08 March 2013

Notes - sunny and working on audio drafts / AD of Ch. 2 and 3 /


         You both got up about an hour early preparing for daylight savings time kicking in tomorrow night.

         0757 hours. This is thinking from the 1950's but I think DST did in drive in movies and boosted golf in the process.

         What can I say to that? - Amorella

         Nothing. At least the sun is out this morning, a very pleasant change indeed. I need to kick in with Pouch 13 then I am ready to move on to Dead 14.

         First though, you are thinking about a nap then doing your exercises. - Amorella

         What can I say?

         Later, dude. - Amorella

         1223 hours. I didn't make much change but it flows better, I can make further changes if needed on the audio draft.

         Your cousin Wendy wrote this morning and told you that your Aunt Patsy and Uncle Ernie want to listen to the new book. As such, as you are going to Westerville next Thursday, let's go ahead and work on a few chapters now that you have it down to do the audio work on this, your MacAir then transfer the final to the MacBook 'Natural Voice' software so it can easily be embedded onto a disk from your iTunes account. You do not need to upload the draft corrections on Pouch 13 here. It can be taken care of when we put chapters 13, 14, and 15 together of a reading. You did your exercises after a nap. Carol is finishing hers. Then lunch out and probably time at the park since it is such a sunny and slightly warmer day. Post. - Amorella


You are having a regular picnic lunch at Pine Hill Lakes Park, far north lot, the car aimed to the southwest and a hill, stream valley, naked trees and snow. The water in Muddy Creek looks clear and it is running fast from the snowmelt. This could be anywhere, but it is in Mason, Ohio. - Amorella
         We have lived in Mason since 1975, Silverton (Cincinnati, on Montgomery Road south of Kenwood) three years before that). Who would have thought a little farm town could grow so fast, but it has. It has had good city growth planning along the way too. Wide roads where they need to be and most all the traffic lights are controlled for the best real time light changes via the traffic cameras at each light. It is amazing what a difference this makes. I-71 is two miles away and I-75 is no more than three miles from where we live. We don't want to move and probably won't until older age and practicality take over, then on to Westerville or Worthington more likely, northern Franklin County or southern Delaware County. That's how it looks at present.
         Carol is on page 52 of a new book, American Wife, by Cincinnati native Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld. The book is fiction though loosely based on the life of the President's wife, Laura Bush. Let's go to the audio, I'm in here for help if needed, boy. - Amorella
         You are home after the park, a stop at the bank and Kroger's on Tylersville. You finished the audio draft on chapter two and did the preliminaries for chapter three. Drop in audio chapter two. It is not a final draft but better than the previous.

***

Chapter Two [AudioDraft] © 2013 rho

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 chapter dream grows. Merlyn kneads his dreams for those with an imagination that casts no shadow.


The Dead 2

         Merlyn sat alone on his heartansoulanmind-made stone on a fine Spring-like heartansoulanmind-made meadow just this side of the mysteriously dark forest. I witnessed much, he surmised, in having been living and dead in Anno Domini 670. That is the seventh century according to what we were taught by the Church. I suppose AD 670 was somewhere around my birth or death. I do not really care to remember as dates are of little importance.
         As Druids we learned Celtic, Greek and Latin. We memorized vast tracks of folklore and wisdom. This is what the Celtic society expected, and this is what we did. He noticed, rather unexpectedly, the white cue ball materializes on his nineteenth century mind created billiard table on the heartansoulanmind built stone ruin of a stage in the meadow.
         I would rather enjoy these Scottish trees and the flowering meadow. He observed the table and ball dissolve as a wispy white cloud’s in an early morning mist.
         Out of the corner of mind's eye Merlyn witnessed a dissimilar spirit appear from behind the nearby giant oak.
         You did not hear the cue ball tap one of your more solid thoughts, asked the Supervisor of the Dead.
         'I did not. I thought I was alone.'
         'I, your Supervisor, put the solid burnt orange in the far right pocket.'
         ''What unconscious thought did you just put away?'
         'The Boatman,' evoked the Supervisor.
         Merlyn smiled in surprise and with more childhood energy than he realized, he responded, 'I don't have to pay the Boatman?'
         'You pay, boy,' snapped at Merlyn's tabled mind. 'Everybody pays the Boatman, even me, the Supervisor of the Dead.'
         Merlyn muttered, 'In Sophia's ancient Greek day the pearly white Gate of Heaven rested on the far side of her rubescent River Styx.'
         'The Styx is where you are,' commented the Supervisor dryly. 'This River you speak of has many cultural names.'

