Up at six-thirty, breakfast and the paper. A bath with jets and bubbles for relaxation of joints and muscles. A cloudy day with showers already. In an hour you will be on your way to the Regal for a summer movie.
“Super 8” has some good reviews. The Roberts/Hank movie didn’t fare so well. We still have the Regal Christmas card from Kim and Paul. Carol talked to Kim this morning; she said Paul is taking time studying for Boards in August. I think he takes these every two years – he always passed the Boards but as he recently received the Cariothoracic Anesthesia Fellowship from the Cleveland Clinic for a year beginning next summer, he is working to keep the odds up already. Good for him. For Paul, I think, getting the fellowship is like getting a heart/lung surgery specialty from Harvard (only better). Well, I think it is better because of the Clinic’s world-wide reputation in the field of heart surgery. Anyway, we are happy for him and Kim. Carol and I were always organized in our professional goals and work habits and we are glad to see they are the same on that score. We love our kids in any case.
Do not erase the above. What is true is. You are always wanting to know the truth about things and reporting such, whether family or not, is what you do in this blog. The further irony of course is that you write fiction, but it is never too far from a much better writer of fictional truth (as we both see it), Herman Melville.
Thank you for the compliment, Amorella. That is my hope – fictional truth. I think I am not really a writer. I have an inherent joy for words, ideas, and human characters; writing brings them to the table.
Mary Lou arrived. Post. – Amorella.
Dusk. You read the new Time and most of new Consumer Reports, watched a TNT TV show from last week, took a long nap, and afterwards had leftovers for supper, a very tasty leftover.
You have set up the Anaximander material separately so you may look at it as a checklist of thought for Merlyn. You also went back over your notes to make sure you have updated scene ten so that you may continue. You assume Merlyn will now pause and rethink what he has just seen and attempt to justify it with Anaximander and Plato’s philosophies –
“Anaximander understood the beginning or first principle to be an endless, unlimited primordial mass (apeiron), subject to neither old age nor decay, that perpetually yielded fresh materials from which everything we perceive is derived. He proposed the theory of the apeiron in direct response to the earlier theory of his teacher, Thales, who had claimed that the primary substance was water.” [Wikipedia]
This above think with Plato [from Wikipedia] below:
"Socrates says in the Republic that people who take the sun-lit world of the senses to be good and real are living pitifully in a den of evil and ignorance. Socrates admits that few climb out of the den, or cave of ignorance, and those who do, not only have a terrible struggle to attain the heights, but when they go back down for a visit or to help other people up, they find themselves objects of scorn and ridicule.
According to Socrates, physical objects and physical events are "shadows" of their ideal or perfect forms, and exist only to the extent that they instantiate the perfect versions of themselves. Just as shadows are temporary, inconsequential epiphenomena produced by physical objects, physical objects are themselves fleeting phenomena caused by more substantial causes, the ideals of which they are mere instances. For example, Socrates thinks that perfect justice exists (although it is not clear where) and his own trial would be a cheap copy of it. . . .
The Theory of Forms typically refers to the belief expressed by Socrates in some of Plato's dialogues, that the material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only an image or copy of the real world. Socrates spoke of forms in formulating a solution to the problem of universals. The forms, according to Socrates, are roughly speaking archetypes or abstract representations of the many types of things, and properties we feel and see around us, that can only be perceived by reason; (that is, they are universals). In other words, Socrates sometimes seems to recognise two worlds: the apparent world, which constantly changes, and an unchanging and unseen world of forms, which may be a cause of what is apparent."
[Selections above edited from “Plato” in Wikipedia]
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Yes, I was thinking this because Merlyn must realize he is in a setting similar to the Apeiron and the Forms, this ‘thing’ [the movamulet] he is witnessing is something primordial, something before the Beginning of the universe, before ‘common’ physical and metaphysical (being dead) reality. He intuitively realizes the “movamulet” is something before his nature as a human being, the rest, the Anaximander and Plato, is a reinforcement of this fact, but he has nothing else to go on unless it is in his mind (and, not necessarily intuitive) a manifestation of an Angel. Part of this, I think, is because the dualistic nature of conflicting ‘religions’ – in this case Druidism and Christianity. I would like to think Merlyn feels that Jesus was a Carpenter, a worker of wood, someone similar to himself as a Druid Master, the carver on/of the Oak. After all, he realizes this Elysium is not Avalon nor is it Heaven. He can work the Board (Chess analogy) as he has been elected to do by the Dead from the Twentieth century back before the seventh century BCE. He is among the Living as well as setting the stage for the Second Rebellion in January, 1961. Surely some of these reflections would run through his heartansoulanmind.
