28 January 2013

Notes - surrounding River / The Brothers 11 completed


        You were up early cleaning Ellie's liquid-like hairball. Fortunately Carol did not step on it in the dark.

         I should have got up when I heard the 'cat cough'. Anyway, I cleaned it up before Carol saw it. We did our early morning chores but my lower spine is sensitive to pain this time of day so in the black bedroom chair I sit until the pain calms down. I discovered an error in yesterday's blog, a false childhood memory, one of many I am sure. I deleted it but first found the latter section of yesterday's blog was set on align center; that I also corrected.

         Old body age, boy. The body is not built so free as the mind; however heartansoul need something to exist four-dimensional environment, don't you think? Nature has its own practicality and rules; however, if one observes nature closely she or he finds not everything in nature is a law to be broken and then to be called a minor miracle. - Amorella

         The above was a completely unexpected comment. I am not sure what the last line means as far as these books are concerned.

         A connection between the Brothers 11 and Grandma's story 11. - Amorella

         I need to go get breakfast. (0834)

         No one is stopping you, boy. - Amorella

         1247 hours. We are going to Panera/Chipotle for lunch within an hour or so. Carol is working on the checkbooks and budget as usual. She is what one would call a real, in the world, home economist.

         At least you say that about Carol. You think she is 'real life' and you are 'mostly imagination of real life'. - Amorella

         That's a good way of putting it politely.

         You are wondering what cards are on the table for the rest of Brothers 11 and how it is going to connect to Grandma 11.

         I just skimmed it and was struck by this quick remake of the last two lines:

Words flow free on a mixed alphabet by Merlyn’s own hand


Into a full flowing fiction ever near the Shoreline and Strand.


         Change the 'a' to an italic 'the' before Shoreline. There is many a Strand breaching the surrounding River no matter what universe or dimension one finds her or himself in.

         In this comment you are as the Lady of the Lake.

         More so than you might think, boy. Post. - Amorella


         1527 hours. We had a good lunch and now are at Pine Hill Lakes looking west down into the forty-foot valley at the wooden foot-bridge crossing a branch of Muddy Creek. It is pretty even with the leaves unavailable. Carol is on page 246 of American Assassin. Leaving Panera we saw one of my form department chair people at Mason, Anne Helwig. A pleasant surprise since I haven't seen her for seven years or so. I told her we had two grandchildren (she had Kim for Honors American lit) and she has thirteen. She was super polite and told me who she was as she got out of the car. I knew the face immediately but names are slow to come by. It saved me the time I would have been spending in my head while chatting trying to think of what her name was. I always asked people to do that if they see me and save me the struggle and embarrassment. Okay, time to write.

         As usual you have no idea. - Amorella

         That's true. I suppose I was going to click on the Brothers 11 document and stare at the Moby Dick whale white on the page. I don't even remember what it was about. -- Turns out they were just talking on: worms, the antique table, the train set and the 1950's. That has nothing to do with shorelines and strands of even rivers. Are heartsansoulsanminds embedded in physical form strands?

         You thought that up all by yourself. Sometimes you surprise me, orndorff.

         If so that adds a whole new dimension to your words. The shoreline is coming out of the river not going into it. The usual thought on the River Jordon or Styx or whatever the name is that one crosses over, but the River in this case is the 'base' of the physical universe. If the base 'flows' erosion occurs and one (a strand) eventually dissolves back into the River. But what then are the Shorelines in such an analogy? (1558) Bring up The House on the Strand (1559).

         1632 hours. I am at 729 words where Robert's last words are, "I'm pretty sure Connie won't." Talk about a serendipitous dialogue. Carol's finish with a chapter. Time to go.

         You watched the news and Masterpiece Theatre. You wonder what the last words will be in The Brothers 11 just as you wonder how it was going to carry on earlier today.

         2126 hours. The Brothers 11 selection is completed in 797 words.

