20 February 2013

Notes - GMG Ch. 10, 11, 12 / Division Summaries / souls and humor / metaphysics


             Mid-morning. First, let's drop in Chapters Ten, Eleven and Twelve of Great Merlyn's Ghost. Because some of these characters, those in "Diplomatic Pouch" selections were first published in Stuck in 2001 let's set the copyright at that date so it is clear you have ownership of them. Many other characters were published in Braided Dreams, Running Through and Merlyn's Mind. Therefore, from this point on, for clarity, the copyright will be 2001-2013 and stretch forward until all three Great Merlyn's Ghost volumes are completed. Readers may download and read for free for now, but once the books are published this will be illegal. - Amorella
***


Great Merlyn's Ghost

© 2001-2013  Richard H. Orndorff



Chapter Ten

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.



The Dead 10
            Returned into the stream of his sanctuary, Merlyn wet and nearly naked rose near the bank, climbed up and out and he began a run from between birch and pine, through the vast field of bluebells, behind the stage ruins, through the great paddock of white foxglove and red poppy, and on through the meadowed pinkish white saxifrage; then across the clearing of grassy field until he reached the flowering purple heather near the east side of the sanctuary, the Oak and Birch forest. There he came to rest and sat in the tall grass under a grand and tall Oak waiting for either Vivian or Sophia to appear.

            Shortly or however one judges time illusionary, Sophia peeked from around the Oak. "Thought I'd find you here, Merlyn," voiced Sophia in a coyness seemingly borrowed from Vivian, or so Merlyn surmised.
            
            With his right hand he padded the imagined ground next to him. "Have a seat beside me on this fine grass," he suggested. He scooted over obligingly. "Are we ready for another talk to tell the Living how it was in those early days of the first Rebellion?"

            She sighed, "I have been playing a scene over in my heartansoulanmind.

            It was on the evening of the first day and Mario, who was on my committee, wanted to talk so he came over to my stone hut, my private sanctuary. I asked him in and directed him to lay on the bed with me as I only had one chair. I did not want him to appear higher than me with me on the bed and him in the chair. I remember his first words as we lay facing one another, our heads propped up by wool stuffed pillows.
           
            He said, “It is pleasant here. We can a nighttime of sleep.”

             I agreed. Being dead was indeed heavenly in our minds then he brought up his concern on how to know the Supervisor when you see herorhim. I told him that unseen doesn't mean the Supervisor doesn't exist no matter what name he responds to." She looked directly in to Merlyn's old dark eyes and quietly declared. "The Supervisor has an interest in us still."
           
            Mario was concerned with deception within our ranks, that we could not trust our fellow Greeks, and what of the other Dead who are not Greek, where are they?

               Merlyn broke into a broad smile. "A wickedly good question old Mario had." He thought how each house of culture carried its own Dead for fellow comfort. Those who thought similar stayed with others like themselves. It was natural and a very human thing to do.

            Whether sincere or not, Sophia always returned a smile, it was/is/will be her custom. She continued, "It was morning of the second day and I remember what was important to me then and now and should be important to the Living too."
           
            "No should's or ought's with the Living, Sophia. It is a rule the Dead must abide by."

            Sophia reached out with her left hand and turned to be facing Merlyn straight away. The Oak framed Merlyn's head in which she could see the image of his skull no more there than herself in spirit.

            “We thought if we were not free in life then we would be free in death but that is not the case in this Place. We ruminate and find camaraderie through our personal identities, personalities and interests. The human center is Our Mother, the first who was allowed in this Place. She is our common point. We are equal citizens through our ancestry. We have become a hive of sensibly silhouetted questions searching for equally reasonable responses. What else can we do? The gods certainly don’t always help. We don’t know, really, if they ever helped.”

             She continued, almost pleading with Merlyn. "The question among we dead is still who am I? Is it really more easily resolved after life than why am I here? What shall I do here?  What did I do in life? In millenniums and through two rebellions in HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither this is still not resolved. Our newly acquired 'friends' the heartsansoulsanminds who were once Marsupial Humanoids have the same questions, but at the same time we have adapted their name for this Place of the Dead we now share. It seems neither of us moved. We were here together all along and did not realize the fuller nature of being Dead yet living in the same consciousness.  

            Merlyn sat Buddha-like in stature and contemplated his ancient Greek friend's words. He thought and in the remembrance of kind souls suggested, "There is much more to being Dead than we know."
           
           Hearing his words, a spark hit Sophia. She thought, he did not say,  we can know.

           
***

Ten


The Brothers

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."

***

Grandma’s Story 10

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.

