Dawn. Up earlier than usual and are planning on taking a hot bath with jets and bubbles before breakfast. Carol is downstairs reading the Sunday paper and the cat is up beside you in the bedroom searching for critters out and down from the bedroom window. Earlier you were thinking about the motivation of profit and that it comes from security first, power second and wealth third. However, the numbers do not need to hold true in a dog eat dog world of commerce. MacDonald’s and Walmart and Amazon and Apple come close to your definition of efficiency systems in the marketplace: for example; MacDonald’s for delivery, Walmart and Amazon for distribution and Apple for electronics in terms of energy and distribution efficiency and simplified and intuitive ease of use in design.
While this is true, I would rather apply this to the fiction at hand. Here’s the problem, after writing the short one hundred word piece yesterday I found myself desiring to ‘get it out there’ and so throughout the day where I saw related website openings to OWS and Occupy Cincinnati on Facebook or the web I placed my statement four times. This morning when I awoke I thought, ‘that was a bit much, why was/am I compelled to ‘have it read’. Then I thought of Puritan Anne Bradstreet and how her poetry was not self-published because it would be too prideful for her as a Puritan to do so, but her brother found a publisher in England otherwise her work may have been lost. I do not trust myself as to my personal motivations. One can think she or he is doing something for the right or wrong reasons but be wrong in either case. A parent may think, ‘I am doing my business for the wealth it will bring or has brought my family and me,’ and think themselves greedy when all the time it is security for the family she or he is really working for. This may unconsciously cause confusion, wonder and self-doubt.
Late morning. You did some house and yard chores, and read the rest of the paper.
Yesterday a tree-trimming fellow came out and ground up the stump in the side yard and today you raked, added soil, seeds, nutrients and watered hoping the seeds sprout before the end of the month.
Some excitement, Kim and Paul called to say he passed his written anesthesiology boards but he cannot be publically declared as such until he has completed residency next June. He will be certified though when he begins work at Cleveland Clinic’s Surgery Center in July. Next fall he has his anesthesiology oral boards. Paul will be thirty-three as he begins his fellowship. – Amorella.
We are very proud of him and Kim too. We first met Paul when he and Kim were juniors at Miami; I think it was in 2000. They have been together ever since.
You have been in a rather non-descript mood this afternoon. You wonder how you might come up with ideas that would help the world run better, to be efficient and yet openly human. Economics is the problem, but you think of Germany before the war and the need to invent scapegoats, the Jews, for their problems. You wonder how you can have nearly full employment thereby giving people the dignity of work and the freedom to find their own personal way through the world.
Lots of very, very bright people have been working on this problem for years and I feel very arrogant to even consider these things – what do I know? Yet, in a protest or rebellion of any kind it would be good to have ideas to make things better and to keep the costs down at the same time.
One thing fun about the fictional Dead is that they have no material costs because they have no material needs that cost. Forgiveness, temperance and other better parts of our humanity such as friendship and love help the Dead bond. I thought maybe the books might be a back or side door – to see a fresh perspective – but nothing of any practicality arises. It is foolishness to attempt to speculate about the world and how it is. A rebellion of any kind brings a sense of hope. John Milton must have felt that strongly when the Puritans rolled into power – a new order, a very unroyal one that didn’t last out his lifetime. If there is going to be change it has to be for the better for most everyone. This is certainly a question that would be on the minds of the Dead in chapter eight.
When we tackle this next scene let’s begin with such a statement. Post. – Amorella.
Papa John’s for a most satisfactory supper, the national news, then a break. Carol is reading and you want to work on scene three where you left Ezekiel but you don’t know where to go.
He has had his vision but is still on the Dead side. It seems like a good place to stop the sequence but where to now?
Time to have Tiresias come forth to show how things work.
How what works, Amorella? And, why this now?
You have completed scene three of chapter eight. Add, and post. – Amorella.
Scene 3, Chapter 8, Book 4
Alone, Ezekiel stared across the River Jordan thinking about how, when he died, he believed he would cross into a heavenly Israel; his idealized sense of a perfect Jewish Israel within the settlement of Angels and YHWH. Though it does not appear so, this River has more than two sides. I crossed on to be here in Sheol, the Place of the Dead before the final resurrection. I cross the River a second time and I . . . .
