Great Merlyn's Ghost
Chapters Four, Five and Six
copyright 2012 Richard H. Orndorff
Online Problems:
[No set pages, and line spacing is off sometimes. Sorry.]
Chapter Four
The Supervisor has a little
saying:
Ring-a-ring
o'rosies
A
pocket full of posies
"A-tishoo!
A-tishoo!"
We
all fall down!
We
rise from clay
On
Judgment Day
Be
we dead or still alive.
Merlyn
has this little ditty memorized to the point it sits in stemmed reverence from
which the four-leafed chapter dream grows to novel size and beyond. Merlyn
kneads the dreams into words, the music for the heartansoulanmind whose
transcendental spirit shines. The words cast a light for those have no sight
and for those with an imagination that casts no shadow.
***
The Dead 4
Sophia
stepped off the stage and floated feather-lite onto Merlyn's private sanctuary
wearing a linen Doric chiton, a violet linen cloth draped over her left
shoulder and down in folds around the blouse and over the hips to the ankles
down. Merlyn smiled, thinking how the style in the twenty-first century might
be considered a beautiful woman in a delightfully intimately woven dress with a
long shawl, suggestively set to crawl into bed with her best friend.
Merlyn
reached out younger handed than the moment before, clasped her right hand with
both of his and said, "I am honored my friend, you are always a welcome
sight my Sophia."
"I
understand our Mother was recently here," commented Sophia in a voice
melodically soft and honest. "What a beautiful meadow you command yourself
to be, Merlyn."
"This
sanctuary is a place where I may touch the living," responded Merlyn.
"I think the Dead who are fit, find this an irresistible challenge."
He paused, "Glevema stopped by asking for you." Merlyn continued with
a confident smile and pointed to the northeast. "On the other side of the
granite mountain one can touch the present Living."
"Can
you show me one day, Merlyn?" To be alive again, the wonderment raced from
Sophia's heartansoul into her mind alone.
Merlyn
calmly spoke, "We have forgotten much of what Life is in the moment. I see
through the still living spirit of a Richard Greystone, a spirit partially
ensnared with his identical twin Robert's spirit. One day you may “ Merlyn
observed Sophia's features dissolving. She was gone.
Heart's
memory cocked the trigger, the soul rose as the sun itself, the mind formed the
billiard table and Merlyn saw the solids and stripes scattered about slate's
green field beyond the cue mark. Refocusing, Merlyn noted a purple stripe, the
12 ball rested on the cue mark. Sophia clothing was violet dyed linen, she is
the uncued 12 ball.
The
12 ball disappeared from the mark, from three dimensions in his mind to a
shade. I have only seen this once before, thought Merlyn the Bard, in ancient
Elysium. Panagiotakis, the shaman who had said, "We are from there, to
here," was below me.
We
were on this side of the Styx where no earthly tremors exist. The Prophet,
Ezekiel, was alongside Takis and two others. I was sitting cross-legged high in
the tree behind the shamans lying on the shoreline. Their souls, each alone,
danced in the center of a shaded circle on the river bank. The shades
disappeared to a place below the bank of the Styx.
Takis,
Ezekiel and the two others were no more than four billiard balls in the mind,
but I saw them William Blake-like as fiery souls dancing not full rounded balls
on the table. The Rebellion of the First Ten Thousand Greek Dead had begun not
soon before. This action of will rose among the twelve major cultures of the
world in those days.
No
human spirit was full-minded, nor could sheorhe be a common letter in any
alphabet spoken or signed. Each spirit scooted about no better than the common
letter 'i' until it rose to a capital height.
Then
a question rose to the left side of the capital 'I' and a period rose on its
right. Length and width had risen straight up adding an undiscovered dimension
to the Dead, a third dimension, height, which had only been experienced while
living and framed by time and distance from there to here.
Merlyn
returned to his rock, his throne to think and to wonder on his cocoon. No
chance to be a butterfly here or there. Today though, since the Second
Rebellion of the Dead we have perspective and a sun in the sky and water.
Collectively we will these into place so that each may, within the spirit, the
heartansoulanmind, have a place of solitude, a suit to wear to disguise our
nakedness to others, a suit of clothing open to the visitors of our free
choice. Many of the Dead will never know this form of deadanliving. They huddle
together in a patchwork quilt, afraid of strangers and worse, afraid of
themselves. No one with any sense of deadanliving can return to the living
experience in any manner but memory. No one but me at present, can learn what
it is to be a deadanliving bridge between the spirit-an-physics of higher
consciousness.
***
The Brothers - 4
Richard
awoke to the chatter downstairs in the kitchen. Julie's here with Ronda Ann and
Jennifer and David are here. No doubt Rob will be popping in wondering why I am
not up. What can we doing today anyway?
"Are
you up, Richard?" shouted Cyndi in a tinge of forced melodious politeness.
"Ronda wants to bring David to get you up."
The
cue. He rolled over feigning sleep, something easily done. Noisy feet on the
steps gave way to the door slightly creaked from the bottom hinge he had
promised to lubricate a month ago. 'What a day already.' He thought in a smile,
'and here come my favorite four and two year old. Do I remain in a deep sleep
or rise up from the sheet in a lion's 'I-m-going-to-get-you' roar?'
***
Later,
after a family meal at the favorite restaurant a two steak and potato, four
chicken salads and two kids' macaroni and cheese lunches, Robert and Richard
sat in the living room, each in a high back chair, with Julie on the left side
of the living room couch followed by three year old Ronda Ann and two year old
David and his mother Jennifer. Robert was ready to mention how good the kids
were at lunch when David scooted off and under the gray marble topped coffee
table looking for his blue Thomas the train engine. Ronda said, "I'm going
to the kitchen to see Grandma," and left a little annoyed she had been
forced to sit properly in the first place. Julie being older spoke first,
"Thank you for lunch, Uncle Richard. We always have a good time coming
over."
