Mid-morning. Carol is up readying herself for a monthly luncheon with Blue Ash Retired Teachers. You have been playing with the cat. Last week you bought her a new toy – a laser which throws a red dot on the carpet or wall and she chases and attempts to pounce on it as if the dot were a small bug of some kind. Once in a while she spies a real bug that has come in with an opened door. She will corner, capture and eat it and is thus cat satisfied with her conquest. The laser red dot is not so easily conquered. Only this morning did she watch you take the laser pen in hand and click it on. The ‘click’ was the key. At that moment she looked at you and you knew she saw this machinery as a toy – which appears fine with her. Play is the name of the game. You are fascinated by this because she has no concept of lasers or the natural properties of light.
You are also thinking of Merlyn of course, and his recent experience with a primordial element. Your conclusion, sometime during the night, is that grammar and language are the barriers to better understanding the properties of the setting of the Dead in the Merlyn series. Merlyn concluded “Dry is Wet”. This reminds you of one of greatest English writer/thinkers of the twentieth century, George Orwell.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
[1984]
It appears that ‘reasoning’ and/or grammar can be a hindrance when focusing on the properties of a ‘setting’ of the Dead. The intellectual acceptance of opposites (in the mind) helps to settle the dust from the stampede of reason/logic over an unseen reality. Merlyn’s heart, however, presents another dilemma. I don’t see it as playing a role. Soul and mind, yet the ‘bubble’ contains the heart too.
In here, Merlyn’s heart provides for the understanding that some accounts of reality are not based within reason. This is a conflict for you because in the literature such as Paradise Lost, you have come to accept an Angel being of supreme intellect. This then is the rub. The Angel of Supreme Intellect is Satan. The heart would deny the intellect its fullness, its supremacy. The heart, in these books, is tempered by humility not pride. This is the basis of “forgiving the debt”. The heart has more humanity in it than either the mind or the soul. That is the point. You did not see this coming? Too bad, boy. Live with it. – Amorella.
I was not talking about the marsupial-humanoids and their ‘debt forgiveness’.
This is one of the themes of the Merlyn series, young man. What did you expect? You want the Grail to be a sugar bowl and sprinkle out sweetness and light? Nothing is free, boy. You need to get this through your head. For the marsupial-humanoids this 'forgiveness' was a most profound lesson for the rise of their still imperfect species. I write the books, you read them. Post. – Amorella.
Later. Once Carol leaves for her luncheon you are watching last week’s episode of “Falling Skies”, and you still haven’t decided whether it is worth the time.
I just heard an interview on BBC about how Toronto professors have shown that those who read fiction (see movies, etc) have better empathy than those who do not. This is something that people ‘know’ but it is rather good that scholarship and testing have shown that this is indeed the case. On another note, I saw the BBC video on the new government created and run travel cable car system from the hills of the favelas down to the city of Rio. What is also striking is the fact that each person who lives there gets one free round trip ticket down and up the mountain a day. This is a wonderful event for the poor of one of the most beautiful of world cities.
You see, humanity still exist, it has not been taken away, as book one, Braided Dreams, implies. You thought at the time of the writing – “you don’t use your heart, you lose it” as a warning. Even in a fiction – it has stayed that way.
My imagination at the time was limited and more anger-filled. I would not have been surprised, in real life, to witness such a scenario/alternate reality for the humans and the marsupial-humanoids both. Only a few human beings left living in selections of book one, and none from the previous United States of America. That was not the criteria for a best seller, such was/is my humor.
Post. – Amorella
You received an interesting quotation about intuition from edge.org today:
"Judgments based on intuition seem mysterious because intuition doesn't involve explicit knowledge. It doesn't involve declarative knowledge about facts. Therefore, we can't explicitly trace the origins of our intuitive judgments. They come from other parts of our knowing. They come from our tacit knowledge and so they feel magical. Intuitions sometimes feel like we have ESP, but it isn't magical, it's really a consequence of the experience we've built up."
From: edge.org : “A Conversation with Gary Klein”
Klein’s quote adds a down to earth perspective for me, today. I am glad to know my words in the Merlyn books and blog are channeled from my own built up experience and not something completely fanciful and out of touch with reality. A nugget of truth may therefore, lay within all the rest. (Then again, perhaps not.)
Time for the local news, then the national. Later you are having Papa John’s for supper. Earlier though you split a Graeter’s hot fudge/butterscotch with walnuts and whipped cream sundae – for a change of pace, and neither of you is presently starved.
How will it be, ending this chapter seven, Amorella?
We are back to Mother who is talking to Thales. He thinks there is something more than reason a-foot and he assumes this is an omen. You need to go back and catch up with where he was last in the chapter and Mother who was apprehensive in leaving Takis, thinks everything will be settled once the Greeks are brought onboard before the all the shamans gather at the river once again. Post. – Amorella.
Go: The conclusion of scene ten, chapter seven.
The rebellion’s ninth day has almost had its run; the shadows flowed from the great white hole and filled the night sky of Elysium. Thales called on Mother as he had acquired some daylight calculations as to the numbers of the Dead based on the numbers of Dead within Elysium.
Mother greeted Thales at the atrium and guided him to the plainly painted white and blue trimmed room on the right. There was a centered large wooden table surrounded by twelve chairs but she lead beyond to the small alcove wherein there sat a large empty brightly polished, thick marble tub about the same height as the table.
A formal bath, thought Thales, and as he drew closer, he could see it was two-thirds full of water. He wondered if Mother were going to ask him to symbolically submerge and baptize himself. Glancing about there were no distinguishing busts of gods of which to ally one’s self or to play a ceremonial cadence to. He shifted his toga more loosely and waited for her instructions.
“The tub is full of fresh water from the Styx. Nothing floats and bubbles do not exist.” She smiled warmly and attractively, and asked, “What is your explanation?”
“The water of the Styx is perhaps not built to pool.”
“But there are pools of water, even near the edge of the River. And, we all see evidence of froth from time to time. Bubbles exist.”
“Nothing floats in either case,” grumbled Thales. “We do not understand the dynamics of the River.”
“So the philosophers say.” Mother stared at the surface and placed her right hand in to pull it up and out slowly. “The water is wet and it drips off my fingertips as any water should do naturally.”
Thales broke into a grin, “I have an estimate of souls among us.”
“This is important?”
“Earlier today Mario and I suggested representation.”
“Yes, you did. I was not pleased.”
“The estimates are twenty million dead in Elysium alone.”
Mother stood in puzzlement as her wet fingers continued to drip. “Numbers make no difference here. We are not raising an army.”
“Something is amiss, Mother. Anaximander himself gave me the figures based on calculation, but where are these souls. I cannot imagine a city with twenty million inhabitants. These are your children, Mother. Where can they be?”
“I do not know, child. That seems so many. My mind is better accepting a poetic one thousand or even a thousand, thousand. We have the time but I am not willing to count souls. Takis will take care of this. Give the number to Takis.”
“I have a sense much is displaced here. We see what we want to see and feel and touch through our senses, which give us reason. Somehow the River is to blame for our order here. Where could the souls be but drowned in the ever-flowing River or heaped in the granules of would be earth beneath our feet? We must command the Dead to rise from water, earth, fire or air. You must eventually take command of your children, Mother.”
“You worry too much, Thales. Go home. Sleep like stone. Tomorrow when awake you will see we Greeks are not alone.”
Preliminary Conclusion of Chapter Seven
***
Put this material in order tomorrow and begin work audio editing. Post. – Amorella.
This is not as I expected. I think there will be much cleaning up to do.
Then you will do it, boy. – Amorella.
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