         Another ferry, another boatman flashed in Merlyn. Captain Lamar. I can return to Earth by the ferry once I find the real Captain Lamar?  The Lamar in question whispered to Merlyn’s heart. Merlyn’s mind registered 'Richard?” in the solid yellow 1 ball resting near the far left corner pocket. Merlyn’s mind grumbled, 'Who is this Richard, Greystone?'
         Glevema whisked herself out from his left fourth finger's nail and this time as a tiny naked winged faery princess. Glevema unknowingly to Merlyn, commanded, 'Prick this fingerless finger.'
         'Whoa,' whispered Merlyn suddenly thinking of his first love, Vivian. She, Vivian, suddenly kissed and then slowly sucked down his now solidly fleshed fourth left finger. Merlyn smilingly knows this finger doesn't really exist in the Land of the Dead. Even as skeletal bone, thought Merlyn, this finger, here and now, does not exist in the very real world of the early twenty-first century. Yet, in spirit, I am in one or many times and places sat once. I need always focus to survive any circumstance in which I find myself enclosed.
         This is the Nature of the Dead. Merlyn in a brighter awareness noticed the eight ball now setting alone on the very center of the green-felted mind-slate. I have no other balls, shuttered Merlyn, not even a cue ball to knock this mother-in-the-meadow of an eight ball off center.
         The Supervisor being wise in forethought, dimpled as SheanHe sat on the fully leafed gigantic oak limb hanging taut and strong, high above a young-spirited Merlyn fully meadowed in his now vibrant passionate engine charging heartansoulanmind. Merlyn said, “This, my human spirit, runs on a deeper gravitational energy than love. I am hot in substance and now fully married as iron is to make steel.”
         The Supervisor of the Dead surmised the scene, ‘Merlyn is as wound as any alarm clock in the world of consciousness. Let him ring only when Necessity or the Boatman demands it.’


The Brothers 2

         “I see we are at your house again today. What are you watching?” asked Robert.
Richard not stirring from his comfortable easy chair, said, “An old National Geographic rerun on DNA. A genetics researcher named Wells is showing that we men are all genetic sons of a man who lived fifty-six thousand years ago in East Africa.”
Rob frowned slightly, “So what else is new?” He sat next to a tall brass stick lamp their parents had bought a year before they died. "Turn us males and females upside down anywhere in the world and we look enough alike; I don’t need DNA evidence to show me that.”
“That’s true,” smirked Richard. “But it's interesting that by sailing the oceans those early sailors moved the brotherhood around the known world fairly quickly. Our genetic Eve existed about one hundred and fifty thousand years ago or so. It is almost a hundred thousand years between the genetic parents of everyone who is now alive.” While speaking he glanced out the front window of their old white painted wood frame house built for five thousand dollars by their grandfather in 1903. We sit across from College Cemetery; he ruminated, half a block west of the corners of Walnut and Knox. My eyes bridge the dead everyday just as they did when we were kids using the cemetery as a playground whenever it was prudent.
“Men are faster than women, that’s the difference in the hundred thousand years,” chuckled Rob. “You got anything to read? Where’s your latest Harper’s?”
“I hid it before you got here.”
“I give you my poetry mags in short order.” complained Rob. “By the way, what did you think of my latest poem? You’ve had it for a week.”
“Hey, what’d you think of my first chapter?” snapped Richard. “You’ve had it for almost a day now.”
Restless, Robert headed to the refrigerator, “Where’s the high test Coke?"
“In the back on the right side second shelf from the top.” Where it always is.
“Golf's on ESPN,” said Rob coming into the room.
“You got it,” said Richard as he pushed the remote.
“Where’s Lady?”
Richard spoke lazily in empathy with their pet, “She’s sleeping on the living room couch. When Cyndi's gone Lady heads for the couch. She can see the driveway and when Cyndi drives in, off she goes.”
While watching a terrific putt by Mark Wilson both snickered imperiously as the golfing crowd clapped rewardingly. Robert asked again, “Where's Lady? Wake the old girl up for me.”
         “Lady!” shouted Richard, “Come here, girl!” A commercial later, Richard shouted again, “Lady!” Still she slept. “She’s got junk in her ears again,” said Richard brooding on how, Rob’s fox terrier named Jack is always obedient. He added, "Cockers have ear problems.”
         “So do you,” parried Rob.
         “Damn dog,” grumbled Richard as he rolled out of the couch.
         Robert heard the growl then another “Damn!” He got up too late to see the comedy. “What happened?” he asked impatiently waiting for an echo of humor.
         “She bit me on the hand. Look at this!”
         “I see the marks but she didn’t draw blood. You must have startled her, Dickie. He looked down seeing Lady cowered under the coffee table. “Come on out, girl. It’s okay,” coaxed Rob in a soft voice. Lady crept out with her ears down. My Jack would never bite me, thought Rob. His slight smirk made it clear to Richard what his brother was thinking.
         Robert pulled up Lady’s right ear. “You’re right. Look at the wax and crude in here. Get some tweezers and swabs,” then he added, “and scissors, she’s got hair tangles in there. I’ll clean this out.” Rob gently petted her, “It’ll be okay girl. You are such a pretty Lady. Pretty Lady,” he continued, stroking the venerable tan and white cocker spaniel until Richard arrived with the small box of ear cleaning material.
         The aging cocker soon found herself with cleaned ears and quickly leaped up on Rob for a wonderland of a belly scratch.  Richard hit the remote during the next commercial and caught the tail end of a broadcast asking for donations."
         “Everyone wants a donation,” said Robert.
         “I agree,” responded Richard as he flipped the channel back to ESPN. “I'm tired of all of it, charity, religion, politics - all of it."
         Rob added, “Our two dogs have a better life than either of us.”

