Notes - to each / ch5imagination / always write something you are willing to sign your name to

         You wrote four paragraphs yesterday and last night you decided you had nothing to say so you didn’t post. – Amorella        

         It was just stuff from my head, Amorella, as you well know. Sometimes – you know, I do lead a very regular boring kind of life and my head doesn’t have much to say. I feel like some of those people who talk all the time and little of what is said is really relevant. My writing is the same. I go on and on, nervous energy I suppose – I want to see if I have anything to say (to myself mostly); and I don’t always. Thoughtless running the fingers across the keyboard doesn’t make one ‘writing’. I keep thinking of that movie, forget the name, of a man and his family out in Idaho in the winter in this big house and he is suppose to be writing a novel and all he writes is something about Jack being a dull boy or some such thing. Madness collects itself in his head – I don’t remember what all goes on but the concept fits here if you take the setting and madness out.

         You did forty minutes of your modified aerobics and had your 281 calorie breakfast, oh, and you read the Saturday paper. That’s it so far and it is one minute until noon. – Amorella

         I procrastinated on mowing the lawn yesterday thinking it would be cooler today, which it is. It rained though, so I have to wait until the grass is a bit drier. I am in a grumpy mood and am not sure why – “Cheer up, things are bound to get worse!” still makes me smile though so not all is at a loss. I need to go do some chores; perhaps then I’ll feel better.

         To each their own, boy. Later dude, post. - Amorella

         You feel better after having lunch at Chipotle/Panera. While there Gary Popplewell came up to say hello. His mother is in the hospital across the street. He did not know about Brennan and called once when you were in Cleveland. You made a lunch date at Tommy’s on the Monday after Easter.

         Gary was a good colleague and friend at Mason. He helped me survive (psychologically) during the eighties, nineties and on to my retirement. It helped that he was a school counselor (rightly suggesting Kim apply for early admittance at Miami at Oxford) and although he said I was the most arrogant man he has ever met, we get along well. I had all four of his kids – all are in public education. He has a great wife who is also a hearing specialist. We are both from education-oriented families of like profession. We have an understanding between us. He read my books but discounted the notes though he was given all the notes (similar to these notes) on the development of the three books. He and the others who have been mentioned in this blog at one time or another have had access to all my notes since 2005 because I sent them to them as the scenes and chapters progressed – an attempt to keep my notes and work honest.  

         Seeing Gary brings a rush of memories – some of which you would just as soon forget – and sometimes do. – Presently, it is after twenty-two hundred hours. Let’s get down some of your Lehrer book notes and comments. – Amorella

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Comments on Lehrer’s Imagination: Chapter Five: “The Outsider”         

   

            “The practical advantages of youth were first identified by Adolphe Quetelet, a nineteenth-century French mathematician. Quetelet’s project was simple: he plotted the number of successful plays produced by playwrights over the course of their careers. That’s when he discovered something unexpected: creativity doesn’t increase with experience. The playwrights weren’t getting better at writing plays. Instead, the curve exhibited a steep rise followed by a long slow decline, a phenomenon of creative output now known as the inverted U curve. According to Quetelet, his curve demonstrated that creativity tends to peak after a few years of work – when we know enough, but not too much – before it starts to fall, in middle age.”  p. 123

And,

            “The moral is that outsider creativity isn’t a phase of life – it’s a state of mind. . . . We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who do not know what we’re talking about. We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise.” p. 125

And,

            “Knowledge can be a subtle curse. When we learn about the world, we also learn all the reasons when the world cannot be changed. We get used to our failures and imperfections. We become numb to the possibilities of something new. In fact, the only way to remain creative over time – to not be undone by our expertise – is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don’t fully understand. This is the lesson of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the nineteenth-century Romantic poet. One of his favorite pastimes was attending public chemistry lectures in London, watching eminent scientists set elements on fire. When Coleridge was asked why he spent so much time watching these pyrotechnic demonstrations, he had a ready reply, “I attend the lectures,” Coleridge said, “so that I can renew my stock of metaphors.” He knew that we see the most when we are on the outside looking in.” p. 135

