Mid-morning. Played with the cat. Breakfast and the paper. Worked on loading three ink cartridges into Carol’s Canon 610 printer and acquiring MapQuest directions to the Pigeon Forge, TN cabins where the end of the month wedding is to take place.
Yesterday, when picking up the ink from Staples I could not read the packaging information well and had to ask for help. Not a reassurance. I can’t ever remember having to do that before. Too many cartridge options, too many numbers. Now, presently my right hand has the shakes and I can hardly type. Can’t remember that ever happening before either.
Relax, young man. Later. – Amorella.
I think it was just a muscle spasm from how I was placing my wrist. My forearm was arched too high. Time to work on scene four.
** **
Scene 4
An unusually frosty late Fall pre-dawn nests on the vegetation along the presently named town of al Kifl in Babylonia in the sixth century BCE. The Euphrates, low this time of year, flows to old Ezekiel’s left as he stands for the last time, looking across the river and the desert west towards his birthplace, Israel. His last thought, ‘I see my Israel coming at me on this uncommonly dry and strong southwesterly wind.’
Focus fell from the tired eyes and large spots of color suddenly erased the details of his sight. Ezekiel felt his head silently float across the river as his priestly body collapsed without tension for the first time in his long life. The Euphrates below and sky above. ‘I never turned to see the rising sun,’ settled on his mind and he never thought to look back to see his limp body on the light brown streaked sandstone and dull edged gray shale clothing the sides of one of the two great rivers in Nebuchadnezzar II’s Babylon, whose much earlier great Mesopotamia’s king, Hammurabi, had carved the world’s first known coded laws in stone.
I look for my father priest, thought Ezekiel and “Buzi!” called out from his naked mind, which seemingly flowed like a river from his once skull dressed thinking. A revelation in his passing: I am Ezekiel still.
What moments before would have appeared as a desert royal blue sky changed substance before free Ezekiel’s eye-filled mind and took on a thickness of an airy coating. The dense substance appeared eight hundred times thicker than earthly air. His mind slowed to a stillness as Ezekiel sensed he suddenly plugged a pipe. His mental senses scattered into the surrounding royal blue thick ambience, floating out about an arm’s length in all directions. Ezekiel’s perception at the moment: My mind grows tiny thin squid-like sea-hairs and tangles.
Ezekiel thought to reach out and touch the floating mind-hair ends and felt forearms tug at his sides where none existed. A thousand mind-tipped eyes budded and bobbed. I am broken into a multitude of crystal pieces, each as a crudely cut star in my own worldly heavens. I have no earthly floor. Yet, I am Ezekiel still.
Ezekiel’s mind transcends into light. Reason becomes substance. The now ten-thousand eye-hairs settled into skin first and into a shadow-like human form second. He questioned, ‘what is it to be this new Ezekiel?’
Youth flew by. Troubling times and heartfelt confusions flew by. Singing praises to G-D. I promised to sing of Angels through my life, reasoned Ezekiel. I promised to love G-D. I promised to love the songs worth singing to Rachael. A state of bliss in an angel’s heart. O Israel, G-D’s promise. To serve this Tribe’s common good, I promise to give it such a voice as true as my father’s voice.
“Ezekiel” echoes on dead ears.
‘Who is this?’ whispered this fresh tongued, Ezekiel, a dead man surprised. He, who is novel dead, is as a predetermined construction with neither an in or out to run into.
“Make do, boy,” said the Voice, “and Ezekiel, listen close. Make you light in the darkness for old friends.”
“Ezekiel . . . Ezekiel . . . Ezekiel,” rang in the Prophet’s ears – a prescribed self-reflection without a mirror in the House.
***
One scene reconstruction at a time. Post. - Amorella
Scene 5
Ezekiel thought that he was about to meet an Angel but he met an old friend instead.
“Ezekiel, this is Isaac.”
Ezekiel felt a smile form within first. “Isaac, friend of my youth?”
