Moving on noon. The usual morning plus two digitally recorded shows. This week you lose Poirot, Inspector Morris and two CSI’s and Blue Bloods are repeats.
One day, if and when I complete this series, I am going to go back and de-construct each novel. I will put an end to a personal mystery. Last night I read the rest of the new March Harper’s enjoying a story titled, “The Miraculous Discovery of Psammetichus I” by Daniel Mason. The story is based on Herodotus’ The Histories, Book II (adapted from the translation by G. Rawlinson, 1858).
You are waiting in the Kroger’s lot on Tylersville after a late lunch at Five Guys Burgers and Fries. You are reminded of the day before yesterday when Mother had a transcendental flash of Grandma Earth through her Grandfather Takis and felt both enlightened and bewildered by it.
You see her flash as from “reading the frozen words” in Grandma’s first story. You then realized the books may be seen not by each volume but by the whole Merlyn’s Mind series. When the books are seen by series (as one unit) there is another layer of meaning; another dimension of thought/concept in your mind. As the books are written a few characters within begin to grasp they are living in a book, in the author’s mind, if you will. Diplomat in her search for the truth about the tiny alien in Richard Graystone’s mind (Richard, twin of Robert). She is not sure about the level beyond this, that is you, another Richard as the author who has the alien who is really me, Amorella, but to her she may see as the Saki. You think this is too confusing for the reader but I disagree. Other levels also exist which you are not yet aware of. This is what happens when one relies on one’s unconsciousness for gathering information.
I find all this quite interesting, but I would hope it is not because it is my mind that is being mined. I would like such books (even)if someone else were the author. I think it is fun to dig around and see what’s really up. One of the reasons why I like the Di Vinci Code and did my own genetic research in relationship to it. The Irish-Scottish old royal line, the Trojan-French old royal line and the Jesus line, all back to David and from David back to Sarah and Abraham. Some peoples in those lines I used in Robert and Richard Graystone’s geneaology as well as their twin wives, Connie and Cindy Bleacher.
I would have never thought to connect the Bleacher and Graystone families more than a thousand years later if I had not seen DNA evidence of it in my own family. I went through Oxford DNA Genealogy as did Carol’s uncle, brother of her father. It turns out we have almost identical male DNA tracing back to Western Scotland the thirteenth century. At turns out that during the Reformation one brother of her family (Hammond) left Scotland for Germany, we figure either for a new religion or a better beer. Anyway, he settled and eventually took the name Henne Zu Ohrndorf after a place name. Well, that’s the Orndorff family theory – the DNA is the scientific evidence of connection.
The point is that these things happen in actual human genealogy. How the DNA comes to meet again in the twentieth century got me to thinking on how there might be more to human connections than we generally see. Genes seeking out like family genes. I thought it was a cool concept so I decided to use it. Amorella concurred.
Also, this ‘great circle’ effect is seen in the legendary genealogy of the royals with Irish, Scots, English and French tracing their legendary royal genes back to Sarah and Abraham. Very cool (to me) so it is built into the story. Now this same concept is being seen in transcendental conceptual ideas (Platonic-like forms) in the ‘flash’ Mother has. Again, it shows (to me as far as fiction goes) it is possible that something else is going on here that we do not see in our daily living. Connections that may have ‘meaning’ that we do not yet know or are ripened enough to see as Amorella. In the story Merlyn draws the ‘stories of centuries and life on the other side of the galaxy together. I like to think about such stuff so it is put to use in the fictions. Obviously, these books are mostly for me. I share them only because Amorella says I will feel better doing so (and I do). This is all there is to it. – rho
You put this together. It is a grand rationalization of course, but then so are the books and blog. Parallels abound. It is getting on time for the local nightly news. Post. – Amorella.
After twenty-one hundred hours and you opened Merlyn’s Mind, book three, and noted Grandma’s Story, the first of her stories in this book. The prologue of the story seems to fit in context with what’s been written today. Include it here for your own interest later. This is a reminder to you that I do not deviate from the path these stories are grown on. Grandma Earth is doing the speaking.
“Grandma’s Story 1” [Merlyn’s Mind]
Here we are still at the dinner table in book one. Some time has passed in the real world of physics beyond the confines of these books. Readers of the first two books are older even in reference to books one and two alone. The Dead stay in their place much as the letters, into words, into sentences and into paragraphs do also. Paragraphs to segments and segments to chapters confined in sky blue covers with puffy cloud colored lettering. The black lettering in here is the color Merlyn’s pupils once were centuries ago when he was alive on the Earth as you are now. To see into the mind of the Living or the Dead is to see into darkness first.
