Notes - Florida, my grandfather, and the Dead

         Dusk. You are packed and Carol is finishing up. Last minute odds and ends before loading the car. Later, dude.

         Light supper and the national news. Luggage is at the door ready to be packed in. Once this is completed the MacBook goes to the back seat. The iPads are updated and AT&T is on for updates on the move.

         The excitement builds, as always when we head to Florida. We love the drive down I-75 and I have been driving stretches of it since 1966 when I drove my grandfather, Clell Tullar Orndorff, over to the Miami area to see a retired colleague of his. We took my 1965 green VW Beetle, drove down to St. Pete then to Naples, over Alligator Alley to Miami and up to St. Augustine and home. Wonderful trip! My grandfather and me! I still feel that down home ‘special quality’ on every trip.

         In here the Dead aren’t so far away, boy. Half-a-heart at most.

         'Half-a-heart' brings forth a good feeling, Amorella.

         Later, old man, I'll give the phrase an explanation. For now it's a placement not a distance. Human hearts don't float in physics . . . least they don't in my stories. - Amorella. 

Notes - sc. 13 - conversation two & thought on convers. three

     Mid-morning. Busy day coming up as there are a number of errands and chores to be completed before heading south. Later, you raked one more time as the last city leaf collection is Wednesday. Stopped by the doctor’s so Carol could get her flu shot, then Olive Garden for lunch. Hallmark, Target, and Carol’s salon shop for trip necessities.

         You have a second conversation between sexual encounter one and two. Here it is:

***

         How would it really be, asked Salamon, if we met with someone who had killed our parents or grandparents?

         This is a problem, thought Sophia. We have been thinking the Dead would unite to find a way home, to Earth, back to the Living. She mumbled, “I would imagine this kind of thing has been resolved,” but further within her doubts were beginning to compound.

         “Like it is resolved within our own culture?” asked Salamon. “People avoid others or ignore them. You ostracize your enemy as others do you. We can always disappear in such situations and do. Avoidance. How is that going to work if we Dead have to unite on a common front?”

         “This is painful to think on, Salamon. Fratricides. Incest. Premeditated murder. People spend most of their time speculating what was going on in the perpetrator’s mind. Then floods of anger and vengeance for lack of justice.”

         Salamon chuckled darkly and commented, “It appears there is no divine justice here, at least not amongst our own cultural tribes.”

         “We are here in Elysium. Where are the other Greeks? Are they in Tartarus? Is this the division?”

         “Then we unite with other Dead who are as we are, the good, the considered heroes of the culture. The evil in each civilization is banished. That is how it seems,” responded Salamon.

         “Divine Justice then is swift and without retribution either way. We each, as we are, are satisfied with our friends, neighbors and acquaintances in this place.” Sophia, thus satisfied, added, “We have common ground in Justice.”

         Surprised by her positive tone, he asked, “All the Dead?”

         She responded knowingly with a smile, a raised eyebrow, and a sparkle in her eye, “I should think.”

***

         I am taken back by this short conversation. I thought it would be different, more somber and meticulously deliberate. Justice popped up. Who would have thought. I have definitions somewhere in all these notes.

         Not needed at this time, orndorff. These characters are not that Dead. Post. More later. – Amorella. 

       Took time to watch a drama, a crime gone amiss, “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead”, on Sundance. Carol is just coming in from her appointment and it is late afternoon. You captured a splice of a NY Times Review that fits your thoughts on the film.

“[Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead] from a script by Kelly Masterson, is a chronicle of destruction — physical, spiritual and moral. That most of the victims and most of the perpetrators are members of a single family gives the story some of the suffocating fatalism of an ancient tragedy. But the workings of fate figure far less in the narrative than bad choices and unlucky accidents. The evil in this world arises not out of any grand metaphysical principle, but rather from petty, permanent features of the human character: greed, envy, stupidity, vanity. There are no demons on display, just small, sad, ordinary people. The filmmakers rigorously tally the results of their sins, minor lapses made monstrous by the failure of love and the corruption of ambition. Simple, familiar desires — for money, sex, status, respect — end in murder.”  Review by A. O. Scott, NYTimes, 26 October 2007.

***

         I don’t think I ever remember hearing about this film, but it pretty much hits on the simple inherent problems conjured by our flaws in human character. Bad choices and unlucky accidents would seem to be the easiest cases of injustice to let go of if one were dead. Everyone, no matter how high herorhis moral character may be, can make bad choices and be fallen by unlucky accidents.