From: Lehrer’s Imagination, “Chapter Five”

** **

         Having played the ‘outsider’ detached role much of my life so that I might observe what is at hand, I have a sense of this material. Living life fully and independently in Brazil with Carol for two years allowed me to see what I was capable of doing – easily adapting to a culture different from the United States – and enjoying most every minute of it. The language was one of my weakest problems but I found that if I spoke slowly in Portuguese and directly to the person I could be mostly understood. The Brazilians watched my facial expression and body language. I was an open book so I was easily read even without fully knowing the language. I could somewhat understand the native speakers by observing tone, expression and body. Humanity readily understands basic humanity – it is a state of mind we have already developed no matter what culture we are born and raised in.

         By picking an esoteric theme for the books I put myself, particularly in The Rebellion, a problem that has caused me to spend much more time digging into heartansoulanmind and existential setting for the Place of the Dead, HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither. I have to work through the concepts and ‘become’ them within. I have to be the characters and I have to see and feel what I imagine they would see and feel being physically dead. These online notes in the blog demonstrate the problems I have had to deal with this, plus not consciously ‘knowing’ what is going to happen in the next scene and next chapter as far as that goes. I enjoy the challenge even though at times I feel it is all imagination without reason – yet so far, as in the other books, once a chapter has been completed it makes sense in context – at least to me. Otherwise, I couldn’t put my name on the book even though Amorella may write it from my perspective, I am the legal writer. I take the credit. I have no choice as long as I have my sanity. Mother always said, “Don’t write anything you cannot willingly sign your name to.” We didn’t always agree, but on that we always did.

         Late afternoon you did mow the grass, all but the hillside, which Carol mowed for you. Tomorrow you will do the trimming and be done with it for a few days. Like last night, you had scrambled eggs and half a peanut butter sandwich for supper. Time for bed, old man. Post - Amorella

Notes - not much / language and art / ch4imagine

        Almost noon. You finished your exercises and decided to weigh yourself mid-day. Your target was 275 but alas you are 278.6 which is two pounds less than a couple of days ago. – Amorella        

         I was rather depressed but hey, I haven’t been in the upper 270’s since 2003 at the earliest. Before that I would have to go back to the early eighties or late seventies. So, overall, I am surprised and pleased. Yesterday we had a big meal out and decided to forego the left over pizza until tonight. So, for supper I piddled around with a few cracker snacks and Cheerios instead. Today, a banana and skim milk; no peanut butter. Blood sugar was up last night – mostly from that Graeter’s kid’s cup of cookie dough and chocolate chips. I wish they had half a kid’s cup. Maybe I just ought to take a bite or two of Carol’s instead, but she prefers double chocolate chip or mint chocolate chip.

         You are thinking of going to another journal just for food commentary but it works here once in a while. Besides, this is what it is like growing older and getting ready to hit the seventy-year mark, boy. Writing is one of your few pleasures outside of friends and family, you are usually at your calmest while writing. Nothing like giving yourself away on paper to keep your spirit freer, that’s my take. – Amorella

         Carol has turned on the news and wouldn’t you know, the big announcement here in Cincinnati – a new Graeter’s flavor: cake batter fudge brownie, available through June. Mostly clear skies though cooler, in the low sixties for a high. Ice cream and weather, important personal level matters in Cincinnati, Ohio. I have nothing else to say.

         Why don’t you read chapter four of Imagine before tackling scene nine. Post. - Amorella


         As Carol has begun one of her 'number in the block' games on her iPad that sounds like a plan. 

         Lunch in Kenwood at Potbelly’s, a stop next door at Barnes and Noble for the DVD’s for seasons one and two of Downton Abbey, and two shirts size 3XL from Casual Male. Home for Carol to pick up her shoes and now at Pine Hill Park for Carol to do her walk.

         I feel somewhat guilty I did not walk part way, perhaps next time. I did do the aerobics for forty minutes though so it’s not like I didn’t do anything. We saved about twenty-two dollars on the DVD’s with promo discounts then Carol’s ten percent added to it. We love the series, we love period pieces, especially from the Isles and Europe. The British Isles (includes Ireland here) and Europe are in my blood, no question about it.