         Add and post. Tomorrow will be a busy day with traveling. Enjoy. - Amorella

***

The Brothers 11 ©2013, rho, nfd

Richard is driving north on State Street in his red 2005 Volkswagen GTI and sees Rob stopping on South Staten in front of the old stage coach line's Stoner Inn, a place rich in the history of the Underground Railroad. Richard pulls over and parks directly across the street in front of the Riverton Mason Temple whose membership began in Riverton in the second year of Lincoln's presidency, rolls the window down and shouts, “Hey!”

“Hey!” echoes Rob. Meet you at your house.” Rich nods and turns left at the next street. Within three minutes, they are parked in the driveway.

“You've got Connie's 1998 jag! Awesome. Surprised she lets you drive it."

“She and Cyndi like cruising. Figure they go out picking up the young men,” laughed Robert.

“We’re way too old,” gibed Richard.

“What’s up?”

“Want to go for a ride?”

“Why not. Where are you heading?”

“Hardware.”

“Speak for yourself, kid,” goaded Rob. “Get in."

“Awesome!” said Richard with a big grin. "You never get to drive this."

They stopped at the south end hardware store for a package of small screws. A block to McDonalds for drinks then down to Alum Park by the river.

“No one fishing today Richie,” said Robert.

“I never caught anything here at the park.”

“Neither did I,” grinned Robert. Both broke out laughing then sat in silence enjoying the immediate environment for half an hour or so.

“Nature’s a conspiracy,” said Richard.

“How’s that?”

“I think it’s a trick.”

“That's your definition of reality?”

“Yeah. Reality is not what it appears to be.”

“It sure is when you are performing surgery,” voiced Robert.

“Yeah, I know. That’s the problem with my theory. Reality is what you bleed in.”

“You mean what you imagine in, don’t you Richie?”

He put his head back and looked up into the late summer blue sky, “You're right.”

“You reason with the brain,” jabbed Robert, “imagination is in your mind, Richie.”

            Richard suddenly laughed and turned to face his brother. “You want reality? Remember the old lines, ‘The worms go in, the worms go out, the worms play pinochle in your snout?’” Both grinned while breaking into old boyish humor. Tears laughed right down their eyes as they sang, "The worms go in, the worm go out, the worms play pinochle in your snout."

** 

            "Where have you boys been?" asked Cyndi.

            Robert replied, "We went to the hardware store. I had to get some screws for Grandpa Bleacher's the old train set."
           
            "Is it still on that antique table?"

            "Yep."

            "I love that old table."

            "You don't have room for it."

            "I know."

            "I like the train set. I'm reworking the scenery for Uptown Riverton in the late fifties when we were in high school."
           
            "That's a good idea," agreed Richard. How things were in old Riverton rushed through his mind. "The peace and calm of the fifties."
           
            "Hardly. The Korean War, the hydrogen bomb, the Cold War, color prejudice."
           
            "The Beats," injected Richard, "and cheap gas. I remember buying it once for 19 cents a gallon." 

            "I think that is as cheap as we ever saw it."
           
            "I see your paperback on the table, what are you reading?"
           
            Cyndi responded in a deliciously warm and spontaneous smile, "The House on the Strand."

            "I loved that book."
           
            Richard added, "By Du Maurier. She was Lady Browning; Daphne du Maurier, probably best known for Rebecca."

            "It was very cool, a Twilight Zone type of story about a man who was in love with two women, one in the fourteenth century and one in the twentieth."

            Richard added, "Rebecca was better. It begins with: 'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.' Hitchcock made it into a movie. The first line is an iambic hexameter. The last line is almost an anapestic tetrameter: 'And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.'"
           
            "House on the Strand was better because . . .."
           
            "Don't tell me Robbie. I haven't finished it yet." Her smile lingered. "You boys want some crackers and cheese?"

            "Good with me," said Robert and he automatically sat down at the head of the dining room table.

            "I usually sit there," commented Richard dryly.

            "You always sit here. You can sit at the head of the table at our house if you want. I don't care, and I'm pretty sure Connie won't."

            Richard mused it doesn't make much difference to Cyndi either. I remember how reality is depicted in The House on the Strand. The house, where a drug was used to induce the main character into choosing between two realities, one in the fourteenth century and one in the twentieth. He, like the Merlyn in my books, would rather return to his seventh century dead than stay in my present living.

799 words
***

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