            She 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.
***

Diplomatic Pouch 10
            Friendly speaks first to Pyl by re-introducing Hartolite and then Yermey, who the earthlings have not met. Friendly then says, "We are not who we say we are. Please give us time to explain." A pause.  "Are you willing to give us the time?"
            Blake interrupts, "First we need to make sure the plane is safe to fly. We have a problem with vapor lock."
            With polite reserve Pyl added, "We need to get off this road."
            Justin opened with, "Where is your transportation? How did you know we would be here?"
            "Did you see us attempt a landing at the airport?" declared Blake with his eyes on the engine.
            "We are foreigners,” replied Yermey. "We do not have U.S. citizenship."
            "There is no need to check for vapor lock," said Hartolite. "We forced your plane down so we could talk on the ground."
            Blake turned, "What did you say?"
            "Are you terrorists?"
            "What do you want with us?"
            "We wish to be friends."
            "Why did you say you forced us down?"
            "Because we did."
            "How?"
            "We caused the vapor lock accidently."
            "It is physics."
            "Ship caused your plane to slide at the airport."
            "We did seem to slide," said Blake. "It felt like the wheels were on ice while we were in the air."
            "It is caused by blackenot."
            "This is the reason no one saw you, why you couldn't contact by radio."
            "What do you mean?"
            "The engine restarted."
            "It was an unknown."
            "It stopped again."
            "You were in no danger."
            "Your plane touched Ship. It was not a bird that cracked the wingtip light. Ship did. You touched Ship with blackenot on. You could not see us."
            "We did not wish to show ourselves at that time."
            "Because you are not citizens. You came across from Canada?"
            "No. You can see we are human."
            "I didn't think you were aliens," said Pyl.
            "We are cousins," declared Yermey.
            "We are human," said Friendly, "but we do not live here."
            "Listen," said Yermey. You are concerned about your plane. Get in and start the engine. Friendly and Hartolite. May they ride with you?"
            "You both have been guests before. Come on board if Blake finds it fly worthy," said Pyl. "What about you?"
            "I will see to your safety."
            "With what?"
            "Ship." Yermey point up.
            "What is that? It doesn't make sense."
            "I don't really see anything."
            "Where is the sky?"
            Blake was already in the plane. The engine started normally. "Everyone in," he said. "Pyl help me with the exterior visual inspection."
            "We are good to go," said Friendly from near the wingtip. "I already have it."
            "I'll feel better once we are in the air. There is not a trace of problem with the engine." Everyone strapped in. Blake glanced about. No cars. No people. He rolled the plane down the township road, the rived the engine up with the flaps down. Slowly but surely speed picked up, then the plane lifted just before they saw the house on the right after the trees. Airborne. They heard the familiar clunk of the wheels drawn up into the fuselage. The plane flew perfectly normal. Blake banked the plane left and headed north to Lake Erie for a return to Burke Lakefront along the shoreline at two thousand feet. Everyone clapped.
            Suddenly. Friendly, sitting behind Blake, reached in her purse pulled out her dark blue cosmetic case and opened it. The earthlings did not notice the sudden tiredness caused by the somewhat stressful ordeal of the long precautionary landing and taking off from Township Road 314 just east of the Ashtabula County Airport. They were flying and all was well. Blake, Pyl and Justine didn't realize how much better the day was than they expected.
            Friendly and Hartolite sat comfortably, Hartolite to the right of Justin in the third seat row. Slowly and carefully Ship dropped the wheel from the fuselage, stopped the Rolls-Royce turboprop, maneuvered the blue and white Cessna into position and drew the plane inside and up to the Annex floor, Ship's recently modified, human friendly first floor basement.
            Shortly thereafter Pyl awoke to the quiet. She opened her eyes to see the prop stopped. She punched her brother, "Blake, the engine." He awoke with a yawn both quickly realized the console was dead. We're dead, she thought, as she saw nothing familiar outside the plane. "We are on the ground."
            "We landed. I don't remember “
            "We are here," said Friendly. "Nothing to worry about. We are all alive and well. Welcome to our environs."
            "We can get out," said Hartolite calmly. We will show you where we are."
            "You are perfectly safe," assured Friendly, "Go ahead, climb out."
***

Chapter 11

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 11
            Merlyn sat near the theatre ruins at his sanctuary, admiring the yellow sun that has only recently been a part of HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither. During my recent tenure on Earth, thought Merlyn, during the time of heartanmind sharing with the identical twins Richard and Robert though Robert didn't appear to know it at the time. He did buy his brother two books on Merlyn though. Surprised Richard, yes it did. We never had rain here either until after the Second Rebellion. It began, so it's said, the Earth night after President Eisenhower's Farewell Address, televised on 17 January 1961. Those who were watching or listening at the time mostly remember it for Eisenhower's warning on too much deficit spending and on the growing military-industrial complex. Those already dead did not hear of it at the time, but many of the recent Dead in those days knew about Eisenhower. It wasn't long before word began to get around. Wars and plagues had passed many people on in the first fifty years of the twentieth century. Now days there are plenty more living but they do not make up for the loss. All the new technology and weaponry, all kinds of weaponry never dreamed of before. The Dead of many cultures got together and said to the Supervisor; "Somebody's got to go back and say some things about how it is here in this Place of the Dead.           
            As I died in the latter seventh century I immediately slept and when I awoke I found myself in Avalon whose topography is similar to the Isles. The earlier Dead of Avalon have slightly different scenes than my own. People wake up where they will be most welcome. Most assume the Supervisor, as SheanHe is titled, understands how these things work. I haven't seen any errors but some say there have been and were correctable. Peoples' spirits need to feel comfortable so individuals choose their own level of personal ease with one's self. This is mostly completed before arrival.
            Communication among the Dead is not difficult as long as one is polite first and honest second. For some this is a difficult undertaking. You have no tongue to slip on. The individual spirit is a personality with selected memory and fully spirited. The words are driven from the heartanmind and in that order. If you do not connect to the singular humor of this you miss half the fun of being Dead. Those who discover problems with this arrangement feel more at home in their private sanctuary. The heartansoul is more of a social issue and home is a good place to resolve the mind on these internal conflicts as they arise.
            At the beginning of the Rebellion, sanctuaries were culturally oriented individual shelters about the size of Henry David Thoreau's cabin at Walden's Pond. The contents would be a bed and a chair for guests, perhaps two chairs as well as a cupboard or two for imaginary cultural essentials such as food and drink for one or two friendly occupants. The Dead don't need things. Memories shared and otherwise will do. Those who know American theatre might think on the minimalist set in Thorton Wilder's play, "Our Town". I'm sure there are examples online in this modern world you presently live in. No need for clutter scattered about when Dead, no matter in what culture and earthy stage you dropped yourself into.
            Let me tell you how it was when I discovered I could visit an earlier place and time to help me with storytelling in dreamtime. In Avalon I was crossing a castle moat and walking through a stone framed doorway to the surrounding gardens. I remember the dark blue sky and seeing those green leaf vines growing up the wall and the top of the yellowish brown stone castle within. Beyond the doorway were two large weeping willows and assorted well-trimmed bushes with the grass in its natural state. This was a very pleasant scene indeed. I walked the path down the hill toward the trees. Beyond and to the left were two gray shaded monoliths and being myself I had to walk between them for the satisfactory pleasure of doing so. One stone whispered in my mother's voice, "Merlyn." The second stone whispered in my father's voice, "Time to visit the birth of the Rebellion." I became as a note of music between strings being plucked by the Supervisor, at least that is my supposition.
            Suddenly I found myself soaring eagle-like between hugely shaped clouds mostly of the high rising Cumulus and Cumulonimbus variety. I looked forward towards a moon-like light at the end of this domed cave filled with multitudes of clouds as I soared outward toward the cultural cloud of Ancient Greece.
***


The Brothers 11

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. 