“The same.”
“Your voice comforts me.”
“See yourself with my eyes.”
Ezekiel saw nothing but felt his face shift slight modifications, first, his lips, ears and nose, then eyebrows, cheeks and chin. He said, “I feel tiny pressures, a sculpturing breeze.”
“You are now similar to who your friends and family witnessed.”
Ezekiel meant to asked Isaac, “When do I meet an Angel?” but found the thought immediately unnerved him.
Instead, he saw his comrade and said, “You are as I wish you to be.” For such I thank G-D, rolled by his mind like a glimpse of sunlight.
Scene Six
Ezekiel’s inner light diffracted at his edge of consciousness. A single ray quietly plunged into his mind as a sunbeam may break through the surface of water. Surprised, Ezekiel suddenly consciously pronounced, ‘Who is the least angelic-like of all my dead friends? And then he declared, ‘That is who I most wish to see.’
The shadows of this scattered thought felt as shades of dispersed bubbles of mind dictating matter. ‘I wish for G-D himself.’ As Ezekiel had not just wished for G-D, his consciousness froze at the thought.
What came next was an event-in-mind that Ezekiel or anyone else could not have expected in either life or death.
It is the beginning and my spine shivers. I am inside and there is no way out. This is the reason my forearms shiver. I am non-thought. My fingers are cold and I am ice forming on the Great River. I am a floating icy continuity of uncommon ground. I am Ezekiel dancing . . . I am namelessness dancing . . . I am as a string of poetic devices – dancing. No-thing h-e-r-e.
To exist and not to exist at once. Unthreaded and detached logic scurries off on the tails of nonlinear un-dotted explanation points. To exist and not to exist. A dash of one and a zero. A dash of zero and a one.
To this Ezekiel thinks, ‘I do not exist and am able to reflect on this fact at the same time. This is the bottom line of being Dead. The top line is that the righteous will be reunited with their loved ones, that is the spirit of the words remembered.’
***
Takis caught hold in Thales’ heart and antenna-like directed Ezekiel’s words indirectly from himself to Thales . . . “the spirit of the words,” entered Takis’s mind from soul or heart, Takis knew not which. Reunited, thought Takis, the Dead and the Living. What appears to be a one-way street need not be. If the Living can come to the Dead, then the Dead can return to the Living. But, the Dead must return to the centeredness of our Mother’s heart. It is the heart not the soul or mind that brings the Dead together. We shamans have focused on the rhythms of the soul not the turbulence in the heart. This must change. One does not dance to a rebellion, rebellion drives itself forward with a most righteous indignation.
***
You and Carol headed to Streets of West Chester for a late lunch at Smokey Bones. The pulled pork was good but you are annoyed by the expense, which was not much below LongHorn’s price and their wonderful steaks. You are sitting in Barnes and Noble, basically across the street from Smokey Bones.
Scene Seven
Mid-morning of the eighth day. Thales sat on a smoothed white stone bench in front of his private sanctuary, a gift of stone from Aeneas’s father, or so he had been told by the disguised ancient shaman, Takis, who had delivered it. “Each morning sit on this and glance to the few clouds in the sky to clear your mind,” had suggested the shaman deliverer.
A gift from Aeneas’s father, Anchises? Strange. I don’t think I ever spoke to him, thought Thales. He smiled, I remember joking with Kassandra about Thales’s father when she wondered about how it would have been to be Thales’s mother and to have made love with Zeus. He paused. I did talk with Aeneas later that same day I was with Kassandra, who told me to ask about his father. Thales shook his head. I spent most of that time in The Mikroikia talking to Aeneas about his mother the first time I met him directly, not his father.
Anchises sent me this stone bench for the pleasure of my thinking. A seemingly gracious response, no doubt out of kindness for the father’s being remembered at all.
