Up, banana and powered food for breakfast. Cloudy, and you still have a strip of grass to mow as soon as it dries a bit more. Seven inches of rain in June already and you expect that when it stops, it’ll stop cold and it’ll be dry into September.
I did think something of that sort but I didn’t expect it to end up here.
You are more concerned on the solar outlook as you read an interesting article on spaceweather.com about the possibility of a giant solar flare, one as powerful as the world witnessed in the 1860’s.
This thought has come up before but the article is a reminder. Lots of thoughts come up and go away, Amorella. I cannot see any reason to repeat them once they are written down, I don’t even understand why they need to be written at all. Redundancy. Too much redundancy. I’m sure I’m full of it. Probably all those years of teaching British literature over and over again in four to five classes a day. Let’s say just thirty of those thirty-seven years, five classes, each an hour, a day, . . . it is too much to figure out; anyway, a lot of redundancy built into my head along the way. Not for the students, just for me. This is not a complaint because I loved going over the same material five times a day. It was wonderful; wow; and I got paid for it.
To many teachers this would have been unbearable.
It gave me more time to observe my students. Each class had its own chemistry of individuals. It was always interesting. And, surprising. Some people liked Chaucer, others Beowulf was it. And, so on up through the literary canon. Lot’s of literature and history, lots of thoughts springing from the times and words of the times. The focus always on the humanity, the human elements of both the history and the literature. People who say the past and its words are irrelevant to the world today have no imagination to work with. You think with your mind but if you put your heart and soul into it once in a while it becomes more meaningful. Students don’t think like this but once in a while something strikes their heart and/or soul and they are modified by it. Hopefully changed into more maturity along the way. That’s what its always about, this education business. Testing of any kind is down the list as far as I am concerned. Okay, I am done ranting.
Are you going to apologize for the rant, you want to. – Amorella.
It doesn’t seem polite to rant. But, no, I’m not going to apologize for saying what I think.
Post. - Amorella.
It took me all of ten to fifteen minutes (including a short rest) to mow the southwest side yard almost back to the woods. It took me only five minutes to realize the difference of taking a Celebrex before the start yesterday and no Celebrex today. Pains on a four to five level for little more than such a short row with a small hill. Carol is mowing the back southwest corner because the grade is more pronounced. Amazing. Einstein said time does not exist but the body at the muscular, skeletal and cellular level may perhaps agree, but aging definitely exist, no question about it.
You feel better expressing than not expressing. Later, dude.
Doug G. brought it up in an email yesterday. I agree with him.
You and Carol drove in to Kenwood for a late Potbelly lunch, and are presently at Barnes & Noble off Fields Ertel Road. Sprinkling and dark clouded most of the afternoon so far.
I am curious as to how this scene nine is going to go once the four men meet.
It is not, boy. It will conclude when Tiresias leaves to meet Ezekiel first, the other two will be close behind on a tributary of the River Styx.
I did not know the river had tributaries.
They are beneath and above the bed of the river, boy.
The Styx flows vertically as well as horizontally?
Like a cross, like a plus sign [+].
That does not seem very efficient. A circle of water, perhaps even a Möbius strip of water rather than a cross.
I really had forgotten that until it popped up about a day ago for no reason at all.
A mind with open doors and windows boy, that’s the reason. None other needed. – Amorella.
Where was it stuck?
Where a lot of things are – hanging like bats upside down in the belfry. A good image for Escher’s “Ants” below; make the image the heart of the bat for a little added drama.
A bat’s attraction for food for survival?
On a broader note that will work for anything living; well, and the beginninganend of the River Styx as well. Post when you arrive home. – Amorella.
It’s dusk, Carol has breakfast at First Watch with her retired Blue Ash friends. You finished “Falling Skies” and will watch a couple more episodes. You are both looking forward to Closer in mid-July. You are considering yourselves TV junkies. Let’s get to it.