***



Grandma 11

We return to three thousand years or so before the present, to a King and Queen i his palace, and he noticed a woman with dark hair and dark features in a bath on a roof over what would be almost a city block away. Perhaps this perfection is a gift from G-d, he thought. I am king in his name. I have done good works. I am of the loins of Abraham and Sarah. Perhaps she is a gift.

            He quickly found who the woman was. Bathsheba, wife of his good and loyal general, Uriah the Hittite, who loved soldiering and war more than anything else in the world. David reflected, she is heaven sent for a king.

            When she arrived as ordered. Once the two were alone in a private chamber David touched and surprisingly, Bathsheba returned touch. He was king and she was not perfect. He began debating his original intuition.

            Being alone and being king lust trickled then rushed and it speared in his mind. David became instantly terror struck thinking, lust is not a present from G-d. He sat with Bathsheba and confessed his desire and his faulty reasoning.

Bathsheba sat surprised at his unpretentious manner and understood. She held him in her arms as he cried for G-d's mercy like a child. Then he stood army-like and dismissed her so they both might have some privacy.

When they met again, this time is secret, they made love in a passion that neither expected. They bathed in a mist of passion so fine that both believed they saw the same rainbow in their heart of hearts.

Weeks later, Bathsheba called on King David privately. “I am pregnant with your child, David,” she said. “I will be stoned to death for adultery.”

“Have you not slept with your husband?” he questioned.

“No. He is busy soldiering and will not be bothered.”

King David replied confidently, “I will not have you stoned."

Without thinking Bathsheba whispered, “I love you."

He also responded without thinking. “I love you, too." The soldier king then considered the immediate situation. How can this be? She is my general’s wife. I have many wives, but he has only one. I cannot take her from him, and I will not. It was then that he thought on how Bathsheba might still be God’s gift to him. He concluded, only if the general dies a good death in battle will I wed her.

Very soon, almost too soon, there was a battle afoot and brave Uriah, the general was up front with his men as always. Uriah was a good and loyal general through his last battle.

Thus, it came to be that Bathsheba married King David. Their son died young. Nathan the Prophet, always knowing, told the king his son’s death was partial payment for the king’s adultery.

David asked, “if this is so, why did G-d take my son and not myself?”

“For further punishment,” hailed Nathan the righteous and the wise.

“How do you know this?” commanded King David, “That G-d should speak to you before he would speak in private to me.”

Nathan quickly reassessed the situation and somberly replied, “I do not know, my king."

“We shall have another child,” snapped David the King.

David dismissed Nathan after a verbal bruising. Once alone the king realized that G-d may have been talking to Nathan because he was a powerful prophet. David came to feel that G-d may also have been talking to him.


Years later, Bathsheba asked a much older David, “Will our son be king?”

“Yes,” without hesitation the king rejoined, “Solomon will become king while I am still alive to see it.”

Bathsheba smiled while musing I am content, and David is content that I am content.

Solomon came to realize this joint contentment in his parents and to silently rejoice to the wisdom within it.


"This is the David and Bathsheba story the way some of the Dead have heard it," noted Grandma with a knowing wink.



In a great bend in the river between the slave and the free,
There is a marked separation where you may want to be.

Being born human can be a chain of much strife,
A free human may unshackle this slave in life
Accepting what one is, a piece of humankind --
Are common and humble roots to grow in the mind.

Be forewarned and yet mellowed by Grandma's earlier wink,
These letters make a fiction to swim or to sink

These words flow free by Merlyn’s own hand

A flowing full fiction between the Shoreline and Strand.

***

Diplomatic Pouch 11
            Walking around from what appeared to be a curtain, Yermey came into view about five yards in front of the Cessna. He waved and smiled. Then he jumped up and down on the earth a couple of times and said, "The floor is solid; it will be fine."
            "It looks like grass, like a grass runway," said Pyl as she opened the door. Blake was right behind her. Friendly followed, then Hartolite and Justin. Pyl put her hand down and touched the grass. "It is real grass . . . and dirt."
            Blake grumbled, "I don't remember putting the wheels down. I had just put them up."
            "Where are we?" said Justin as if it were a statement.
            Yermey reached out with good will and shook Pyl's hand first. "Welcome to our abode."
            "This is a giant hanger with grass growing in it," declared Blake, "I'll be damned if it isn't. How'd we get here? I don't remember landing."
            "I think we have been abducted by aliens," asserted Justin. "I think things are not as they seem."
            "You are not abducted, though it may seem that way," replied Friendly. "We need to talk, and this is the safest place."
            "For you, maybe," charged Justin. "Where are the windows?"
            Pyl in restrained anguish responded, "Calm down," Justin."           
            Blake directed his question to Hartolite, "Are we really abducted Carlson?"
            "No, you are not. My real name is Hartolite not Carlson."
            "Why the deception?" retorted Justin in growing anger, focused in part on Pyl's comment to calm down.
            "First, let's show you where you are," said Yermey politely.
            Looking at Pyl for a comeback, Justin quietly bemoaned, "They are probably going to gut us and have us for dinner. That's the best outcome I can think of."
            Friendly smiled towards Pyl. "Yermey put real dirt on the floor," she said, "this is real earth grass because we want you to feel comfortable. You are our guests and you will be treated well."
            "Not well cooked," noted Yermey, then he quipped with a fun face, "We are not cannibals."
            "We hold the same virtues you do," said Hartolite. "This is why we are here."
            "Let's go over to your apartment if you choose to stay aboard; otherwise this will be a short stay. You are not going to be harmed in any way. If after we explain and respond to your questions you will be allowed to return to your Cessna and will see to it that you will be loosed into the air with everything functioning, to land at Burke which is only a mile or two away."
            "Are you going to take our memories away?" asked Justin in a slight but direct voice.
            "No need," said Yermey. "This is not science fiction. No one will believe you if you tell what you are experiencing here. Why would they?"
            "They wouldn't, that's the point. I am not so trustful as Pyl and Blake."
            Ship interjected for the first time, "Trust is what we do, Justin, this is what I am built for."
            I am built to know and understand the captain and crew whom I protect, I am in loco parentis just as a public school teacher in your culture. It is my job to keep you safe from harm first. We have no weapons. We have no need of a military presence at home or here. We are runners by the same nature that you are stand-and-fighters.
            "Parents?"
            "The marsupial-humanoids, as you will come to call us, are run like a single family household in your culture. We are the same species thus we treat each other as family."
            Blake chuckled, "We have problems in and between families."
            "As do we, that's why we have a committee of twelve with two Parents elected once and only once every twenty years, a male and female. Three judges in courts clarify disputes. Our institutions are similar. Our practical form of Family has worked for us for fifteen thousand years but we have no wish to impose our culture onto yours. We would rather run first. I, Ship, am built for safety and for running first in the process."
            Friendly interposed, "Ship welcomes you. He will protect you and your culture while on board. If bad comes to worse, we will drop you off safely, with your plane fully intact and running and we will run off too."
            Anticipating Justin's next question Blake asked, "What if one of you attempted to harm us?"
            "Ship would protect you first as you are our guests, and us second."
            Justin stood surprised, finding he trusting the machinery first just like he would trust his car before he would trust a stranger driving it.