         “True,” said Richard as he reached and stroked Lady, “but she cares for us as only a mother might.”
         Rob responded on cue, “We have to take care of ourselves. Nothing's free.” He groused, “It's a miracle our species has survived this long.”
         That’s true, considered Richard. The fifties and sixties, how did we survive that? No one our age thought we would live to be thirty and here we are seventy this year. “And, the world is worse now than it was then.”
         “No,” argued Robert, “it was worse with the arsenal the Soviets and Americans had pointed at one another.”
         “One day some crazy group will explode a nuclear weapon somewhere in the remote Pacific and then say they have another, that's all it would take, even if they didn't have another.”
         “Why didn’t Truman do that?” said Robert. “Why couldn’t we have dropped the bomb near Japan so the power would not be hidden from the general population?”
         “War is not humane,” commented Richard.
         Robert countered, “But it’s human enough.”
“War dogs take care of their own,” noted Richard.
“War dogs hardly ever bite the hand that feeds them,” snickered Robert.
         “Remember Rob," jibed Richard as he stuck his right forefinger in the air, "a bone in the hand is worth more meat in the bush. Cheer up, things are bound to get worse." Both laughed.


Grandma’s Story 2

Grandma traces Homo sapiens’ genetic Eve’s DNA through various shamans or storytellers because they understand Merlyn's use of trancephysics, though not by that name. Trancephysics is a vehicle Merlyn uses to slide his spirit through the heart of Captain Lamar, the heart that is in reality the heart of Richard Greystone, the younger brother of Robert. 
One might consider trancephysics a retro-quantum entanglement in modern times because a quantum meadow of reality coupled with a heavy mist of Chaos theory presents a thin faery-like wall of separation when both exist in a natural embrace or so it seems. Quantum and Chaos theories graduated like everyone else living from the last century to the present one where the Living exists. There are earlier time-tested qualities of heart and soul and mind than the one Merlyn livingandead is presenting. Sir Phillip Sydney, a tolerable Elizabethan poet from a few hundred years back created a quiet two philosophical lines about it in his poem, "Arcadia”.
         My truelove hath my heart, and I have his,
         By just exchange one for the other given:

