After noon and you are getting ready to go to
lunch. Limited morning exercises, chores and errands as well as an unsuccessful
attempt at a nap. The Tree Service is supposed to return and finish taking the
wood. You took pictures this morning in case they never return. - Amorella
I have my doubts. Don't know what I'll do about
it other than contract with someone else to take the 'trunk' and assorted 14 or
so logs out. Their truck was full when they left and they didn't say they would
be back so I called when I saw the leftovers. The owner, Joe, said they would
be out today, that he knew about a problem with the truck. One never knows
though when dealing with one's fellow beings. But, here I am talking as if they
aren't going to come out. So far they have been a good service. Just have to
wait and see.
The pragmatic orndorff creeps out. You have
your reasons, as do most people, for distrust of one's fellows. Immediately you
think of Caesar's assassination as your prime example. - Amorella
I trust my friends, but I always remember Caesar
as an example as to how the world can turn on you on a dime, or should I say a
drachma (that's Greek not Roman but the Romans used it - it was the worth of a
day's labor in those times). Hmmm. Worth a bit more than a dime.
Later, orndorff. Lunch and more errand time.
Post. - Amorella
1433 hours. Lunch
at Smashburgers. We love the sweet potato fries and cooked veggies with dip. I
think we are addicted. Carol is on a short walk around the north end of Pine
Hill Lakes Park and I am sitting on the shade side of the multi-treed (woodsy)
hill waiting in the lot. I can't help but think of Merlyn in his
heartansoulanmind deadanliving and living cocoon.
It
is the Gateway to the New World, boy. -
Amorella
That's good, Amorella. Last night I was thinking
about the sheanhe aspects of the soul and I had forgot that this was covered
somewhere in the first trilogy because something came up that if one were
partial to the same sex, let's say, male and male, then the soul would stay
'male' in terms of the 'marriage'. Plus, I really like your analogy of a smithy
and the marriage of metals. It reminds me of the book Mircea Eliade who wrote The
Sacred and the Profane; the book is The Forge and the Crucible. I
used selections from both books in my mythology course at Indian Hill. Some of
my students enjoyed that elective. I had no problem filling it so that the
course would be taught year after year. Lectures, readings, discussions and
student presentations and a research paper filled the time.
That was a heart rendering course boy. Most
of your courses were that way. Heart's memories lead the way in these books as
always. - Amorella
Of course it is easy to realize the mind triggers
its own memories too; but what of the soul, what trigger's the soul's memories
if it has any (at least as far as the book is concerned)? I cannot imagine the
'real' soul having memories that would be triggerable as far as the heartanmind
are concerned, it doesn't seem probably that such memories would be triggerable
because they would be of a soul's perspective, the 'touching' as you say, or camaraderie
(if you will) among souls. (Gads, I get this flash of a gathering of souls like
I am seeing, via a microscope, a gathering of ameba in a Petri dish.)
That will work. Why not? - Amorella
I am not sure how to respond here.
It is a visual the reader can easily
recognize. - Amorella
1516 hours. I was reading about ameba in
Wikipedia Offline. I think I should not take the analogy very far.
Just the shape and movement will do, and one
more, mitosis.
** **
Mitosis is the process by which a eukaryotic cell separates
the chromosomes in its cell nucleus into two
identical sets, in two separate nuclei. It is generally followed immediately by
cytokinesis, which divides
the nuclei, cytoplasm,
organelles and cell membrane into two
cells containing roughly equal shares of these cellular components. Mitosis and
cytokinesis together define the mitotic (M) phase of the cell cycle cell cycle—the division of the mother
cell into two daughter cells, genetically identical to each other and to their
parent cell. This accounts for approximately 10% of the cell cycle.
...
The process of mitosis is fast
and highly complex. The sequence of events is divided into stages corresponding
to the completion of one set of activities and the start of the next. ... The cell then divides in cytokinesis, to produce
two identical daughter cells which are still diploid cells.