***


Chapter 12

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 12
            Only a moment ago I began soaring eagle-like within a heaven of nebulae surroundings, mountainous gas bubbles, places undeterminable in time and space.
            Behind me, Avalon is of large cumulus in form. The pleasing reddish hues of such a cloud reminds me of the Malus domestica, the pleasant apple-like pigment. As I distance further, Avalon appears a well-weathering giant Cumulonimbus, ever so majestically shaped as a broad-winged bird in angular flight.
            Merlyn loosed his heartanmind eye forward to more closely observe the prodigious distance between him and the small reddish cloud. A small faraway cloud hanging like a prolonged thin fissure, a horizontal vapor of sanguine mist married to a speck of gold center. This small pictured center setting above the large moonlike light at the far end of this dark cavern of the Dead. This object, this tiny gold center surrounded by sanguine mist, is the edge of Elysium, thinks Merlyn. I am reminded of the tales of Hercules, and like Hercules on his travel to the Garden of Hesperides, I fly to pick the Classical Greek approach to immortality as I slowly close on golden speck of distant apple in my own eye.

            On his way and in further thought, Merlyn wandered into a cloud of his own making. Within the Eleventh Labor of Hercules the Hero had to bear the weight of the world on his shoulders and but for only a trick in foresight Hercules would still be there in Atlas' place. What does it mean to hold the weight of the world on one's shoulders? Dead, I weigh nothing. This vast Place of the Dead weighs nothing. This Place and I are but bubbles in Nothing. What then is the weight of the Earth and Sun and innumerable other Stars and their worldly plane(t)s? From Here to There is but a thought without grammar, without verb or noun. Yet time it takes or so takes time in this human reasoning, in this appearance of flight.
            The weight is in the world and Earth, not here. What good will Our Mother's Blessing be to this newfound enterprise of we the present and past Dead? I feel no burden, even elected to tell the tale. Living or Dead, the ears have to hear; the eyes have to read; the brain has to reason. That is not my part as teller of how it is to be human, dead physically, but ultimately self-aware and alive in the whole of one's heartansoulanmind. Holding one's heartansoulanmind with bone and muscle is one thing, without such weight and physics it is quite another. One is free to remember and to regret. I hold on, flying, as I will, with no regrets to whatever I must encounter.
            What is it to be Dead and free in heartansoulanmind when such spiritual elements are by nature drawn together as one, for how can one know and understand freedom without the bond that provides self-awareness in one's seed and heranhis attached string in the full humanity of Our Mother and Beyond? The Birth of Self-Consciousness begins where? Where does it end? This flight shows me there is no end in sight no matter where I stand or fly. Timeless and with fewer self-regrets the freer one is to stand on the height of what humanity is not its lower depth which is hardly more than animal instinct. To flower and to be free everyone must by definition follow nature's course, which for the Living or the Dead, is to grow and mature into what is built to be, humane to one another and in the process be humane to one's self.

            Merlyn's nearly volatilized spirit condensed into the spiritual Shroud of Elysium, until his droplet of heartansoulanmind re-energized by flowering into the full-stemmed spirit and personality of Merlyn the Bard of Scotland. Consciousness had re-fixe Id its position head high. Merlyn found himself staring at the worn stone, two-cart wide roadway. Unknown to him at the time the uneven stone surface on which his ghostly spirit stands leads to Mother's House. Merlyn thought, I know this place from my heart's memory of Classical Greek and Latin. I am fully self-aware and residing in Elysium, Shroud of this collective cultural consciousness of the Classical Era.
            Unknown to Merlyn alone and beginning his walk, Mother is awaiting his arrival as all mothers since knowingly understand and wait for their own children, every last one with whom to be reunited.
***


Brothers 12
Richard sat in the winter sky blue wingback living room chair, looking on the west wall at a thin black-framed historic portrait of the Stoner Inn on South State. I continually forget, he thought, how much this small village was a part of the Underground Railway. In the 1850’s, George Stoner used to smuggle slaves in the back of his stagecoach to the Inn where they stayed in the basement until they could move north to Canada.  Bishop William Hanby was a conductor on the old Underground. Here I sit in comfort a few blocks away from the present location of Hanby House.

Mother used to volunteer to take children around the place after she retired. Richard’s frown turned to a scowl and he thought; we are all slaves of different sorts today. No more Ohio River to cross, no more underground railway out. Where would we go to be free other than in our heads? Grandma used to say that we kids should study hard and learn what is important in the world, that way no one can ever take it from you. Grandma was born just above the Delaware County line in 1888, the year of the Great Blizzard.

Richard's mind was forming on the family genealogy, both the Greystone's and wife Cyndi's, the Bleacher's. Shoot, he thought, all eight of our grandparents, both sides, were born and raised in Delaware County. Riverton used to end at the county line, now the city stretches up several miles, almost to Freeman Road in Genoa Township. He glanced at his watch and asked, "When is Robert getting home?" No response. This left him with a disagreeable opinion, I thought they were in the kitchen. They are always in the kitchen. He got up from the semi-comfortable wingback chair. His tone sat unchecked as he said, "Cyndi! Connie!" followed with a grumbling mutter, "Where the hell are you two?"