Thales slouched slightly creating more comfort for the corporal body he does not have. How does one do this? I exist first through my mind. The Dead dress this place, Elysium, for our comfort by our collective mind. Mind first. Reason, the skeletal structure, is always the Prime. Without the self-structure thought cannot exist, and without thought, neither can the Dead. And, the heart?
What then is the structure of the heart? Is it a vessel or a vehicle, or both? What dwells in the individual and collective hearts of the Dead that differs from the hearts of the Living? Our collective heart must somehow communicate with the collective heart of other cultural tribes. How else? Thales found himself snickering.
How could anyone possibly feel that our collective dead minds could do anything but design our setting here? What is our common ground with the other tribes beside their environment in life and surviving death?
A thought may dwell in either the heart or the mind, though we may not know which. This is easily observed Here as well as when we were Living. A heart registers our charged passions; degrees of full or empty; and the mind registers basic degrees up or down as old sky and real earth. A heart has temperaments. A mind holds minute matters opened to closed. Presently we are collectively closed to our fellow once earthly cousins; yet, we are all sons and daughters of our original Mother. The first Mother was neither Greek, Egyptian or Babylonian. She was Mother. How did she become known as Greek?
These are Thales’s first rummaged thoughts while sitting on the generous gift from the ever, elusive shaman, Takis, a displaced and displacing mind without the usual social filters.
Scene Eight
The Temple to Athena sets directly on the corner of Eleusis and Plaka. Nearing noon by Earth standards, Thales found himself sitting on his favorite bench near the seven steps down to the small rectangular stone pool in Garden Park just off the northeast corner of the east-west Plaka Street and the main, north-south Eleusis. Thales was glancing down to the reflective waters of the pool but thinking about the virgin, Goddess Athena, instead.
Were I to have sprung from the head of Zeus I would do my own wheeled reckoning. I am not so clever as Salamon who thinks the Supervisor, who in some way works for Zeus. Kassandra believes the Supervisor is god-like Betweener or directly connected with Hera. A shimmering on the surface of the water in the pool reminded Thales of Poseidon and he quickly re-connected with the myth that the only time Athena and Poseidon ever cooperated was when Athena created a chariot and Poseidon prepared the horses to drive it. I wonder, is the heart as the chariot or the horses in carrying my thoughts to the foreign Dead who do not know me? The soul may connect to all souls, in which case it is the heart, the passion, that drives the communication, the thought across the Styx to the Egyptians or Phoenicians. Earlier today I swear I felt such a thought coming from nowhere.
“Hello, Thales,” said Aeneas as he sat beside his friend. “I was told you wanted to meet here . . . something about my father.”
Thales smiled warmly, “Yes, your father sent me a surprise gift today even though we have never met.”
“Why would he do that?” replied Aeneas bluntly.
“I do not know. I thought you might.”
“I rarely see the man,” said Aeneas abruptly. “He is with his friends not his family.”
“Anchises gave me a stone bench for quiet thinking.”
“You have a chair and a bed. What need have you for a bench?” Then he quickly added, ”Did he deliver it himself?”
“No. An old man did. One I have not seen before. Why anyone would wish to look old when there is no need in this place is beyond me.”
Pride, thought Aeneas suddenly. “Did the old man have gapped front teeth and a large nose?”
“No,” replied Thales, “no large nose. In fact he was rather hairless, but his teeth appeared strangely cloud white; and I believe there was a small gap between the two front ones. Do you know this ancient?”
“No, I do not. The one I was thinking on had a large nose and a ruddy complexion.”
“This man was moon pale by the looks of him,” noted Thales, at once disappointed.
***
Early afternoon. Mario and Sophia invite Aeneas into her private abode where they each sit on one of the three chairs available.
Aeneas glances about the subdued atmosphere of the room which is lined with wood planks covering the stone. He thinks, this is as a simple structure, a shed. Why all the wood? Just the stone frame around the window, the open sky does not seem as connected as with the usual stone interior. I don’t like it.
“What brings you, Aeneas?” asked Sophia.