Edited from Wikipedia Offline: Mitosis
** **
This is an interesting twist, a soul dividing. I
would not have thought of such a thing.
There is reason for such in the story as you
will see. Post. - Amorella
1711 hours. Souls
dividing. I like the imagery. A spiritual membrane, a sheanhe, I can't help but
think of Moby Dick and Captain Ahab's comment to Starbuck on Adam.
** **
"Oh, Starbuck!
it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky.
On such a day--very
much such a sweetness as this--I struck
my first whale--a
boy-harpooneer of eighteen!
Forty--forty--
forty years ago!--ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty
years of privation,
and peril, and storm-time! forty years on
the pitiless sea!
for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land,
for forty years to
make war on the horrors of the deep!
Aye and yes, Starbuck,
out of those forty years I have not
spent three
ashore. When I think of this life
I have led;
the desolation of
solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of
a Captain's
exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any
sympathy from the
green country without--oh, weariness! heaviness!
Guinea-coast slavery
of solitary command!--when I think of all this;
only half-suspected,
not so keenly known to me before--
and how for forty
years I have fed upon dry salted fare--
fit emblem of the
dry nourishment of my soul!--when the poorest
landsman has had
fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken
the world's fresh
bread to my mouldy crusts--away, whole oceans away,
from that young
girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for
Cape Horn the next
day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow--
wife? wife?--rather
a widow with her husband alive?
Aye, I widowed
that poor girl when
I married her, Starbuck; and then,
the madness, the
frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow,
with which, for a
thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously,
foamingly chased his
prey--more a demon than a man!--aye, aye! what
a forty years'
fool--fool--old fool, has old Ahab been!
Why this strife of
the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm
at the oar, and the
iron, and the lance? how the richer
or better is Ahab
now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard,
that with this weary
load I bear, one poor leg should have been
snatched from under
me? Here, brush this old hair
aside;
it blinds me, that I
seem to weep. Locks so grey did never
grow
but from out some
ashes! But do I look very old, so
very,
very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped,
as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries
since Paradise. God! God! God!--crack my heart!--stave my brain!--
mockery! mockery!
bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived
enough joy to wear
ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old?
Close! stand close
to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye;
it is better than to
gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze
upon God.
From: Melville's Moby Dick
** **
It
is here, Amorella. "I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since
Paradise." How
would it be that Adam's soul and Ahab's were one in the same? Is this not how
Captain Ahab feels? Not the same soul exactly but the son/daughter's son/daughter and so on (so to
speak) of the original soul? The human soul, as that of the first woman or man
to have one, generates all the souls; an ancestry of souls leads but to one soul rather than Emerson's sense of an "Oversoul".
This has a simply defined probability to it, and relating particularly to the books, this creates a fictional sense. All shapes are repeated in the metaphysical and physical worlds. Why not? The human mind can only make sense of human-oriented matter. The 'naming of things' in both the spiritual and material worlds provides a north compass heading, an orientation for further study and supposition. This is acceptable postulation, orndorff. Post. - Amorella
I feel strongly that my long time 'literary-minded' friend Bob Pringle would like this.
You are, as they say, 'kindred spirits'. - Amorella
2128 hours. I am
wondering, in the story, when a child is born, does sheorhe have a
heartansoulanmind or a heartanmind or a heartansoul or a soul or heart alone or
some other combination?
This is a question Merlyn would ask, as he
is curious. - Amorella
One
more question, that perhaps would be asked first, does Merlyn know that souls
divide?
No. He does wonder about the soul's beginnings.
Rightly or wrongly, Merlyn assumes the baby is born with heartanmind because he
feels he has witnessed this in newborns. A newborn reacts to light and sound,
this would show a 'brain' at work if not a mind. A newborn shows emotion such
as contentment or anger or pain, this he would attribute to a young heart
and/or a young mind. And, sometimes it is witnessed that a newborn appears to
have the heart to live or not live. The heart makes this decision not the mind.