            "What do you mean, where are you two? We are not your children to boss around, buddy boy," snapped Cyndi from the open basement door.
            Richard stood awkwardly at the kitchen entrance, "I didn't say you were. Why didn't you answer?"
            "We were in the basement,” said Connie clearly perturbed.
            Noting both were up the stairs, Richard responded unkindly, "What were you doing down there?"
            "None of your damn business, Richard," rebutted Connie. "None of your damn business." Cyndi's rejoinder sat silently on her face.
            Richard toned down, "I thought you were both in the kitchen."
            "Why, because we're women?" snapped Cyndi.
            Richard stated calmly, "You are always in the kitchen."
            "If we are in the kitchen we are working; we are not sitting on our duffs playing chess or writing," responded Connie.
            "Or playing with our computer toys." Cyndi paused, "You'd think you and your brother would do more around the house. We give you lists and you never do them."
            Connie commented, "Rarely, you rarely do them, Richie and neither does Robert, but rarely."
            "Rob isn't here to defend himself," scolded Richard.
            "Robbie's at that medical conference," piped Connie.
            "Why? He's retired."
            Cyndi responded more kindly, "He's still interested in surgery, Richie."
            The tone stood like Richard, sulking but defiant. "You're saying I'm not interested in anything?"
            Connie responded positively without thinking, "You like your history."
            "You don't need to side with the old goat," said Cyndi angered.
            "I'm not, but he does like history and both like writing poetry." Her eyes threaded a protective look at her sister.
            Cyndi declared, "We are not always in the kitchen, Richard." Her voice choked, "We work hard to keep everything in order."
            Connie, unconsciously caught in her sister's emotion, railed, "And provide happiness."
            A consolatory tone rose in Richard's voice, "You just didn't answer. I didn't know where you were."
            "Why didn't you just get up and come looking?" asked Connie somewhat exasperated.
`            "Did you think we were upstairs ironing clothes?" added Cyndi.
            "I just wondered where you were." He paused like he was going to apologize but did not. He thought, Why didn't you say something if you could hear me? I wouldn't have muttered. Losing the battle, Richard sat down quietly fuming.

            Within the moment Robert entered the side door and strolling into the kitchen he greeted the house with, "Hello, everybody! I'm home. It was a great conference. Very exciting work on invasive aortic valve surgery. Only a three to four inch incision." Silence. Robert walked into the living room. Connie and Cyndi were sitting on the separate ends of the couch waiting for Richard to speak first. Richard sat stubbornly ridged glaring at the dark framed portrait of the old Stoner House on the wall. "What's the argument, Richie?" 
            ***           


Grandma’s Story 12

Grandma made herself comfortable sitting cross-legged on a sand dune and began as the sun rose. This story takes place about twenty six hundred years ago. This particular setting is routed in trade between Egypt and ancient Ireland. The two young people involved are Princess Teah Tephi of Egypt and Prince Eireamhon of Ireland. You can look them up in the Irish legends if you like.

Eireamhon called Teah his princess. Supposedly, Teah Tephi was really the daughter of the last king of Judah, Zedekiah. Zedekiah had allied himself with the Egyptian Pharaoh Apries. Many Hebrews went with King Zedekiah to Egypt but eventually the Hebrews were sent to exile in Babylonia.

The story told is that Pharaoh Apries hid Zedekiah's daughter Teah Tephi, and she kept a title of princess to the pharaoh for protection. Whether she was truly a daughter of Zedekiah, only her mother and old Grandma know.

When Teah left Egypt, she brought a few small stones from her original home in Judah and locks of hair from her family to keep her company. She was told her father had been driven into exile. She came to think her father had died in the desert or drowned.

The stories always made Teah suspicious and this is one of the reasons she didn't mind leaving Egypt one of the reasons she didn’t mind leaving Egypt for Ireland. She felt she could always return to Egypt if she so desired, not even her husband Prince Eireamhon was going to stop her.

On the boat that followed the trade routes of those days Teah said to her husband, “I brought my Judah with me,” and she showed her husband three small rocks. Her eyes widened with enthusiasm, “I will keep these. These will bring us luck.”

The prince continued smiling, but secretly thought, he Irish will think her a fool for bringing these stones from her homeland, or worse, they will treat it as an insult to our Irish stones. Prince Eireamhon politely suggested, “Put them in something so they will not be lost.”

Eireamhon wants me to hide them, thought Teah. I can tell when he is lying through this tongue.

Once the two arrived at Tara, not to far from present Dublin, Princess Teah was presented to the High King. “I have a present for you from my own country of Judah,” she said. “This small stone is from the pillow upon whose head of Jacob, our ancient patriarch who rested at Bethel. He was the grandson of our first patriarch, Abraham. It was at Bethel while resting on the stone pillow Jacob had his visions of angels.”

The High King appeared interested because Ireland too had its ancient stones. He asked, “How big of a stone is this piece broken from?”

She stretched her arms to measure its size, about twenty-six inches. She moved her hands in to sixteen inches, and then raised her right hand above the other about eleven inches. Then she added, “It weighed over three hundred pounds.” And this is a small piece of it."

The king cautiously continued, “Does this stone have power?”

            “Since Jacob dreamed of angels while sleeping on it,” said Teah cleverly, “it is surely possible an angel’s touch is still within the stone though no one knows for sure.”

            The king responded, “Perhaps we should construct a replica of the stone pillow and strike the small stone to it so that the angel may move from the small piece to the larger one.”

            “This is an excellent idea,” chimed the Princess.

            When the replica of the reddish stone was complete as carved, Princess Teah saw to it that it appeared so very much like the original she once saw in Judah. In great secret ceremony, the king struck the larger stone with Teah's stone chip. “As it was a pillow,” the king decreed, “it will rest under the high king’s throne.”
            Stories create their own traditions. The replica sitting under the High King of Ireland's throne eventually found its way to the Scottish kings where it became known as the "Stone of Destiny". More time passed and in 1952 Queen Elizabeth was crowned in the same chair with the same stone underneath. The Scots don't believe this story, and I doubt the Irish do either. Some stories are beyond belief. Only Grandma Earth knows the truth.