         You are wondering about the differences between desire and ambition, where the sins are consciously understood yet greed or envy or vanity takes over anyway.

         Synonyms for desire: wish, want, crave, covet

         Synonyms for ambition: aspiration (ennobling), pretension (false pride?).

         What desires and ambitions are in these two characters? Personal flaws/weaknesses come out in third discussion?  What do you have in mind for the third discussion, Amorella?

         A simple disagreement turned to argument over the worth of Mario, what motivates his character? Is there a flaw in it? And, of course neither see the same flaw in themselves for a bit of the dark humor. How’s that for something to think on? – Amorella.

         I suppose, though it seems to me Kassandra might be a better choice.

         Why is that?

         I thought that Sophia would verbally attack Kassandra because Sophia knows Salamon has slept with Kassandra and likes her well enough, so she might want to find out who Salamon likes better, Kassandra or herself, thus an argument would raise the emotional stake.

         By the same token, orndorff, Salamon might be thinking the same of Mario, and he may want to know who Sophia really favors.

I hadn’t thought that. I wonder why I took the woman’s perspective here? Do I do that often? Is it easier for me to think like I think a woman would think than like I, as a man, think? This is a weirdness thought.

Post, old man. More later, or tomorrow, whichever comes first. – Amorella. 

Notes - sc. 13 - conversation prep - morals & responsibility

        Home from a quick trip to Polaris in Columbus, lunch at Potbelly’s with Kim, Paul and Owen, and the delivery of cat Jadah to them for safekeeping until you return from a Florida holiday in a week or so. Neighbors on both sides house-sitting as well as the usual home surveillance devices set up in the mid-nineties. You upped your iPad from OS3 to OS4 and Paul showed you how the new system works. Tomorrow you will kick Carol’s iPad to the same. Electronics fuels some excitement just as the early Atari 2600 console and cartridges did back in the late seventies into the late eighties for you.

         Atari was simply fun, as is the Nintendo 64 which I still have and bring out of the closet every year or so for a few games. I know the games are much better today but I’ve lost the toy end for picking up serious music and the practical aspects of mail and networking. The only game I play regularly on the iPad is a free ‘Slots’ game. I’d rather hit the keyboard instead. This brings up tonight and I suppose a new section of scene thirteen after the first bit of sexual encounter between Sophia and Salomon. What are they going to talk about, chariot racing?

         How about a short ‘what if’ conversation, child-like wondering about how it might be in the other cultures. What about the dead soldiers meeting their counterparts, even those whom they killed or killed them? What about atrocities committed by both sides? The deceptions and alliances gone bad – we can keep this within families as well – how do those treat those who abused them in one form or another? If you remember you used this concept before, when Caesar meets Brutus after death.

         I don’t think I actually did, Amorella. It was a plan for somewhere in the books. I think people had to choose to sit and the same table with an enemy and drink wine and break bread so to speak. But if I remember right, this had to do with moving from Heaven to Hell or Hell to Heaven. Something along those lines. It was too long ago. I am sure it is somewhere in notes maybe ten years ago. I don’t think it is worth checking on. This is not what I expected here and now. Water over the dam. Imaginary thoughts without any real weight to them.

         So, you are beyond this sort of banter now?

         No, but I can’t see anything useful coming from it as far as the reading audience is concerned.

         You mean you can’t see anything useful coming from it as far as your own reading is concerned? What would you say to someone who had hacked your head off?

         I really don’t know, Amorella. I have never thought of such a thing.

         If you were dead and your head had been chopped off you might decide such a thought appropriate. What if a drunk driver had killed you in your prime? What would you say to such a person?

         If sheorhe were remorseful what else could one do but forgive herorhim. Accidents happen, drunk or not drunk. If the person were still fairly well pleased with herorhimself for the damage thus done I think I would rather not see the person at all. It would be one thing to be headless and be gloated at. I would rather not enjoy that person’s company. It could be quite complicated depending upon the sensitivity and empathy in an error prone world where we live. One is supposed to be responsible for herorhis actions. That’s the way our culture sees it, or at least used to. Now we can blame committees and companies and governments and so forth. The individual culprits may never see the blame. I get a vision of Dante’s Inferno here, where individuals were actually seen and punished for their misdeeds.

         How do you think the shaman got around this problem of individual morals and responsibility?

         I have no idea, Amorella. This can become really, really complicated.