         Merlyn deadanliving intuitively sides with the poet though he appreciates the modern sciences. Anyone who has ever been deeply in love like Merlyn has experienced nearly the same inwardly event as the poet Sir Phillip Sydney so eloquently describes in those two lines above. One doesn't need a degree in physics to understand how one’s humanity may snare one human being into the entanglement of another. Merlyn feels however that his trancephysics is beyond the deepest love’s qualities. This is Merlyn’s heartansoulanmind that slides annoyingly within the human spirit of Richard Greystone.
         Define the human heart, the soul, and the human mind. Is the human heart and soul and mind science or philosophy? What is the entanglement within a single human spirit? How and why does it work? How do any two human spirits come to share an intangible bond without being conscious of this experience as it happens? This unconsciously connected ‘invisible bond’ is an undeniable human experience that may remain forever wordless but nevertheless mutually understood between two people who may rarely meet when living. This is how it is between Merlyn the seventh century Bard and Richard Graystone.
         Stranger experiences than this happen within the broader human experience. People have family stories hesitantly told because the stories are beyond belief. Below is one of those stories, noted Grandma with the flashing wink of her darkly piercing left eye. This story is told by a descendent of the cave man caught in the ice in Merlyn’s first chapter installment.
The shaman, Panagiotakis, from the ancient middle eastern region of the world once told his audience they could be among the Stars and here on Earth at the same time. His favorite grandchild, Glevema, asked the pertinent question, “How can this be, Grandfather, that a person can be here on Earth and out among the Stars at the same time?” Ironically enough, Glevema had to physically die before she could more fully began to understand her grandfather’s earlier response to the only real question she ever asked of him. After finding herself consciously both deadanliving at the same time she discovered other heartsansoulsanminds at the Place of the Dead.
Glevema soon realized these other human-like spirits with heartsansoulsanminds appeared as she did deadanliving, had been physically similar to human beings on Earth. One of the most noticeable differences between her and the other women was the spiritualization or manifestation, if you will, of a pouch in the lower belly. As Glevema was the first of humankind to find a way to the Place of the Dead she was allowed to stay, but once a few human spirits made their way to this Place she was allowed to form an Earth oriented Place of the Dead. She and the few other human spirits moved on, as it were across a divide that may have been miniscule or huge. No one knew. 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. On Earth out of necessity of physical survival each groveled with the other on how it is to behave in an orderly way for the species to survive better, so that each generation might grow better, behave better, learn more, and live more comfortably within the framework of Earth’s nature, which they assumed was not that much different from their own nature. That’s how it was in those early days in the Place of the Dead.
A direct female descendant of the drowned granddaughter, Glevema, traveled from what is now northern Italy to Spain. This was about ten thousand years ago, and within the next thousand years of generations, she had found herself on the British Isles with a trading people from the Continent now called Basques. A few had settled on in lower western Scotland. As the families grew, some moved on to Ireland. Others drifted to Wales and England. More than five thousand years later, a shaman appeared who had some tall tales centered on Mother Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, and the Nature of human beings.
This particular shaman spent much of his time walking the woods and daydreaming north of England’s Salisbury Plain. The shaman dreamed a new story. He was five when he first had the dream but when he awoke, it wasn’t there. The next night he dreamed the event again and thought about it for the next fifteen years. The vision settled in on a rebellion in the Place of the Dead. This is what he told the tribe:
“The cold, icy fingers of the Dead feel their way back to our Mother Earth. The Dead do not have to go all the way to the Stars in Heaven or even to the Moon. The Dead are within us.
He related this to others and said, “If you cremate the Dead, their bones will be blackened like the night. They will not have to see their bodies rotting and the animals won’t dig them up, and the quicker they will be a part of Mother again, and best of all, they will have no icy cold fingers reaching out to us the Living.” He continued, “You can close the gate to burial place with stones. Stones don’t move so easily as the spirits do.”
The stones never move themselves, but some people claimed that they could sense the stone moving within, as if something living was trapped in the stone. People have a spirit and so do stones. Stones can appear dead on the outside but be living on the inside. People can appear living on the outside and be dead on the inside. Stone and people have that in common.

Grandma snickered.  “Stones, a few of them, are like bones,” she said, “line them up just right and they lie right in front of you, that’s the truth of it.”
Grandma glanced beyond the gloomy sky above. “I got me a chant, she added, to take us from a past to a future. Grandma rushes from past to future, just like lovers young and old are about to embrace.
From two venerable human hearts created to sing
Return this story to where other passions ring

The well-known druidess and druid will do
In a similar spirit body that dresses you.

Within a corridor where stirring memories show
Vivien and Merlyn on Charon’s ferry flow

This time when Grandma chants and hums,
A marching future stage this way drums.


Diplomatic Pouch 2

         The next morning Blake rambled down the stairs to find Pyl and Justin sitting at the table with toast and a cup of coffee and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "Morning," he murmured. Glancing out the large back kitchen window and added, "Looks like quite a few dog walkers out at the park."

         "Joggers were out earlier," commented Justin, and with the slightest of sarcasm he continued, "Just another wonderful day in the neighborhood."
        
         "Right."

         Pym put down the editorial page and said, "Are you really willing to sell the plane?"

         "The offer is much more than its worth."

         "Why is that?" said Justin. "Pyl and I were talking about this earlier."

         Blake walked to the cupboard for a mug, the refrigerator for skim milk, and the pantry from instant cocoa mix. "The woman said, ‘tops at two hundred,’" He quickly tore the package open and added "Odd that she brought up her top price rather than low-balling. I will say that." He nuked the mixed milk and powdered cocoa.

         Pyl commented, "Justin thinks the woman has a mixed Boston and Brooklyn accent. I agree that it's unusual, maybe English is a second language."

         Blake laughed, "Or she's from down in the hills and worked to rid herself of that hill twang. Business people don't like that slow Appalachian tone even if the grammar is correct." He surprised himself by siding with the woman but he hated the injustice that sometimes comes from not speaking correctly." He sat facing the window in his chair at the kitchen table.

         His sister tweaked, "You've taken a liking to her sudden friendliness, huh, Blakey."

         Justin quickly added, "Sell the plane and gain a businessman’s wife, is that the plan, old man."

         "Then we'd have the plane back," joked Pyl; afterwards thinking that wouldn't be a bad idea.

         "Don't you too have to go to work today?"

         "We took the day off."

         "If you stayed in Daddy's business like I did you wouldn't have to be going into work at all," said Blake dryly, while hopefully wishing they would help run the company.  'We live in the family house together. We might as well all be working at the same place mostly from here,' is what he wanted to say, but didn’t have the heart to.