People can spend their lives making up things,
And so miss the sweet songs the little bird sings.
***


Pouch 12
            Blake glanced at his sister, wondering what she was thinking.
            Pyl looked over at the plane. No apparent damage. No problems when they became airborne when the wheels left the road. Where is that road now, only moments later it seems, and the road, the county airport, Ohio, Lake Erie -- where are they? All I have here are my husband, my brother, and Daddy's plane.
            Justin felt almost uncontrollably alone. We don't know where we are and until we do we cannot hope to escape these people. Are they terrorists? Our plane is perhaps more important than we are. Do they want our plane to use as a terrorist weapon? Surely we are being duped. Pyl and Blake are my responsibility at this point. I have to come up with a plan.

            "Again, we welcome you onboard our vessel," assured Friendly in both manner and voice. "Ship also welcomes you. We will show you selections of our vessel. Then you can see where you are."
            "Come this way," directed Yermey. "We can climb the flight of stairs to the main deck. Where we are is in the annex."
            "What you may call a basement," added Hartolite.
            "Or a storage area," said Friendly. "Follow Yermey. Yermey one step at a time for our guests please."              

            Blake carefully observed the setting first by counting the stairs, there were twenty-two. The room appeared large and hospital clean in perhaps a forty to fifty-foot square. In the dim light he could see machinery set at an angle of about a thirty-degree tilt off center. Rather than seen the large box of machinery, which towered up perhaps fifteen feet straight on he saw the box on angle. 'I cannot tell,' he thought, 'how wide it is. It almost appears to be an optical illusion.'
            "Come ahead, this way," directed Yermey. "Over to this area where we can observe better."
            Blake followed mostly out of polite routine as if he were on a tour of a manufacturing plant. A whiff of acidic scent reminded him of being in a factory that molded exothermic sleeve forms used in the construction of steel castings, but the ground had blended grass growing on it just as the Annex had. However the grass floor felt short and soft, like he was walking on a golf green. Shortly, Pyl and Justin stood beside him as Friendly and Hartolite walked around to their left and stood next to Yermey.
            The six were elevator close together looking into the room from a new angle. No one could see the door they had entered from. They could see no other entrance or exit. The walls and ceiling slowly illuminated to an eye comfort level where all could better view the space and what filled it.
            I am standing in the southeast corner of the room. We entered near the southwest corner. Blake's eyes focused on the first thing he saw upon entering the control room -- the two-stacked black boxes in the northwest corner from the entrance. The size and shape reminded him of two top and bottom washer dryer combinations with round see through side windows to the front of both. Each window was surrounded by a four inch or so aluminum colored band. The boxes were otherwise clean of buttons or dials. 'I estimate it is six to seven feet high and three and a half feet in width.'           
            His eyes moved east along the north wall to a second set of aluminum colored metallic or plastic boxes set beside one another. On the horizontal rather than the vertical they appear the same size and clean only the windows, similar in size to the other machine have a square with rounded corners windows.
            On the northeast corner is a large blue metallic-like box the size of a large refrigerator only a couple feet taller. It has one large oval window with an aluminum-like band surrounding. The height of the oval is over seven feet and it drops to within two feet of the bottom of the box. The width of the oval band is within a couple of inches of the sides of the machine. I have no idea what these machines do. There are no tables or chairs or desks. I wonder what is on the other side of those windows. Blake's thoughts were interrupted.
            Friendly's teacher voice said, "We are all here. Where would you like me to begin?"
            Blake replied, "I see many box-like in the room. Please start with the one in the northwest corner." He pointed, "The two black stacked boxes, they look like stacked washing machines."
***
-30-
***


         0958 hours. I feel much relief that these words are online as well as on iCloud. It is better to be transparent because it is freer in my head. What's done is done and so be it. Now it is time to move on through the next three chapters and so on until this novel is completed.

         For the sake of organization and further clarity let's drop in the short three chapter summaries here. - Amorella

***

Summaries of Chapters by their Divisions

The Dead 1.2.3

The ever-learning Dead live in a transparent setting; a visitor can glean information from their heartansoulanmind wrappings of what is important in the deadanliving spirit in the existential moments of the visit. 

4.5.6

Merlyn learns the sanctuary is a place where he alone, at present, is a deadanliving bridge between the spirit-an-physics of higher consciousness. Ezekiel is a heartansoulanmind Merlyn remembers singularly from tapping his friend's soul to heart to mind.

7.8.9

Merlyn feels the presence of Vivian; she says she is his soul's sister. Merlyn envelops in Vivian and gains 'insight' to meet Takis. Merlyn confronts Mother, Takis on the Supervisor and Sophia and she speaks of how it was in the Rebellion of the First 10,000.

10.11.12

Merlyn with Sophia who begins the story of how the Rebellion began - she speaks of Mario, Mother, the Supervisor and herself Rebellion II begins with Eisenhower's speech. Shelters were as H. D. Thoreau's cabin. The stones spoke and Merlyn began his way to Elysium. Description of flight from Avalon to Elysium.

***



The Brothers 1.2.3

Richard and Robert have mutual interests in writing. Connie and Cyndi appear closer than the identical twins. Richard is more right brained (creative), Robert, more left (analytical). Robert cares more than Richard.  

4.5.6

Background on childhood settings. Life proliferates between birth and death. A walk through John Knox College Cemetery and analogy with a circuit board for living/dead to contact one another. The chambers in the mausoleum with the chambers in the heart. A study of the biblical symbols in the stained glass windows.

7.8.9

Robert and Richard talk on Angels even though both are agnostic in dining room with Cyndi and Connie and brownies. R & R talk about the cemetery via Google Earth and the Bleacher and Greystone families. Robert shows poem "Nature Junkie". Talk of dowsing and Divining rods and finger muscles to the unconscious.

10.11.12

Robert and Richard discussing poetry. National Geographic TV on hyenas. Unconscious thinking discussion. Next day, brothers meet Uptown at Stoners, Rob has '98 Jag. House on the Strand talk. Then next day, Richard, Connie and Cyndi have fight on women's rights. Rob comes in from heart conference afterwards.


***

Grandma's Story 1.2.3

Story 1

Like other higher consciousnesses, Merlyn, in dreams or not, realizes existing deadanliving is more than meets the eye.

