Before sunrise. No sun, no rain pops into
mind and you think the Dead-11. Carol is drying her hair. She has an
Inauguration Party to go to later this morning. You have your exercises and a
nap.
Carol
has left for her party and fun with the ladies. You have been toying with the
Ford Fusion Hybrid and C-Max. You want seventeen-inch wheels, not eighteen that
come with the Titanium model. You don't like the black interior. And,
customers, some of them, complain that it doesn't have nearly the m/g that the
stats say. In fact, most get between thirty-eight and forty m/g (real world)
not forty-seven as stated.
On the screen the car sale doesn't sound so appetizing. Friends who have
the Prius get about 44 m/g sometimes it drops to the upper 30's in winter. The
physics is understandable and acceptable. I'm already committed to Lebanon Ford
for a look/see and possible test-drive tomorrow. Andy B. is our old salesman
from the Lincoln-Mercury days.
You snuck a peek at last night's Downton
Abbey, but keep it a secret as you watch it again with Carol. The day is cold
and will become colder this evening. Snow flurries in the air with clouds above
for their upbringing and support. - Amorella
What an odd turn of phrase, Amorella. I should not have thought about
the weather like that.
That I already understand, boy. Shall we
work on Brothers-10? - Amorella
Yes. I need to refresh to the times and place. (1241)
The
original Brothers 10 is exactly 1000 words.
Reduce it and say the same thing. - Amorella
Those are my very words to students in years past. I think you rather
enjoy saying them, Amorella.
Thoughts have their humor, circular and
otherwise. - Amorella
1409 hours. I have completed The Brothers - 10.
Good. Drop it in and post. - Amorella
***
The Brothers - 10
With Jack contently sitting on
his master’s lap Robert sat in the large comfortable maroon chair in the TV
room watching an episode of National Geographic about lions and hyenas sharing
their scrubby desert-like territory beneath Mt. Kilimanjaro. Jack suddenly
jumped off his lap.
“I’m I interrupting?” said
Richard softly as he pets Jack who appeared eager for a new playmate.
“No, not in the least. Jack
and I were just watching the lions about to attack the hyenas.”
“Sounds exciting. Who wins?”
“Lions I assume, unless fifty
hyenas jump out and tear them apart.” said Robert.
“It all has to do with
numbers. I have that in my book with the marsupials. They are lucky to have
three planets to populate rather than just one like us.”
“Hyenas and lions are not
fiction, Richie. You’re marsupials aren’t going to be on National Geographic.”
“I know, but I am making a
point about population. I think we are a little beyond the lion versus hyena
stage. What’s that? How is the male with the cubs?”
“That’s a female. That’s her
clitoris Richie.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. She has more
testosterone than the male.”
“Holy shit!”
Robert flipped off the set.
“What’s happening?”
“Nothing. Cyndi wanted to come
over, so I decided to come along.”
Robert smiled, “How about a
Taco Bell?”
Fifteen minutes later, they
are at the local fast food restaurant with two tacos and two diet Cokes each.
“We didn’t bring any poetry along,” said Richard. “I wanted to see what you are
working on in terms of the cemetery poem.”
“I don’t see it in your
poetry.” Robert pulled a tightly folded piece of paper from his back pocket and
pronounced, “Here is a poem you once wrote that I think can be used in
juxtaposition with the one I wrote. The one you read the other day.” He gave it
to Richard to read.
A Sunrise
The
beauty of a clear and Spring-like sunrise
lies in the quiet separation of light
and dark
causing the crossbar atop a telephone pole
to shadow down and stretch melancholy out,
to hold a grounded and subtle shape,
a shape a Nazarene once nailed to a cause;
waiting enough, the moving
shadows of a solar ritual
pull on the gravity of the eye weighted soul,
tugging the soul to settle and set at sundown,
to be overcome by power,
a power resting on the edge of the universe
and hovering deep in the outback of the observing mind;
It saddles up a god more ancient than Apollo
and makes
him ready to ride a new thought through the cosmos.
**
“I had forgotten about this
one.”
“A couple of days ago when Ferlinghetti
came up, I thought of this poem. It has a sense of Coney Island of the Mind, ‘Number
Five’ in it.”
“The gravity of the
eye-weighted soul, is a good line, but why did you follow with ‘the eye-weighted rather than ‘an eye-weighted soul’ Richie?”
“I don’t know, Rob. I wrote
this more than twenty-five years ago.”
“Then you go on talking about
a power resting at the edge of the universe and you say it is hovering deep in
the outback of your mind. Is that your unconscious -- the power of your unconsciousness
coming out?”
Richard sighed and finished
his taco. “The mind is not the same as the brain. It is not physical. The mind
is a shadow of the brain.”
“But Richie,” noted Robert
with a confident smile, “in your mind
it appears the other way around, your mind is more real than your brain, which
is then its shadow. The unconscious is not in your brain at all but in your
mind. Isn’t that the way you really see it?”
Richard thought about his
books, “I don’t know,” He paused then responded, "I don’t know where the
words come from. I am in the middle of a pregnant pause but I didn’t notice its
conception."
"We're going Uptown to
get an ice cream, you boys want to come along?" asked Kay from the kitchen
doorway.
"I'm game," asserted
Richard, glad to have a diversion.
"I think I'll stay,"
recited Robert. "I have some work to do."
Connie came into the room,
smiled her dear warm-hearted smile, and coerced with a "Let's go, big boy.
You need to be more social."
726 words
***
Carol arrived told you about her day, then you were off to McD's on Mason-Montgomery for coffee and a diet Coke, now you are stopped at Kroger's about two yards due west of McD's for a few items.