         Which may be a reason why the Dead of the different cultures have not tried to see eye to eye?

         Maybe. I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.

         Well, orndorff, that is what they are going to talk about so you might as well begin considering these points. Post. – Amorella.

Notes - intro to scene 13 - Sophia & Salamon

         Mid-morning. You arrived home late last night after two very quick days in Westerville. One of the highlights to you beside seeing immediate family was visiting with Doug and Nancy at Steve and Karen’s home near Sunbury, Ohio. Insert the photo when you download.

         You have set the scene with what you have, and now need to fill in with a different perspective, building mutually creative bridges among the Dead. Let this percolate consciously for a wee bit. – Amorella.

         Almost twenty-one hundred hours, and you have completed the first draft introduction into scene thirteen. Post it as it is. – Amorella.

13

         After entering, Sophia anxiously sat down in the chair nearest the door. “I don’t think I have been you your privacy before?”

         “I have been to yours though,” smiled Salamon.

         She smiled demurely, “We were ready for a three-way discussion.”

         He sat down across from her in the open four cornered room with no windows but the fully open ceiling presently receiving the twilight. Salamon noted, “The bed-talk was about Mother’s original culture, that’s the way I remember it – that she was pre-Greek.”

         “What I remember most in the conversation is ‘Where are all the other Dead?”

         Salamon replied, “We need to bridge this gap. Mother is the key.”

         “What I am afraid of, Salamon, is that our bridge project will not become the symbol I am hoping for.”

         “It isn’t a symbol alone, Sophia. “We are into the construction. There may be a real connection, a real bridge to the other Dead even if there is not to the Living.”

         Salamon spoke comfortably, “It would make sense if they were on the other side of the river. Perhaps it really does wind onto itself.”

         She blurted almost unaware, “Mother knows things.”

         “I am sure of it.”

         “Why doesn’t she tell us the truth?”

         “About us, or about the Dead?”

         She sighed in disgust, “We are the Dead, Salamon.”

         “I meant the other Dead, Sophia. Don’t twist me about.”

         “Panagiotakis also knows. He may control Mother. It would not be unheard of that a shaman had the leader in his net.”

         “I cannot imagine that. Mother is his grandchild.”

         She struck, “Then why is he not considered our Father? Tell me that Salamon.”

         “Relax, Sophia. Let’s lie down and relax. Observe the heavens from the mattress. It is warm and pleasant. We can stare out and say what comes to mind. Create our own constellations. Create a few sips of wine and a mix nuts.”

         She glanced up, “I thought when I died I’d be closer to stars yet here they still are.”

         “See, a much more satisfying conversation.” He stood, pulled her from the chair. “I’ll get a couple of wine glasses.”

         “We can think our own fruit to go with it.”

         “That’s what I like to hear.” He picked up two small glass tumblers and two metal-like dishes from a common three story shelf setting along the west wall.

         Sophia sat on the mattress set on knee high flat stones with a surround of soft grass as a carpet. “Why do you have the grass?”

         “I like to feel it with hands and feet while sleeping. I’ll roll over, seemingly to frieze into stone, and wake up with tender blades of grass tickling my extremities. Stone coming to life amongst the grass.”

         “This is a wish to climb out of the grave, Salamon, that’s what it sounds like.” As well as looks like, she thought. Quaint or odd, I’m not sure which.

         He handed her a glass and dish then sat down on the edge of the mattress with her. Empty goblet to empty goblet, yet when each sipped sheanhe tasted the best of their memory of grape flavors. They sat awhile and said little, eventually, they held hands and fell onto the mattress and observed the twilight turn to starlight with the moon in the west.

         “It is strange,” whispered Sophia, when I was young I loved the moon more than the sun. It had mystery. Yet, here we are, no sun but light in day and the moon ever shines in day as it did when we were living.”

         “I had not thought that, but you are right, Sophia. I have never seen the moon in day. There is no need for jealousy with the sun here, but she shies away.”

         “She still dresses in one of her four quarters. A pretty sight even waning.” Sophia closed her eyes and with a secret smile, drifted into her youth.

         Sophia is so much smarter than myself, thought Salamon. Yet our fingers enjoy their play together. The sun still shines within with her touch. I become a puddle of stirring thought.

***

Notes - with an erasure enclosed

        After twenty-two hundred hours. You are ready for bed after a day full of last minute chores and errands relating to tomorrow and Friday. We can work on this scene thirteen when you can. Friends and family come first boy. Another reason why this works.