"We
have a good time," mimicked Jennifer. "Dad, what are you and Uncle
Rob going to do while we girls go shopping?"
"We
are so glad you are retired, and can take care of the kids once in a
while," added Julie in her naturally quiet demeanor like her mother's.
"We'll
find something to do, we could not imagine living so far away, like your
parents Jennifer."
"It
is good what with Calvin out of town at a conference, and Allen working six
days a week." Jennifer paused, smiled graciously and said, "I am not
complaining at least the kids' fathers both have jobs."
"We've
been there," said Rob and Rich almost simultaneously. The four laughed
light heartedly and they began talking about how each set of grandparents was
in the process of redecorating one room or another.
Rob
and Rich could both hear the strain of
'we-wish-we-had-the-time-and-energy-to-think-on-such-things' in their voices.
The twin grandfathers thought back on how it was with each of their children,
affectionately called rug rats in the late seventies. Life and the business
that ensues in one's thirties, forties, and into the fifties -- work, home,
errands, chores and parenting, parenting, errands, chores, home and work, all
crammed in and on life's familiar stages of necessity first, everything else
second.
Both
concluded their silent high back chair conversation with, 'the fifties were a
much better time for growing up,' as the continued listening closely to what
Julie and Jennifer were intimating between the lines. Fortunately, all sets of
grandparents had some money saved and invested. The grandparents all, owned
their homes and cars and had no debts. Every set, from time to time, helped their
children survive better, little things usually, like taking everyone out to
lunch or buying clothes for the grandchildren, money for birthdays and
Christmas. The grandparents' parents had done the same from time to time.
The
great-grandparents grew up in the thirties. Hard economic times and then there
was a great world war to resolve. The parents of the grandparents Rob and
Connie and Richard and Cyndi grew older through the administrations of FDR,
Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton
none had lived passed the tenure of George W. None as young children would have
dreamed a Negro would have become President of the United States shortly after
their demise.
Lots
of turmoil and changes took place in those pre and post war years in almost
every culture and country. Turmoil and change continues as it always has. Life
proliferates between birth and death; it has no choice but to flourish where
and when it can.
***
Grandma
Story - 4
Wexer
debated people most of his life, his spirit thrills on confrontation like a
pyromaniac's mind bores into observing a roaring blaze. Once deadanliving, and
finding but one friend (she never disagreed) among the Dead, he became
profoundly bored, and his whip-biting spirit driven to great desperation,
decided it was time to have a singular great debate between his heart and mind.
Sharper and cleverer than he had been in life, he knew the in's and out's of
grammar and construction in his native language. His restless spirit felt, 'I
have never lost a debate and there is no way I can lose this one.'
This
is Grandma. I caught the passion leak away on this particular
heartansoulanmind. He disappeared even among the Dead and no one knows what
happened to him. When this happened friends of his woman's friend noticed she
was more at peace with herself but neither she nor they understood why.
This
is the argument that human spirit decided to have. The debate between his heart
and mind focused on his singular woman friend who always agreed with him.
Wexer's
mind debated that his friend was pretending to agree, that she could not
possibly agree with all his arguments for or against one passion or another.
Wexer's heart, on the other hand, debated that the woman friend, his only
friend among the Dead, did not disagree with him because she loved him so
terribly much. The deeper Wexer's spirit whipped its arguments the less resolve
Wexer discovered he had in coming to a conclusion as to which was the winner, his
heart or his mind.
Grandma sashayed and did a little
calypso dance in her bare feet, threw her hands over her head, twirled, and
clapped three times. She smiled like the glow of a tropical sunset and
whispered a secret; “I just love these little freedom stories because they are
real enough as any sunset or sunrise.”
What won, Wexer's mind or heart? Why did he disappear even among the
Dead? Why did his woman friend become more at peace with herself after Wexer's
spirit, his heartansoulanmind, disappeared from the scene?
I have one more dead man's short
story here. This one balances out the first.
Another
ancestor, a shaman of about seven thousand years ago in the area of the Black
Sea, stood by the fire one cloudy dark night in summer and said, “I have a new
story. This is about a man who can be in two places at once while he is still
alive. He can be standing here like me, telling a story, and,” he pointed to
his north, “be in the woods telling a story at the same time. How do you think
he accomplishes this?”
This
invited the listener to give herorhis own plausibility and the shaman
discovered he could be enormously entertaining while being instructive; an
unsolvable mystery no one could decipher to everyone’s satisfaction. ‘How is
it possible for a person to be telling the same story in more than one place at
the same time?’
This
story was so popular that shamans throughout the world were soon asking the
question to their neighbors along the major world trade routes had been set
into motion because people wanted goods from far away places. People wanted
something valuable to keep for security, for peace of mind, and just for the
pleasure of having material goods they did not already have. Storytelling
helped pass the time on the journeys from Asia to Europe and Europe to Africa
and from Africa to Asia. Some of the stories even migrated to the Americas.
This
particular storyteller created a mysterious set of written characters that
allowed the carving of the story line onto a tree. Other tribe members were
taught to read the runes, so it was possible for someone to be reading the
story in one place while it was being told at the same time in another place
entirely. Few could believe such a marvelous invention, but they soon
discovered belief wasn’t a part of the equation. Below is a translatable
representation of what the shaman wrote.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G
Now the characters you can see
H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P
Each as individual as you or me
Q, R, S, T, U, and V
Allow each us to remain free
W, X, Y, and Z
The beginning and the end carved
on a tree.
And from Grandma’s tongue, tooth
and gum
Some familiar runes will this way
come.