         Midmorning. Ship hovers well above the air traffic and well below any orbiting satellites. Lake Erie is straight down. Friendly sits around a handsomely dark p2wooded table-from-the-floor with Hartolite and Yermey. They are drinking a good-for-you yummy twistanshake and nibbling on p1green-forest-nuttleberry treats. All three sit bare breasted in colorful boxershort loungers relaxed on comfortchairs down so their clean bare feet with well trimmed toe nails are firmly snuggled in the greenest plushest living blades of grass this side of HomePlanetsThree. Ship's floor is a living piece of bio-diverse machinery from his outer hull to his antigravobars pulse that allows these three perspicacious marsupial humanoids to serve as Ship's heart, Ship's humanity heart, but not Ship's mind which mostly is his own.

         The worst that can happen is Ship will run naked to HomePlanetsThree with for his living bioheart crew attached. When it comes to fight-or-flight the marsupial humanoids have always had some place to run for their own survival and safety. They have not had to stand-an-fight event for over twenty thousand earth years. Cultural social consciousness is the necessity that sees to that.

         "Do you think he'll take your offer?" asked the fit and ready-for-another-swim Hartolite.

         Yermey stated, "I'm more interested in why Ship allowed the Cessna wingtip's touch. Ship had to know the plane was close and he chose to do little about it."

         With gazed eyes narrowing Captain Friendly commented, "Ship allowed a touch not a collision. I too wonder about this. For now though we need to go with what is. Unknowingly this woman named Pill has scientific evidence of our existence, and there may be microscopic evidence attached the plane, traces of blackenot tissue for instance. I think it would be easier to buy the plane and allow them to make a healthy profit in the process. Besides, an electromagnetic anomaly may have allowed the plane to tap Ship. Godofamily only knows stranger things have happened in this galaxy.

         "What do we do?" questioned Hartolite. "Ship is autonomous as we came here on our own orders, not from ParentsinCharge."

         "We came to save this species of primates from a most abominably deathly plague," whispered Friendly in an unconventionally commanding tone.

         "We cannot know this plague is for certain," calmed Yermey in an impish smile. "It is highly probable though, highly probable." This he quietly reasoned is because otherwise I would not have volunteered for this surreptitious expedition.

3737 words

***
         1623 hours. I am ready for a break but I think I can easily get chapter three completed tonight.

         Even though it will take more CD's let's make one CD per chapter. It will be easier for your aunt and uncle. And, we will have to find a way to simplify a marking code, as both are legally blind. Post. - Amorella


        After supper, the last of the chicken soup, and the news and last night's "Person of Interest" Carol is working on her email and you have time to finish the audio draft of chapter three.


         2020 hours. Yes, I have Grandma.3 and Pouch.3 to listen to and make corrections. I'm sure there are more but each time I find fewer and fewer. Tomorrow we take a break during late morning to see the film, Quartet, at AMC Westchester, which until last month was the Rave Theatre. I assume it is a character study, but we'll see. Lunch after. Craig and Alta will be here Tuesday for lunch. We are excited to see them.



***


Chapter Three © rho [audio draft]

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 chapter dream grows. Merlyn kneads his dreams for those with an imagination that casts no shadow.




The Dead 3

         The livingandead Merlyn stepped onto the slab of non-granite where he stationed his non-sitting stone, or throne, as he likes to call it; the esoteric mind-home he created for the etherial domain of his earthly spirit.

         In HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither each spirit is allowed a private sanctuary of herorhis own rightful choosing. This is the primary reason the marsupial-humanoids chose to call this Place of the Dead, where Merlyn eventually found himself after physical death, HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither.

         The Dead are not so empirical with the naming-of-things; at least one is no more empirical than one's own heartansoulanmind is. The spirit, the humanity, attempts to keep a balance of the once (while living) unconsciousness and which, while dead, is consciousness. The human spirit decides and judges the just worthiness of herorhis otherwise fragile and unearthly habitat. The gravity, the passion by which one's self-worth and dignity holds the spiritual track. One track is the recent unconscious mind made conscious after physical death, and the other track is the conscious mind one had in life. This is what the human spirit rides upon, at least this is the way, I, Merlyn the old Scottish bard sees it.

         Knowing one's self never has a deeper meaning when deadanliving. Balancing one's real self with who one was in life is not an easy matter. Many of the Dead, marsupial humanoids or earthlings remain silent for a long time for good reason; learning who one is before learning who the other Dead are. These are a few of the rules that apply. The similarity with the Living, the real world is that nothing is free. Each pays the Boatman, no matter who she and/or he was in life.

         To the North of Merlyn's roughshod though comfortable wooden hut Merlyn sits on his smoothed stone chair. This throne rests on a well-laid granite slab to the immediate right of the large tall and stately oak. Merlyn glances north into the spiritual configuration of a securely woven cloth-like matrix to better dress the energetic and passionate cocoon of Merlyn's heartansoulanmind.

