Notes - first third of Dead-5 / spooky or spiritual / good-bye

          Mid-morning. Breakfast and the paper. You have the yard to mow and the rest of the house to clean, particularly the kitchen floor. Jimmy Buffet's "Love in the Library" is on the car CD and you find it slow and satisfying and presently one of your favorites. Usually Jimmy is played in the Spring and Summer, but you are thinking about Florida in December as your next real "sabbatical". Next week's trip near Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is a 'gathering of friends'.

         "Sabbatical" is probably a ludicrous word for vacation, but our sojourns to Madeira Beach for two weeks at a time are energy restorers. How can one have a vacation when sheorhe is retired? I never can seem to find the right words for what I mean.

         The kitchen has mostly been cleared and the floor is waiting. Yet, here you are taking a break. . . . now you are letting it dry after using two pads rather than the usual one. Dirty floor, boy, you should have done this a couple of months ago. - Amorella

         I decided to wait until we had company. Laziness. Tim King, the next-door neighbor, is taking some of the wood that is fine with me. They have been working for over two hours. The tree was about three feet in diameter at the trunk. It was a big old (once beautiful) tree. Too bad it died. If it had come crashing down it would have hit the deck as well as destroyed half the woods in the yard, plus Carol would have lost all of her wildflowers, the original she has nurtured and those she has planted for the last twenty years. Not a good scenario. Once I can put the furniture, etc back into the kitchen I have just two more rooms to dust.

         You have been working on the Dead -5 and have a third or so completed. Add and post as it is about lunchtime. - Amorella

Dead-5 - 1st Draft

         Merlyn sat on the rock in front of his comfortable hut-of-a-home on the meadow in the river valley mostly surrounded by hill and forest and that huge granite dome to his northeast. No billiards this time around, his mind acquiesced to his heartfelt surroundings and his heart in turn acquiesced to his soul. His only thought, 'I love this solitude.'

         Amid the solitude a much older feminine voice stirred within, 'this is your Soul, Merlyn. I surround your heartanmind,' is a scenario he had heard before. He didn't believe it then nor does he believe it now. He thought of the great horned owl and the fox he had as pets when he was a child. Good teachers, both.

         His pets had listened to him; it was only right that he listen to the introductory voice within, who, soul or not, was a part of his human nature. He glanced to the north woods to see the great horned owl sitting on a limb and the fox rolling and scratching his reddish brown coat in the grass below. He wondered on how it was, that once in a considerable while, he would observe one pet or the other eating a rodent. He knew this is heartansoulanmind's environment, yet he had not commanded the rodent for their nourishment. They needed none, nor did he. Food existed even though it was no more there than Merlyn himself, no more than an ever-sustained consciousness. The soul's voice had burrowed into his immediate seclusion. - 250w

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        1507 hours. Lunch at Panera and now waiting for Carol at the Lebanon Kroger's while she gets her high dose flu shot, then over to the county building to vote early. Not a bad way to spend a very pleasant Fall afternoon. I would not have suspected how this section of the Dead (5) has fallen into place. I like it, Amorella, rather a mellow beginning. He is listening because of his favorite pets. The ecological system is a base of his system, which is the ecological system of the physical body; the unconsciousness that ran the body is put to work running the heartansoulanmind. Very clever.

         Very much like nature itself, boy, that's the set up in here. - Amorella

         Few will take the time to catch such aspects, but I like the ease, dare I say, the natural flow in which this is being written. And, oddly the sense of 'time' appears slower, almost 'farming time' like.

         I will keep this 'organic' quality throughout. It seems natural that Merlyn would dream sixth century Medieval. - Amorella

         I am detecting that there is a thin line between 'spooky' and 'spiritual'.

         This is something Merlyn knows about. Contrary to popular modern opinion, there is not one iota of difference. - Amorella

         I would never say that, Amorella.

         That's the point, boy. Post. - Amorella

       1927 hours. Scrambled eggs and toast for supper coming up, then a trip to the grocery one more time. Craig and Alta will probably arrive around three or four tomorrow afternoon. 

         2028 hours. Living room and dining room are clean. We are at Kroger's on Tylersville picking up items for breakfast tomorrow and Sunday. Pizza is what everyone decided on for supper tomorrow so Carol can relax. She has an AM appointment with the hairdresser. I have to finish up the house, pack and check out the 05 Honda for Sunday. It's six hours the way I remember it, that's with a stop at the Cultural Centre at Berea and lunch about the time we arrive in the Knoxville area. We have to be there by three when they open. I don't know when the others will arrive. No doubt everyone will have phoned everyone for coordination by early afternoon Sunday. Jim and Jeanne are coming up from Georgia and Bill and Sharon from Virginia. Fun busyness that's what I think. Getting together while everyone is still alive is always fun.

         You don't believe in conscious life after death, do you orndorff? - Amorella

         I have my doubts either way, Amorella. I suppose I really don't care all that much. No great expectations either way. Some might consider my perspective ironic but actually, it is easier to write Amorella's word choices this way. It would be nice to visit with family and friends when dead but if no one is visiting anyone, with sleep the king of the day, that's fine with me. As Woody Guthrie used to sing, "So long, it's been good to know ya."

         Those would be your last words? - Amorella

         No, my last words would be, "It's been good to you," to those I have known, of course. What would your last words be, Amorella?

         "Good-bye." - Amorella

         That sounds fair enough to me.

         Post, orndorff. Don't forget you have work to do and the grass to mow tomorrow morning. - Amorella