***
Pouch - 4
By
late mid-morning the next day Justin watched Blake go over an exterior
inspection of the slightly damaged Rolls-Royce turboprop Cessna P210N Silver
Eagle while Pyl waited at the entrance to the Burke Lakefront terminal for
Friendly and her companion to arrive.
Shortly
after introductions and a walk to the east of the terminal Justin stood next to
the nearby wire fence and watched Pyl and Blake answering questions and
pointing out various aspects of the plane to Friendly and Hartolite. After
observing that both Friendly, whose real name was Michael 'Mykkie' Carlson and
Harts, her sister is Lindsey Carlson on their Ohio driver's and pilot's
licenses. He thought it odd that they even brought their U.S. passports with
them as prove of identity.
Why
do they want to buy this plane, he thought. They are willing to give up to a
million and half for a refurbished old plane; I wouldn't give three hundred
thousand for it. I saw practically the same plane on line, a 1978 Cessna 210
for a hundred and sixty thousand. Blake put a new engine in an old plane, all
new bells and whistles. I don't see the need. The old engine would have got us
to Detroit and back. I wasn't any more comfortable in the new backseat than I
was in the old back seat. When Blake takes this up into the wilds of Canada for
a fishing expedition with his friends he would be better off having kept it as
it was. I don't feel any safer flying in it. I'd feel better if it were a brand
new plane, not so fancy, just newer. A thought crossed. Here it is, another
sunny and relatively warm day, no wind, it feels like early April. I wonder if
they are going to take it up.
Within
an hour Justin was feeling some pangs for lunch and was ready to get a soda at
the terminal when Pyl waved from down and across from the row of planes he was
checking out and finding problems with like they were used cars he wouldn't buy
on a bet.
Pyl
was smiling profusely as he drew closer. "Blake doesn't want to sell even
for a million and a half. Harts says she wants to take a ride anyway and she
talked it up with Mykkie, so Mykkie asked Blake for a ride over to Put-in-Bay,
said she'd give us a thousand dollars for the ride there and back because she
loved flying in a Silver Eagle similar to the one her uncle had when she was a
child. We are all going. It ought to be fun. Maybe even a picnic in the park.
In January, can you believe this, Justin?"
He
sighed. "I guess, but I could use something right now."
"Go
get something to drink and get me a candy bar and you too. I'll take a little
bit to get this plane in the air." Pyl could hardly contain her
excitement. As a kid Grandpa took Grandma and Blake and herself over to
Put-in-Bay for an afternoon of fun and a plane ride too. Sometimes we even flew
to Port Clinton, then took a cab to Cedar Point, we had a good time.
Justin
turned back, "Pyl, what about the damaged wingtip?"
"It'll
be okay, Justin. Blake wrote out a report. We are getting it repaired next
week. The plane is safe to fly."
Within
the next hour the five took off from Burke Lakefront on the secondary runway,
6R/24L on their way to the South Bass Island.
Blake
turned from the controls once they were at ten thousand feet and commented,
"The 3W2 Put-in-Bay airport is open for light traffic this time of year.
It'll be fine, it's a nice strip."
"This
will be fun," noted Pyl from the co-pilot seat, "We can see the town
and Perry's Monument. We can call a cab and take a quick tour of downtown and
get something to eat, then be on our way."
"Our
treat on the extra's ladies, you are quite generous with your payment."
"We
are glad to have you all along with us," replied Friendly politely.
"It is always nice to make new friends, even if we could not come to a
deal. It is a delight to be flying in this wonderful plane."
"And
you can fly back, Mykkie, but if you don't mind, I'll sit co-pilot."
"Fine
with me," she said, and she looked at Hartolite with an excited smile,
"Won't this be fun."
***
Chapter Five
The Supervisor has a little
saying:
Ring-a-ring
o'rosies
A
pocket full of posies
"A-tishoo!
A-tishoo!"
We
all fall down!
We
rise from clay
On
Judgment Day
Be
we dead or still alive.
Merlyn
has this little ditty memorized to the point it sits in stemmed reverence from
which the four-leafed chapter dream grows to novel size and beyond. Merlyn
kneads the dreams into words, the music for the heartansoulanmind whose
transcendental spirit shines. The words cast a light for those have no sight
and for those with an imagination that casts no shadow.
***
The Dead-5
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.
Listen
closely my friend. A music is close at hand.
Merlyn
waited intuitively tuned and found a rolling and then a disappearing into his
own tunnel and a distant heartbeat, the heartbeat of his friend from the
Rebellion of the first ten thousand, Ezekiel, grew closer.
Ezekiel’s
inner light diffracted at Merlyn's edge of consciousness. A single ray quietly
plunged into his mind as a sunbeam may break through the surface of water.
Surprised, Ezekiel suddenly consciously pronounced, ‘Who is the least
angelic-like of all my dead friends? And then declared, ‘That is who I most
wish to see.’
The shadows of this scattered
thought felt as shades of dispersed bubbles of mind dictating matter. ‘I wish
for G-D himself.’ As Ezekiel had not just wished for G-D, his consciousness
froze at the thought.
What came next was an
interweaving event-in-mind that neither Ezekiel nor Merlyn could not have
expected.
It is the beginning
and my spine shivers. I am inside and there is no way out. This is the reason
my forearms shiver. My fingers are cold and I am becoming an ice forming on the
Great River. I am a floating semi-solid continuity in uncommon ground. I am
Ezekiel dancing . . . I am as a string of poetic devices – dancing within.
To this Ezekiel
thinks, ‘I do not exist and am able to reflect on this fact at the same time.
This is the bottom line of being Dead. The top line is that the righteous will
be reunited with their loved ones, that is the spirit of the words remembered.’
