You are in the mid-morning shade at Pine Hill Lakes Park waiting for Carol on her walk. Earlier you had a light breakfast, banana with peanut butter and a half of a glass of skim milk. You have gained five pounds from the two hundred and seventy five and have a doctor's appointment on Tuesday. You also did your exercises and presently don't feel much like eating. Your glucose shot up to 144 this morning but your blood pressure was 108/70. Yesterday you had a turkey lunch at the Rocking Chair Place and half a ham and cheese sandwich for supper, an ice cream treat at 150 calories and 80 calories of high test Coke so you do not understand the reason for the spike. You are sure it will come up at the doctor's office.
I am wondering about "The Brothers" segment I have not said they were twins or the girls either and actually suggested they were not the same age. Now that I 'know' Kay and Ann again in real life it doesn't feel right to use their twin status as these characters are created out of amalgamations of personalities, etc. Bob and I were/are (for the books) mental twins so that's okay with me. In fact I like writing Bob's part as if he were still here and alive. Also, I do not have much description of the house or living room setting in the piece, only the window to the cemetery. I placed the house on Knox Street on the corner of Cherry just behind my grandparents' place, but when I flash to the cemetery in my mind I am sitting on the front porch of Mr. Press Reynolds, the kind old fellow who had been born and raised a slave and faced Otterbein Cemetery from the north on West Walnut. There are strange and interesting connections in my head in yesterday's hindsight. I can sense the pathways of thought as the words fall into place from bits of memory "haunted memory tunneling" is what I am going to call it.
Let's work on Grandma's Story. - Amorella
1500 hours. We had a light delicious lunch at First Watch near the Streets of West Chester. What was really enjoyable were the rolling southwestern Ohio hills in the background. These hills to our north mark the moraine left by the last Great Wisconsin ice sheet. Southern Butler and Warren counties are also in and on those hills. The height of the Wisconsin glaciations took place 18,000 years ago which oddly enough is the time period of Grandma's first story which I just completed.
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Chapter One
Grandma’s Story
This is Grandma Earth child. I am here to show you the DNA, the chromosomes, the genetics lines of Rob and Rich and their wife-partner families. The lines trace back to Merlyn's life friendships and those friendships continuing connections up to Merlyn's return to Life, though still dead, through Richard's soul. It is not so complicated as one might think. You may want to call this genetic memory if you are not inclined to the concept that human beings have a soul. Grandma Earth doesn't care much what human beings think. She considers all consciousness a child of herself. You come from the earth and you return to it, that's what this is about. Believe what you want. You have a spirit of higher consciousness. I know this otherwise you wouldn't be reading.
***
I have a long ago story for you, said Grandma. I pick out a memory one of the dead, of higher consciousness, the memory of a heartansoulanmind that is the human spirit; the spirit or ghost that continues beyond the physical body, the physical world. A man, though dead and a direct ancestor of Rob and Richard, is still worldly troubled. All the people in Grandma's stories are dead. Here is his and his granddaughter's unresolved conflict.
It is dawn and my shoulders shiver. This is the way it is. I hear the crickets and other small creatures around the swamp. I am in a hole in a wall and there is no way out. This is the way it is. I cannot get out. Let me out. I am stuck. Let me out.
My fingers are cold and full of ice. It is winter in spring. The birds sing. I am no bird. It is cold, and I am ice forming on the river. I am floating and cold. The river is not what I am. I am continuity, the common ground in icy hands.
I had a dream last night, and it was a whopper. It was about these people who live way out among the stars, and how it is when they are stuck too.
I will tap out my message as people caught in a cave do. I have ice-cold fingers, the Living listen. I remember time; it is in my own cold dawn. I am almost eighteen thousand years old. I am stuck frozen and flat in the ice near the cold stone that surrounds the pond of stars. I am here then and now. I am the shaman dancing and I am in half a spirit living and half a spirit dead.
The dancing stopped. The shaman alive on earth in the man's memory looked to his audience, pointed to a not so bright star in the night and said, “We are from there,” then he pointed to the soil beneath his feet, “to here.” That is what the now shivering shaman said. None of the onlookers slept well that night.
One of those attentive listeners to the shaman, his granddaughter, tossed and turned and suddenly unexpectedly, she thought, ‘How can we be here and there at the same time?’ Later in life, she died and found herself waiting for members of her group to join her once they died and did not die too. People had become respecting the Dead in the time of the Shaman who still felt freezing cold and buried the Dead with rites and passages, thus accommodating both the Living and the Dead at the same time. The Living had made the conscious decision, being in two places at once to be with their living friends and to be with the memories their friends who are dead.
*
This particular shaman knows Grandma Earth with her white teeth gleaning through white paper usually unsoiled with shadows. She looked out on her listeners young and old alike staring at these passing shadows.
Child, she said, you ain’t got a clue on what words are. I’m gonna sit on this here stump and hope it won’t stain my pretty blue and white dress floating along in a gentle breeze. To look into Grandma you need to first search deep down into yourself. You may not like it but I am your nature inside and out. The kerchief on my head ain’t nothin' but the stars. You keep that in your head, if you got a free mind for it.
Grandma glanced up beyond the dark sky on her head. The white of her puffy eyes showed dark mysterious pupils; then she re-connected with her listener. I got me a chant to take us from a story in the past to a story in the future. I become the bosom, the heart board on which the shamans dance. Merlyn is no different than other shamans. Merlyn and his lover still meet. He considers himself Merlyn half dead and Merlyn half alive. But like other higher consciousnesses, Merlyn knows there is more to death and life than that. For instance, his lover sweet Vivien is one.
From two ancient hearts by souls made to one
Show these stories where our passions are begun.
Our well-known druidess and druid will do,
They are the same like spirits that make up you.