         Family and friends among the Dead, that is the way it is in the books and in my head too, but I separated the facts from the fiction.

         I am talking about how you got into this. Love and friendship, boy. You remember. You said, ‘I love my two friends more than the universe, more even than God,’ did you not?

         I did. My heart was in a thousand pieces, it still may be. I meant those words with all that was within me at that moment.

         What did you learn?

          

 What you have written in these two paragraphs above [now blank] needed to be seen by your own eyes. Now you may erase them. Private and true words from you to me. – Amorella.

I am thankful for the erasing.

Consider this a gift. Post. – Amorella.

What do I write in its place?

            What would you put in its place? Leave it blank, boy.  – Amorella. 

Notes - a hypothetical thought & last 'raw' scene 13

        Breakfast and the paper. Yesterday you and Carol had passport photos taken at AAA as they need renewed. Ten years older, and this time, no smiles allowed. Not so bad as the new groping at the airport.

         Being groped is not so dignified. I went with the body scanner. Not to worry, I thought at the time. A whole lot of nothing to be peeked about. Do the observers care? Not on my account I can assure you. I carry no weapons. I have no problems with the scanner machinery which is built for public safety, for the greater good. Why people would rather have real  rubber gloved hands touching than radiation is beyond me, especially because I don’t fly much to begin with. Professional travellers are a different story. I have no idea what to do about it.

         No one asked your advice, orndorff.

         I deserve that one, Amorella.

         Post. – Amorella.

         After noon, and a visit to the doctor for more meds for bronchitis, sinus and cough. Prescriptions being filled, Carol is taking back clothes to Carter’s while you wait and lunch is up next before the return to Kroger’s. Carol doesn’t want to go to Five Guys, Panera, Bob Evans, Chinese or Friday’s. You don’t want to go to Penn Station or City Barbeque. The nearby place you both like best is Longhorn Steak House and you were just there yesterday. You hope Dewey’s Pizza will be the place as you are getting hungry.

         Lunch at Dewey’s and a return to the Kroger lot for last minute Thanksgiving items and prescriptions. Cold and crisp with an otherwise California-like cloudless sky. I’ll chose this last set of positions, let’s go with number twenty. – Amorella.

         That is pretty up front of you, Amorella. I guess I no longer have to consider you are an angel in disguise.

         Interesting that you aren’t as up front as I am here. You thought about deleting the “I guess” but cannot bring yourself to do it.

         I most always have doubts, Amorella. It would be more than arrogant to make the statement: “I no longer have to consider you are an angel in disguise.”

         Why do you go so far as to consider such a statement sacrilegious?

         It was just a passing thought, Amorella. In the context of the whole of all the notes and the drafts of the Merlyn books I, deep down, consider these writing deeply personal and spiritual. It depends on how deep this goes. At times I could be on the edge of a spiritual reality the ‘human spirit’ is ‘mystically or otherwise’ connected to or running parallel to. The ‘spiritual’ in my mind, by definition, is open – a doorway is most always open. Thus, in context with my sense of ‘self’ that may survive physical death, it may be sacrilegious from that personal self. To think otherwise would be hypocritical and/or dishonest.

         A hypothetical may thus be a reality. – Amorella.

         Yes. An infinitesimally small possibility, but a possibility nevertheless – The soul attached to a human may be one, but a human heart may have a thousand separate proper nouns to call forth a thousand intra-connected fragments, each deemed wholeable. No one knows these things. Conjecture on my part is all this is. – rho

         Under these circumstances, post. – Amorella.

         After a trip to Sears Appliances on Tylersville for a refrigerator water filter one more stop at Kroger’s as Carol told Kim she would pick something up for her. Tonight you should finish the last sexual event after you both watch NCIS and NCIS-LA.

         Tomorrow I can work some as Carol will be cooking pies and making veggie trays, etc. for Thursday. I may get a haircut as I have a coupon. I am happy we got those passport photos with the bushier beard and eyebrows that touch the beret. More my authentic look, a bit wild on the outside to match the mental wildness on the inside.

         You almost wrote wilderness rather than wildness. A near Freudian slip?

         Probably.

         The two NCIS shows are over and you have finished the last raw sexual episode for this scene. Tomorrow we begin to clean this material into better copy. – Amorella.