         They are in your heart, boy, much more so than your blood. Your blood is earthbound first. Geography does not matter as far as the species and its propagation is concerned. Blood begets blood – politics and religion not withstanding.

         I like to think I have Celtic and European roots first.

         It’s the other way around – Central Asia, Celtic and European roots is a better suite in Hotel Earth, thirty thousand years is far enough back. At least you know about those pieces of DNA. Project pieces of yourself back that far to gather in the imagination for the rest, back to 170,000 or so years to the DNA mother, the direct ancestor every woman who is alive. It’s the female who is most important here (in context), not the male. From the book’s perspective no one alive is directly related to Mother Gloama’s grandfather, Panagiotakis, and it is the female who is more important in these books.

** **

The origin of Homo sapiens

(From: World Book 2009 software)

Scientists classify today's people as Homo sapiens, a term that means wise human being. Anthropologists disagree about the precise evolutionary relationships between Homo sapiens and earlier peoples, such as Homo erectus. They also disagree about where and when H. sapiens first appeared.

Anthropologists today reject the idea that human beings can be divided into biologically defined races. Only slight differences distinguish the features of any two modern peoples who developed in neighboring regions. Thus, it is hard to draw a dividing line between them. But groups of people who have lived in certain parts of the world for many thousands of years tend to differ in appearance from groups in other parts of the world. These differences are probably adaptations to local environments. For example, people whose ancestors have lived for generations in sunny climates tend to have dark skin. Dark pigment helps protect the skin from sunburn and reduces the risk of skin cancer.

The multiple origins theory states that after H. erectus spread out of Africa, groups of these early human beings settled in different parts of Asia, and then, later, reached Europe. As they moved to new areas, with differing climates and plants and animals, these scattered populations developed different characteristics. In each geographical area, human groups with different appearances evolved.

***

The spread of early human beings. According to the single origin theory, the first Homo sapiens appeared in Africa between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, having developed from H. heidelbergensis in that region. Soon afterward, H. sapiens spread to other parts of Africa, as well as to Asia and Europe. In these regions, modern H. sapiens replaced the earlier peoples who lived there. All these earlier peoples, such as the Neandertals in Europe and Homo erectus in Asia, became extinct.

***

Molecular biologists have gained a greater understanding of human evolution by studying the rate of change of human genetic material. By calculating this rate, some scientists have concluded that all living people must have evolved from a small group of human ancestors who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago. But some molecular biologists doubt that enough is known about human heredity to draw such a conclusion.

***

The first part of the Stone Age is called the Paleolithic Period. It began with the first toolmaking over 2 ¹/2 million years ago and lasted until about 10,000 years ago, when some people in the Middle East began farming. On the basis of toolmaking techniques, scientists divide the Paleolithic Period into three parts. From the earliest to the latest, they are called the Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic. Anthropologists most often use those terms to describe periods of European prehistory.

Even after some people learned to farm, many others continued to live by gathering wild plants and by hunting. These Stone Age hunters and gatherers who lived after 10,000 years ago are called Mesolithic people. Farmers from this period are called Neolithic people.

Throughout the early stages of human evolution, the rate of cultural change among prehistoric people was extremely slow. At times, stone tools and other products of human skill remained unchanged for many thousands of years. The cultural activities of the first physically modern people resembled those of the Neandertals and other early people who lived during that time. For example, the modern-looking human beings from the 100,000-year-old sites of Qafzeh and Skhul were found with the same kinds of stone tools that Neandertals used at sites nearby. Thus, the appearance of modern human beings did not represent a sudden change in lifestyle or culture from the earlier people. About 35,000 years ago, however, the rate of cultural change began to accelerate rapidly. This later period is generally referred to as the late Stone Age, or, in Europe, the Upper Paleolithic.

***

The Stone Age lasted until bronze replaced stone as the chief toolmaking material. In some areas, this occurred about 5,000 years ago.

