Mid-morning. Chores, breakfast and the paper. The usual routine. Yesterday you spent time catching up on TV shows you enjoy as well as quiet time, which you enjoy just as much.
Quiet time is old fashion library time. I remember as a little kid when the Westerville Library was above the city offices. I would walk up the staircase and the door would be open at the top and once inside, to my right, were all the books, ten rows of stacked books, or so it seemed, maybe more. I would walk slowly through the stacks absorbing the flavor of the moment. It was a perfect silent place most of the time. A bit of ordered Heaven. Then I would head for the books for little people my age. I have never lost my enjoyment for quiet time.
I am sounding like an old man ruffling up much younger memories. At least people don’t have to listen to them. Nothing worse than politely listening to some old fellow such as myself talking away about things of no interest to anyone else. In here, they are reflections, that’s all, echoes of the past. I won’t apologize for them. Human nature. Must serve some purpose overall, an holistic view of one’s life perhaps, something that is more easily done at this age than in one’s thirties. I can still picture those John Carter of Mars comic books and reading them from the top or bottom bunk in my room. When I shut the door in my bedroom it many times became a spaceship and I was off to another world, usually Mars. There was utter joy to escape the world, I don’t know why exactly because I enjoyed Earth equally.
Reflections and echoes. Not much has changed in sixty-five or so years. Sight and sound. The world is full of it. Humans are full of it. Post. Later, dude. – Amorella.
Early afternoon. You are thinking about getting a haircut because it has been about two months. Carol has a hair appointment at three. Nothing much else on your mind, orndorff?
Not that I can think of. It is one of those dreary cloudy days in Ohio. Rains coming later tonight and we are in the last week of February. Everyone in this region of the country is waiting for Spring. That’s about it. Most people talk about the weather when they don’t have anything else to talk about, I’m no exception.
I just went to check my email and found the new April issue of Discover online and checked out Carl Zimmer’s article “The Brain”. The headliner says: “Rich autobiographical memory is the essence of our humanity and the base from which we foresee the future – a key to our species’ success.” Within the article is more detail.
“The past and future may seem like different worlds, yet the two are intimately intertwined in our minds. In recent studies on mental time travel, neuroscientists found that we use many of the same regions of the brain to remember the past as we do to envision our future lives. In fact, our need for foresight may explain why we can form memories in the first place. They are indeed ‘a base to build the future’.
Endel Tulving, a neuroscientist at the University of Toronto, first proposed a link between memory and foresight in 1985. It had occurred to him as he was examining a brain-injured patient. ‘N.N.’ as the man was known, still had memories of basic facts. . . . But he could not recall a single event from his own life. . . . Tulving and his colleagues then discovered that N.N. could not imagine the future.”
The author writes about experiments with children and animals with mental time then concludes:
“The fact that chimpanzees can’t explain themselves may itself be a clue to the nature of time travel. Full-blown language, which evolved only within the past few hundred thousand years, is one of the traits that make us humans different from other species. It is possible that once language evolved in our ancestors, it changed how we travel through time. We could now tell ourselves stories about our lives and used that material to compose new stories about our future. Perhaps the literary imaginations that gave rise to Dickens and Twain and Nabokov is, in fact, a time machine we carry in our heads.”
[Carl Zimmer is an award-winning biology writer and author of The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution.]
Discover, “The Brain”, Carl Zimmer, April, 2011 (online edition)
***
I find the above interesting and it shows that here, in this blog, there may be reason behind my memories of earlier days. True, I am not writing about the future, but perhaps the memories themselves help to invigorate my imagination via Amorella. A different perspective I had not considered.
It is pleasant to see you enlighten yourself once in a while, orndorff. Post. – Amorella.
Both with haircuts, you are out shopping at Target in the VOA mall, and then ice cream at Graeters or a cookie at Kidd’s Coffee.
You have the first two lines of Scene Five where Mother is meeting with her Grandfather Takis on the bank of the Styx. Takis will tell her a story about the tree roots in Elysium she had not heard before and will bring this around to Mario’s meddling in great business he is not all that familiar with.
Rings a bell doesn’t it boy?
Yes. I used to feel this way myself, like Mario must – he should at least be anxious about the situation, though I don’t know that is his case.
Mario wasn’t a bit anxious when Takis listened to him before Mother arrived.
Okay. That is not good. I can’t help but smile and think of Disney’s old “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. And, even though this is the creation of fiction, I have my own anxious moments from time to time. My greatest fear is having you leave me and then being unable to write, like earlier today – I would be sitting around writing about the weather.
You found something to write about yourself in Discover.
True, but that was just a coincidence that it arrived online today and that there was an article of immediate interest. Otherwise, I may have begun scene five but I only have the two lines but now I am finding out more about what is going on. I didn’t know Mario had spoken to Takis though I wondered if that is what the scene was going to be about, but it is about Mother and Takis instead.
Takis can relay the conversation he had to Mother and that will take care of it for the reader. No need for a separate scene.
Now this is what puzzles me, Amorella. In the first three books (quite wordy themselves) I could not find anything major to delete. This is continuing in book four. I assume each scene is important from your perspective but this is not the style of minimalists like Hemingway. At one time I thought about editing out half the words (at least) and still say the same thing. I cannot do it, yet you cut out a very short scene with Takis and Mario. This is not a complaint, only an observation.
You want to say, “Beggars can’t be choosers” but hesitate because you did not request or beg for me to be here in the first place.
I chose not to say it but did not know the reason. Now I know. But why bring it up at all? This just more wordage.
If you remember, this is my blog. You are editor just like with the books. I am writing your mind at work, boy, so you can go back and see why the books are as they are. You have not done this to any real extent because you don’t care all that much. The caring is in the keeping of notes because the writing is experimental and it seems useful and somewhat scholarly and you feel more comfortable with the notes because if someone argues that you are “a crazy man” you can say, “Look at my notes. This is how my books came into being. No magic, no Hell’s or Heaven’s Angels. The BS is all my own, it’s fiction, folks.”
This goes back to the time at Mason (mid-eighties) when a couple of parents and two school board members accused you of Satanism because you handed your class a handout you had used at Indian Hill about Dante’s Inferno as the book was mentioned in the American literature class you were teaching at the time. It showed a diagram of Dante’s Hell (the circles with short descriptions) with Satan stuck, waist up, in the ninth circle. Fortunately for you the other three board members did not see you guilty. At the time you did not have tenure, which added to your fear that you might lose your job.
I like not to think about those harried days. It was a terrible time. I was afraid I would lose my job and not be able to teach any longer. Those were the worst days in my entire career. All of this was behind the scenes. I was terrified within. Perhaps I still am. Me, of all people, (I have been long transcendental in my spiritual outlook even though I am agnostic); and to be accused (by people unknown to me to this day) of Satanism. You are right. I am sure this is a part of my behavior. “No magic, just Amorella my imaginary helper who now writes the books and blogs for me.
More personal memories, boy. Not all of them good. You are what you are, just like everyone else is who sheorhe is, a mix of intellect and emotion. Heartansoulanmind became twisted or woven together in those days. What else could a transcendental existentialist do? Heart and soul and mind were drifting apart, your inner identity as a teacher was dissolving as was the hope and faith that you would survive inwardly. Your will to survive this was spiritual not physical. You have your reasons. Being agnostic might have given the board pause. Being honest causes problems so you kept quiet. Not here though, boy. I will not allow it. Post. This is enough for today. – Amorella.
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