“I am glad you are both here. Takis gave Thales a stone bench thinking this morning and told him it was a gift from my father. At least that is what he told me. My father would have no reason to give Thales a gift. He has never met him as far as I know.”
Mario mumbled, mostly to himself, “Why is this important?”
“I could think of no reason,” replied Aeneas, “but the point is that I discovered through the conversation with Thales, that Takis had disguised himself. I reasoned him out because he stood old and he had a slight gap between his teeth.
Mario chuckled, “Those yellowed teeth of his. He wears them as if they are an honor.”
“No, Mario. Thales said they were white and that Takis’s complexion was pale. It was a purposeful disguise.”
Sophia suddenly spoke, “Takis doesn’t even know Thales nor Thales Takis as far as I know. There is no reason for a disguise.”
“Thales said he was visiting Kassandra this afternoon.”
“What does this have to do with searching for our foreign relatives across the Styx?” asked Sophia. “You and Mario should be the ones to first make communication with our equally dead cousins.”
Mario noted, “We are not shamans. We were let in to their ceremony over the Styx as observers. I assume Takis will bring one of the foreign Dead here when he captures one.”
“What good will that do, Mario?”
“I will talk to Mother,” said Sophia, “and find out what Takis is up to.”
“What if Mother doesn’t know?” responded Aeneas.
Sophia considered this quietly, Takis has knowledge we do not. He is not necessarily a friendly sign. She said, “Our Mother knows. Mothers know everything.”
Scene Nine
Lying on their backs, the bed padding drifts beneath the lovers’ minds. Thales toyed with and between Kassandra’s fingers only to slowly and methodically capture the middle and ring finger of her left hand and quietly grasp the two as if they were his own. She moved sensuously in such a way to follow through in a similar manner, and she grasp the ring and middle fingers of his right hand. Thales right arm and Kassandra’s left lay hard and close between their bodies while her right arm and his left stretched across their nearly non-existent ribs to rest. One clasping above, the other clasping below. Neither then moved while nearly full moon slowly moved a short distance from east to west above.
In a natural cadence, each unloosed the clasped fingers and rolled on their sides to face at only a distance of finger or two between. Kassandra looked for the slightest of smiles but saw none rise into his lips. She whispered, “With such a pleasant moonlight above I am surprised you are not more content in my bed.”
“You are good to touch and hold; contentment is not so easy with my present, wandering mind.”
She smiled and joked, “I thought it is your fingers that have been doing most of the wandering.” She giggled, “penetrating my foggy thoughts as casually as this amorous moonlight.” She frowned and spoke more straight-forward and friend-like, “Still no smile. My bed like my mind is no turntable of slow motion, Thales. It scares me when you are hard thinking with those eyes of yours so dark and wall-like.”
“I worry that Zeus rests just above us. Zeus or the Supervisor sits just beyond the top corners of the walls, close enough to curtain some of this too bright moonlight you just spoke so softly of.”
Her frown fell into concern as she slowly distanced herself a hand’s width away, “That blank stare I’ve witnessed before Thales. It is with awe or alarm enough to capture my love and hold it as a bar between us.
He grumbled without a thought and said, “You are a silly woman,” then quickly but gravely added, “I mean, you are being silly, woman.” In the pause of such personal hours his mind roared into her unmoving silence as she turned two fists of distance from him and faced the ever silent beauty of a puff of clouds above rolling shadows across the stone wall as if it were her own centeredness, strong and resilient, a woman who knows who she is, no matter what the weather of the soul.
Thales angrily thought, Kassandra does not realize how close the gods are. Is this the Supervisor above? Zeus’s older brother or he himself. A blast of lightning will do me no harm. What can a god to do me? Kick me out of Elysium? For what reason? No. I am kept here where I might be a useful foil to the Rebellion. That is not going to happen. I would, could I be, in madness first. What good is a chaotic mind to a god? Willing madness is a first choice it seems to me.
