1222 hours. I just glanced over Grandma-6 original and it is some 5770 words. How
in the world am I going to cut this down to 750 or so?
You have another wonderful Fall day, boy. It
is probably best for you to re-read it and I will bold what to keep. We'll go
from there. - Amorella
You
had lunch at Five Guys Burgers and Fries and are now at the far north end of
Pine Hill Lakes Park. Carol is taking a break from reading Red Mist by
taking a walk. You had your exercise earlier this morning. We have significantly
reduced the number of words to 1402 mostly by leaving the making of the devise
(which you still have leaning against a wall in the basement). Just for fun
let's include these words as they are. The next time seen in order they
essentially will have another story to tell. - Amorella
**
**
Merlyn and I have another story for you this
chapter. 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 far away, not more than a day’s walk at most. An
apprentice shaman sat attempting to discover who he was
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. In those days, everyone knew
storytelling demanded an authenticity that was so deep the person became
someone or something else while sharing the story. The question afterwards was
usually, ‘who was that telling the story, who had the shaman become?’
No one expected any of the stories to be true
because no one knew what was true and what was not. Everyone knew what reality
was though. Water,
food, shelter. Warmth from animals and fellow human beings that could be
trusted. Science developed from the necessity of water, food, and shelter for
the group. Storytelling had goals and objectives and was the department of
education and understanding the focus so the individual might better survive in
the group
The shaman took young
Bracc aside and said, “I will give you a project and a story will come from it
that is entirely your own. The elders are expecting a story sometime this year
but they don’t know when.”
Bracc’s face lit up,
“I am ready, master. Give me the project, and I will test myself.”
Death is black but sleep is gray
like stone. White and light are similar and lean towards the living. White and
black make gray. Black is invisible but gray can be hard like stone. Building
material dreams. Stories in gray are dreams. Bracc suddenly smiled like dawn
and said aloud to any living creature nearby, “I shall tell a story
in gray.” The real honest to goodness reality of it is this is that is
exactly what he did.
Later that day he had the story engine together. He stared
at it as he rested it against some rocks and tree roots and tree. This frame
device climbs the bottom of the tree as did the six pointed box turtle. Revelation. The frame was the visible
side of a six-sided cube. The rest of the cube sat in the invisible world under
the tree trunk, the tree roots, and the stones, and the earth beyond. The
ground will speak, thought Bracc suddenly. The cube will speak from the
invisible place of the Dead. The machinery I have created with the master’s
direction shall tell a story of that I am sure. Revelation. This story engine is a Destiny Shaper to the audience,
but to my master alone it is a Freedom Shaker.
***
He began again. The Living are
touched by the Dead in many ways. We are touched by the Dead inside our earth,
our bodies, as they touch our Mother outside when they die. The world of the
Dead cannot be seen, but it can be known by the Dead themselves. I have a short
story that one of them told me in passing.
People were suddenly amazed young
Bracc would attempt such a difficult story. People had told them before, and
many were horrifying. Others were pleasant enough to want to go there. It was
confusing as to how it was to be dead. They sat waiting to hear what young
Bracc had to say. Most were skeptical because he was so young and to the young
death seemed far away even though it struck them with surprise, sometimes
sooner than any expected.
Bracc pulled his engine from the
camouflage of green foliage and balanced it upright in his left hand. What do you see? he asked the elders.
I know this, said one elder, it is
a story engine that the old shaman had you construct.
Bracc smiled. It is a box of six
sides, he replied.
We only see one side of the box,
said another with a joking though friendly banter in the audience.
We have
heard this all before, shouted the disbeliever.
Bracc
stood suddenly realizing the man was right. There is nothing new in what he
said. The gimmick, the trick, was in using the rising hot air to move the disks
so that people thought it was magic, like the Dead were moving the disks, which
they weren’t. It was nothing but hot air. It was a travesty. I am a travesty, he thought. He felt his
skin give up before he did. A storyteller he was not, but I shall be, he thought.
Bracc
mustered a red, honest face and with a calm smile replied to the entire
audience of elders, “It was the hot air that made the disk to rise, when I took
the framework away from the flames the disks slid down the wooden shafts. It
was simple. I was trying to make a point, to show the Dead were still here.
Now, humbled by the truth, it is I who understand what it is to be one of the
Dead. My story is not a good story because I cannot show the Dead are here
without trickery. I am sorry for the deception. As you can see, I deceived
myself first, to even think that I could reinforce a story with tricks. It is
not the way to tell a story even if it is not true. The Living cannot talk with
the Dead and the Dead cannot talk with the Living. This is a story from my
imagination alone. It is not reality. Forgive me for my attempted deception.”
With that, Bracc collapsed and
died right there on the spot. He died of embarrassment. He died because he ran
out of imagination and had to tell the truth for a change. The elders of the
tribe learned a great lesson that day. Storytelling had to be true to be real.
No more stories about the Dead. Those were fantastic tales. We want only real
stories in our tribe, that is what they proclaimed. Real stories is what the
tribe heard from then on.
The elders decided that since
Bracc had told his story just before he died, it was close to the truth if not
completely true. It had not exactly been told by a dead man, but it was told by
one who was closer to death than he or anyone else had thought. People in the
tribe understood the truth of themselves. When the elders told the tribe what
had happened many wondered on Bracc’s story engine for a long time. Were there
really six sides to the frame when they could only see one? No one knew. No one
alive will ever know, this is what they rationally concluded.
