You took the Sunshine Skyway Bridge down to Rt. 301 and I-75 to an outlet mall where Carol, Linda, Jean and Jen are shopping. In a while you will eat lunch at one of your favorite restaurants, the Crab Trap II which is nearby. Presently you are sitting in a McD’s lot in the shade – just finished a long note to Kay H. an old high school classmate. She asked about how it was living in Brazil and you told her.
I am still in that note, Amorella. I was reminded of so many people and sights and feelings. What a wonderful life I have had to have had such an experience living in Brazil and witnessing parts of Latin America.
Relax with those thoughts, old man. More later. – Amorella.
I just remembered, your metaphor with the billiard table – I wonder about that. The view of the event was horizontal in nature. Why was that?
In context, the Dead are two dimensional, boy. These commentaries are always in context in this blog.
But my grandfather and such Florida remembrances were real.
I have to work with what you are, orndorff, not with what I would like you to be. You are a what you see is what you get kind of fellow – I respond accordingly. You got that, boy? – Amorella.
Yes.
Post. – Amorella.
Post, old man. Then, we work on this scene thirteen. – Amorella.
Evening. Supper at Mama’s Kitchen after a two hour nap while the women continued shopping at the West Shore Mall. Bill was busy at school most of the day. Another two months and he will retire with many years as assistant principal in Hillsborough County (Tampa City Schools). A decorated Vietnam disabled vet, Bill was born and raised two blocks from where they now live in old Port Tampa – an historical part of old Florida, you like to affectionately call it.
Earlier, after Kay H. returned your note with one of her own on her and Ken’s years in Germany and Korea, it dawned on you that it is the ‘human understandings’ one learns in/from life that are more important than the actually facts, at least this is the direction you want to go in the books.
Amorella, sometimes I don’t see the trees for the forest when it comes to what is really important, and though what I think may not be true, that is, factual when it comes to life after death, it brings a novel consistency that I like. The Dead from different cultures reach an agreement through mutual human understandings reached in life and death not the cultures. Birth, children, death, positive and negative life experiences and understandings gleaned from them. I noticed that Kay and Ken came to a similar human understanding about travel and living Overseas that Carol and I did. Different circumstances as adults yet similar conclusions on becoming a part of the culture one is immersed in. Surely this would be as the Dead in the book. They learned from life as well as their circumstances being among the Dead. Culture, no matter what culture, is further from the basic human experience. Being consciously dead after being consciously alive, you can’t get any more basic than that. This is what the characters should be discovering. Shoot, maybe they already have, and I’m playing catch-up here. It wouldn’t be the first time in all these notes, attempted novels and novels.
Conversation 3, Scene 13 draft one
Salamon fell asleep chuckling. Later as he awoke Sophia stirred and mumbled, “Why am I not exhausted?”
“I wake up and feel refreshed then the old storm in the back of my head rises and I wonder what this being Dead is all about.”
She added, “I wonder about this rebellion.” Are the gods behind this, she thought, then quickly concluded as usual, there are no gods. We are here just like we were alive. We have no control over either circumstance. What we are makes us who we are first.
He formed a seriousness in her words and said, “The bridge is a form of justice. We are building it by our own design. All of the Dead can walk upon it and we will take it as far out onto the River Styx as this nature will allow us.”
She asked stubbornly, “Who is this Supervisor who is supposedly constantly observing and controlling this nature we survive in?”
Salamon stretched and put his hands behind his head. Sophia gave him a look and threw a blanket over his nakedness.
“Why’d you do that?”
She smiled politely and replied, “To warm you up.”
He closed his eyes and sighed, and as he did he felt surprisingly alive. With those feelings suddenly almost bodily resurrected he forgot Sophia’s question.
***
Post, orndorff. All for tonight. Tomorrow, a movie, Harry Potter, then a late afternoon family dinner at the Conch Republic, another favorite restaurant near Madeira Beach. - Amorella.
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