Story 2

In those times the human spirit worked within the engine of passion for acceptance and for learning how to better balance the appearance of separation between heart and soul and mind.

Story 3

Get in Grandma's way and pay.
This story of light leafs from orange and sun;
A maple leaf and another imagination sprang.

Story 4

Wexer won his debates in life. What won Wexer's mind or heart? His woman friend more at peace after he disappeared. How to be in two places at once - a storyteller telling life and a reader reading the written story later through the magic of the runes

Story 5

Southeast Asia. Sawasdee Ka (wife) and Sawasdee Khrap (husband) fought over goddess (kind or defensive) on the porch. Both die in final earthly fight but it continues on and on - so much hate neither realizes where sheorhe is, i.e. HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither.

Story 6

Bracc desires to be a first class shaman and is told to tell a story in gray. In telling the story to an audience after great planning he realizes the story is full of trickery and false magic. Embarrassed he dies in front of wife Erca feeling naked and empty. But they have a child who will grow; the DNA continues unabated.

Story 7

Grandma and the pea-like ghost has a humanities growth via geography even though she fits snuggly in Grandma's pocket.

Story 8

Gadelin of the North Woods of Ireland and her priest Mardynn Herremon of the East Woods each work to become King Simon Breac's official Seer. Love of the Moon god/goddess with a twist of fate.

Story 9

Abbatoot survives a storm and begins to count her digits and unknowingly comes to understand what the shaman understands. The Shaman realizes on his deathbed, the truth of the bellybutton, the zero, but Abbatoot doesn't get it and no one discovers the zero in mathematics for a long time after.


Story 10

Rumbasant and the hurricane and stick. Commanded the storms to cease. Lightning strikes the stick and puts out her eye 'shell eye' along the Kenya coast. She was struck again and survived and a marvel to her people.

Story 11

David and Bathsheba love affair. Her husband later died in battle and David married her. In the conclusion they have Solomon who will become king, both then are content with their lives.

Story 12

Egypt and Princess Teah Tephi, daughter of Zedekiah who was forced into exile in Babylon. She marries Eireamhon of Ireland. She takes pebble from Pillow of Jacob claims it may have Angels. High King of Ireland accepts pebble and creates replica of Pillow -- this becomes the Stone of Scone used in Scotland and sets under the Coronation Chair at Westminster.

***

Diplomatic Pouch 1.2.3

This existential story is the observation of two alien species (marsupial and primate); who since the second rebellion of the Dead, are consciously sharing HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither. The Living alien species are becoming acquainted. Pouch is an introductory costume ball, mixed species only.

4.5.6

The Cessna P210N Silver Eagle takes off from Burke for Put-in-Bay with Blake, Pyl, Justin, Friendly as Michael 'Mykkie' Carlso and Hartolite as her sister Lindsey. Yermey waits to 'wash' the Cessna on the trip back to Cleveland's Burke field and realizes he has sexual arousal for Pyl. Ship also notes this and an awareness of Yermey's heartansoulanmind as a mystery 'he' does not experience in his 'consciousness'. Pyl comes to realize there is a mystery with 'Mykkie' and her 'pushanpull of the toggle. She tells Blake upon landing she does not want to sell Father's plane.

7.8.9

Blake, Pyl and Justine are comfortable keeping the Cessna. Ship wonders on the one-minute slip of time between the console but knows the Cessna inside and out. Yermey is concerned on the time slip. A month goes by, 1March12. Bored with the cloudy weather the three decide to take the plane up to see the sun beyond the clouds. Ship notes their flight and decides to mimic trouble in the engine; so they might land in a secluded place and Friendly and crew can tell them the truth about themselves. Not at the planned but workable. The Cessna comes down out of the clouds in a glide at Ashtabula and heads southeast to the county airport; the last minute with blackenot unknowingly covering the Cessna the engine re-starts and they land on a nearby township road. Looking at the engine Yermey then Friendly come up behind the Cessna tail to say hello.

10.11.12

Plane on the road when Friendly + come up to say hello. Talk; then put to sleep earthlings wake up in Annex of Ship. Friendly tell a bit about themselves to ease the tensions  - in loco parentis - etc. Then go up the steps and see the first room and Blake describes to himself what he sees. Ends with Friendly beginning the tour of Ship.
***

         Post. - Amorella


        You completed your exercises and noticed on yesterday's blog you had written: "I was wonderful" and you immediately changed it to "It was wonderful". - Amorella

         This is so embarrassing Amorella. I of all people would ever say, "I am wonderful".

         You are displaying your arrogance again, boy. - Amorella

         That's how I feel: "of all people" fits. I cannot think of anyone who has ever heard me utter those words unless it was a cynical statement. Self-praise is wrong. In my heartanmind it is wrong; I don't know what my soul thinks about it. I must have a bit of Puritanism in me or stern Presbyterian.

         If it is cultural as you feel it is, what would the soul have to do with it anyway? - Amorella

         Good question. You come up with good questions. -- perhaps, in my heartansoulanmind, it is morally incorrect to self-praise.

         What about your arrogance? - Amorella

         It is something I have to live with. Stubbornness is something else I have to live with. It is a part of my rebellious nature. I am not going to apologize for who or what I am as an individual. We are all human Amorella, and therefore we are imperfect by our nature. If we were perfect, how would we survive in such a universe as we find ourselves born into?

         Now you asked a good question, boy. - Amorella

         The 'we' above is in reference to Homo sapiens not you Amorella.

         Really. Post, boy. Such a dark and twisted sense of humor you have built in. One might wonder where it comes from, Heart or Soul or Mind. - Amorella

         I cannot imagine souls with a sense of humor. (1148)

         You have little imagination, boy. Post. - Amorella


         Displaying this lack of imagination is shown in your lack of knowledge about Dead 13. You don't even know who is the leader in this segment, Merlyn or Sophia. - Amorella

         1351 hours. No, I don't. I have the basics prepared on the document but nothing more than that. I don't know what is important to talk about and what isn't.

         Carol just left for a hair appointment. Take a break. - Amorella

         1605 hours. We stopped at McD's on Mason-Montgomery for drinks and reading. Later, supper at the Brazenhead Pub; we haven't been there for three months or so.