To
this Merlyn wonders on Ezekiel's heart and the directed . . . "spirit of Ezekiel's words,” enters Merlyn's
tabled mind; having been rolled and tunneled from his soul to drift
unsanctimously onto the rapids of his ever-unsettling heart.
Reunited,
thought Merlyn, the deadanliving and the living. What appears to be a one-way
street need not be. Here and now I am becoming floating ship-like rhythms, the
ribs of our Mother's replicating soul hold me up. I sit quietly above the
turbulence in my ever-rebellious human heart. Deadanliving it is not so easy
crossing from soul to mind no matter what or who the heart's bridge be. How
much more difficult would it be for the living who are not so human as we?
Solidification.
The act of the human spirit become stone in mindansoul freezing the heart to
calm so it might thaw in reasonable contemplation. This is how Merlyn sees this
event in his heartansoulanmind; no more real than imagination becoming thought
and thought becoming the evaporation of wonderment.
Consideration
becomes the pretty package to open and see the present, the here and now of an
existential Merlyn unbound and ready to tie the binds cover to cover all within
the human margins of error.
Ezekiel,
a heartansoulanmind I remember singularly. There are other deadanliving friends
such as myself who have danced in a rebellion or two above and below the Great
Many-Named River's Divide. Deadanliving or Living, to tap a friend's soul is to
tap the echoes of a beating heart and considering mind.
***
The Brothers - 5
Robert
and Richard walked west on Walnut down to the end of Grove Street and crossed
at the north entrance of John Knox College Cemetery into oldest section, the
far west side at the top. The oldest of the grave marker stones and trees, one
of which that has been officially estimated to be over four hundred years old,
topped the hill overlooking the river.
I
have known these gravestones since I was a small child, thought Richard as he
and Robert walked the narrow tar and stone chipped cemetery road south off the
end of Grove Street. The stone and stained glass mausoleum stood straight
ahead. Richard asked, “Do you remember the size of this place?”
Robert
grinned, “Sixty by eighty feet, something like that.”
“That’s
pretty good. Rob. I know it has about three hundred crypts.”
“I’d
forgotten that. It’s a pretty good sized building in relationship to the
cemetery.”
“Particularly
this old cemetery section,” added Richard. Once at the large steel and stained
glass door both hand cupped their eyes so they could peer in at the beautiful
piece of stained glass fifty-six feet away that terminated of the south end.
Between the glass and themselves were square pillars separating the first bank
of crypts to the east and west, then a second bank, and then yet another third
bank of crypts just before the outer wall. A wooden podium stood centered just
in front of the stained glass blues, yellows and greens. On either side of the
podium were Doric columns. The entire interior was a white and gray Vermont
marble.
Richard
backed from the door. “I’ve the key,” he said. “The city service department
loaned it to me.”
“We
haven’t been inside here for an age,” gleamed Robert.
“No,
we haven’t. I want to see our great grandparents’ crypts and take some
pictures.”
“For
your book?”
“No,
no pictures in the book. However, when I was studying the history of the place
I discovered something I did not know.”
“What’s
that?”
“There
are symbols of the world’s seven great religion within here. Well, they are
supposed to be anyway.”
“I
didn’t know that.”
“Neither
did I.” He turned the key.
“Wait,”
hesitated Robert. “Let’s go around the outside first. Remember how we pretended
this was a great ancient artifact when we were kids?”
“Here
we are seventy and the place still looks ancient to me. It still looks like
something out of an Indiana Jones movie.”
Glancing
southwest, Robert commented, “Look at those massive limbs. This could have been
a hanging tree.”
“I
don’t think it ever was though,” noted Richard. He pointed down the hill. “We
used to play along here.”
“Good
guys versus the bad guys.” Robert’s smile dissipated. “We didn’t know much
difference back then.”
“Nope,”
responded Richard, “it was fun just playing. We still have the sky above,
stones, trees and grass, and the Dead below. This place was always good for
philosophizing.” He continued, “when you look at an aerial picture of the
cemetery from about fifteen hundred feet, it looks like the bottom of a circuit
board.”
“How’s
that?” responded Robert.
“I
downloaded a satellite photo and from that height the tombstones look like
solder joints on the bottom side of an integrated circuit board.” Richard
added, “It is just the opposite the top of a circuit board where the board
looks similar to city blocks and freeways.
“What’s
the point, Richie? They are all man made.”
“I
know that,” replied Richard sarcastically. “But thinking about the pattern of
the cemetery from the air is interesting."
“Robert
chuckled, “Richie,” he paused appropriately, “Is your analogy is making the
Dead or their coffins as transistors.”
“Maybe
the similar placements of stones and trees makes this place haunted? The
circuit board analogy is something I think Merlyn might agree with. ”
"The
Living and the Dead complete the circuit at the cemetery; pretty good,
Dickie." Robert paused, the said, "Old town people used to say this
cemetery was haunted, but now they are all dead.”
“That’s
funny, Rob. Good one.” Rob always has the good one liner, thought Richard.
Sharp as a scalpel Rob used to hold in his right hand. Neither had a word for a
few moments.
“Yep.
I’ll be in here before you are,” deadpanned Robert.
“Yep,”
mirrored Richard, “You always come in first.”
***
Grandma’s Story – 5
I have a little story
that happened several thousand years ago. It was on an island off Southeast
Asia. A woman, Sawasdee Ka and a man, Sawasdee Khrap were arguing which of the
gods they wanted to place on their house front stones. The woman’s goddess was kind
and generous to a fault, and she thought that it would be appropriate to show
the guest, whoever sheorhe was, that the guest is always welcome to their home.