Seemingly talking to the stone, Kassandra suddenly and directly said aloud, “Thales. You will be lost.”
The rush of thought froze as existence nearly disappeared into a kernel of Thales’s soul. A lost mind? My soul left bobbling in the wasteland as a simple twig? Parts divided – soul and mind. A soul without fuel. Heartfelt inner lined but unreasoning. How did Kassandra know to say such a thing? Coincidence? Too quiet, she is, as if feigning sleep – it is said that a honeybee can grow mad and desert the hive. No place to go, no orientation to get there in any case. It would be us were it not for our Mother. Our hive is she alone. We are but scattered shades first of her biology and now only slivers of her soul. Bubbles of what was once real. Once popped unknown and unheard.
Of no use – even a feigned use would do. Not here though, not with Zeus’s ear above to echo my thoughts to one once loved. He paused in the nearly silent breeze of mind, -- was it so long ago that we, with loving hands and fingers held, rested here? With no center, I return to Mother. She is the only goddess. Elysium is but her outer garment we tally within grasping like children to her curtain. Little much is Here and little less is Now. The soul has no energy, no power. It is little more than an illusion, a worn kernel of imaginary self. No one fathered Zeus. Fatherless and unnatural are the gods themselves. We are the only ones – alone and soulless. Scattered minds and hearts are the all. Mother, we are still within, unborn.
“We are undead not unborn,” replied Kassandra.
“You read my thought?”
“I heard your voice from inside my mind. I heard you say, ‘Mother, we are unborn.’”
“What wordy thoughts before?”
“Nothing, those are the only words.”
“I don’t think I thought those words exactly.”
“I only know what I heard.” Kassandra paused and looked directly through his eyes. She said, “We cannot afford madness here.
He turned his head, stared into the sky and mumbled, “Mother is reason alone.”
She whispered, “We exist in reason, Thales.”
“Then, what is the meaning, the purpose?”
“To find ourselves. Thales, there is no other meaning.”
He found himself in a smile. “You believe this?”
“What else?” left her lips and reflected his own. Her left hand touched his right and the fingers clasped methodically as if it were their primary nature.
***
Above, outside the west wall of her inner home, the Supervisor in mind drifted, a thinly ballooned wall of sorts, separating is from shall be. Distance is important for such things, whether the minds are beyond dead or living. A wall is a gift within itself. Humans when united by mind or body discount reality with something else entirely, something built in for their own protection, a strong scent of camouflage.
***
Drawing unknowingly on this selective bead of disguise, Thales suddenly realized of Kassandra, ‘I love this woman better than all I now know of nature.’ At that very moment the close and timely presence of Zeus or the Supervisor evaporated from Thales’s point of what is.
***
Presently you and Carol are sitting in the car under the shade of Pine Hill’s northern hill. You both have a 24 ounce ice tea and she an oatmeal raisin cookie remaining. She continues her novel, Deliver Us from Evil by David Baldacci, as you take a break from revising. . . . Home. Post. – Amorella.
Raisin Brain for supper, then a Friday TV program you both enjoy but you can’t remember the name of. You saw Tim mowing the yard at twenty hundred hours so you mowed and Carol helped mow and you finished the yard before dark – a good bath with jets and bubbles, now you are ready for bed before twenty-two hundred.
I must say, it is easier to edit chapter six knowing what is happening in chapter seven. I like this idea of editing after two chapters. It will be easier on Aunt Patsy and Uncle Ernie if I just tell them what’s happening. They are getting to the age where getting older is just plain hard work. If Uncle Ernie wants to listen I’ll put them on disk for him after Bob’s done with my old machine. I could get a new DVD for my MacBook Air but once iCloud is out in the fall there really won’t be the need. I can always rig it up on Carol’s iMac but I don’t like using her machine. Too big of a screen and too stationary for my tastes. Time to play with the cat, then hit the sack.
Perhaps we can complete chapter six tomorrow. Post. – Amorella.
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