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.
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.
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.
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
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