24 November 2012

Notes - GMG - Ch.4,5,6 copyright 2012 rho


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

***

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