortal memories. We need to use this as an advantage.”
“It sounds like you want to use the wooden arches as it will make the construction much faster.”
“We can go out a few hundred yards,” said Sophia. “In the meantime we need to have people interrogate the recent Dead to see if we can find abnormalities in the arrival here. We need to find advantages.”
“I agree,” stated Kassandra with enthusiasm. “If we could just fly like eagles.”
“Or swim upstream like salmon,” retorted Sophia while she was quietly reckoning, we are higher animals with accorded minds to likewise think upstream if not swim.
Scene 20
A forty foot square lined the tower specifications for the creation of the bridge. By midday the base of the tower stood marked with stones on the bank of the River Styx. Meanwhile, other crews are hauling down timber the sizes of ten to fifteen foot wooden beams and the larger are more like telephone poles in length and circumference.
Like Stone Hill to the west there was a place to the south that had a forest for lumber that if needed could be cut to form. Again, like Stone Hill the forest trees cut one day appeared the next as if they had not been cut. The widespread theory was that Persephone had blessed these two places with her resting presence at one time while trying to escape the indeterminable affliction of her husband Hades.
The story told is that her mother Demeter, the goddess of fertility, while following her daughter, had double blessed Stone Hill and Forest Plentiful for allowing her daughter sufficient rest and repose nearby.
The Dead therefore were fortunate enough to be close by to take advantage of a situation that had happened long before the Dead had arrived. In fact, some believed that it was Demeter who had initially directed their genetic Mother Eve to this Sacred Place. Others had another, sadder story and as such called this Place of the Dead the Sacred Prison instead. Looking back at this from modern times both stories of Stone Hill and Forest Plentiful are considered jokes. In fact, their theology, the study of God and God’s relationship with the Greeks of those days is scorned in the twenty-first century as chapters of allegorical and childish stories about Greek gods and goddesses and their relationships with human beings.
The Dead therefore were fortunate enough to be close by to take advantage of a situation that had happened long before the Dead had arrived. In fact, some believed that it was Demeter who had initially directed their genetic Mother Eve to this Sacred Place. Others had another, sadder story and as such called this Place of the Dead the Sacred Prison instead. Looking back at this from modern times both stories of Stone Hill and Forest Plentiful are considered jokes. In fact, their theology, the study of God and God’s relationship with the Greeks of those days is scorned in the twenty-first century as chapters of allegorical and childish stories about Greek gods and goddesses and their relationships with human beings.
Time, culture, education and belief systems make a world of difference in engaging mirror-like story-telling motifs. What would happen if one survived death and the afterlife was just as one imagined it would be? Then what? That doesn’t sound very productive to me. All evolution moving up to the time where human-like beings have a conscious and unconscious mind that can ‘cross over’ from physical death, and that’s it? My sense of evolution goes further than that.
Scene 21
This is the Supervisor and I have a short relevant story here. Once there was but ONE. Now there are Many-in-ONE and Many More, and still there is ONE. To make the story relevant the reader supplies the applicable antecedent.
All stories have a humor about them, some however becomes settled in, like dirt in a grave. The mind is built to come up with something, thus it does. The story is buried and later resurrected as something new, which it isn’t. The story isn’t new because the human mind that has the fiction built in isn’t new. Minds are stuff dreams are made of.
Scene 22
Hera stood mature and resolute by the small fountain spring in front of her home on Olympus. She stared out beyond three universes that lay like water ponds in her sight. Hera stood in mind as in a library as do all the gods on Olympus, which is among other things not spoken, a library of souls, a spiritual DNA script of Passion before Life, the Essence of Unconscious-an-Consciousness, the seed, the ring, the system. A catalogue, if you Will, of Creation in its bud.
Hera whispered, “Athena.”
As in the time before a blink of the eye is first considered, Athena appears the most determined and mindset protector. A warrior guardian who would stand twice the stature of Hera if she dared. Hera’s three water pond universes stretched out across the green mother field were as three small puddles to Athena. It is she that carries the Trumpet of Conclusions to eventually be blown and heard silently reverberating across and through All-that-Is in Reality and Imagination alike.
As in the time before a blink of the eye is first considered, Athena appears the most determined and mindset protector. A warrior guardian who would stand twice the stature of Hera if she dared. Hera’s three water pond universes stretched out across the green mother field were as three small puddles to Athena. It is she that carries the Trumpet of Conclusions to eventually be blown and heard silently reverberating across and through All-that-Is in Reality and Imagination alike.
From a long jump down to the human perspective of her-an-his universe seen and unseen, which is but the center of the dark pupil in the eye of Athena, the most intelligent and wisest of the Olympians, who first sprang a fully mature warrior guardian, from the splitting headache of the great and mighty Zeus. Leaving him sadly, a little less gifted than he was before.
Rumor has it that she once had Wings, as no Messenger who ever flew from any Place, but she drew them and plucked them out whole as two great swords-an-shields, and shoved them into the deepest and mightiest place in her Guardian's Heart, for added strength were she to ever need it.
What sense would this description make to an ancient Greek? Or any wide-eyed human of those days, be they dead or alive? What sense does it mean to the modern reader? Very little, I imagine. Why. Because this is a story beyond orthodox belief, even though reason is the center of it and reason will carry it through.
Scene 23
Supper at the Mikroikia. The five sat at the rectangular table away from the bar area and in the darkest corner. A variety of fish, a Mediterranean salad and local red wine were in their collective thoughts, so that is what they had, another of the most satisfying meals they had ever tasted.
Salaman, Mario and Thales sat on a long bench looking out at the others and the window and entrance beyond while Kassandra and Sophia sat on the bench on the opposite side of the table facing the men and the back wall.
From an outsider’s perspective it would appear that this small lively family restaurant was serving food on invisible dishes and in invisible glasses, giving the appearance of a pleasing pantomime of gustatory delight being enjoyed by all. Conversation, focusing on the eyes and facial expressions of the person talking; listening skills honing in on the marvelous sounds of the human voice, that is what sitting around the table is all about when Dead. The voice and face are what keep the people conscious of others as well as themselves. Living solely in one’s own thoughts produces a silent agony that drives them to this comradery. Instead of sharing food, they share themselves at every meal.
Unknown to those in the establishment another guest sat on the bench directly across from Mario, a wingless being the size and appearance of a small woman child if she were noticed. Cherub-like, she listened closely to the conversation of the hour. She is Metis, the Titan, the first wife of Zeus, the morally wise counselor, the mother of Athena and maker of her daughter’s armor, seemingly forever bound to the belly of Zeus, swallowed, but never eaten and digested.
Now, she thought, here I am at supper to digest this dinner-held dead human strategy while my unsuspecting Athena prepares with the marriage-feasting Hera. As Metis listened she found herself struck with the injustice that had befallen these human innocence. They had arrived Here through their trials and inspired good works in life. Their goal was to visit their great grandchildren and to tell them how it was in this Place, to give them added hope that the children could eventually build a better world for all the children of the world.
A sudden streak of empathy with the humans bolted Zeus directly. And, beyond this he realized this innocent human hope of good will to children all was beyond his station as King thinking: these are mere translucent creatures, the flawed remains of good will that have passed beyond the physical realms.
At his Olympian throne Zeus looked up to the piece of gold locked in the sky and saw it slightly tarnished. His sudden belly ached as did his forehead. To remain all-wise in this contest, he resolved, I’ll need to be in the most humble of disguise should this tentatively modest human uprising turn the mighty Zeus against his older brother, Hades.
The End of Chapter Two
of the fourth book in the Merlyn’s Mind series
© 2009 Richard H. Orndorff
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