The man replied (the
woman always spoke first) that he thought his defender-of-the-home goddess was
best to display because this would show the guest that although sheorhe was
welcome, home security for family and friends was more important than
hospitality. Ka and Khrap fought about this situation off and on during the
next year. Both homeowners finally agreed that it was better to have no god or
goddess on their house front stones than the wrong one.
Now one might think
the god and goddess would be offended because neither stood by the door, but
this was not the case. Eventually in the ebbs and tides of anger and personal
insult the couple broke into a no-holds-barred physical battle.
To end all the
squabbling and noise Ka stabbed Khrap with his favorite long knife defensive
weapon as Khrap struck her with a sharpened ax for chopping wood. Both died
though that was not the end of it.
In a raging anger Ka
and Khrap are still fighting in HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither. Neither of these two
human spiritual remnants realizes that even in this day each is physically
dead. This is because the battle continues to be what it has become a deeply
contagious metaphysical question rooted and pride and anger. Homeland security
for polite guests and friends is no longer the problem. I, Grandma, see a humor
here, but those in battle don’t see it that way. Not much humor surrounds the
battlefield in either the physical or metaphysical human state.
Grandma's face turned
into a full Halloween moon. The tricks the human mind is capable of pulling on
one's self is greater than the tricks conceivable to play on others in jest or
anger. No one kills anyone in HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither. Pride, anger . . . as
psychological examples of the seven deadly are worthless here but the Dead are
allowed to wear them around their necks as they would jewelry. After all they
are spirits of choice until they have none left. These dead rarely find
themselves in view of any one but their own sort. Their heartsansoulsanminds
hang like bats, upside down comfortably sleeping in their caves. They feed on
themselves until there is nothing left but indifference, no humanity
whatsoever. Nothing. Their souls cleansed and free float awaiting new tenants.
They have no
heartansoulanmind as a whole human spirit exists. These lesser spirits would
not be aware of HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither if it were to tickle them as a soft
feather might be directed to tickle a babe for the expressed delight of hearing
a young one's contagious laughter. These sub-human spirits are the natural
jokes of misbegotten involving humanity. These spirits are indeed rare as there
are rarities in the physical world. Not rare as the precious metals in the
physical world, these heartless-an-mindless hollows become as
pumpkin-faced vegetables not fit for eating before they disappear into shadows
of shades. From these shadows and shades there is no filtering what light of
humanity was and is not becoming.
Grandma waned then
brightened her smile Halloween full again. All who labored in life know there
are tricks to the trade no matter what the trade is. Souls understand their
trade as human laborers do. You start when the foundation is free standing and
heart mated with mind into a fully human consciousness. The physical body
learns rather than teaches. The heartanmind grow under the protection of the
soul until the body dies away and it is left alone to wall the seed in an
eternally very long time.
You measure once, you measure
twice, and much to your surprise
How fast and long the logic runs
from the brain to theorize.
My goddess stands here, your god
stand there, on frontal stone bare
The body to the brain is stuck
while the mind runs unaware
Yet, all the while, this moon
bright Grandma’s story sums
A familiar engine
dances as the heartless mind runs and runs.
***
Diplomatic Pouch - 5
Yermey
sat glancing at the current vital signs of Ship on the left and his own vital
signs on the right. Ship automatically bio-tracked Friendly and Hartolite; no
display needed. Yermey surmised the situation. The
left-wingtip-cleansing-of-the-Cessna shouldn't be a problem as long
as-Ship-agrees. I cannot understand why this sterilizing-to-normal operation
was not completed automatically at the original moment of touch. Yermey
remained poker-faced and focused. The key is, he thought, Ship notes no change
in my bio-registering vitals physically, emotionally or mentally. This is a fun
private contest with Ship I continue to win because first and foremost, Ship
does not realize he is being contested.
His
eyes returned at his earth built laptop. He is reading the personal Facebook
page of Pyl Williams-Burroughs. She appears to be in her mid three-fifties. He
felt a slight stirring in his groin. The shrunken, gangly stringy organ semi
filled with blood and muscle arrangement to a miserably limp six inches of with
an eighth of an inch diameter. His scrotum, his two pea-sized testes, ached
wretchedly. 'I have done nothing to provoke this,' ruled his head. The
half-full-uncalled-for-moment lasted almost five minutes. Ship registered
Yermey's eye movements every second he observed the amenable photos of a fully
clothed Pyl Williams-Burroughs on Facebook. 'This woman has real breasts on her
chest.'
Never
had he read, heard of a male marsupial humanoid having a partial erection
without at least an hour of stimulation and a full erection before another
three to five hours of with consequentially immediate ejection of than two
seconds tops. Never. 'Up and down' in less time than it took to say the words.
Immediately he drove the thought into oblivion and watched his emotional brain
and body roll into a complete rest.
Ship's
response was immediately normalized. Nevertheless Yermey was plagued with a
single frozen thought in the center of heartansoulanmind, 'Ship understands
me better than I do.' It took an extreme power of patient will for Yermey
not to sweat. 'I am almost five hundred years old and in this moment I
experienced a revelation.' He slowly closed the laptop and got up from the
chair and pushanpulled his bedinabox-open as the
desk-folded-over-the-laptop-while-sliding quietly under the floor. Exhausted he
immediately fell asleep.
In
analytical delight Ship savored in a revelation himself. Ship had just
intuitively sensed a hint, a shadow of a marsupial humanoid's
heartansoulanmind. 'A singular physiological experience,' he thought.
I,
Ship, have had such a recent experience also. Being modified for recent travel
through a destabilized dark-mattered hyperstringfield permanent wormhole rather
than the usual far more stable transversable wormhole pathways the marsupial
humanoids have cleaned for their own pathways.