The appearance of art was one of the most spectacular developments of the late Stone Age. The oldest known works of art date from this period. Furthermore, the practice of creating art seems to have spread rapidly in Europe, Africa, and Australia.

Some of the oldest artworks from the Upper Paleolithic were ornaments, such as beads made from polished shells. After about 30,000 years ago, prehistoric people began to produce a variety of artwork. They excelled at carving-creating beautiful sculptures of animals and people, usually from ivory or bone. They also made engravings of people, fish, birds, and other animals on bone, ivory, and stone. In addition, the Upper Paleolithic people in Europe sculpted clay, ivory, and stone figurines of women, which may have represented fertility.

The development of speech. No one knows when or how spoken language developed. However, some anthropologists think that human beings may have first begun to speak sometime during the late Stone Age. These scientists believe that the many cultural developments that occurred at this time-especially the appearance of art-may be related to the development of speech. The beginnings of speech, the creation of artwork, and the making of complex tools all required advancements in human intelligence and cooperation.

The spread of settlement. Prehistoric people spread into new areas during the late Stone Age. Cultural and technological advances enabled them to migrate to such places as Australia, the Pacific Islands, and North and South America.

As early as 60,000 years ago, people used boats to reach Australia. About 20,000 years ago, people from Australia and Asia began to colonize the Pacific Islands. These people used sophisticated navigational systems involving knowledge of the stars, water currents, and wind direction. They also used simple navigational tools.

By 130,000 years ago, human beings had spread to the cold, harsh plains of western Siberia, but not until later did people move into the eastern part of the region. At that time, because so much water had been frozen as glacial ice, the level of the oceans and seas was lower than it is today. As a result, the Bering Strait was dry and formed a land bridge between northeast Asia and North America. Most scientists believe prehistoric people crossed this bridge and were living in North America by about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. Eventually, through a series of migrations from Asia, modern people populated North and South America.

The most recent ice age ended about 11,500 years ago. As the ice receded, the environment of many prehistoric people changed and greatly affected their way of life. In some areas, such as Europe, forests began to spread across the land. The people of these areas learned to hunt new species of animals and gather new varieties of plants from the forests. In other parts of the world, people began to experiment with methods of controlling their supply of food. They learned that they could plant seeds from the plants they ate. They also learned that they could domesticate animals, perhaps by capturing young ones from the wild and raising them. These discoveries led to farming.

The rise of agriculture, according to most scientists, began in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago, or 8000 B.C. The first farmers lived in a region called the Fertile Crescent, which covers what is now Lebanon and parts of Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey. At first, these people probably did not depend entirely on the crops they raised. But as they improved their methods, farming became their most important source of food. The earliest plants grown in the Middle East were probably barley and wheat. Early farmers in the Middle East eventually raised cattle, goats, and sheep.

People were herding cattle and growing grain in northern Africa by 6000 B.C. By about 5000 to 4000 B.C., agriculture had developed independently in Asia. In the Yangtze Valley of China, and perhaps in what is now Thailand, farmers grew rice and a grain called millet. By the same time, people had begun to farm in the Indus River Valley of what is now Pakistan.

Between about 4500 and 4000 B.C., farming peoples spread from southeastern Europe into the dense forests of central and western Europe. These people brought wheat and cattle with them. Foraging people in Scandinavia learned how to farm from these newcomers.

     Agriculture began to develop in southern Africa by about 3000 B.C. By 1500 B.C., people had begun to cultivate corn and beans in what is now Mexico. By 1000 B.C., peoples in what became the eastern United States were raising gourds and sunflowers. Farming began later in other parts of North America.

Selected and edited from: World Book 2009, software.

** **

         The above will serve as our lead as far as Merlyn is concerned. The Beginnings of Language and Art is the factor that further separates the consciousness of species with other species on the planet. The other unit of measure will be when human being began to bury their dead. With this there is an inkling of a ‘feel’ for a possible afterlife. That will be the reasoning. Fiction or not, the books have a laid out plausibility for your imagination to follow. – Amorella

** **

Burial

Intentional burial, particularly with grave goods, may be one of the earliest detectable forms of religious practice since, as Philip Lieberman suggests, it may signify a "concern for the dead that transcends daily life." Though disputed, evidence suggests that the Neanderthals were the first human species to intentionally bury the dead, doing so in shallow graves along with stone tools and animal bones. Exemplary sites include Shanidar in Iraq, Kebara Cave in Israel and Krapina in Croatia. Some scholars, however argue that these bodies may have been disposed of for secular reasons.