Preliminary Scene 13 – more raw drafting

Mattress on the floor, late. Salamon with eyes shut lay flat out on his back in a rest mode. A slight noise opened his eyes to see Sophia standing naked above him. What will it be? He thought, a rest, or one more go?

         Sophia said nothing but began to drop down. To coordinate with this Salamon first rose up into a sitting position with as much anticipation as he could muster. Surprised, he presently found her sitting on the focus of much of what was left of warm anticipation. With the fingers of her right hand she spread her much exercised lips and nudged him into place. Then she sat tall with her back parallel to his. Her taut breasts front and center to his neck Salamon quickly found himself bending his mouth instinctively forward to a potential taste of awaiting spiritual nourishment. Lips and tongue, a twist of pleasure mutually felt. He did not notice her more experienced eyes were above his own, observing contentedly.

         I feel him within and without. Who is changed more in this parallel frontal positioning? The flesh, the thought of flesh keeps his mind busy on the essentials of fingertips as his right hand appears fresh with a single finger heading towards my bottom just far enough for me to tingle of playful entrance. Erection or finger, I don’t know which counts more in my present bottomful of private two-way joy.

         Contentment is staying in this prayful position until morning. Here, Heaven rests in the one of being.

***

         Again, this (above) is not what I expected. I really don’t know what I expected but this isn’t it. How can I do this, write what I do not anticipate that I myself might write? My own automaticity overrides the consciousness that allows my sense of being, of meaning, but alas, the purpose remains unknown. I still have so many words in me. Where do they all come from? Are they rising up from a deeper well in my heart, in my mind, or in my soul? This is a truthful question, Amorella.

         You can never know, boy. That is the real authenticity. Post. – Amorella. 

Notes - the first 'conquest' and Salamon mixed thought -

       You are waiting in the driveway for Carol as you are going out to eat at Longhorn as a treat for her giving blood today and you having mowed the grass – two and a half hours for what you used to do in fifty minutes. Lots of rest time along the way.

         I thought of a couple of things on this scene while mowing but I have forgotten them. It is no wonder I write everything down. If I didn’t write I wouldn’t have much proof of being here day to day.

         A reminder on the nightly national news – JFK. What a time that was. The next few weeks were unbelievably surreal. The world was touched with sadness at his family’s and our nation’s youth. This is how I remember it today.

         Let’s finish up these two scenes tonight, then we can put them together with some dressing and call this part of the scene completed, at least for now. – Amorella.

         I am better learning to accept the species of which I am a single part. The books are becoming a framework around which to see myself. Commonality with the greater group. This line of species’ research is not for everyone, but it is working for me.  

         As I approach this event I have decided to switch from thirteen to nine, The Emperor because it is a standard most every adolescent and beyond human being is familiar with.

Preliminary Scene 13 – raw writing

Mattress on the floor early evening. The first connection. Eye contact. Sophia looses her garment and rolls onto her back. Eye contact. She reaches out for Salamon’s waist as he leans gently between her opened thighs and pushes his outward arms palms down beyond her shoulders for balance. Sophia places her left arm so that her hand is holding onto the back right of his waist. Her right arm is placed so that her right hand pulls and anchors her spread right thigh. Her feet high, beginning to wiggle involuntarily as he pushes himself in and pulls himself out in a slow machine like rhythm, accelerating his pelvic thrusts in then out in quicker and quicker motion. The  mind in automatic, the driver, a ridged airy-like instrument, a detachment of will beyond his consciousness. The pelvises happily slapping a library of book cover passions momentarily shared.

         Real enough, thought Salamon, these rush of motions in the mind are real enough to trigger body memory. Nature exists even here in Elysium. Sophia easily allowed me to pin her. She wished it perhaps. She opens her legs in an opportune moment. A signal accepted without a second thought. Still, Pandora. No man can forget Pandora, or woman either in my imaginings. Rebellion is in the motions. Her toes move independently as do her feet. Antenna-like feet twitching out there beyond me – insect-like. I but desire to pierce her shell and those magnificent legs open themselves – she swallows me whole – I so mind the blanketed resurrection of body heated feeling. Who would have thought this Sophia would have such reason in her. And, here I am without a single plan while the thought of the surrounding pantheon nearly escapes my capture. Sex is brought to dinner.

***

         I don’t know what happened here. This description is not as the others.

         This will be the first escapade for the evening. Tomorrow, one more, and we begin to bring this work together with thought and conversation between the two participants. – Amorella. 