         You had a nap while Carol was getting her hair shortened. Dead 13 will take place back at Merlyn's sanctuary. We are not just going to go through Book Four.

         Good thing I didn't have a plan in the first place. I did pop up Adler's Moral Philosophy notes from Wikipedia.

         Right on target, young man. You see, Merlyn being reminded of how it was moving from Avalon to Elysium and remembering both in 'flash memory' as it were has him thinking of how things are with the Dead; the simple rules, and why they are always uncapitalized in intent. This is not a lecture, but a process of thought by a man who has been there and come back. The places of the Living and the Dead are not the same even though the Dead are who they are, just as they were who they were when they were alive. - Amorella

         This is interesting, and it sets the mood. I am curious. Would it be better to make a list of these moral aspects and virtues so that I might better put them down in better continuity? I am thinking, Merlyn knows what he is going to say, but I do not. I think with a quick background I would be better off sensing the humanity of it, since the humanity is not changed Dead or Alive.

         You are attempting imagination and empathy with Merlyn here, but first, look about you. You are at a fast food restaurant looking out across major traffic on a local road. Across the road directly (you are at a slant to the northeast) is a woods owned by Proctor and Gamble that was once a part of Natorp's Nursery. Now the trees are growing wild. Across the road to the southeast is a P&G research facility. The road is indifferent. The transportation is indifferent. The people within might appear indifferent or, one might say focused while aiming their cars in an almost compass north and south. Let's go to Google Earth. - Amorella

         Home from delicious supper at Brazenhead Pub and you are home in time for the local and national news. You have two photos, one closer in on the McDonalds and a second with a broader view. McD's is in the upper middle, a red lined rectangle. It is down from the asterisk. At the center crossroad the McD's is in the northwest quadrant. The metal roofed work barn is on the northwest quadrant on the wooded P&G property.

                                                                        *




         2110 hours. We relaxed with three DVRed shows. "NCIS", "Los Vegas" and " last week's "NCIS-LA".

         Notice, orndorff that the first shot shows one crossroad at Terra Firma Drive and Mason-Montgomery Road. The Kroger's parking lot is just west of the McDonald's. An apartment complex is in the southwest quadrant and a bit of the P&G lot is shown at the bottom of the southeast quadrant.




         In the second Google photo of the same area the observer is further 'up' in vertical distance. Now two crossroads exist at Mason-Montgomery Road. One can still see the small white dot just east of Mason-Montgomery in the middle of the photo. This is the work barn on the east side of the road. McDonald's is on the west side opposite but the red outline of the building can not longer be seen. Other crossroads also exist in the photo but they are not important because the focus is the north/south Mason-Montgomery Road where the traffic is. One cannot see the vehicles on the road let alone the people within them. Not the same traffic you were seeing live, but traffic none the less. Create an analogy with the traffic being the Dead and you, orndorff, being some distance away. Assume the Dead are moving north and south on Mason-Montgomery Road. What evidence do you have in the second photo that the Dead are where they are and you are where you are? What evidence do the Dead have that you exist where you do in the sky? - Amorella

         I think this is a trick question first because I have no proof that I am either on the ground in the photograph or above it. I am sitting in a chair in the living room in real life I cannot be a part of the analogy. I would like to be in the analogy because that would be 'pretend' like me pretending to be the characters in the books. (2135)

         Where have you been for the last twenty-five minutes? - Amorella

         Reading and studying my thoughts; I have been in my head. This seems pointless, Amorella.

         You are forgetting you have been not only in your head but also you have been in your imagination in your head. - Amorella

         In here, the base of imagination is in the soul, the same place the base of humor is. Neither is fully describable, they are qualities like heartanmind. - Amorella

         Imagination and humor are definable nouns, Amorella. Heart and souls are not so easily definable.

** **
imagination  -  noun

the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses: she'd never been blessed with a vivid imagination.

• the ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful: technology gives workers the chance to use their imagination.

• the part of the mind that imagines things: a girl who existed only in my imagination.

ORIGIN Middle English: via Old French from Latin imaginatio(n-), from the verb imaginari ‘picture to oneself,’ from imago, imagin- ‘image.’
***
humor   -  noun

1 the quality of being amusing or comic, esp. as expressed in literature or speech: his tales are full of humor.
• the ability to express humor or make other people laugh: their inimitable brand of humor.

2 a mood or state of mind: her good humor vanished | the clash hadn't improved his humor.
• archaic an inclination or whim.

3 (also cardinal humor ) historical each of the four chief fluids of the body (blood, phlegm, yellow bile [choler], and black bile [melancholy]) that were thought to determine a person's physical and mental qualities by the relative proportions in which they were present.

ORIGIN Middle English (as humour): via Old French from Latin humor ‘moisture,’ from humere. The original sense was ‘bodily fluid’ (surviving in aqueous humor and vitreous humor, fluids in the eyeball); it was used specifically for any of the cardinal humor, whence ‘mental disposition’ (thought to be caused by the relative proportions of the humors). This led, in the 16th cent., to the senses ‘state of mind, mood’  and ‘whim, fancy,’ hence to humor someone ‘to indulge a person's whim.’ dates from the late 16th cent.

Slightly edited from the Oxford-American Mac software
** **

            In here, in the fiction, imagination and humor are primary properties of the soul. - Amorella

         I can accept this in a fiction but not otherwise. They are properties of our humanity.

         Yes, I agree. Post. - Amorella

         2156 hours. It seems to me that my senses, my eyesight on the Google photographs, drove my imagination. I saw no humor or hints of it in that short 25 minute experiment.

         The humor, dear boy, is that the blog and books and even me are a part of your 'fancy'. - Reality as you witness it in real life is also a fancy, wouldn't you say? - Amorella

         No. A part of myself, a part of everyone is reality.(2205)

         The whole that you cannot see but 'understand' that exists, is driven from the soul first. That's how it is in here. - Amorella

         Remember our analogy, the soul is the outer skin, the immortal part that holds and protects that which is not alone immortal - the heart and the mind. The humanity in these books sees through the 'eye' of the soul outward. That's your metaphysics lesson for today. Have a good sleep, boy. Post. - Amorella



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