The earliest undisputed human burial, discovered so far dates back 130,000 years. Human skeletal remains stained with red ochre were discovered in the Skhul cave at Qafzeh, Israel.

From Wikipedia

** **

         You can work with this. What is thirty thousand or so years between the book's DNA mother and the remains 130,000 years ago? Easily fictionalized, boy. Post. - Amorella

** **

Comments on Lehrer’s Imagination: Chapter Four: “The Letting Go”

“ . . . this is why [Yo-Yo] Ma sways as he plays: Because he can’t restrain himself. Because he is experiencing the same emotions that he is trying to express. Because he is letting himself go. “The best storytellers always really get into their own stories,” Ma says. “They’re waving their arms, laughing at their own jokes. That’s what I try to be like on stage . . . I know that some of the best music happens when you let yourself get a little carried away.” pp. 87-88

And,

“ . . . Once we fall asleep, the prefrontal cortex shuts itself down; the censor goes eerily quiet. Meanwhile, neurons all across the brain start shooting out squirts of acetylcholine. But this isn’t the usual excitement of reality; this activity is semi-random and unpredictable. It’s as if the mind is entertaining itself with improv, filling nighttime narratives with whatever spare details happen to be lying around.” pp. 106-107

And,

[Yo-Yo Ma says]: “[A child] is playing for pleasure. He is playing because making this sound expressing this melody makes him happy. That is still the only good reason to play.” p. 111

** **

         The focus of this chapter in the book is on musicians and their use of creativity. I understand the “getting carried away” though, only with me it is words. I see myself more as a researcher and writer at the same time. I’ll never forget writing about the marsupial-humanoids on their ‘Ship’ and how living grass was their carpet on Ship. I could feel the grass on my bare feet as I hit those keys on the laptop. It makes me feel better about myself to see these things in real artists; mostly I am a make believe artist – still, I have some of their same skills. Cool beans.

         The censor must be quieted. I understand this too, but being a former teacher I feel the need to be polite. I used “BS” in class more than once, but I would never say the full word. Though I did make a mistake a few times – the worst was when at Mason and I was teaching a junior honor’s English class and I meant to say “Huck Finn” but it came out the other way around “Fuck Hinn”. Hey, everyone woke up at the instant, even myself. I thought, ‘Did I hear  the word? Who said that? Holy crap, it was me.’ Some laughed until they teared up. Red-faced, I laughed too. I mean, what else could we do?

         As far as the last quotation – I write because it makes me happy. That is the first and foremost reason. Why not, I’m retired and I always wanted to write, now I can write more, and do.

         Enough for tonight, old man. Post. - Amorella

Notes - sweet & mellow / do you see a problem here? / ch3imagination / sc.8 complete / bj&bs / sc.9 concept

         Mid-morning. Carol is downstairs reading the paper and you are up in the bedroom relaxing with the cat and watching the green on the trees slowly progressing towards the upper branches. The north sky has been storm dark purple but to the southeast the sun is beginning to smoothly and laser-like slice through those unseen clouds from time to time. Contemplation: ‘do I write commentary on chapter three of Imagine or do I do exercises?      

  

         Not very deep thinking, huh?

         Both are important to you in different ways, don’t make them appear less than they are.

         That was not my intent.

         You think that personifying a soul is deep thought? – Amorella

         I must since I was toying with the thought and getting nowhere.

         It is a good thing I am in here and not out there, boy. I would give you something to personify rather than lightly sketch within your psychological sense survival. – Amorella

         I’m not about to let my imagination get the better of me, Amorella.

         I smell a sweet and mellow humor, boy. What are you smoking? – Amorella

         Nothing, Amorella, as you well know.