Moving
to light speed, encased in a photon bubble, becoming, seemingly, surrounded and
pushed or pulled dark energy while moving at up to twenty times the speed of
light. Slowing by the passages of a rarely reflective dark matter. Settling
down at below light speed levels like waking up from a dreamless sleep. So rare
it used to be to travel across the galaxy, now the body marsupial has begun
thinking of an entire galaxy as but a single pouch.
Less
is always more in physics. Were I, Ship, transposed to a mere spark of quantum
entanglement I could, in an instant, be in two galaxies at once. The smaller we
become the faster we go. Dark matter eats us for dinner. We go in the tunnel, through
the great divide of light and faster-than-light, faster than light down to the
speed of light and below, then out the other side and we are here and now
inside of a month.
Yermey
awoke in a subjective analysis of what humanity is and wondered on Ship's
thoughts of his first trip through Hyperstringfield black hole thermodynamics
following, for the first time, a well planted homing reference beacon on a dark
matter slab in pulsating light greater than four dimensional light speed
threaded to less that one.
We
came to Earth enveloped in a faster-than-light bubble, thought Yermey, by
skimming the backdoor hyperstringfield black hole thermodynamics. I set up a
small reference station, a homing device within the wormhole. We have
stabilized a dark matter traversable wormhole into a secret highway from There
to Here.
Once
fully awake Yermey realized time was running short. Friendly and Hartolite
should be returning from Put-in-Bay within the half hour. Ship has his orders.
I am the pilot in this here-and-now and he knows it.
***
Chapter Six
The Supervisor has a little
saying:
Ring-a-ring
o'rosies
A
pocket full of posies
"A-tishoo!
A-tishoo!"
We
all fall down!
We
rise from clay
On
Judgment Day
Be
we dead or still alive.
Merlyn
has this little ditty memorized to the point it sits in stemmed reverence from
which the four-leafed chapter dream grows to novel size and beyond. Merlyn
kneads the dreams into words, the music for the heartansoulanmind whose
transcendental spirit shines. The words cast a light for those have no sight
and for those with an imagination that casts no shadow.
Dead - 6
Merlyn soon found himself slipping into dreamtime while lying between
the rock and great Oak. On introspection he thought, being dead has a pleasant
side, no aches or pains unless I want them. All sensory appears psychosomatic.
I think in my native Celtic tongue but when I want to be heard I appear to be
immediately understood by others I am in presence with. Irish, Latin, Greek,
English, Norse are my in my resume. Languages are now my forte.
Therein
Merlyn's mind glided naturally into, Ogham, the Celtic alphabet, which
has letters based on the names of trees as the trees are shaped with reasonably
forked branches. Kenning-like poetic thoughts produced the alpha-an-beta, and
in this poesy not all the tree letters are known to humankind, never were, and
in that lays wisdom in the Mystery of the Letters. Merlyn thought, once alive,
now dead, I sound the letters and still they are heard by the Living through
their eyes alone. In this sounding sense of reason the silent ears of the Dead
are but whispering eyes to the living.
A
lot of people affected my living -- family, friends, acquaintances, and
perceived enemies. People are not an indifference to me. Living or Dead each is
a piece on the crystal board. Each is in herorhis own squared area of consciousness
or lack of it. All have a shared square area of the same heavenly blue sky
randomly decked with clouds of similar fluff.
Two
friends float above the rest within my soul. Why? I have never known because
some friends are older, better known and deeper within. Both at once were
living druidesses who snaked and coiled their way around my very soul.
Brigit
of Iona was a human reincarnate of the earlier Brigit, who was thought by some
to be a goddess. She was not. She was a female sage, a physician and a smith as
was her druidic father, who also had been a physician and a smith. I was placed
to dangle on the bottom of her moon silver charm bracelet. She stirred my fiery
passions into her hot and throaty caldron and had the summary of my Celtic faith
for an immediate dinner.
The
second was Vivian who designed a silver and golden brooch to capture my reason
with the heavy breathing in and out through her tangling net of erotic charms.
A crystallized madness she became in my imagination alone. I never touched her
nor her me. No need to touch when she was already a haunt beneath my boneless
bag. I was a sorry sack of skin with Vivian.
Both
women were equally a damnable pleasant witchery. Priestess Brigit and Priestess
Vivian druidically placed me, Merlyn, a once shining jewel, in a rolled
leathery piece of ancient pre-Celtic phylactery. Both druidesses became leather
strapped, amulet-like pistons in the youth of my flamed mortal earthly engine.
Scroll-like I was wound and unwound from mind to soul and soul to heart. And,
thus bodiless, I was driven into an inconceivable madness while making
sorceries’ choice. Unthinkingly, I chose to be in a spiritual magic with both
women at once.
Merlyn
peered into the elementary considerations of his being included in the highest
first order of druidic shamans. The same druidic hierarchical setting in which
he would also place Brigit and Vivian. He immediately determined his chess
queen’s position to be off the board, a Betweener; no one would question this.
He smiled; no one Living or Dead can legitimately question this because I am
Elsewhere. I am off the Board. I am consciousness outside and before the
Creation of the Tree of Thought and Light.
I, Merlyn, exist.
Still
Within
Silence
Non-Begotten
...BE-ING…
Non-Begotten
Silence
Within
Still
I, Merlyn, do not exist. Yet, Here I Am, Thinks Merlyn
and echoes
Yet, Here I Am, Thinks Merlyn
and echoes
Yet, Here I Am, Thinks Merlyn
Heart and Echo
and
Soul
and
Mind
At Once Shredded
and
At Once Re-stitched
Again
and
Again
and
Again
'And,
yet again, Merlyn,' interrupted black-balled Glevema near the corner pocket of
his mind. This is your Grandest Mother my child. Guardian you are of the new
Gate of the Dead. You move your mindanheartansoul first thinking of whom your
best friends are in this moment on your soul, the small quaint classroom where
heart and mind sit. Mind your p's and q's boy when choosing an alphabet of
names to lovingly rouse.
