You were uptown running an errand, paying a bill actually, and you remembered how it was as a kid when your Grandmother Orndorff used to take you Uptown Westerville and you would run in and pay three bills, the electric and gas was in one building, the bank deposit in another, and the grocery bill in another. Usually it was a cash exchange and you felt like a bigger more responsible kid to carry money from the car into places. Now, you see you were being used by grandma, but you used to do somewhat the same thing with Kim when some errands had to be run.
Children have lots of energy and many don’t mind doing errands to show their worth, their dignity from my perspective. Human dignity is of greater value than individual freedom in my book. The Dead have an unwritten (of course) social contract. (This, by the way, is the concept you were trying to recall last night.) You are suddenly remembering B. F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity and thinking you need to review it, but no need here. This is the theme, if you will, of scene ten.
I remember writing a poem about Skinner’s book, I think it was published along with students’ works at Escola Graduada. Perhaps not.
As your curiosity is aroused go check it out. – Amorella.
First, now I remember what triggered the original thought yesterday – the political yard signs to “vote no” on the Mason school levy issue. It seems to me that voting for schools that are doing their jobs, is a given. I have no children in school but I feel I have a personal social contract to vote for these and other humanitarian levies when they are on the ballot unless extreme circumstances would force me not to, i.e. known corruption or gross misused of funds. A social contract is of utmost importance in local, state, national and international politics. It is the thread that binds the individual to the state of the world. Human dignity for all, children included, is written between the lines of such a social contract in my mind. Opinion, but it is my own, and as legal author of these Merlyn books I want to make sure this is included within them. Merlyn’s dreams are a part of this social contract in my head. I don’t believe I ever recognized this as such before, or if I did, I had forgotten its greater importance in the stories. – rho
I could not find the poem on Skinner’s work but I did find the paperback which I bought 21 September 1972 which means I may have written the poem later (although I may have read the hardbound while overseas as I had an access to newly published books in English). What I did find is a poem I wrote on 20 March 1975 which is based on the “Knowledge or Certainty” episode of Joseph Bronowski’s 1970’s PBS Series, Ascent of Man.
In Memory of Dr. Bronowski
The ascent of man
requires that I step
shoe deep
into a silent pool of strained humanity
so that I may stoop and tug
at the muddy ashes and past conceptions
of photo-gray and living men.
The ascent of man
requires that I, the scientist and artist,
become a limitless hollow one –
living in a bent lit universe of infinite quantum waves,
built on cell thoughts and multi-meated truths;
built on the strained, sweaty ashes of past living men.
The ascent of man
requires that I weep and measure in a metric of tears;
the ascent of man
requires that I also lend an unseen hand
with blinded fingers, square sensitive to the touch –
fingers dripping the blood of muddy and slippery ash.
The ascent of man
requires me to care for a spring of human ashes;
aware of the touch:
a silent mental pool within
cries out in waves,
and the sides of my rounded brain splash with morbid echoes;
O my God. O my God. O my God.
You wrote this after witnessing a concluding scene of Dr. Jacob Bronowski where he stood formally dressed with newly polished shoes standing in a two to three inch rain puddle on the muddy grounds of the Auschwitz concentration/extermination camps. You were and still are stunned and impressed by his show of human dignity in that scene.
It brings me to weep on thinking on Dr. Bronowski, Amorella. I am amazed the scene struck so deep to last so long. I shall never forget that most dignified scene in the Ascent of Man series.
I want to include a photograph of the man.
Do so, but show the man, not his gravestone in Highgate Cemetery, London.
You would like to add some words here, but you have said enough. Post. - Amorella.
You checked for a video of “Knowledge or Certainty" and found it on YouTube for anyone who is interested. The scene you wrote the poem on was in the final five minutes of the film.
I re-watched this scene for the first time in thirty-five years. Strange, it does not have the same visual impact for me today. It is not the visual that my emotions of the event rise, it is from deep down in my heartansoul from where I first witnessed this and wrote the poem. It is interesting that our physical senses are not so important as the dynamics of the human heartansoulanmind. With my heartansoulanmind I was there witnessing his wading into the rain puddle and lifting up the mud that may have held a segment of ash from his own immediate ancestors. I was as there when it counted the most to me, to my self, to my consciousness. Who says we cannot be two places at once. I have been there and did not realize it. – rho
Displacement, orndorff of what is real inwardly and what is real outwardly. It is not entanglement as in quantum physics, but it is a natural phenomenon when it comes to being human. Post. – Amorella.
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