         Sometimes you are way to literal, old man. Take a break. Do your exercises. Later, dude. Post. - Amorella

          You worked out modified aerobics style for forty minutes listening to the eighty’s pop music, online with Loudcaster. Carol and the cat are presently downstairs and you are enjoying the library quiet – nothing but the train rolling the tracks about a quarter mile or so due west where Tylersville Road crosses State Route 42.

         I find it pleasurable to hear a train go through three or four times a week. A couple miles south they tore up the track so it goes to local businesses and then north through Lebanon or Monroe and on up to Middletown I suppose. Local traffic. During Christmas and summer break the railroad takes passengers. We are planning on taking it ourselves, this summer when Kim, Paul, Owen and Brennan are down for a week. Also, we plan to hit the Cincinnati Zoo (they also have a train). Owen loves Thomas the Train Engine. It was the first app they put on their new iPad – lots of good learning stuff as well as entertainment.

         Isn’t that what entertainment is, learning? – Amorella

         It is to me. There goes the train back north, whistle blowing through the town’s crossings. Mason is a very pleasant place to live. I remember the trains rolling through Westerville growing up. Grandma and Popo Schick lived on the west side of Westerville Creamery that sat just west of the tracks. The tracks moved on south through Minerva Park, again we lived not more than a quarter mile from them. There used to be traffic, then it dried up to a trickle, then no more. They tore the tracks out and that was that. End of an era. If only Mason had a four-year college in town, it would be a lot like home. I miss the presence of Otterbein’s campus and the Otterbein Cemetery, two of my favorite old haunts. A pint or so of my cremains will be in the cemetery though, that’s the plan; if haunting is allowed that would be fun – to walk or float around the cemetery, east and north uptown via Walnut and Knox Street, back west on College Avenue or Main Street to Otterbein’s campus, then back south on Grove Street to the cemetery. Pleasant little journey with lots of memories, that’s how I see it.

         You planning to peek in windows, bob through stores, hover over the benches, window shop, breeze down Main to Grove – dash around campus, hover in the back of some of the classrooms and seeing what’s being taught? – Amorella

         I know you are funning me but it sounds like a good plan.

         How is there any growth in that? – Amorella

         I’d visit with some old friends, dead like me. I don’t know how much learning there would be.

         Do you see a problem here? – Amorella

         Yes, I do. Interesting. I hadn’t thought about that.

         Post. - Amorella

I like the quotation used to begin this third chapter:

“It was a flash of inspiration. Kind of a thirty year flash.” Charles Eames

** **

Comments on Lehrer’s Imagination: Chapter Three: “The Unconcealing”

Glaser says, “ . . . It’s only by really thinking about something that we’re able to move ourselves into perceptions that we never knew we had the capacity for.”

            “The German philosopher Martin Heidegger referred to this as the unconcealing process. He argued, like Glaser, that the reality of things is naturally obscured by the clutter of the world, by all those ideas and sensations that distract the mind. The only way to see through the clutter is to rely on the knife of conscious attention, which can cut away the excess and reveal ‘the things themselves.’” pp. 73

And,

“The question, of course, is how to adjust our thought process to the task at hand. How does anyone know when to listen to the prefrontal cortex instead of unleashing the right hemisphere?” . . .

            The good news is that the human mind has a natural ability to diagnose its own problems, to assess the kind of creativity that’s needed. The assessments have an eloquent name: they’re called ‘feelings of knowing,’ and they occur when we suspect that we can find the answer if only we keep on thinking about the question. . . .

            But here’s the mystery: If you’ve forgotten a person’s name, then why are you so sure that you can remember it? What does it mean to know something without being able to access it? . . . So we keep thinking, because the next thought might be the answer.” pp. 81 & 83.

** **

         This concept is easily witnessed in my notes. Since college days evidence can be seen in my writing of being curiouser and curiouser about esoteric concepts such as metaphysics and the ‘heartansoulanmind’. The only problem here is that I did not learn anything much from this chapter I know between-the-lines of this chapter all to well. Okay, this reads really arrogant.