Notes- Continuing drafting sc.13 - Warning: Explicit

        Later, mid-morning. You are sitting in the Kroger lot on Tylersville as Carol does early Thanksgiving meal shopping as Mary Lou has Thanksgiving this year. On late Friday afternoon you and Carol are heading to Steve and Karen G’s home in Delaware County to see them and Doug and Nancy G. as they will be up to see his younger brother who lives in Powell, Ohio. Thursday, Friday and Saturday will be mostly friends and family.

         Thursday you had a trip to the doctor’s office for throat and a bad cough. The medicine has a sick stomach after effect which is irritating more than anything else.

         I have been sitting here sucking on crushed ice and a regular 7-Up. Not my usual. What bothers me more is that I had my normal for breakfast, crunchy peanut butter, raisins and honey on a slice of wheat bread, a banana and a glass of skim milk and my stomach is now upset having earlier eaten my favorite foods. Split infinitive. I used to get in trouble for that in Miss Harley’s English class. I feel rebellious today so I’ll leave this as a warning to myself on how radical I can be. Amazingly, the 7-Up seems to be helping.

         Carol is planning on raking leaves this afternoon as the southwest breeze is favorable for it and you are going to mow and mulch the grass this one last time in the season.

         I need to check my old grammar books when we arrive home. People are not using the comparative degree properly these days. Maybe they are teaching grammar differently today though I didn’t retire that long ago. More likely, they aren’t teaching grammar much at all. Without grammar it is difficult for me to think clearly and therein lies the problem with the momentarily rebellion in my last paragraph. I am going to sit back and relax, watching the people come and go, while thinking of those well known quotations by one of my favorite writers, George Orwell. Sometimes I feel myself like ol’ Benjamin in Animal Farm. I think it is Benjamin.

        

         Home. You found the rules have not changed though they are open for interpretation among the educated class. Thus, the media professionals have gone with the use of ‘more clear’ rather than ‘clearer’ which is deemed informal. The chances are you are mistaken in this particular grammar skirmish.

         Another reason to keep my mouth shut.

         Carol has begun raking leaves. Post. – Amorella.

         Sunday night and you have completed a draft of the third sexual event between Sophia and Salamon for scene three, chapter six. Post. You have two more, then we will redraft and continue for this, the beginning of the final scene in chapter six.

**

Preliminary scene 13, continued first drafting

         Mattress on the floor late evening. Sophia suddenly discovered that she was more conscious of Salamon’s right hand, thumb and fingers spread across the back of her right hip than his unconsciously moving tongue stroking her snuggle warm, semi-erecting clitoris. His right hand is solid, holding. His other hand rests, comforting my outer thigh just above my bent left knee. It is like Salamon is attempting to suck away something not fully there. A straw with nothing at the other end. Does he remember the taste, feminine moisture on his nose? What is the enchantment? The born man-child comes head first, is it his plan of subterfuge, to worm his way back in the same way? I give him the two things he wants in the coming timed moment. Poetry. A metaphor. Sharing what I don’t have with what he doesn’t have. As in life, it is the thought of fully giving what you have of your most private self.

         I sniff too, thinks Sophia, and I lick a taste of rush’s memory. I do remember the sharpness. Of watching a man become beside himself. Automaticity. With a few strokes and licks I can do such a thing. I can flatten a man much as a runaway oxen can. I can run him down with my lips and tongue. Yet, little is here but the memory and wish to be whole again. This is with mind alone without the vast entrances and exits of physical pressures, of colliding storms within bodies arching humanly together in little more than the air we don’t even breathe. We are what we are, sharing naked the only utilities we have to share, our five senses intermixed, as it were in cemented feelings. Salamon’s thoughts and feelings are consciously drowned in these reflexive moments. He is not even here. I am that good, I am as solid as his clasping right hand.

***

Notes - 'love' and 'dignity' and cultural thinking

         Mid-morning. You are wondering how many more ‘sexual events’ are being planned for this scene?

         I am. I understand the need for several, to make a point, but I don’t want to overdo it.

         If that isn’t telling, I don’t know what is, orndorff.

         I don’t have a response for that.

         Of course not.

         Let’s just move on, Amorella. How many of these do I have write?

         Five will do. Make sure, as you are doing, that it one naturally follows the previous.

         That might be difficult. I did that as a criteria from one to two but that is going to take some statues study. I guess I am more of a prude than I think as I am finding this, as it were, a bit out of my league.

         And, what of human dignity in sexual performance?