** **
Continuation of Sc.9; Ch. 7:
Merlyn continued his observations unaware he himself was being sensed by the shamans. The three sat cross-legged making a small circle within their toe range, a larger circle set while the placed the open palm of each hand on each knee. A larger circle still as their backbones, each struck a perpendicular stance. The three shamans, Takis, Meir, and Tiresias bent their necks back as if they were about to speak to the sky. Another circle within the cross-legged, perpendicular arched bodies and bent back necks and heads. Minds outstretched, hearts in the palms of their hands, and the toes glowed red, as a slow rising sun, thirty toes holding a single resolution, the radiation of three souls dancing in the center of the circle on the bank of the River Styx in Elysium.
Mystified, Merlyn, looking into the center of the circle saw heat where there was none. The heat, invisible as it was, rose from toes outward to the hearts in palms and up the spines and outward from neck to the minds of the shamans. And with that, Merlyn saw something never witnessed in Elysium or any other culture of the earthly Dead, The shadows of the three shamans lay flat outside the circles. The bodies of three dead shamans sat more circularly real than the mighty Styx itself. Merlyn observed the three sink into the sand at the bank leaving at last only single shadow being cast from someplace else. Someplace Merlyn was not, some sunken place where rose a pillar, a river of water unheard of even by Zeus himself.
**
Thus concludes scene nine of chapter seven. One more scene will do it and chapter seven will be complete. Post after including the whole scene. – Amorella.
** **
Scene 9, Chapter 7 (first draft)
Ezekiel sat contentedly in a lone stretch of meadow surrounded by forearm tall pink and yellow flowers with velvety leaves. Nothing foremost lit on his present winged mindedness. Friends and family but no angels appear. I am exacerbated by the lack of angels. I am here as surely they are. The presence of one would be a confirmation of G-d in his Heaven.
A gentle breeze uplifted and stirred the colorful petals brightening to a slight westerly bent and he glanced upward to gaze the blue between the puffy white clouds. Why is there no sun? A moon appears in a starry sky by weekly schedules, but the effervescent light of day casts no shadows. His familiar inner voice whispered, “A sun may be mistaken for an Angel.” This caused Ezekiel to again think how an Angel might appear without his sense of earthly induced visions. Death cleaned my mind of torments and shadows, it is as filtered as spring water. How better to see and reflect on Michael, Gabriel or Raphael. Michael’s torch would be our Hebrew sun that is plain enough without a vision. Perhaps Michael cannot be seen without the sword of Gabriel gleaming. He returned his eyes across the flowers wonderful. This fair meadowland is a therapeutic presence for me. I may be resting on the healing breast of Raphael and not to know it. Not to know is a joy unto itself and makes me, at times, as free as the surrounding and passing air I do not breathe.
***
Takis smiled broadly between his broad white mustache and four to five inch long and thick white beard. He wore at wrapped cloth of coarse cotton about his head and the binding set at such that it dropped just beyond the thick gray-white eyebrows lightly covering the side beard and ears. The makeshift headpiece appeared as a soft helmet as if to protect his inner thoughts. The dark-pupils in eyes gleaned coal-like beneath crinkled lids each side off the thick bridge of his nose; cheeks ruddy full and below the large nose and mustache elephant tusk colored front gapped teeth. His simple draping robe was a plain blue with defined and undefined white markings. Takis waved his right arm in the motions of a light breeze.