The tribe kept the one side they
could see and touch. An appropriate empty space was left around the frame among
a small grove of Oak in case Bracc’s hand-built story engine really did have a
six-sided frame. The empty space surrounding the frame Bracc built became
sacred space. The story line became nothing
could be something. It required deeper thinking to understand it. It
required a mind that was nearly nothing, it required a very, very, very
small-minded individual indeed.
That is the end of Bracc’s story.
Today we have heard all of these things in thousands of different stories, but
Bracc’s was one of the first. Some of you readers were there and heard it first
in real time. The thoughts are in your genes, you see, both the storytelling
and the listening. That’s the way it is. Who am I? Grandma is your earlier
earthy nature, your DNA ever moving forward into the world. Who else would
Grandma be?
Can nothing be
something nature sent?
Nothing quite common is nothing enchained.
Where else in the world is nothing time-bent?
This profane nothing is in mind’s cathedral contained.
Pouch text, pouch story, what’s to be seen
From deep in the past to the future preen?
Within a story’s format there’s always a catch
Death driving deep in the ground’s worm patch.
Yet, from Grandma’s dark and dentaled gums
Nothing in the mind this wordy way comes.
1402 words
***
1450
hours. I remember Bracc. As the main character(s) in each story are
representative direct or closely direct (a brother/sister or aunt/uncle) ancestors
of both the families (twin brothers married to sisters) - the Greystone's and
the Bleacher's, neither know nor need to know the two families shared common
very great grandparents. One of the points in the original story, and here too,
in the remake, is that many human beings have an ancestry in which the married
couple (twins & sisters) where the original families of old share direct
genetic connections.
This
is fascinating to me and I decided to use this as a devise in the story because
after I had my DNA researched through Oxford Ancestors (Oxford, England).
**
**
In the Oxford
database none of my Y-chromosome are Northern Viking in origin. My (our)
paternal ancestor belonged to one of the ancient Celtic tribes that lived in
Britain before the Vikings arrived at the end of the eighth century AD. On the
balance of probability my (our) paternal ancestor was one of the original
Celtic people who had already settled the British Isles at the time the Romans
invaded. This is almost certain if we can trace our ancestry to Wales, Scotland
or Ireland. If our origins are in southern or eastern England, then there is a
very small probability that the ancestry is Anglo-Saxon. [The origins as Aunt
Floy and I have traced are in the western British Isles, at least back to the
Hubbell- in Warwickshire (not too far from Shakespeare's traditional
birthplace) in 1066.]
We were
hunter-gatherers who moved up from Southern Europe about 9,000 years ago (after
the last Ice Age). About 3,000 years ago, during the late Bronze Age and Iron
Age the Celtic artifacts (weapons and jewels) began appearing in Britain. This
involved relatively few people.
There are
intriguing genetic connections between Y-chromosomes such as ours and those
found in the Iberian Peninsula, especially among the Basques. This hints at the
existence of vigorous connections between Ireland, western Britain and the
Atlantic seaboard of France and Spain, which archaeologists have long
suspected. This connection began with the pre-farming hunters and fishermen and
continued with the peoples who built the large stone monuments, the megaliths,
which also connect these western sites from Spain to Scotland. The paper from
Oxford Ancestors continues to say that though we [Orndorffs] have no Viking
paternal ancestor our ancestors have been in Britain for a great deal longer.
Taken from
papers sent to me from Oxford Ancestors (this has probably been in the notes before t00 much for me to remember fully but not worth checking)
** **
When
I received the material in 2001 it was a revelation. I thought my ancestors
were mostly Viking and German and the rest a European mix. The other surprise
was in 2005 when Carol's Uncle John Hammond (her father's brother) had his DNA
done at Oxford and we found that Carol and I shared a grandfather somewhere
around the 13th or 14th centuries. It was then I began wondering how those
ancient genetic traces fill in for everyone. I read someplace that each of us
human beings is at least a 52nd cousin. And I got to speculating on how much
fun it would be to see (DNA wise) how we are all connected. If we were all in a
genetic pool then when you meet someone and like them well enough to share
genetics you could find out just how closely you are (and perhaps have been) related
genetically. I think some people would be really surprised on a strings of
grandfathers/grandmothers how close those connections would be. This way we
would see ourselves more as family than divisions through races and politics
and religions. Anyway, this is the reason I decided to add Grandma's Stories to
the mix.
Also,
the strings of ancestors and physics 'string theory' has a natural connection,
at least in my mind it does. These are the kinds of ideas and concepts that are
the most fun to me, the most entertaining, because it gives me more to wonder
about and imagine how much greater and grander 'reality' is than what and who
we are and see in real life. (1604)
You want to apologize for your wandering
mind but there is no need for that because you wrote a truth on how you see
things. Since you never talk about it much this way it is sharable at a
physical distance. However, if a reader takes some of the words to heart, so to
speak, you and the reader may be closer than you think or can even imagine.
Writing is your idea of a magic wand, boy. Such mysteries go unspoken every
day. Grandma has a good time presenting these stories. From my perspective
she's even between these lines here and now. Take a break. You are waiting for
Carol at Kroger's on Tylersville picking up ingredients for some wonderfully
delicious pies she has been requested to bring to Thanksgiving dinner later
this week. - Amorella
You
are home. Errands and chores done for the moment, Carol is making a meatloaf
for supper. The time is near dusk. Post. - Amorella
I
thought maybe I would get some of Grandma-6 completed.
2234 hours. I completed Grandma-6.
It was a fun challenge was it not? -
Amorella
Yes,
it was. I had a very good time placing the words as I did. Thank you for the
initial guidance, Amorella.
Richard fixed this one on his own. Post. -
Amorella
***
Grandma's Story - 6 (nfd)
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-like. 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 those listeners who heard him. 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.
739 words
***
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