         What?

         You can read, orndorff. Post, while you are thinking on it.

         I am trying to ponder on where the question came from. Somehow I am caught off guard by it. I never have thought such a thing.

         So, do you want me to put the question back in the jar, so to speak?

         Once thought, it is. I am still struck by it. Somehow I think the question could be made into a metaphysical conceit. Humor was the first thing that popped up.  – People say, “making love” to dignify it.

         Love and dignity are not the same thing.

         I will have to think about it.

         Please do because it is a part of this scene.

         Love: attraction based on sexual desire.

         Dignity: quality or state of being worthy or honorable

         I don’t know.

         Early afternoon. First, I have chosen the five sexual positions. I will just write them in order and will change them around after. Here they are with modern names:  3, The Horsewoman; 8, The Empress; which are drafted already, then 11, The Sixty-nine; 13, The Andromaque; and 26, Gomorrhe.

         How do I write these showing human dignity?

         The sexual pleasuring, the sharing of mutual pleasures. No different than a variety of mutually accepted kisses and/or hugs, orndorff, though kisses and/or hugs are generally more publically shared and witnessed first hand.

         I think someone not of my age and mental/moral framework may be better at writing this than I will be.

         You need to study your own culture within yourself. These five are real examples of privately shared human sexual expression whether people will admit it or not. People who deny this possibility are denying a part of their humanity.

         Some consider this whole business vulgar and/or animalistic and having little or no virtue. Sex is seen by some as having only the purpose of baby-making. “Be fruitful and multiply,” that kind of thing.

         This is cultural thinking is it not? – Amorella.

         The science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein comes to mind. I think I taught that in a course once. Maybe not though. Pretty controversial in its time.

         You cover this without nearly so much thought with your marsupial aliens in the books.

         Somehow this seems different because it is in a blog first.

         Still, the end result in a novel. Besides, these dead people are ancient Greek. What do you think the ancient Egyptians and Persians and Israelis would think of these sexual exploits? What would the other Dead being doing that was so different? Having children when dead is not even involved. So, the Dead should not be allowed to share pleasures with a friend or so?

         I don’t know, Amorella. I’m not Dead.

         What if you were? What if this were a real reality, this attempt in having sex after physical death? People have their privacy areas, they can do what they want in private. Who are you, newly dead, to stop them? Talk about arrogance. – Amorella.

         This is fairly overwhelming to consider as a real possibility. It would take some real adjustment.

         Well, keep in mind this is the way the Dead from other cultures may think too, although I don’t think the sex part will be the division. Gods and goddesses might. Heroic values might. The philosophical meanings of what life is about might. Do you see what I am getting at here, old man? Do you understand you are having a hang-up about sexual posturing. What are such Dead going to do when they hit the Other Side, boy? You have to put your mind into such a place as the author if you want to continue making this work ‘authentically yours’, boy.– Amorella.

         I agree, Amorella. I understand. Wow. It is difficult to take all this in at once.

         It is difficult taking this all in, period. You have to live it in your head to make it real, just like everyone else, orndorff. There are no exceptions. Post. – Amorella.

        You fell asleep in chair in which you are sitting, now awake, you glanced at statue position eleven at kama3d.org and have no desire to begin writing. Carol is watching television in the other room, but still you have no desire to write presently.

        

         The event is mechanical in nature and has autonomic physical aspects to it. I wonder if it is mostly imagination even in physical action, that the imagination is playing it up to something grander than it is. If this is so, then sexual mechanics may be mare natural than we are consciously willing to accept. Sniffing, licking and tasting our partner’s  privates like a dog might. Why would such a thing be built in so deeply. Instinctually, serves no natural good other than the pleasure of some sort of perverse culturally uncivilized naughtiness. I can understand the blacking out of everything else, the pleasure of the existential moment, even with the perverse defiance of the act, the free of will. The whole mix. Slap, slap, here we are getting-it-on in sharing the ‘joy’ of moment.

         Again, your inner cultural conscious is speaking out, orndorff.

         I see the humanity in this. Who can deny it? But, I do not see the dignity other than the joy of perverse rebellion, at least in my culture as I see it.

         All for today. Post. – Amorella.

         This is how I see it presently.

         Think about it. Study why you think like this. You have to find a way to see this with some sense of dignity to make this work in tone.

         As with the statues – artistic dignity. It is not pornography.

         Post. Tomorrow perhaps, or Monday. – Amorella.