Up before early. You came downstairs and promptly forgot what was on your mind.
Habit. I punched Safari. Checked my email to find an iTunes ad. I opened it and found all this ‘stuff’ and deleted. Checked Fbk to find nothing new. I should have punched Notes first.
What did you expect to find?
Something on my mind. I will say this. Many years ago I thought it would be extremely cool if someone invented a machine to read your mind for just twenty-four hours – everything, conscious and unconscious. I would do it in a minute. Now I have all this ‘stuff’ – at least twenty years worth and it appears relatively meaningless ramblings.
Why did you change ‘is’ to ‘appears’ three lines ago?
Because deep down I don’t think it is completely meaningless, I think I have meaning. I think all human beings have meaning.
Do you think human beings have purpose?
Only what they create for themselves.
There you go, that’s what’s on your mind presently. Post. Perhaps later you will remember what you forgot. – Amorella.
Up again at mid-morning. Breakfast. Paul got in, took Owen duty and is heading up to bed. Carol is watching Owen. A change is shifts. You tried playing with the cat but she wanted to be chased and finally gave up on you for that cat game. Nothing remembered, nothing gained.
You watched last night’s ‘V’ on the iPad with earphones. Works wonders.
It bothers me, the sense of aliens – mostly I guess I hope better, that we can raise our standards. Romantic idealism, I know. ‘V’ is straight sci fi, more Heinlein and soap oriented than Asimov. Old standards of fifty years ago. I enjoy the show but it leaves me a bit down in the dumps every week.
Let’s see how many words we have. > Four thousand, one hundred and thirty-nine.
This chapter is taking a long time. I have a feeling I am running out of things to say. > We are back at the grocery as Paul is watching Owen. Carol wants to make something special for supper and needs more ingredients. Supposedly I’m cooking up something for scene eight, or rather Amorella has already cooked it up, but I am not sure where we are going. In context it might be best to have Mario and Aeneas meet up with Takis but it is going to take longer than a day to walk the ten or so miles. I suppose Takis can hurry them along but how? The Dead, it would seem to me, have no place for magic and spells and the like. They appear to hardly exist at all yet the books are full of them. Very odd juxtapositioning here. A bit funny when I think about it.
Let’s get to it orndorff.
Scene 8
Early afternoon. Mario and Aeneas are on the north cliff looking back and down to the bridge construction in progress. “The temple gate appears done from here,” said Aeneas, “and there is progress on the first section of the bridge.”
“It will take a while but the path is the optimum way to find Panagiotakis,” replied Mario a few minutes later. “We ought to be there by dusk.”
Walking the river’s edge was comfortable and somewhat relaxing, and Aeneas wondered why he didn’t take it more often just to escape the ordinary urban environs. Aeneas was also the first to notice a disheveled looking stranger walking towards them. Upon the observation the stranger waved in a familiar and friendly fashion. “Hello!” shouted Takis with an energetic smile. “I hear you two boys are looking for me.” He said nothing more until they met with a greeting ritual of a slight bow of the head and an extension of the right hands in a short clipped clasp at the same moment. The hands are let go as the nod of the heads rises. Surprisingly to Mario, Takis took Aeneas’s hand first but he greeted both warmly. [to be continued]
**
As I worked on this I had the notion to check ‘substance theory’ on Wikipedia because I feel this is a direction which the conversation is about to follow. Here are two slightly edited selections:
Substance theory, or substance attribute theory, is an ontological theory about object-hood, positing that a substance is distinct from its properties. This is part of essentialism in that ousia as a substance can also be a descriptor of an object's being (ontology) and/or nature. As substance or ousia is a permanent property of an object without which the object no longer remains itself and therefore becomes some other object. Adherence to the philosophical doctrine of substance theory is known as substantialism. . . .
Argument from grammar
The argument from grammar uses traditional grammar to support substance theory. For example, the sentence, "Snow is white," contains a grammatical subject, "snow", and the assertion that the grammatical subject is white. The argument holds that it makes no grammatical sense to speak of "whiteness" disembodied, without snow or some other grammatical subject that is white. That is, the only way to make a meaningful claim is to speak of a grammatical subject and to predicate various properties of it. Substance theory calls this grammatical subject of predication a substance. Thus, in order to make claims about physical objects, one must refer to substances, which must exist in order for those claims to be meaningful.