Book two of the Merlyn’s Mind series was worked into publication during May, 2007. The month held two full moons, neither of them blue. The final proof was sent to the publishers on 23 May 2007, during a half moon phase. This would mean nothing were the dream not Merlyn’s, but as it is, there is existential significance. From Merlyn’s point of view time does not exist. It is as though the Dead exist within the framework of a book consisting of a single page. The difference is night and day.
The half moon is a reminder to one such as Merlyn that half a moon shadowed is better than no moon, and a moon in half-light is better than a moon reflecting no light at all. Otherwise, Merlyn would not have a ghost of a chance at being here. The dreamer is always first in a dream. It is a matter of grammar, of logic. It is a matter of the mind, a matter that is unseen but understood. Matter of this sort travels beyond the grave. People who attempt to prove an understanding can do no more than the people who would believe an understanding. The mind of Merlyn will have none of it.
Understanding, as Merlyn uses it, means to grasp the nature and the significance of the three story dreams in segments as well as in their holistic essence of humanity in your own living and in your possible sense of consciousness after physical death.
Reason is in the mind first, it is the breath of thought. Imagination is next. Meaning develops from the two intertwined. This is how Merlyn views the environs of being among the Dead. What need exists for belief or doubt when one recognizes a continued existence beyond one’s own demise? Hope presses on the mind of the Dead as gravity presses on matter.
An internal first question might be, ‘I still exist. Now what?’ One doubt or belief is resolved, ‘Where do I go from here?’ Human compassion and kindness are forced to the forefront. ‘A silent benediction will do.’ Then there is the common question, ‘Am I alone?’ A response, ‘Only if you want to be,’ is understood as ‘I still have free will.’ And with this, hope is renewed. To each their own of course, as free will is recognized. The Dead pay the piper for continued free will. Merlyn sees a humor in it as it helps to have an understanding of your own personal humanity. The mind has a choice to grow, to mature, or not. This is an example of the self-recognition of being physical dead. The mind paints its own portrait.
The Dead soon find they need their friends. Like minds attract. As always survival is first. Hope is the seed that is nourished by friendships. This is not an existence of levels of Heaven or Hell or even Purgatory. Where would you want your dead friends to find themselves? The mind is built for whatever question that comes forth, and it is here that humans reason and use their imaginations.
Grandma slapped her thigh as if she was a horse that, first and foremost,
needed a tickle to remind itself it was in a horse race after all. She glanced out at her audience and said, “Remember this. When you are dead to the world your mind is all you have left and you either learn to tame it or it tames you.” She sat with a wisp of a smirk on her face. “With the mind, life goes on one way or another. That is the way it reads in here and there is nothing that can be done about it.” This is the same line used by Lord Robert as we reenter the dining room with the large table Merlyn once put his elbows on while studying the genealogy of Lord Renaldo and Lady Criteria.
If you remember, Lady Criteria’s parents were Count Athalaric and Countess Evangeline. The Count’s brother or cousin was King Thedoric. One set of her grandparents were Thanos and Peony who lived through much of the seventh century in Greece. Under such circumstances she may have been a part of the old Frankish bloodline that traced itself back to Sarah and Abraham.
Lord Renaldo’s parents were Konrad and Kaaje and a set of his grandparents were Maarten and Skylar, who also live through much of the seventh century. And, in a revised bloodline he might have traced himself back to Odin and Frigga, who were popular in the Scandinavian sagas. This family could also be traced back to the area near the Black Sea seven thousand years earlier. You may remember reading a story about one of them, the shaman in Grandma’s Story, chapter four of book one. The shaman who told the short story about being in two places at once.
The Place of the Dead where Merlyn exists to dream is a part of the greater Nature of being human. The reader is a part of that same greater Nature as far as old Grandma is concerned. It is a part of understanding who you are and where you came from. Blood roots. You don’t need a formal genealogy to realize a truth here. You share your blood with cousins all around the world.
***
The above is the set up for the first Grandma Story in book 3 by reminding the reader what happened at the conclusion of the second books’ ‘Grandma Stories’. The stories all follow the genealogies of the Graystone and Bleacher families. Post. - Amorella.
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