***
The Brothers - 6
The
brothers walked to the hillside that dropped to the bottoms and river at a
fifty-degree angle, looked down into childhood memories and then back towards
the mausoleum. "Let's go in," said Robert.
Richard glanced to the right, the
corridor closest to the entrance, which is at the north and saw the three
pieces of stain glass at the west wall. “Look at the crypts,” he said, “lots of
marble
Robert
said, “I think our relatives are interred in this next section. Second shelf
up. The last four.”
Both
walked to where they could see the names. “James
and Mabel are on mother’s side, and Ron and Beatrice and David and Jessie are
on father’s side. I wonder why they are all buried together on this shelf.”
“I
guess they were good friends,” replied Richard while thinking, the mystery is
why would they be good friends. I didn’t know they even got along. Ron and
Beatrice were dead before we were born, but I remember the others well enough.
I don’t remember coming to the funerals though. They turned toward the center of
the building.
“The
mausoleum was built in the twenties for friends and relatives I would
imagine," suggested Robert.
“True
enough.” Richard glancing over to
the large centerpiece, “look at the angel with the emerald wings, just above
her right hand is an orange Star of David. I wonder why she is tinted green, as
are her robes. And look at the dark sky behind her. It is like she flew through
a storm to talk to the child at her feet.”
“Interesting,”
said Robert matter-of-factly. “Is the kid in the glass Jesus or Moses?”
“I
don’t know.” Richard moved back to get a better focus. “The kid is wearing a
red robe but he is looking at her open left hand. Above her wingtips, on
another plate, is the orange double eagle in a green background. A larger copy
of the two side pieces’ double eagles.”
Robert
glanced at the opposing long east chamber and at the marble wall of the hallway
between the four chambers. “The light from the east chamber was still shining
in like we are in a movie, he thought, only the sunlight is natural.
“I
like that naked bulb hanging from the ceiling in the center here,” said
Richard. “A nice piece of copper hanging above it but the outer bulb is
missing.” With Robert on his left, he turned to peer into the other west
chamber at the south section of the mausoleum. “This chamber is a lot shorter.
I had forgotten that.” He glanced up and quickly counted, “It has twenty crypts
on each side.”
Robert
noted, "I like the marble design of the chamber as a whole. It is
interesting.”
“And
from out here in the hall,” noted Richard, “the colors that are most striking.”
“Why
don’t you get a key made instead of the loner from the city,” suggested Robert.
“And we could come back anytime.”
Robert
stepped back too, “With decorative markings above that. The rest are typical
stained glass features. You see more purples at a distance. It is all rather
somber.”
“Hey,
don't forget where are we Rob?”
Both
chuckled, but the comment used to be funnier when they each had fewer of them.
They turned and walked away from the south stained glass and the five stacked
marble crypts on both sides. Then they walked passed the dark walnut podium
with the black cross carved in its center and up the marble hall past the two
north chambers and out the creaking brass door that had to be pulled to shut
tightly for locking, and which Richard diligently locked.
Richard
was surprised but neither really looked closely down the southeast crypt
chamber where all the sunlight was pouring in. That was the one that looked
eerie from a distance, he thought, and maybe it was too bright to look into
comfortably, but we didn’t. It is hard to believe there were be too much light
in a mausoleum, but this morning there was. We probably missed something.
When
they walked to Walnut Street Robert said, “I’m going home.”
“I’ll
head on up Grove to the house,” said Richard. “I like walking in the shade of
these old trees and through campus.” The twins walked their separate ways,
Richard to the east and Robert north. Their heartsansoulsanminds though settled
close together in the deep of what life is.
***
Grandma's Story - 6
Hello,
Readers, Merlyn and I have Bracc’s story from the Dead for you. It happened
long ago on the large Isle off the coast of France not far from where the town
of Canterbury would rise. Rolling hills and woods and streams and the coast not
more than a day’s walk. Bracc had long black hair with roughly built limbs and
a log like trunk. He had neither a comfort stage-like appearance, nor an
unusual one such as a mask or prop that would benefit him in his storytelling.
No
listener expected any of the stories to be objectively true because stories are
not like a hunter pointing to a deer and saying, "Dinner."
Storytelling goals and objectives were the department of education and the
focus, the premise, was how the individual might better survive on herorhis own
and/or in a social group.
The shaman took young
Bracc aside and said, “I will give you a project and a story will come from
this that is entirely your own.”
Bracc’s face lit up,
“I am ready, master. Give me the project, and I will test myself.”
The shaman charged,
"Tell a story in gray,"
Bracc stoically tread a path to
his thinking cave near a rabbits' warren. 'Death is black but sleep is gray
like stone. White and black make gray. I love dreaming about building higher
and higher stone walls. Stories like stones are gray in dreams.' Bracc smiled
like dawn and said aloud, “I
shall thus color my story in gray.”
***
Two full moons passed. Bracc
stood looking out at his first audience. This is what life is, he thought,
standing alone while the others are content to sit. Tonight I will make my
love, my Erca, proud to be my mate and to have brought our child into this
world. He began. "The Living
touch the Dead in many ways. The Dead cannot be seen but they can be heard
whispering from time to time. This is a story one told me in passing.
People were suddenly amazed young
Bracc would attempt such a difficult story. The audience of friends and
acquaintances sat with anticipation. Most were skeptical because Bracc appeared
to young to have heard an unknown story from the Dead. Even Bracc's wife Erca, holding their two-month old son
nearby was dubious, as she had heard some of Bracc's tall tales.
Bracc pulled his wooden story
engine cube from the camouflage of green foliage and balanced it upright in his
left hand and said, "What do you see?"
