Mid-morning and you just returned from Home Depot with a new trash can and recycle can as Kim needed both. Babies make trash, it is the way of the world.
I am reminded of the play The Way of the World by William Congreve, eighteenth century, a satire.
Go back to Google and put in a bit about it. From Wikipedia:
“The epigraph found on the title page of the 1700 edition of The Way of the World contains two Latin quotations from Horace’s Satires. In their wider contexts they read in English:
▪ "It is worthwhile, for those of you who wish adulterers no success, to hear how much misfortune they suffer, and how often their pleasure is marred by pain and, though rarely achieved, even then fraught with danger."
▪ "I have no fear in her company that a husband may rush back from the country, the door burst open, the dog bark, the house shake with the din, the woman, deathly pale, leap from her bed, her complicit maid shriek, she fearing for her limbs, her guilty mistress for her dowry and I for myself."
The quotations offer a fore-warning of the chaos to ensue from both infidelity and deception.”
What attracts my interest the most in the Wikipedia piece are the characters and the quotes from Horace. Mom had the book, “Quotations” by Bartlett an old thirties edition, I inherited it. I read it in junior high and early high school. It is a great book. I’m sure Horace’s quotes are in it somewhere. I would be surprised it they were not. Very funny. My kind of humor. This also reminds me of a more modern British comedy with John Cleese, “Fawlty Towers”. The BBC sitcom was quite enjoyable, still is. What does this have to do with The Rebellion?
Nothing. I just wanted these ideas on the table, that’s all.
Amorella, I am no good at writing a comedic scene. Is Sophia going to stop by Agathia’s and find Thales there? There is a scene in Austin’s Sense and Sensibility where Edward Ferrars interrupts Eleanor Dashwood and Lucy Steele. It is understated and hilarious. I would like to include a scene of that sort. That would be very funny if pulled off well. Austin was so clever, so focused on the basic human condition.
Mid-afternoon. Time for a nap old man. This next scene is between Salaman and Mario. That which both wish would come up, doesn’t. Looking at alternatives, just in case. Problem is, how does one sacrifice for an event that has already been sacrificed for? Post.
One nap and one errand to the store later, you are ready to work. Let’s go to it. > You spent time trying to find design specifications for the Temple of Asclepius, the healer as you think it would be a good design for the façade of the Gate to the bridge. This is taking more time than you thought, plus you and the family took time to watch last night’s ‘24’. Continue for a bit. Almost twenty-two hundred hours and you have completed scene twenty-one. Count the number of words you have to date in this chapter.
There are approximately eight thousand nine hundred words so far. Chapter one has eight thousand one hundred and chapter two has some eight thousand three hundred. Is this the end of the chapter?
Seems likely as we want to have some consistency in length established.
I did not expect this. The scene is rather depressing.
What did you expect orndorff?
I don’t know. We have a long way to go before they lose the rebellion.
The Living lost too, you know. And, look where you are?
The sting of reality.
The funny thing is, is that some people think you live in a fantasy.
That is truly funny, Amorella. It really is.
Scene 21
Mario and Salaman stood on the high west rocky precipice looking down some fifteen hundred feet, north to south through the small city-state from Mother’s home on the hill, down Eleusis Street to where it ends at the Styx. The bridge building had begun with the bridge’s entrance gate. Mario explains the details to Salaman.
The gate façade is set to replicate the Temple of Asclepius. Twelve sixteen foot wide stone steps from river beach up to the rectangular base stone floor. The front wall, closest to the town, is to be sixteen rectangular stone blocks high, each cut block twelve inches long, ten inches high and eight inches thick.
The front wall consists of four blocks in from the outer west corner to the arched entrance. The same four blocks in from the outer east corner to the arched entrance. The height of the wall is ten blocks. The eleventh block begins the arch. Four blocks up from the eleventh ends the arch and three more blocks up to the top of the wall sets the architrave.
A simple concrete frieze tops the architrave with a small centered relief of Asclepius the Healer, the bearded god of medicine holding a serpent-entwined staff. Presently the rectangular floor of the façade is complete the size of which will hold four corner Doric columns to the front and with one middle column and back corner column.
Salaman replies, “A rectangle rather than a square about sixteen feet wide at the front and eight feet deep at the sides.”
“Right. With four corner Doric columns, plus two on the front and back and one centered on each side.”
Salaman stated, “Originally it was going to be square.”
“True,” declared Mario, “but we have changed the dimensions of the bridge to the height of twelve feet above the Styx and a width of either twelve or sixteen feet.”
“The final width will be decided soon.”
Salaman deadpanned, “It is a working plan.” Both laughed at the reality neither wanted to admit.
“The relief will be on both the front and back of frieze.”
“I like the simplicity,” added Salaman. “Essentially this will be higher than a military construction but within the bounds of civility.”
“It is a wonderful view.”
“The Styx stretches out as wide as the Mediterranean.”
“So it appears.” Mario points back to the city. “We appear civilized even in our deathly repose.”
“Strange how that is. Other towns all along the coast just as at home,” said Salaman.
Mario contemplated, “And no one has ever found the length of the great River.”
“It could be as long as forever, but it’s width cannot, for we know the Living are on the other side.”
“That would be Egypt,” joked Mario. Again, both laughed, but the hollowness of the laughter spread itself thin until it dangled there at the end of a rope.
There is more to this than we know, thought Salaman.
Mario stopped thinking altogether and tried to regain his joy of the marvelous view.
The End of Chapter Three
of the fourth book in the Merlyn’s Mind series
©2009 Richard H. Orndorff
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