A very good night’s sleep. Then breakfast at McD’s as Mary Lou did not have your breakfast concept in mind when last visiting the grocery.
The continuation of the scene will focus on the ‘spiritual magic’ and end with a flash. The thunder will follow soon enough. – Amorella.
I assume this is a show not tell scene, but how do you show ‘spiritual magic’ apart from the two women? What kind of lead in is needed here? I think Grandma Earth should play a part, a booster rocket out of this world and into another. What other? A spiritual world beyond the Place of the Dead, beyond the Tree of Thought and Light? How to get from Here to There? How can that happen in a conscientious imagination? To be in the Presence of the Supervisor is surely the ‘flash’. Is it shown by accident or design? Can there be such a thing as accidental design? What is ‘felt’ or ‘understood’ in the flash as it is beyond or below the five or even six quite ordinary human senses? My hands and fingers grow cold in such thoughts. I am immediately reminded of the opening Grandma’s Story in the first book Braided Dreams.
Grandma’s Story - One
“I, Grandma Earth, have been summoned by Merlyn to show fragmented stories from the tailbone up through the human mind. Captain Leo Lamar, tugging freedom across the Ohio to the Underground Railroad delivers the stories to the Living. Richard is the author or conductor on the railroad if you will. You are welcome to come along as long as you keep on the tracks.
I have an old story for you, nodded Grandma, a man is in worldly trouble long ago. Merlyn has a mind to listen in, and thus, so do you.
It is the beginning of dawn and my shoulders shiver. This is the way it is in here. I hear the crickets and other small creatures around the swamp. I am inside a hole in the wall and there is no way out. I am stuck. This is the way it is. I cannot get out. Let me out. Let me out.
It is the beginning of dawn and my forearms shiver. This is the way it is. I hear the crickets and the other small creatures. I am in a hole in the wall and there is no way out. This is the way it is. I cannot get out.
My fingers are cold and full of ice. It is winter in spring. It is dawn. The birds sing. I am no bird. It is cold, and I am ice forming on the river. I am floating and cold. The river is not what I am. I am continuity, a common ground in icy hands. . . .”
**
This is where I am, where the story began. The ice is in my fingers. It has never left. I know this sense of things. I have been there. I have been to all the places in the books. My mind has never left them. Subjective experiences all. The reader sees my secret dreams. There is no other way to share these things that dance between heart and soul and soul and mind. The experience is transcendental on or in a level beyond or below being human, perhaps both at once. There is no matter, not even thoughts to make words.
So, you see, orndorff, the experience, the spiritual magic, is beyond or rather, before ‘thought’. ‘Before’ makes more sense here. This is the reason for ‘Merlyn’. For the pre-Celtic influence, for Grandma Earth or, if you will, Mother Earth first. But, in this ‘experience’, Mother Earth is not ‘first’. This ‘setting’ with the Supervisor is pre-conditioned. Find the next words you are searching for in Melville’s Moby Dick. – Amorella.
Moby Dick. Chapter 134
". . . Starbuck, of late I've felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that hour we both saw--thou know'st what, in one another's eyes. But in this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this hand--a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.--Stand round men, men.
Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab--his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half-stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere I break, yell hear me crack;and till ye hear that, know that Ahab's hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, in the things called omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface; then rise again, to sink for evermore. So with Moby Dick--two days he's floated--to-morrow will be the third. Aye, men, he'll rise once more,--but only to spout his last! . . .”
From: Melville’s Moby Dick. Chapter 134: The Chase - Second Day.
**
That didn’t take you long to find via The Gutenberg Project series.
In just the few minutes to find, download and a quick search – I knew what the lines were and where they would be. So few are such sparsely worded lines in all of the literature in my heart of hearts.
“Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled.”
Post this and warm those hands, boy. Relax. Time will out that this be written down from the same such source that drove Ahab and Melville, and all such others to tell the semblance of an honest truth in nothing less than fiction. – Amorella.
Such it is that the same thoughts and feelings my character Merlyn does feel will also be my own to make these forward words honest and true from heart to soul to mind and fingertips. This is what it is within, to be the author, first reader and final editor of this, the Merlyn’s Mind series. – rho.
Early afternoon. You are at Barnes & Noble’s at Polaris after a Graeter’s ice cream at Uptown Westerville and you feel a world away from this morning’s writing.
Strange how that is. When one is immersed in one’s sense of creative art, one is at one with herorhis consciousness, and perhaps even unconsciousness since time, as it were, ceases to exist. Reality quickly enters when I discover I have had my Word speller off. Lots of errors which I will have to correct on the blog.
You see, I don’t care so much about such errors, orndorff. Matters of deep passion are in a language where spelling and grammar don’t really count. You feel humbled by your lack of spelling abilities, but I feel you are enriched by them. – Amorella.
We are not of the same consciousness Amorella, either that, or I am indeed a multiple personality. I would never feel enriched by my errors, particularly grammatical ones. All those years of teaching and daily fear of grammatical mistakes on the board or in handouts. I made them and made a joke out of it by giving points any time someone spotted one. But, within it was no joke. I am always humbled by such things when dealing with the English language. The language is sometimes a hard horse to ride, but I climb back on because I have no choice. How else to share thought? Passion is secondary to thought in my mind, for you it appears first. It is a marked difference between us. I will make the corrections when we are back in Cleveland. In the meantime, I will hope no one is taking a peek at the site. Oh well, such is life, no sense on dwelling on what cannot be changed, even in the moment.