You are speaking of Merlyn’s mind here, but it is his soul that ‘sees’ the ‘movamulet’ as the interlaced crossing of the River Styx. – Amorella.
So, Merlyn’s soul also cannot ‘see’ a Form as it truly is?
Neither can you, boy. That is the point.
So, in my subjective/objective memory, in a human reality at some point in my life, I feel (as a fact) that I accidently saw a "Form", and that is what the symbolic dreamy novels are about, a justification of this once seemingly factual observation?
This is one way to put it. The problem, as I see it, is that to you, as it is not a provable accidental witnessing, it is therefore not real.
Well, that’s is a simple way to put it.
You see, the reason for bringing this up is that your mind is stuck with a quotation from Moby Dick. You know exactly what line I am talking about. Find it for accuracy.
I have found it in "Chapter 19 – The Prophet" but while I know the line it appears to be seen in context.
Put the chapter in and bold the lines. After that, post. – Amorella.
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Moby Dick: "CHAPTER 19. The Prophet."
"Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?"
Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away from the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried up.
"Have ye shipped in her?" he repeated.
"You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose," said I, trying to gain a little
more time for an uninterrupted look at him.
"Aye, the Pequod--that ship there," he said, drawing back his whole
arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with the fixed
bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object.
"Yes," said I, "we have just signed the articles."
"Anything down there about your souls?"
"About what?"
"Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any," he said quickly. "No matter though,
I know many chaps that hav'n't got any,--good luck to 'em; and they are all the better off for it. A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon."
"What are you jabbering about, shipmate?" said I.
"HE'S got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that sort
in other chaps," abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous emphasis upon the word HE.
"Queequeg," said I, "let's go; this fellow has broken loose from
somewhere; he's talking about something and somebody we don't know."
"Stop!" cried the stranger. "Ye said true--ye hav'n't seen Old Thunder
yet, have ye?"
"Who's Old Thunder?" said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness of his manner.
"Captain Ahab."
"What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?"
"Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye
hav'n't seen him yet, have ye?"
"No, we hav'n't. He's sick they say, but is getting better, and will be
all right again before long."
"All right again before long!" laughed the stranger, with a solemnly
derisive sort of laugh. "Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then
this left arm of mine will be all right; not before."
"What do you know about him?"
"What did they TELL you about him? Say that!"
"They didn't tell much of anything about him; only I've heard that he's
a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew."
"That's true, that's true--yes, both true enough. But you must jump when he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go--that's the word with Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights; nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa?--heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into? And nothing about his losing his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn't ye hear a word about them matters andsomething more, eh? No, I don't think ye did; how could ye? Who knows tell about the leg, and how he lost it; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare say. Oh yes, THAT every one knows a'most--I mean they know he's only one leg; and that a parmacetti took the other off."
"My friend," said I, "what all this gibberish of yours is about, I
don't know, and I don't much care; for it seems to me that you must be a little damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of that ship there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss of his leg."
"ALL about it, eh--sure you do?--all?"
"Pretty sure."
With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like
stranger stood as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a
little, turned and said:--"Ye've shipped, have ye? Names down on the
papers? Well, well, what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will be;
and then again, perhaps it won't be, after all. Anyhow, it's all fixed
and arranged a'ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I
suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity 'em! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I'm sorry I stopped ye."
"Look here, friend," said I, "if you have anything important to tell
us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are
mistaken in your game; that's all I have to say."
"And it's said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way;
you are just the man for him--the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates, morning! Oh! when ye get there, tell 'em I've concluded not to make one of 'em."
"Ah, my dear fellow, you can't fool us that way--you can't fool us. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him."
"Morning to ye, shipmates, morning."
"Morning it is," said I. "Come along, Queequeg, let's leave this crazy
man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?"
"Elijah."
Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each
other's fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was
nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone
perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and
looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us,
though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I
said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but passed on with my
comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner that we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver calabash; and what Captain Peleg had said of him, when I left the ship the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig; and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy things.
I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really
dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg, and on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on, without seeming to notice us. This relieved me; and once more, and finally as it seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug.
(From: Project Gutenberg – Moby Dick)
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