Ezekiel’ s mind fell into his soul and his heart followed directly to what he believed was a Never-Been-Born domain. Seven flat houses appear before my dead eyes and they rise in layers of fog or cloud above the River as I float in Never-Been. Archangel Gabriel raises the roof of the first house and the other five rise like a staircase each a house and a step up with a golden Angel waving a wand of light on the roof until the Holiest House, the Seventh, raises the last House, the House of Seraphim Walls create the a final Step, the Throne of Glory that cannot be seen for the shining golden angelic light. I stand on this mysterious shore of Sheol in a vision not made on living Earth. I cannot see but I am not blind to the other side of this great River. He looked down and felt his bare feet on solid ground. He was still on the shore of Sheol but his heart felt as it had crossed over. He did not know what was the truth and his mind could confirm or deny nothing.
***
Tiresias stood to Ezekiel’s left and pointed across the water, “In a vision, even now, in your condition, you see a fantasy from your once-living imagination.”
“You do not know what I have seen,” responded Ezekiel, nonplussed by the voice of the Greek prophet. He didn’t even look Tiresias’ way to confirm or deny the older Greek spirit’s reality.
“You saw what you wanted, what you desired to see,” He paused, “Angels, I suppose, or YHWH.”
Ezekiel’s lips drew a slight smile as he quietly commented, “Angels, walls of Angels.”
The short somewhat terse description caught Tiresias unexpectedly. He wondered: one Angel to a wall; a number of Angels in a wall; how many; how thick is the wall; how many walls; four; a room composed of Angelic walls; how many sides to the room; five; six? He pondered questions such as this in the time it took him to drop his right hand to his side. Tiresias said to Ezekiel, “You never left. I have been here beside you. You did not cross the river, Ezekiel.”
The seemingly much younger Jewish prophet turned to face Tiresias, his shoulder-long straight hair, the skeletal-like chin bone almost piercing the pale leathery skin, the protruding boney cheeks, the dark wide brows and narrowed eyes seemingly glowed a mystical night of black. Grumbling, he declared in a heavily burdened confidence, “The Angels come to me, Tiresias, I do not go to them.”
***
Facing the land of the Jewish Dead and not the river, Takis appeared on Ezekiel’s right and said, “You realize that your people wrapped in this sacred ground, are only a river away from we who were Greek in body and personality.”
Ezekiel turned to the other voice to the white bearded Takis, while watching Tiresias seemingly move with his own body as if it were a slight though swiftly changing breeze on either side of him. ‘I am a sail,’ thought Ezekiel. ‘This New Israel, this holy land my dead feet walk and stand on is my boat.’ Ezekiel stood mast straight and silent. Tiresias and Takis felt this Land of the Dead suddenly and subtlety shift about a toe’s length beneath their feet.
Neither Tiresias nor Takis knew what the truth was, and neither was in a state of mind to confirm or deny.
***
Unbelievable; who knows where that came from. I do not know what happened to Meir, the oldest Jewish prophet. I thought he would appear also.
Ezekiel only had two sides for delivery even in metaphysics it has to make sense, boy.
Is Ezekiel more powerful than the others?
No, he is not, but each prophet has his own gifts. – Amorella.
What about scene four? Who is in it and what is it about?
As we are on a tight ‘inner dimensional metaphysical schedule’, we will continue with Merlyn and Arthur.
Who says, “If there is going to be change it has to be for the better for most everyone.”
Merlyn.
What is the sense of this scene besides an introduction to more of them?
The introduction is enough for now. We are going to wean away from the Greek and Israeli folk to gain a broader picture through Merlyn and Arthur as to what may happen next. Merlyn does not know. He moves himself across the Great Board but he does not and cannot know what piece he is playing: pawn, rook, knight, bishop or queen.
As Arthur was King on Earth what is his station among the Celtic/Christian Dead?
They are in the Land of the Celtic Dead. The Christian Dead have no land, per se. They are roamers, strangers in strange lands of the Dead.
This is/was unexpected.
Rather ironic when you think on it, boy. Merlyn has not yet thought the Geography of the Dead out. – Amorella.
Obviously, I haven’t thought it out either. I have been going on the assumption that each of the twelve cultures is from a particularly earthly region, later even the followers of Mohammed are from a region and Mecca is the center. Christians – too diverse in language and cultures. The focus is on the cross and the sacrifice and resurrection, the physical and the metaphorical.
Your words not mine. All for tonight, post. – Amorella.
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