Many ontology’s, including bundle theory, reject the argument from grammar on the basis that a grammatical subject does not necessarily refer to a metaphysical subject. Bundle theory, for example, maintains that the grammatical subject of statement refers to its properties. For example, a bundle theorist understands the grammatical subject of the sentence, "Snow is white", as a referent to a bundle of properties, including perhaps the containing of ice crystals, being cold, and being a few feet deep. To the bundle theorist, the sentence then modifies that bundle of properties to include the property of being white. The bundle theorist, then, maintains that one can make meaningful statements about bodies without referring to substances that lack properties.
**
You are back into the intent of interaction as far as Takis is concerned. This will go more smoothly than you anticipate. Time for a break. Post. Later, old man. – Amorella.
Later, is here, and you have finished scene eight. Post it. There is more to being in scene nine. – Amorella.
You were right. This went quickly. I was embedded in the characters and their short conversation. I am embedded in the emptiness. I am also held in the intensity of heartsoulmind matter of old Takis.
Yes, you are. We are back to a primitive form trancephysics, don’t you see. So simple, even a child in imagination can be carried from place to place with heartsoulmind. No light. No matter. – Amorella.
Scene 8
Early afternoon. Mario and Aeneas are on the north cliff looking back and down to the bridge construction in progress. “The temple gate appears done from here,” said Aeneas, “and there is progress on the first section of the bridge.”
“It will take a while but the path is the optimum way to find Panagiotakis,” replied Mario a few minutes later. “We ought to be there by dusk.”
Walking the river’s edge was comfortable and somewhat relaxing, and Aeneas wondered why he didn’t take it more often just to escape the ordinary urban environs. Aeneas was also the first to notice a disheveled looking stranger walking towards them. Upon the observation the stranger waved in a familiar and friendly fashion. “Hello!” shouted Takis with an energetic smile. “I hear you two boys are looking for me.” He said nothing more until they met with a greeting ritual of a slight bow of the head and an extension of the right hands in a short clipped clasp at the same moment. The hands are let go as the nod of the heads rises. Surprisingly to Mario, Takis took Aeneas’s hand first but he greeted both of Mother’s boys warmly.
Mario broke the ice first as they sat cross-legged a few feet from the Styx and observed the man carefully. Bedraggled and loosely woven clothing, olive skinned, wide thick eyebrows, a large nose and ruddy cheeks, a red rumpled and somewhat torn towel-wrapped turban on his head. The old man grinned at him with worn and yellowed teeth, the front one gapped enough to squirt a strong line of spit through. His dark eyes mirrored the young man’s puzzled gaze as he heard Mario speak, “You are one of the exceptions.”
“I am.” And, you are not, said Takis to himself.
Mario added, “You are Mother’s grandfather.” And, I am one of her much later children, thought Mario.
Takis sat with his right hand and index finger raised skyward. “I knew I was being dreamed by Merlyn in the beginning of Book One.” Takis paused then continued, “He was wrong, you know.”
“We were not in Merlyn’s dream. We have not read the dream.” said Aeneas. “Who is Merlyn?”
Merlyn dreamed I was eighteen thousand years ago, but now in the present it was one hundred and eighty thousand years ago.”
“We are dead,” responded Aeneas, “we are not in the present. We are in Elysium.”
Old Takis winked at Mario and said, “Aeneas, if the Dead are not in the Present, then they are in the Past or the Future.”
“Wait,” said Mario in a quick defense, “On Earth we are in the Past. Here is our eternal Present.”
“If this were so, young Mario, then you could not be building a wall into the Future.”
“You do not make sense, old man,” rebuked Aeneas.
“The Future is already walled. How can we be building one?” asked Mario.
“The bridge is a wall,” stated Takis calmly.
This is a trick, thought Aeneas, “Takis, you are old and wise. No Dead is older Here. We want to know if it is possible to visit the Dead of tribes other than Greece?”
“I am not of Greece, nor is Mother.”
“How are you here in Elysium?”
“I am no more here than you are,” said Takis as he studied Aeneas’s eyes. He turned to Mario, “Does young Aeneas here have eyes?”
“Yes, of course. We all have eyes,” said Mario.
Takis feigned a deep sigh and with finger still pointed upward asked, “Where is the light?” Noting the sudden silence, Takis added, “Where is the matter?”
Just as suddenly being Dead took on an added meaning of emptiness in black. Just as surprising to Mario and Aeneas, the three still sat cross-legged on and within Nothing. Intensity held them to the clear foreign mind of the old, once disheveled one, whose name is Panagiotakis and not Panagiotakis both at once.
***
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