In a timeless corridor where musing memories rightly stay
Our Vivien and Merlyn still consciously lay.
Thus from romance and Grandma's red and toothy gums
Our narrative from past and also future comes.
*** ***
This is difficult for you to realize how much fun this work actually is. Passion is like that, boy, much more so than love. Post. - Amorella
1604 hours. I just took a look at this next section -- Pouch Text is 12 pages long and 3632 words long. The Intro/Prologue is 1381 words; The Dead - 709 words; Transition - 95 words; The Brothers - 1203 words; Grandma's Story - 906 words and now here is Pouch Text at - 3632 words. How are we going to cut this, Amorella?
Use Word to create various sized summaries of the chapter first, put these summaries on a separate working document and we'll go from there. Post. - Amorella
1652 hours. I have created two automated summaries, one at ten percent and the other at fifty.
It will be easier to work with the one at fifty percent. Both will have to be on the screen at the same time then have a third screen to work the new version on. - Amorella
I will set this up but I am going to have to take a break. This is a new method. I knew there was going to be a problem with the Pouch sections. They are horrendously long. I am going to try to write it just from the summary first, and see what happens.
Take your break. I'll help you with it as we go along and we can see how it goes. Post. - Amorella
2328 hours. We had sandwiches and fruit for supper then watched last night's final summer episode of "Suits:" I sat down to write and cannot believe I completed first chapter of "Diplomatic Pouch" Here it is:
*** ***
Chapter One
The Diplomatic Pouch
Trexer rubbed his forehead, "Problem," he murmured, "We have a captain."
"Is blackenot still on?" asked Captain Fargo while standing barefoot on Ship's grassy floor.
"Yes, Captain, but Ship's not running."
We always run, thought Captain Fargo. "Godofamily, we are stuckinagray." No antigravobars. Ship is a withering vine clinging to a hollow stump of stars.
Trexer responded with a grimace and a reinforced childhood thought, "The brighter the berry, the more shade in the head."
"Stuckinagray,"
"Not good, captain. The prophets say this is a bad sign. We might be too late to save them."
"Ship is a good runner."
"Homing instincts are clear, Captain. Beaconhome is on. Blackenot is on."
"Where's Hartolite?" I miss Friendly. Why did PrimeThree keep her home? This is our second visit to Earth. Friendly should have come with me again. (That was twelve years ago.) Nervously, Fargo scratched at his cheek like an earthman would stroke his beard. "How long before we are critical?" (I just want to go home.)
Trexer with dark tree knot clouded eyes responded, "One week."
The captain muttered, "We must be Earth's sun. Can we pushanpull blackenot to off and navigate by sight?"
"We might disrupt solar functions if we are too close."
"Rules say we run," grumbled Captain Fargo. "We have a week."
"Shuttlevator is working, captain," interrupted Hartolite rushing in from another slice of Ship. We are close . . . within a day.
Old Yermey sauntered into the control room giving one of his finest disgruntled looks. "Fine, Hart, Are you sure Shuttlevator is up to the task of running to Earth rather than Home?"
Trexer spoke, "Surely ParentsinCharge will direct Ship Two to gather us for Home."
Yermey always the agnostic commented, "We land on Earth and that's it. We wait to be picked up from a planet we can survive on." So similar, he thought, ThreePlanets is on the other side of the galaxy yet we humanoid marsupials are so look alike earthlings. We each have ten fingers and toes, hair, two eyes and a nose with mouth below. Earthlings have marsupial faces and bodies except we males each have a crumbled thin penis and the females have a pouch between their belly and virginas. Mentally we enjoy similar concepts -- science, mathematics, philosophy, religion, mythology, literature, dance and the other arts. Why else would I be on this journey?
Understanding the instrumentation, Fargo followed old Yermey's lead tone, "Shuttlevator will not move because Ship thinks he's home."
"I've read the theories," replied Yermey, "we can trick Ship."
Hartolite countered, "Can't be done. Ship's an entire computerized-bionics ego system. He has a software consciousness. Ship knows to run home for survival. He thinks he is Home, Yermey. Why would he move?
"Ship thinks two opposites are true at once. I am Home. I am not Home. Stuckinagray may be psychological not a machinery malfunction."
"Maybe he's deliberating," said Trexer.
Ever up to the challenge old Yermey smiled wickedly broad, "Let's give Ship a perspective he does not have so he'll run on the grass naturally was we would were we on our native soil."
Within minutes PrimeThree sent a directive to Fargo. 'Friendly's Class A Shuttlevator is near as she was tagging Ship. Stay away from Mars. Shut down. She will pick you up with a day. HelpCrew is being sent to feed wellness into Ship's qualities and regenerate his mental health. Land on Earth in emergency blackenot. No need to run.'
Within two days the Class A Shuttlevator landed on Earth with a crew of five, Trexer, Hartolite, Yermey, Friendly and Captain Fargo. The first thing Yermey noticed was the Chicago Tribune and the date was 14 June 2000, twelve years to the date that Friendly and Fargo first landed on Earth, 14 June 1988.
***
[Hello, I am the Soki and I will have observations on this story in most every Pouch section. This small crew of humanoid marsupials is relieved to find themselves unstuck for the present. Each individual character has a voice to speak herorhis mind just as earthlings do.
I am a Floater between the Living and the Dead in this, the first of three resurrected novels. Everyone in here lives by rules and by theatre. How quaint and earthlike you might think. But I am speaking of the Dead as well as the Living. Each, humanoid marsupial has to prepare for herorhis own private court appearance before the Bar just as each humanoid earthling has to. What are the Bar rules for a genuine non-being, a Floater, like me? I only have a vague notion just as you do.]
*** ***
You are just content to be writing, boy. Time for bed. Post. - Amorella
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