Carol is at the magazine center and has two books. Shortly you will be stopping at Potbelly’s for a quick lunch before the drive north.
After lunch and a call to Kim you are stopping at Macy’s before the trip home rather than after. In the meantime you found spelling errors on your MacBook document of the "Encounters In Mind" blog, the 9 April posting, so you will make the corrections according online later.
I remember fooling around with the Word preferences a couple of days ago that must be when I inadvertently unclicked the process of showing the error.
First we need to have a transition from Merlyn’s mixed feelings on Brigit and Vivian. Let’s go to it.
I need to get in my mind what spiritual magic means. First, the dictionary.
For ‘spiritual’ in this context, let’s use: incorporeal sacred phenomena. And, for ‘magic’ let’s use: seemingly supernatural enchantment. Combinations of what is found in your Merriam-Webster’s.
Thank you for the help, Amorella. I would still be debating.
You do not yet consciously know its use in context. Tricky words for the few philosophical readers to play with. Another reason for the transparency in all the notes.
I don’t think anyone is really that interested, Amorella, but better to be safe than sorry. Clarity is elementary element of any writing to share with a third party. Actually, even with me first as my name goes on the legal line. In any case, Merlyn is a shaman of the first order and his character must be presented as such. Books by Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade immediately come to mind.
You need nothing more in terms of background to keep the focus in this scene. I consider both shaman-like thinkers of the twentieth century. – Amorella.
Okay. I am into this particular sentence below even though I am sitting in the car in the parking lot outside of Macy’s south entrance at the Polaris Shopping Mall.
“[Merlyn] smiled, no one Living or Dead can legitimately question this because I am ElseWhere. I am off the Board. I am consciousness outside and before the Creation of the Tree of Thought and Light.”
Scene Three as you now have it:
Scene 3
Merlyn soon found himself slipping into dreamtime during the pleasant blue light of day. On introspection he thought, I’m not that tired. Being dead has a pleasant side, no aches or pains unless I want them. All sensory appears psychosomatic. I think in my native Celtic tongue but when I want to be heard I appear to be immediately understood by others I am in presence with. Irish, Latin, Greek, English, Norse are my in my resume. Languages are my forte.
Therein his mind glided naturally into, Ogham, the Celtic alphabet, which has letters based on the names of trees as they are shaped in reasonably forked branches. Kenning-like poetic thoughts produced the alpha-an-beta, and in this poesy not all the tree letters are known to humankind, never were, and in that lies a wisdom in the Mystery of the Letters. Merlyn thought, once alive, now dead, I sound the letters and still they are heard by the Living through their eyes alone. In this sounding sense of reason the silent ears of the Dead are but whispering eyes to the living.
A lot of people effected my living. Family, friends, acquaintances, and perceived enemies. People are not an indifference to me. Living or Dead each is a piece on the crystal board. Each is in herorhis own squared area of consciousness or lack of it. All have a shared square area of the same heavenly blue sky randomly flight decked with clouds of similar fluff.
Two friends float above the rest within my soul. Why? I have never known because some friends are older, better known and deeper within. Both at once were living druidesses who snaked and coiled their way around my very soul.
Brigit of Iona was a human reincarnate of the earlier Brigit, who was thought by some a goddess. She was not. She was a female sage, a physician and a smith as was her druidic father, who also had been a physician and a smith. I was placed to dangle on the bottom of her moon silver charm bracelet. She stirred my fiery passions into her hot and throaty caldron and had the summary of my Celtic faith for an immediate dinner.
The second was Vivian who designed a silver and golden brooch to capture my reason with the heavy breathing in and out through her tangling net of erotic charms. A crystallized madness she became in my imagination alone. I never touched her nor her me. No need when she was already a haunt beneath my boneless bag, a sorry sack of skin.
Both women were equally a damnable pleasant witchery. I, Merlyn, a once shining jewel, druidically placed in a rolled leathery piece of ancient pre-Celtic phylactery by Priestess Brigit and Priestess Vivian. Both druidesses became leather strapped, amulet-like pistons in the youth of my flamed mortal earthly engine. Scroll-like I was wound and unwound from mind to soul and soul to heart. And, thus bodiless, I was driven into an inconceivable madness while making a sorcerous choice. Unthinking, I chose both to be in a spiritual magic with both women at once.
Merlyn peered into the elementary considerations of his being included in the highest first order of druidic shamans. The same druidic hierarchical setting in which he would also place Brigit and Vivian. He immediately determined his chess queen’s position to be off the board. Merlyn thinks, I am a Betweener, no one would question this. He smiled, no one Living or Dead can legitimately question this because I am ElseWhere. I am off the Board. I am in a consciousness outside and before the Creation of the Tree of Thought and Light. [to be continued]
***
You are in Cleveland and have been busy with the family since. Post what you have for tonight. – Amorella.
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