Those are his thoughts based on his experiences of life not yours,
orndorff. - Amorella
What
generates this focus on the soul's beginnings in this 'Dead- 5' chapter.
Merlyn wonders on souls then hearts and then
minds and how they have come to be as one unit in which he can create his
'spirit house' as it were. He assumes that the soul was first as it is immortal
and has no need of an individual's heart and soul to exist. He likens the soul
to the roots and trunk of the apple tree and the heart as the branches carrying
the leaves out to gather the sunlight to be the mind of the apple tree, and
lastly the fruit the apple to be the heart of the tree. Only he thinks with
human beings it is the reverse, the fruit, the heart is first, the growth of
the limbs and leaves, the mind, is second, and third, from the combination, the
marriage of the heartanmind the soul is born to envelope the heartansoul as a
seed, the core of the heartansoul is enveloped by the apple, the growth of the
soul which comes with the maturity from baby to adult. One develops the soul to
defend the heartanmind at the age of twenty-one. This is Merlyn's thinking. By
the age of seven the person has a baby soul, by fourteen sheorhe has an
immature soul, and by twenty-one the soul is an adult guardian, a knight and
castle, if you will that surrounds one's heartanmind. - Amorella
This
is interesting background, Amorella, to gain insight into Merlyn this way.
Thank you.
Consider these points and we will exploit them
for the books. - Amorella
No, Amorella. Even in a fiction I would not
exploit these things. It would not be right to do so. I would not. - rho
We will show a sense of the spiritual and
material through such concepts. - Amorella
It is abhorrent to me that you used
"exploit". I heard an echo of the word just before keying it. Why
would you say this? I do not feel that you are exploiting me? This is
interesting. It helps me to understand the world through a myth if you will,
but it helps me make sense of the world at least for me. As there are no
answers that we know of in terms of the metaphysical realm at least in a story
I can gain some sense of satisfaction not of writing it, but of listening to
carefully to the words and 'learning' a way to 'understand' the metaphysical
world in my heartansoulanmind better. To me it doesn't make any difference if
it is true or not true, it still helps me to understand (in my own way) what it
is to be a human being.
Glad to be of assistance, boy. You are being
'self-taught' you realize. - Amorella
I can accept that. Most of my life has been
self-taught. One cannot be human and not be self-taught. But it also helps to
have a guide along the way. I am most appreciative.
You are being humbled. Nothing wrong with
that. Good night, old man, sleep tight (as they say). Post. - Amorella
Sleep tight has to do with keeping the ropes
underneath the mattress taut. I think this phrase is from the seventeenth
century or so. (I have to check;)
Online
explanation one:
** **
Sometime during the sixteenth century, British
farmers moved from sleeping on the ground to sleeping in beds.
These beds were little more than straw-filled
mattress tied to wooden frames with ropes.
To secure the mattress before sleeping, you pulled
on the ropes to tighten them, and that’s when they began saying, “Goodnight,
sleep tight.”
From: Big Site of Amazing Facts
** **
and online
explanation two:
** **
Unfortunately, the Oxford English Dictionary,
which knows a bit about such things, doesn't buy it. Here's what they say:
"It seems that tight in this expression is the equivalent of the
only surviving use of the adverb tightly meaning 'soundly, properly,
well, effectively'."
From: Science Advisory Board to The Straight Dope
** **
I
have to agree with the second comment. The OED knows what it is doing. I feel I
am wrong just on the merits of the scholars at OED. It is a simpler explanation
and makes more sense. Here's my take, originally it meant 'sleep tightly or
sleep well' then later when ropes were used to raise bed from the ground,
keeping the ropes tight probably meant for a sounder sleep so the phrase was
modified to fit a newer definition. Hey, this is one of the reasons it is better to
claim, 'I don't know much,' and let it go.
A good place to post. - Amorella
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