No, boy. There is not. Post. - Amorella
Carol arrived told you about her day, then you were off to McD's on Mason-Montgomery for coffee and a diet Coke, now you are stopped at Kroger's about two yards due west of McD's for a few items.
1553 hours. I feel quite relaxed. It is rather pleasant finishing a
story section in a day. I'll take the short ones when they show up. Grandma's
Story 10 is next and I'm ready to take a look. Maybe I can get it done today
also. --- Okay, 3392 words; this
one is going to take some time. (1600)
1644
hours. I decided to take a look at the blog statistics for the month. I realize
some readers hit the blog accidently, but nevertheless I thank every one of you
who stop by once in a while. You help make me feel like I am a normal person
who has to tell the world how it is here inside. Thank you every much, kind
people, for your reading. Remember, if you want to copy the book for free, you
may as long as you give Amorella and me credit for putting it together. I don't
mind if you share your copy as long as it is with someone who is genuinely
interested. Richard Henry Orndorff
(signed)
***
22 Dec. 12 to 20 Jan. 13
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***
It is fine that once in a while you thank
your readers. Don't be too kind though, boy. Human beings are not always who
they seem to be. - Amorella
Why would you say such a thing, Amorella. There is nothing wrong with
being polite.
Now you are making me cautious.
That is my intent. I am your friend first in this position I find myself. - Amorella
Why do you always have to be in character?
To keep you honest and wary at the same time. You are no fool, boy, and I will not allow you to be. - Amorella
2211 hours. I have completed Grandma's Story 10.
So you have. Add and post. No more tonight.
- Amorella
***
Grandma’s Story 10 ©2012, rho, nfd
Some aspects of human
society are as invisible as gravity as you will see in this little story that
takes place about three thousand years ago on the coast of East Africa in what
is now Kenya.
Rumbasant
stood at the edge of the forest inspecting the horizon beyond the great water.
She is thinking the horizon is not the end of things, as I am not standing at
the beginning of things. Our men leave this place by boats. Most do not return.
Always the sons of the chief or sons of his brothers leave on quests. It has
been that way for as many stars as there are in the night sky.
I
would like to leave on a boat with one of my brothers. I will never leave. I
keep my blackened walking stick. The fire from the sky struck the tree I used
for shelter. This stick is from that tree. God's fire hit my left shoulder and
went down my right leg and into the ground. The fire is still in the ground where
I left it. I know what it is to have been touched by Father’s fire.
It
was a great shock to the tribe. Older people say the Sky Father struck me for
being born to our Grand Chief first. I argued that if this was so, Sky Father
is an abusive father. We do not
strike each other or our children anymore. We are a simple and peaceful people.
In
Grandma's the last story, Abbatoot and part of her clan had survived a terrible
storm, and I am brewing a typhoon not far from where Rumbasant is standing.
Rumbasant has been struck down once, what more can the Sky Father do? To be
struck by sky fire twice would be unprecedented. Would it not?
The
sunset appeared as a tunnel, a tube by which she could cross to the other side
of the world. A huge storm roared onto the beach during the night. The winds
grew steady to stay between fifty and seventy miles per hour. Rumbasant held
her sacred stick high as lightning struck nearby trees. Wind-driven and
stinging, sticky bleached sand hit Rumbasant’s face. Continuous thunderous
roars, ominous booms, green tinged sky, blue, and low purple bands of a mass
cloud.
Rumbasant
shouted to the storm, “By Mother Earth and by her sacred marriage to Father
Sky, I command the winds and rain to cease!”
This
grew into a magical chant, a spontaneous ritual dance and a shout to the up
heaved ocean. Only to be responded to by wind, rain, lightning and thunder.
Rumbasant unconsciously shortened the oath. “By Mother and Father, I command
this water and wind to cease!” The night storm roared on and so did Rumbasant
who shouted her spontaneously created chant.
Arumba.
Arumba. Arumba.
Foam
of the mad dog.
Arumba.
Arumba. Arumba.
Foam
of a mad sea.
Arumba. Arumba. Arumba.
Foam
to the mad wind.
Arumba.
Arumba. Arumba.
Like
the storm Rumbasant roared on, “Arumba. Arumba. Arumba.” She shouted the word
with every other beat of her terrified and defiant heart. “Arumba. Arumba.
Arumba.”
Lightning
strikes the Stick. Fire burst forth and the Boom echoed in tribal memory for
life.
On the beach Rumbasant
laid stirring and twitching. The smoking Stick lies beside. Living is not
enough, thought Rumbasant, but I am enough alive to think.
Rumbasant clutched at
Stick and pulled herself up. As Rumbasant stood once again and raised Stick in
right defiant hand, a wall of lightning snapped at the bank of palms where the
tribal witnesses had recently stood.
“Stick
is what it is,” shouted Rumbasant to her tribe in the distance. "I am
hammered twice by Father’s fire and I am alive!" The
people came closer staring at Rumbasant’s face in disbelief. Her right eye
socket was empty. The tribal people began a search for a shell with Rumbasant’s
burnt eye in it.
Early one morning not
long after, Rumbasant discovered a perfectly white slightly oval shell in the
water near the beach. Rumbasant put the shell up to her empty eye socket,
pulled open the lids and slid it in for a welcome fit. She thought, this will
work just fine.
She was called Shell Eye in stories along the Kenya
coast of East Africa long after her death. The name Shell Eye was forged into a mystical tribal name.
Taking an eye for an eye or so it’s been said
Is not quite the same as taking wine with bread?
To see what story time remains to be seen,
One needs the depth of one eye threaded quite
lean.
773 words
***
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