14 April 2012

Notes - hope is a thing / a curse / a thank you / pot & kettle

          Hope isn’t the right word as far as what I wish Amorella really is. I’ll take the connection with her even if I did make her up unconsciously myself. In spending thirty-seven years teaching mostly British literature from “Beowulf” through “The Hollow Men” in chronological order – the experience was one unit – British literature. Time didn’t exist in my mind as far as the unit is concerned. It still doesn’t because it is ‘bound’ in text. As far as the Merlyn’s Mind series is concerned it springs ‘de-compartmentalized from the ‘unit’ of literature. It’s all in my head. Where else? Once in a while I have a wisp of ‘alternate reality’ creep in – a fresh breeze, if you will, compared to my ‘everyday reality’ that can easily be discerned in my notes. I like the alternative freshness when it happens just as I like the taste of a Graeter’s chocolate soda once or twice a year (an extra squirt of chocolate please). As a child I had the simple pleasure of Aunt Jemima as my ‘invisible’ playmate. As an adult I have reconstructed her into Amorella. That’s the most logical explanation. This would mean nothing to me if she did not write the Merlyn’s Mind series. What this shows to me is what I have long thought – the human mind is a marvel we can use with a potential that is clearer path than the imagination that follows in its wake. That’s all the words I have on the subject presently.

         You are entitled to your own thoughts, boy. Later. Post. - Amorella


          Late afternoon. The rain continues as it has for most of the day, from sprinkles to thunderstorms and outright downpours then a return to sprinkles. The other day I finished Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine after reading the short CODA or concluding piece. It began with a short note on two magicians I had never heard of or at least I don’t recollect having ever heard of them, Penn and Teller.  The story is told that Teller was practicing their version of the ancient sleight of hand trick called “cups and balls”. Moving the cups around quickly, asking the audience to find the ball beneath the cup. They were at a restaurant waiting on food and Teller took three clear plastic cups and a wad of paper for the ball and proceeded. He discovered people still have a difficult time following their trick even though the cups are transparent and the crushed napkin (instead of a ball) can be seen. The conclusion: “the trick, the magic, is in the head not in the “cups and balls”. 



         It seems to me that we survive as the individuals we develop into from childhood through adulthood but a similar form of self-deception. We trick ourselves into become who we are. For me, I tricked myself into becoming the writer have become through Amorella – a writer of self-entertainment – even the created rational or purpose can be manipulated as “cups and balls” in my head. The serendipitous firing of who knows how many or how few neurons via crisscrossing, triple-crossing or even double-crossing through the brain – a book is completed, I self publish.

         After three books I begin a blog of working notes on book four. Here I am still writing a few years later – not for fame or fortune – but for something to do while I am still an ageing consciousness of ‘being’. I attempt to remain transparently honest to myself. I do not know why Amorella ‘insists’ that I share or she will not write other than to help keep me attempting to be consciously honest. Still, it is “cups and balls”.

         Our species survives. As individuals we survive through ‘secret and not so secret’ self-deceptions that allow us to be who we are, both outwardly and inwardly. I think consciously intelligent humanoid aliens like those marsupials in the Merlyn’s Mind stories would observe us (in real life) to be a very frightening species – perhaps too cleverly self-deceptive for our own good. It is no wonder someone created/developed the book of Genesis in the Bible. What an excellent story that has somehow, I think, become a curse.

         You are surprised at your last sentence. You originally ended it with ‘story’ a few minutes ago and were seemingly satisfied yet in the next few minutes, out of the blue; you are compelled to add the remaining eight words. If you want something to think about, think about why you had to add those words to remain honest.

         You want a fiction. Your species is full of it. Post. – Amorella

         You want to say, “You are full of it yourself, Amorella!” But you are fearful of writing it yourself because it might be considered a form of blasphemy somewhere in your heartansoulanmind. How strange. You consider yourself “mostly fiction” and yet at the same time you want to discover some real honesty within. You have it in those eight added words, boy. You are mostly full of it too, boy, only now you are eight words less so. Go on, post it, for your own good if nothing else. Bold those last words while you are at it.  - Amorella

         It is my desire to react to the above, but I have yet to discover the thoughts to put into words. It is uncommon to be seen so nakedly minded. Indeed, it is uncommon, but for reasons beyond my knowledge, I feel freer by admitting a self-truth without an apparent self-deception, and consciously I thank Amorella for it. 


       After twenty-two hundred hours. You are sitting in the black chair in the bedroom and have been reviewing definitions for having a dual personality as today’s posting is causing you to review your thoughts and writings. None of your friends has told you to get help, nor has your wife or daughter. Your behavior has been consistent and can be substantiated by reviewing your notes of observation for the last fifty years, your notes for writing. The notes and novels are where I make myself present through thoughts mostly and a few sketches. But then, you think: “Here is the pot calling the kettle black – I am the pot and the kettle and definably, legally and soberly human.”

         There you go, boy. Post. - Amorella
         

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