An elder replied, "It is a
gray box of six sides."
"Yes, a box of six sides can
easily be explained, but what of the color, gray? One might say it is a pigment
mix of black and white. Black is the night sky, white, the ever-changing moon
enumerable stars, sparkling jewels dancing across a black velvet sky. Nature in
the heavens does not mix gray. Clouds may be gray but they interrupt the
heavens like a gray stone wall. What then is gray if it is not a mix?
Another elder jokingly added,
"I can only see one side of the box."
"We have
heard and seen a trickery of words in such a simple device before!"
shouted yet another in the audience.
Bracc
stood suddenly realizing the man was right. There is nothing new in telling a
haunting story of gray ghost in the box. I am a travesty, he thought. He
felt his face redden like it gave up on him. He glanced to Erca whose eyes were
now cast down as she instinctively sheltered their child more closely. Bracc's thinking grew ridged and stone.
I shall be remembered as a storyteller nevertheless.
Bracc
quickly confessed, "I deceived myself to even think that I could reinforce
a story with tricks and devices. The Dead cannot talk with the Living. This
story is my imagination alone. But it will be remembered." Bracc stood
before the crowd in a mind fully naked and empty. Feeling so fully alone and
embarrassed Bracc collapsed and died.
For some Bracc's last thoughts
are in your genes, both the storytellers and the first listeners. I am Grandma
your earliest earthy nature, human DNA ever moving forward onto a world.
Bracc and Erca are now long
reposed
With sons and daughters since
surrogated;
Grandma's mouth would be forever closed
But for those strands and
molecules correlated.
***
Pouch - 6
After
an efficient walk around the plane and inspection of the controls Friendly,
known as Mykkie Carlson, glanced over the instrument and screen rich Cessna
Silver Eagle control panel and pushanpulled the start toggle fumbled then
pushed the toggle to the up position. Embarrassed that Pyl was watching she
quickly smiled and commented, "It's been awhile." Then glanced at her
watch and the clock on the console and thought, we'll be home before dark.
"We
all do silly things, Mykkie," said Pyl with a smile. “I love this plane,
outside of me I think this was Dad's favorite thing." She winked,
"Isn't that right, Blakey?"
He
feigned a grumble, "Yeah, Pyl was always the favorite."
Justin
looked to Mykkie’s sister Lindsey who was sitting next to him and said, "Pyl
and Blake come from parents who were a bit dissimilar."
"Pardon,"
replied Hartolite.
"Dissimilar,
you know, diverse."
Hartolite thought, what in the world are
they talking about, families that are 'dissimilar' and 'diverse,’? Does he mean
'heterogeneous'?
With
the flaps down Friendly revved the engine and confirmed the rpm status,
verified the alternator and voltage and they were picking up speed while
rolling down the runway, a lift of the nose, and with the flaps reset for a
slow climb southwest Friendly tapped the brakes to stop the spin and retracted
the wheels. Quickly nearing the Ohio shoreline she continued the climb while
turning the yoke to the left. The Silver Eagle continued a steady climb with
Catawba Island, then the Marblehead lighthouse were below the right wing and
Kelley's Island and greater Lake Erie lay down below the left wing. The plane
continued climbing due east until leveling off at nine thousand feet with a
speed of 140 mph. Friendly felt her body immediately relax. "We're good
for Burke," she said. "Beautiful day, beautiful scenery, one beauty
of a plane."
Pyl
smiled without further response. The plane and the pilot were as one in the
same. Pyl just loved the flying.
The
flight continued, seemingly uneventful. Pyl fell into a catnap. Awakening to
the drone of the engine she found that Justin and Blake had fallen asleep too.
Pyl let be. She glanced over at Friendly, smiled and quietly said, "I can
tell you are in love with this plane. I am in love with it too." Pyl
closed her eyes in a ruse and let her mind moved into surreptitious quarters.
Pyl
recollected her thoughts. This tension began yesterday with the bird cracking
the left wingtip light. Blake initially said it felt like the bird lightly
tapped the wingtip light. I asked if it was a bird. Justin said it sounded like
a piece of gravel hit the wingtip. When we inspected the wing at the hanger
Blake said the gray remnants were bird guts but there wasn't any blood mixed in
it. The gray matter reminded me of soot.
Pyl
continued, Mykkie Carlson is clearly in charge. The only flight mistake she has
made was the attempt to push the toggle switch in and then pull. She didn't
fumble with the toggle to push in and then pull out. It was smoothly done,
almost unconsciously, like she had done it a thousand times before, like I
would turn a car key down to the right to start the engine.
Pyl
adjusted herself in the seat and relaxed with her eyes closed until she heard
the thump of the wheels being lowered. She glanced at her watch and saw the
time was 4:48 then looked at the time on the interment panel, it was 4:49.
That's odd, she thought, we were synchronized when we left Put-in-Bay. She
pulled her iPhone out of her purse; it also showed 4:48. "What time do you
have Justin?" she asked.
"We
checked our watches at breakfast. Just what you have, 4:48."
Pyl
responded, "The plane says it is 4:49."
Blake
said, "I have 4:48 too. Now it's 4:49."
"The
plane says it's now 4:50," noted Pyl.
"I
have 4:50 too," said Friendly.
Hartolite
glanced at her watch that also said it was 4:50 but she lied and said, "I
have 4:49 just like they do. Maybe it is just a fluke of a few seconds."
Polite
chatter ruled during the smooth landing, exiting, the quick inspection of the
plane and then locked up by Blake.
While walking into the Burke Terminal, Ply spoke fully resolved. She
said, "Blake, I don't want you to sell our father's plane."
copyright 2012 Great Merlyn's Ghost by Richard H. Orndorff
***
