06 October 2010

Notes & a draft selection: intro A of scene nine

        Up with the sun for a change. Picked up the papers, had breakfast while reading the paper and thinking about when an upcoming Seldon Crisis would appear in real life. What would it take, you wonder, to trip the world into change, and what then would the world change into?

         Sounds like a plot for a movie or television more than anything else, Amorella. That’s my thought on the subject. We had ‘V’ last year and this year it is ‘The Event’. I enjoy both – still have science fiction in my blood and I guess I miss my “Pouch Text” stories in the process. Asimov was the best and Clarke not far behind. What is the plausibility? That is the question real life asks, and I say, not much in terms of change in the world. We are still in a Renaissance as far as technology is concerned, thank goodness! A friend and I were talking about how great it is to be alive and retired and having the Internet at our disposal. Conversation and research world wide is wonderful for those of us growing up with short wave radios providing some of the same experience albeit one way for those such as I who couldn’t pass the Morse Code to be a HAM operator.

         Here I am sounding like an old man. I’ve mentioned that story time and time again. Reminds me of Swift’s “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift”. Funny and true lines:

. . .
See, how the Dean begins to break:
 Poor Gentleman, he droops apace, 10 
You plainly find it in his Face:

That old Vertigo in his Head, 11 
Will never leave him, till he's dead:

Besides, his Memory decays,
He recollects not what he says;

He cannot call his Friends to Mind;

Forgets the Place where last he din'd:

Plyes you with Stories o'er and o'er,

He told them fifty Times before.
How does he fancy we can sit,

To hear his out-of-fashion'd Wit?

But he takes up with younger Fokes,

Who for his Wine will bear his Jokes:

Faith, he must make his Stories shorter,
Or change his Comrades once a Quarter: …

From: “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift,” by Jonathon Swift, Lines: 80-96, 1739.   [www.ethnicity.rutgers.edu]

         And, I didn’t have to have much memory to conjure up the lines, me with little to no memory at all. I love Swift. Those last four lines are a kicker. As far as being human is concerned nothing much changes and three thousand years of literature shows that if ever anyone wanted such proof.

         You're point being?

         These books with my name on them romanticize our species, and, at times, it is depressing to think upon it. How’s that, Amorella. You want a straight answer and you got it.

        No, orndorff, you got it. Time to put it on paper so you can see such a realistic thought from your head. The romance is satire, old man. You are not so romantic as you like to think. So, stuff that in your pipe and give it a smoke. – Post, while you are at it. – Amorella. 






         Mid-afternoon. Late satisfying lunch at Panera/Chipotle. A stop at Kroger’s on Tylersville as you wait in the parking lot. You are ready to work on the beginning of scene nine, then the conclusion. You are looking to 6500 chapter words or so and you presently have about 4000. Several more scenes to look forward to, boy.

         I don’t mind. It is always new to me. It is a book I like to read anyway. It is always a mystery as to what is going to happen in each scene and it is also a mystery as to how the book will all tie together in its conclusion, which this is at least the first half of the story, right?

         It is the first two-thirds, orndorff, rising action until the last scene or so. Then it is “I know how this is going to end, but I don’t know who or why?” That will be in the next book, the who and why.

         I assume it somehow reflects a parallel with Adam and Eve  and Satan. Original Sin has to play a part, Hubris/Pride, as the seven deadly sins  and virtues are included for moral argument. This is about a moral argument isn’t it?

         The argument of whether it is morally dignified and right to speak to the Living about how things are. It is also about doing this for the right reasons. In here, orndorff, it has to be for the right reasons because it is from your mind, your humanity, that I must tow the story. – Amorella.

         For authenticity?

         No. Because, my boy, I have no other choice. – Amorella.

         Alas, what a sad state of affairs that must exist from your perspective. Such gallows humor. I can’t help but smile at the irony. I think it is irony. Anyway, the situation causes me to smile.

         Now you see a fuller framed picture, old man. I am a Betweener of sorts as I stand (hypothetically) between your naked memory, mind and unconsciousness and the reading audiences’ conscience. Your own consciousness first as you are the first reader. You see, even reasoning it out if I were a minute alien intelligence, or even truly angelic, what other choice would I have? Human thoughts and words in your primary language is a must. Translation is difficult enough in any case, boy, you have said it yourself. So, the story would be quite different from another human’s experiences, but not so much where it counts the most. The story would still be as a series of dreams and open to interpretation as real dreams are. What else would you expect, imagination or no?   > Now that you are home, post. – Amorella. 




         This is good. What it means to me is that I have the Merlyn stories already wrapped up in my head, they just need to work their way out. The bases are covered from imagination (me) alone, to a minute alien, or to a ghost of Merlyn or someone else or an angel of unknown or unknowable origin. Those are the nouns/pronouns that cover the process writing. And, the conclusion of each book is still authored by me. These wisps of thought just make it more fun from my perspective, back to what it was sixty or so years ago, self-entertainment.

         You pretty much have the bases covered, orndorff. Next time we get together here let’s head directly to the chapter six document and do some work.

         Sounds good to me.

         Post for now. – Amorella.

         You have about half of this first section of scene nine. Post it for tonight. Amorella. 



Scene Nine

         Lying on their backs the bed padding drifts beneath their minds. Thales toyed with and between Kassandra’s fingers only to slowly and methodically capture the middle and ring finger of her left hand and quietly grasp the two as if they were his own. She moved sensuously in such a way to follow through in a similar manner and grasp the ring and middle fingers of his right hand. His right arm and her left lay hard and close between their bodies while her right arm and his left stretched across their chests to rest. One clasping above the other clasping below. Neither then moved while nearly full moon slowly moved a short distance from east to west above.

         In a natural cadence each unloosed the clasped fingers and rolled on their sides to face one a finger or two apart. Kassandra looked for the slightest of smiles but saw none rise into his lips. She whispered, “With such a pleasant moonlight as this for cover I am surprised you are not more content in my bed.”

         “You were good to touch and hold; content is not so easy with  this present, this wandering mind.”

She smiled and joked, “I thought it was your fingers that have been doing most of the wandering,” she giggled, “penetrating my foggy thoughts as casually as this amorous moonlight.” She frowned and spoke more straight-forward and friend-like, “Still no smile. My bed like my mind is no turntable of slow motion, Thales. It scares me when you are hard thinking with eyes so dark and wall-like.”

         “I worry that Zeus rests just above us. Zeus or the Supervisor sits just beyond the top corners of the walls, close enough to curtain some of this too bright moonlight you speak so softly of.”

         Her frown fell into concern as she slowly distanced herself a hand’s width away, “That blank look I’ve witnessed before Thales. It is frightening.”

         He grumbled without a thought and said, “You are a silly woman,” then quickly but gravely added, “I mean you are being silly, woman.” In the pause of such personal hours his mind roared into her unmoving silence as she turned two fists of distance from him and faced the ever silent beauty of the stone wall as if it were her own centeredness, strong and resilient, a woman who knows who she is.
**

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