         To the northeast of his throne lie the moss-blotched two-foot high flagstone front stage ruins on which he had first magically danced as a child. Around and beyond the stage are a continuation of Scottish meadow grass and flowers. Flower of color, a brush of bluebells and ox eyed white daisies to the left and a caress of white foxglove and red poppies to the stage ruin's right. To the further north a large stand of Scottish Pine grows grandly tall on a higher rising sloop.

         On Merlyn's nearer right as he views north is a great bald granite dome. Skirting the granite mountain is a fence of purple heather. Watching the yellow sunrise over such a large and handsome dome of graveyard created stone is a continual reminder to Merlyn of how close in thought the physical universe lies. Merlyn thinks, 'this was once an unscalable scene by human and marsupial humanoid alike.'

         The southern aspect of Merlyn's domain lies in a valley of thick oak forest scattered with hazel bushes and stands of birch. Further into southwest of Merlyn's druidic domain are two wild apple trees with red melancholy thistles scattered about, both a delight to Merlyn’s heart and mind.

         To the West not far from the hut and nearby granite slab on which Merlyn sits, he can see the slowly moving river slightly camouflaged by well-leafed young trees and bushes. Merlyn has one-man tanned leather and stick framed Celtic boat, a curragh, resting on the bank. On the other side of the fishable stream tall and more majestic oak stand.

         Quite satisfied with his ancient earthy projected surroundings, Merlyn glanced up beyond the blue and sun to see the faint outline of his basic chess-squared spirit threaded his imagination and reasoning. It is here where Merlyn flashed on the reality of his entangled presence in the heartansoulanmind of present day Richard Greystone.

         Glancing down at the seeming reality of the stage ruins, Merlyn snickered slightly and thought of the Boatman who ultimately held his holistic awareness of metaphysics and physics at bay. He grumbled, "My life will continue in chapters." An astute Voice breathed into Merlyn's ghostly ear, "You pay the Boatman just like everyone else, boy. No exceptions."


         With that a fellow spirit appeared in his staged ruins. "Hello, Merlyn," said this human spirit who was once raised ancient Greek, "this is Sophia your friend and leader of the First Rebellion of the Dead."

         Sophia begins to walk towards Merlyn and stubs her right big toe on a  stone nearly buried in the meadow grass. She bends down to see what it is, and puzzled, she picks up a black marble ball from beneath the rotted board side of the stage ruin.

         Surprised at this uncalled-for scene Merlyn noted, ‘Sophia just stumbled onto that mother of an 8 ball in my mind.’ In a second thought he concludes, ‘No need of mirrors in this Place of the Dead, no need at all.’



The Brothers 3

         The next day Richard walked up the steps and down the hall to Robert’s present study.

         “This room is like our old club house as kids. No women allowed,” announced Richard.

         Both laughed, and Robert added, “And to think, we both had girls.”

         “Just as well,” responded his brother.

         “I got rid of the ragged flowers on Mom and Dad’s graves this morning?”

         Robert replied, “I'll tell Connie as Memorial Day is coming up.”

         “I still like walking Lady through the cemetery in the morning.”

         “Just like Papa used to do,” chuckled Robert. “And, Dad too. I sometimes walk Jack down to the cemetery but we usually go to the park and along the river below the cemetery instead."

         Smiling with restored energy Richard sat across from his father's old work desk. “We used to explored the cemetery, its mausoleum and the river valley as kids.”

         “Fun times,” declared Robert.

         “You know," asserted Richard, "People still say it's haunted on the west side of the Mausoleum where the old trail leads to the woods down the hill.”

         Robert sighed, “Dad never said, but Mom thought it was haunted too. It was an old story about seeing people walking who weren’t there. I have a poem about it somewhere."

"Published?"

"It was, some years ago in our own Riverton Historical Society bulletin," responded Robert.

"Mom always believed in ghosts but Dad never did."

In a sadder than expected tone, Richard said, "I don't think Dad ever believed in anything."
        
"Not in our lifetime anyway. What are the girls up to?"

"They are getting ready to go shopping."

"Why did I even ask?" moaned Robert.

"I got the car if you want to head over to the used book store."

Perked, he asked, "The one that used to be a church?"

"Why not, we haven't been over there for a while."

"You know I'm looking for an old copy of Ferlinghetti’s "Coney Island of the Mind".

"When Cyndi and I were in Frisco last year we stopped at Ferlinghetti’s City Lights bookstore. They had a republication of his classic Coney Island of the Mind."

Robert comment ranked with caustic tone, "I used to have a signed first edition, but I can't find it.”

"Julie probably borrowed it to show her classes. Her favorite Ferlinghetti’s "Coney Island of the Mind # 5", is my favorite too."