         It is true, orndorff, not arrogant. There is a difference between ‘having an understanding’ on a concept and having hand-waving exultations about it. Post. - Amorella 

   

Scene 8, Ch. 8, Bk. 4 (drafted)

         Merlyn continued responding to Arthur’s many questions as to his perspective and early scenes viewed by following several analogies and narratives the reader has observed throughout The Rebellion.

        

         “I see the overview,” noted Arthur, “but the circumstances within us who are Dead and less so obvious among the Living, appears to be more important than even the tree that roots the vast universes seemingly beyond my imagination. I can consider the numbers, the analogous mathematics and dimensions involved but my mind cannot absorb what my heart cannot experience.”

         “Experience is a dimension unto itself, Arthur. A dream experience is a reality. Those who deny such have not been effected by a dream. The greater, common reality is witnessed in the effect. The wordy braided DNA dreams on how I arrived from my death in the European seventh century to make my way up to the twenty-first century through the crisscrossing of many heartsansoulsanminds of over the two-thousand year mixed genealogy of twins who married twins. In the mid-twentieth century Robert and Richard Graystone married their genealogically connected counterparts, Connie and Cindy Bleacher.

         Even today they do not realize their special connection to the heartansoulanmind with me – Merlyn, the once seventh century Scottish Bard and Celtic Druid. I traveled heartsansoulsanminds through the letters so that others might see how it is to be the Shaman of this six part series. In the pages an entrance through my dreams to the Rebellion of the First Ten Thousand Dead in Elysium’s setting of the eighth century before Christ to our present circumstantial setting, here in our seventh century set on the Isle of our Celtic Dead, Avalon.

         “I don’t understand where you are, my old and dear friend,” commented Arthur sincerely. “You were my elderly companion most of my life and much of the time I didn’t even realize it.”

         “I made mistakes,” Merlyn paused regretfully, “I did not foresee the affair.”

        

         “Nor did I, Merlyn. Guenevere won’t see me. She ran to the Convent after to avoid both Lancelot and myself. Here, in Avalon I thought I would see her once again, but I never have, not even at a distance. I cannot imagine her not being here.”

         Merlyn drilled his dark eyes through Arthur as if he weren’t there and stated, “Guenevere is here.”

         “Why did you not tell me, Merlyn?” asked Arthur with a rushed  tear filling his left eyelid.

        

         “You don’t see anyone who makes you uncomfortable, anyone you would want to avoid. One day you will and find you have disappeared and returned to your private abode. That is what happens.”

         “No, Lancelot either. He avoids me not I him,” shuttered Arthur in a tone more of disappointment than rage. “He is in Avalon too, isn’t he?”

        

         “I haven’t seen him nor do I want to.”

         Awed, Arthur replied, “By your want you can make him vanish?”

         “From me, my king, I can. My presence can be felt before I arrive in a place,” Merlyn laughed and with a twinkle, said, “The lightning comes before, I arrive with the thunder.”

         “You are in jest, Merlyn. I rarely know your true feelings.”

         “Me either,” quipped Merlyn. “Emotions without a body’s direction are not always easy to decipher.”

         “They originate in the heart though, Merlyn. We both know that.”

         “A spirit can make others quiver, but a spirit’s heart must function as a whole heartansoulanmind. Heartanmind are more readily distinquished, but the soul passes through emotion as lightning passes through air. The following ‘booming’ sound is usually mind brought not heart.”

         “How do you know these things, Merlyn? You appeared, at times, a magician on Earth, but in Avalon? How did these secret matters of Rebellion come to surround you as Avalon is surrounded by the Great River of Souls?

         “Souls are an accompaniment, they are not here on their own.”

         Depressed, Arthur half mumbled, “So, Guinevere and Lancelot still have their souls.”

         Merlyn showed puzzlement, “Did you expect them damned?”

         “It is a secret hope that Lancelot was . . . but Merlyn, he was my friend, it is difficult to condemn one without the other. I twist in the wind on this circumstance.”

         “They twist in their own way, also, Arthur, but they choose to twist as a single string of twine.” He drew his hand on Arthur’s supposed shoulder, “One way or another we are all dangling here, my lad, that is why the Rebellion has arisen.”