With the wave Meir slowly and naturally materialized first as a small cloud of dew about ten feet off the shoreline. Within the time it would take to reach over with the right hand and scratch an itch on the left elbow Meir stood just above the waters of the Styx barrel-chested with lanky arms and hands while the trunks were thickly athletic with solid feet and lengthy toes. The hair hung thick and long to beyond the muscular shoulders. His beard clinged dark and short surrounding a wide unlengthy nose and thick black eyebrows. The white of his eyes appeared to narrow the lids, nearly surrounding the black pupils. He wore leather-like leggings with an open leather sleeveless vest. His fingernails were dirt-diggers and those feet just above the Styx were quickly judged ruggedly calloused and coarse as he walked above the water with the confidence of an eagle swooping in for a kill straight towards Takis. Meir had the strange appearance of a man still solidly middle-aged and living. He would have appeared menacing in his pace and stature were not the matching grin of Takis reflecting a horse-full-like set of medium brown ivory-hued teeth. Upon the shoreline the two men hugged and rubbed foreheads mimicking small cat-like sounds before breaking the hug and beginning what appeared to Merlyn as actual human communication
Meir could see a slender to medium sized man or woman walking up from the trail to the Styx from behind Takis. Takis, without turning, said, “This is Tiresias one of our greatest modern shamans. He will find it easier to gain the confidence of Ezekiel than either of us in our old ways.”
Meir watched the gait of the person and the body, clothed in a coarse, not so thick long white robe of cloth, enraptured him in a language all its own. Sheorhe, he thought, has long straight black hair over his shoulders as I. The face is narrow and bony to the point he appears to exist in bone dancing body with a six-pointed oval skull on its top. He or She is half bald over his brows, forehead and brown eyes that display a round calm understanding grace. A large nose flattens over his high cheekbones, and I would say he is a man but for those other feminine features. The smile is slight and his lips pursed. An air of confidence surrounds his features, even a slight light-green aurora shimmers the entire features showing, the color of dark thunderclouds before a whirlwind. Long slender feminine hands; she is a woman I am sure of it. The hands and sandaled feet give her away. As Tiresias drew within an arm’s length, Takis turned. “See,” he said, “this is Tiresias. He is our Greek shaman’s shaman.”
With a slight smile and without a hint of forethought, Meir commented, “I am sure, Tiresias, you stay clear of the solders.”
“I dispatch them with my tongue,” smarted Tiresias, pleased that Meir developed a dumbfounded face that quickly settled back. Meir stood his ground, but an understanding had been screwed in quickly.
Takis’s face was alight with this quick battle of wit and noted to himself the slight shift of Meir’s strong sense of footing. Takis chuckled and said, “No earthly tremors this side of the Styx, even in this Elysium, Meir. We are the old Masters, Tiresias and Ezekiel are two of the new.”
The three quickly nodded to one another – equality is important in the process, thought Merlyn sitting cross-legged high in the tree leaves behind and above the shamans. Merlyn couldn’t help but grumble to himself, ‘These three are all ancients as far as I am concerned.’ He felt self-pride well up and quickly diminished it with the thought most sincere, ‘I must watch while these souls work.’
Merlyn continued his observations unaware he himself was being sensed by the shamans. The three sat cross-legged making a small circle within their toe range, a larger circle set while the placed the open palm of each hand on each knee. A larger circle still as their backbones, each struck a perpendicular stance. The three shamans, Takis, Meir, and Tiresias bent their necks back as if they were about to speak to the sky. Another circle within the cross-legged, perpendicular arched spines and bent back necks and heads. Minds outstretched, hearts in the palms of their hands, and the toes glowed red, as a slow rising sun, thirty toes holding a single resolution, the radiation of three souls dancing in the center of the circle on the bank of the River Styx in Elysium.
Mystified, Merlyn, looking into the center of the circle saw heat where there was none. The heat, invisible as it was, rose from toes outward to the hearts in palms and up the spines and outward from neck to the minds of the shamans. And with that, Merlyn saw something never witnessed in Elysium or any other culture of the earthly Dead, The shadows of the three shamans lay flat outside the circles. The bodies of three dead shamans sat more circularly real than the mighty Styx itself. Merlyn observed the three sink into the sand at the bank leaving at last only single shadow being cast from someplace else. Someplace Merlyn was not, some sunken place where rose a pillar, a river of water unheard of even by Zeus himself.
***
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