"I can't believe she has a popular unit on fifties Beat poetry," Robert paused, "she didn't have to take my signed copy though."

"Maybe she didn’t. Give her a call. Do you want to go to books or not?"

Robert mumbled, "Old books are one of the few things we have in common these days. Let's go."

A few minutes later the house was quieter by two and Connie and Cyndi were still sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea with an opened recent House and Garden and a like themed iPad app or two.

         "It is hard to believe the boys just turned seventy," whispered Cyndi.

         "We're not far behind."

         "They been going to that used bookstore for at least forty years."

         "Was it ever a church in our lifetime?"

         "I imagine it was. That’s the closest place the boys will go to a church setting. They always seem to come back with an old book or two."

         "Julie usually borrows the poetry to show her classes."

         Connie, still whispering, commented, "Robbie always wanted Julie to go into medicine, to be a surgeon like himself."

         "You wanted her to be a cardiovascular nurse like we are."
        
         "She didn't want either so we directed her into case management nursing and she didn't want that either."

         "Julie always wanted to be a teacher like Richard."

         "Does she still call him Uncle Dickie?" giggled Cyndi.

         "That was always Robbie's doing." Both laughed.
        
         "What kind of countertop do you really want?"
        
         Exasperated, Cyndi stated, "Richard says he doesn't care. He says that, but whatever we end up with he won't like it."

         "They are both stubborn and single-minded. We knew that when we married them. Both hide themselves in each other -- personality quirk of identicals, I suppose."

         “How in the world did we ever decide who was going to marry whom?”

         “I think we flipped for it,” said Cyndi. Both laughed independently, one never knew who was going to stop first. This is one of the small differences in being close sisters and not being identical twins like Robert and Richard. At least this is what they always believed to be true, the two sisters were never quite as fully in tune with each other as the boys were.





Grandma’s Story 3

A young woman by the name of Qwinta stands staring at a multi-shaded orange maple leaf. The orange hue is the complex of the photosynthesis of carbohydrates using the energy of sunlight. Qwinta is within sight of a body of water that some eight thousand years from her time on Earth will be identified as Lake Champlain in the supposedly united state of Vermont.

         Eight thousand years ago Qwinta imagines the orange hue of the beautiful autumn maple leaf to be that of the ghostly kneeling Princess, a royal canoeist in an artfully decorated regal dugout. To touch this enchanting maple leaf Princess Qwinta more earnestly imagines . . .

         . . . The maple wood paddle the Princess is using and I, the Quinta, become as one-in-mind . . . I am the paddle’s head, its grip. I am the head; the shaft-and-blade become two . . .
          . . . The royal hand on the grip, my head, becomes one with the drop and swirl movement of the paddle through the water. When the paddle is lifted from the water, a ripple ensues. The ripple is a wave with a reflected orange in the Maple leaf . . .
         . . .  The very spirit of the one whose hand dips like a paddle into the River of the Dead also lifts up and leaves a ripple as it passes from one side of the profound and ethereal current to the other side. The swirling spirit, the sculling spirit also manifests itself into the maple tree reflected water is swirled into this lone maple leaf as the paddle rises . . .
         . . . I, Qwinta, a Princess spirit and mind, am the causal connection between the Living and the Dead just as the maple tree, paddle and canoe, are the one; the only causal connection between the sun, the color and this fallen maple leaf.


Grandma all wonderfully black, full bosomed, and full hipped, is colorfully costumed in Caribbean Island dress sashays around, and she says, “There isn’t a reason on this Earth for people to be touched by Perfection. Since I dance in the physical sciences of the universe, I don’t see any reason to be touched. Matter and the spirit each have their own interests.”

Grandma matter sometimes settles in earthquakes as a reminder of what she is when there is an immediate connection with the Living and the Dead. Get in Grandma's way and pay. That is a rule. Human species, be they marsupial or primate, have the imagination and the reason to do good if they wish, but it is a human equation. I operate by Necessity and you have the necessity to operate.

         Grandma beamed and redressed in dark-bottomed clouds with sunlight and she rained big drops, “Physics has a framework and the interior of human and marsupial skulls will shine quite nicely within it."

 Muddy waters may run full and fast
And show a future from this woman's past,

This story of light leafs from orange and sun
Allowed by Nature's photosynthesized mask.

Thus from old Grandma’s waves of rain and maple leaf
 another imagination might spring.