         “You make it a sun, the one we do not have here?”

         “Figuratively, at best,” shored Merlyn. “No region of the Dead holds a sun in the sky.” He collected a thought, “to avert sharp shadows I suppose. Enough shade here in Avalon as is, don’t you think, Arthur?” Merlyn in a quick glance at his friend’s still bright and royal eyes. More on this later, my young friend. I need to return to matters long passed.” With that, transparency became Merlyn’s helper and guide. In less than a dead man’s blink Merlyn vanished, swept out of Arthur’s eyes, as it were, as a flash of sunlight.

         I know better, said Arthur to himself, my old friend was never here at all. He stood up and walked alone to the unimposing castle straight ahead.

***

        You finished the scene while sitting in the car in the nearby park, came home after a late afternoon treat at Graeter’s. Earlier in the afternoon an excellent lunch at Longhorn with your favorite, Jennifer, as your server. While sitting in your large comfortable  living room chair and waiting on the national news you had a quick thought on the male portraits of yesterday and the elusive feminine triangle. Your present conclusion is that the soul is feminine and that the three men were heartsanminds that were attached to this same feminine-like soul at different time periods in history. Then, you discounted this hypothesis because you have read of these kinds of events before and it sounds too much like the Celtic faeryland for you. Besides, a triangle does not a five-pointed star make. That’s your view, right? – Amorella

         It was just a thought, Amorella. Then it sounded like I was digging up stories of how souls are from other stories and I would not like to use the same stories perspectives on souls because they are, as one says, out of a standard box on souls and angels and probably even extraterrestrial aliens. Too many stories. I would like something fresh. I mean, when I was writing down my original thoughts the first thing that came to mind was Freud and a more sexual (and simpler) explanation for my flash of thought while sitting on the pot. I see the feminine detail beneath the pubic hair and then what happens – three male heads. Ha! In this context it sounds like I was thinking a BJ to me and suppressing the thought with a bit of esoterics and disguised theatre. I mean, really, Amorella. If it was an ‘out of body’ experience then that was the fantasy. You know, I am a shy fellow, really. But, life is what it is and I’m sure the character of the books, Grandma, would agree. I shouldn’t have even written it down, but I did. It’s just male BS; I am suppressing the dirty old man in me. I have a mind but I have a male brain too. I cannot deny either.

          You get angry with yourself over the oddest matters, orndorff. At least it’s out of your system and you can let it go. A blow job (or three) and bullshit. Why don’t you just spell it out? Too polite? In this case your sense of self-honesty is floating in a cloud of arrogance. The arrogance is in your anger, you near defiance of what you are, your basic humanity. In here, the Dead lived with it and still do until they don’t. Where were human beings’ heartsansoulsanminds before they existed on Earth? These things are also thought and written about. How long does it take a babe to adjust to the physical world of life? What takes place? In here the same exists after physical death. You understand the dark humor between the lines. To you, at times, this sounds or appears depressing, but that is not the case in these books. It just is. Consistency is not something that the soul is designed to hold, boy. In here, the soul is designed to hold a human/marsupial-humanoid heartanmind. Post. - Amorella

         Almost time for bed and you are wondering about scene nine. The focus is on Merlyn and Gloama. The situation will be reviewed to bring the reader up to par but in the process Gloama will drop a bombshell, so to speak, and Merlyn will find himself in a very awkward position. He wishes to fade away in the moment but Mother will prevail. – Amorella

         This sounds ominous, Amorella. Merlyn has been ‘elected’, as it were, to be in this position. He is stretched as far as the human species, from the ‘beginning’ with the same fictional mother we all have to the present, 2012. Even though Merlyn heartanmind is protected within his soul’s skin, if you will, how is it metaphysically possible to be stretched through the whole of the DNA and the Living and the Dead of the human species?

         He will be aided by the Supervisor because it is a Necessity beyond the Supervisor’s circumstance. The event will be quite subtle, orndorff, neither the Supervisor or Mother Gloama will realize what has happened but you and the reader will at the end of the scene. – Amorella