Diplomatic Pouch 3 

         After the three had a lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches with a side of chips Pyl took leave to check the yard for sticks blown from trees, as it is another pleasant Cleveland day in January. "How is the company, Blake?" asked Justin as they headed to the comfortable couch and two high back chairs in the Bose media room. Once Blake adjusted the smooth jazz to play in the background and they were comfortably relaxed. Blake talked as the CEO of Electronic Communication Software.
         "You know Dad and an electrical engineer friend started in a small empty office space that had been a used book store downtown near Fenn College."
         Justin smiled, "Who would have thought Fenn College would become Cleveland State."
         "Dad took some classes there in the early sixties but moved to Case Western-Reserve. We've lived in this area for fifty years. Pyl and I grew up in the three-story off West Fairmount in Cleveland Heights."
         "Pyl asks me to drive by every time we come up. I love that big screened side porch."
         "Dad had it screened. He reconditioned the old electric motors himself. We used it full time most of the summer. Anyway, in the late seventies he thought about putting chips into the radar detector business following the tenets of Cincinnati Microwave, but he moved  more heavily into software and built the electronics around it.”
         Justin shook his head positively and both sat chilling on a George Benson's guitar piece.
         Pyl strolled in from the back yard. "I love that big old sugar maple, look, it’s January and I found a beautiful orange leaf down in the bushes." She gave it to Justin and sat down beside him.
         "I'm thinking about getting that maple cut down, Pyl, it's getting old; and, it’s the highest tree out back. If we get a terrible wind it could fall on the house," said Blake too perfectly serious.
         Justin glanced at the rising anger in Pyl’s face and turned up the Walter Beasley sax rendition of "Do You Wanna Dance," as he took a slow sip of his Coke thinking on how Blake throws the bait and Pyl almost always picks it up.  It's no wonder we don't live this close to home, he thought.


         On Ship, after a shared communial lunch the three continued sharing. Hartolite whispered, “Do you need a little more action, Yermey? She noted his typically quiet smile as his right hand slowly slid into her silky smooth warm pouch. She sighed in the companionship.
         His words stumbled, "It's been five years since I've this dressed this far down." Probably be five more years after this little meetanmatch, he thought. Whenever the women have big decisions to make a hot itch comes over them and there is not a man alive who can satisfy it. My right hand rests in dreamland. Such is a male’s only real pleasure.
         Friendly leaned up from his stomach and giggled, "It's been ten years if it's been a day since we’ve seen you in this position." Hartolite echoed the snicker.

         Yermey unslid his hand-in-pouch and abruptly sat and climbed out of bedfromthewall. He grumbled as he walked to the wall, pulled out fresh overalls from the chute and one at a time he lazily dropped his legs into them, pulled them up and felt the cloth quickly adjusted to his size and unwrinkled. A general distain arose from his mind, 'the women pop us in those pouches when we are tiny crawlers and never let us go. We men grow up expected to put a hand in a pouch at soon we see a woman's seductive glance. Alas, when little crawlers we cannot survive without a crawl-shinny into a pouch. His heart murmured, ‘Such is biological fate.’ Yermey turned to the bedfromthewall; His soul adjusted with, ‘the women are gone and without even a polite word of thanks. It is just as well.’ He gathered his three positions and conferenced them for deeper introspection later.

         In such a moment Yermey turned too moody philosophizing on the ancient marsupial humanoid children’s stories. I don’t believe the myths of our clergy, he thought - ancient fableizing hint at untellable truths. There is a close connection between our two species’ Concept-of-Godofamily; such as our Fall-from-Grace before creation of the galaxy. These HighPrimates have their similar story.


         Yermey thought, Friendly is always upbeat and positive. I would never move her to gloom. Hartolite is one good handsome cuddlanbabe. When I imagine resting my hand in her pouch almost every night I go right to sleep. Imagination is so much easier than the complications of inanout experience. We would just as soon do our life’s series of services-for-the-species: imagining more comfortable educational and entertaining settings for our-family-of-selves and the safest, most efficient and easily manipulative devices possible to obtain and sustain our species’ goals for living full consciously, humanely and well for ourselves, our immediate families-in-time and our ThreePlanetCommunity.

         Meanwhile, Hartolite and Friendly had come to a mutual conclusion. Captain Friendly softly declared, “We buy the Williams’ plane tomorrow or leave them four hundred thousand and take it. I want done with this. Then we must create the best, most efficiently way to directly contact this HighPrimate species. The shock will do them well," concluded Friendly, but Hartolite’s facial expression made Friendly quickly ask, “Hartolite, is it ‘do them well’ or ‘do them good’”?

***

         2101 hours. I feel good that three chapters are better clarified. I am still not sure about using the names of real universities. I don't believe I did in the first three books. I need to resolve this before making CD's.

         If the college or university becomes an intricate part of the plot of a section, create the name. If it is a part of the setting only, don't worry about it. - Amorella

         That sounds good, Amorella. Thank you.

         Small matters and consistencies and inconsistencies will have to be dealt with after the book chapters are completed. Carol is coming up to read. Take a break. If you like we can begin work on Dead 14. Post. - Amorella

        

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