Notes - love of character / help from Jim / The Dead 17, completed in 805 words

The Caunterbury Tales : Prologue

Here bygynneth the Book 
of the tales of Caunterbury

1: Whan that aprill with his shoures soote

2: The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,

3: And bathed every veyne in swich licour

4: Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

5: Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

6: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

7: Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

8: Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,

9: And smale foweles maken melodye,

10: That slepen al the nyght with open ye

11: (so priketh hem nature in hir corages);

12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

13: And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,

14: To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

15: And specially from every shires ende

16: Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,

17: The hooly blisful martir for to seke,

18: That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

Archbishop Thomas Becket

Murdered at this Site in 1170.

This, the last day of April, is a tribute to both

Thomas Becket and Geoffrey Chaucer

***

       You have a deep love for history, literature and human character, boy. - Post. - Amorella

       1353 hours. Had my bath and am dressed ready to meet the outside world. Sitting on the front pouch listening to the St. Susanna Catholic kids on the playground across from nearby Muddy Creek. Carol is over talking to Donna L. next door and I am enjoying the blue sky, shade from the full sun and all the green mixed with a sprinkling of colorful flowers and flowering trees. It is a wonderful time of the year. The furnace is off and the windows up. It is a cat's joy to smell the outside and look for assorted bunnies, squirrels, birds and the buzzing of bumblebees and wasps. Tomorrow the lawn needs re-mowed. Time to get the deck furniture out of the basement. I even have my sandals on. Such is Spring in southwest Ohio.

         You are waiting to go to lunch. You want to better complete Dead 17. The grass is growing faster than you expected and you have to finish edging the front of the yard at the street. This is where you are at present. - Amorella

         Mid-afternoon. You had a late lunch at Five Guys Burgers and Fries and ate at one of the outside table overlooking the traffic on Tylersville. Presently you are sitting at the north lot at Pine Hill Lakes. Carol brought an unread book but is reading a new Better Homes and Garden. Let's go to Dead 17 and clean it up. - Amorella

         You just received a note from Jim Powers, you were asking your friend and former Indian Hill colleague about ancient Greek greetings. This is his reply:

** **

Stock greeting among classical Attic Greeks (5th c. BCE and thereafter) was "xaire" (chi-alpha-iota-rho-eta) which can be translated as "rejoice!" And the vocative ends masculine names with an eta. Not sure about vocative feminine ending. If he's able to be familiar (probably not) he could clasp forearms with them. Otherwise, (more likely) an inclination of the upper body from the waist (not a deeply as the Japanese bow) would certainly be a cordial sign of respect. Now, I'm reminded of the remarkable scene of Odysseus' trip to the Underworld. I don't recall any depictions of how the blessed are met with and exchange with live guests in Elysium.

Soldier on!

--

Jim

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       1633 hours. Jim is certainly helpful here.  This draft is better, Amorella. I am surprised at the conclusion. Who would have thought Merlyn, a Celt, would have the better of the two Greeks?

         Merlyn is the centermost. What else would you expect? - Amorella

         I am still in awe of Plutarch and Pythia.

         You have the imagination to create such a statement. I do not. Add and post when plausible. Later, dude. - Amorella

***

The Dead 17  ©2013, rho, completed

         The observer changes what is observed, thought Merlyn as sat facing south toward the meadow of ragged robin and white foxglove from the stage ruins in his sanctuary. He groused, "I am watched and even read." How does this entanglement in spirit change me?

         I can only read my own mind through it as a measuring device. I measure the human heart through my own first, and I measure my soul through my intuition of the conditional aspects of what others and myself consider the soul to be. These are as rays of light filtered through a deepened, dark-bottomed water-like consciousness, which rises or sinks as an alter ego, a presence of my own making forever without a mirrored reflection.

         This presence is also an observer but separate and unlike myself -- a parallel and unequal self -- a natural doppelganger of spirit, this is the non-shadowed presence. This is a sensory experience, a human experience, be the spirit encased in living matter or no. Nothing is observed; however, the lingering awareness of 'a separate being' in heartansoulanmind exists nevertheless.

         Merlyn fell into a memory of Plutarch, whom he met at the Academy of Athens when Plutarch was in a parallel and entangled memory. Plutarch was stand with his friend Senecio and their discussion was on how long consciousness would last after death.

         "Excuse me," uttered Merlyn, "Did I overhear that one of you is Plutarch of Chaeronea, the once senior priest at Delphi?"

         "I am," commented the Greek on the right. "And you are?"

         "Merlyn, a man interested in the arts, living some six hundred years after yourself and your friend, Senecio, I presume."

         "Yes, I am," responded Senecio somewhat interested, "And you are which Merlyn?"

         "Merlyn, a Scottish bard of the seventh century."

         "I know of you Merlyn," noted Plutarch. "You are interested in Pythia."

         "And, yourself," divulged Merlyn. "I see we are engaged through channeled memories."

         "Astute of you."

         "I would like to meet Pythia."

         Plutarch smiled confidently, "What is unclear, Merlyn?"

         Merlyn spoke distinctly and clearly, "Pythia in a tranced mind."

         In a manner echoing Merlyn's, Plutarch asserted, "We two have a similar interest at heart."

         "Dead, does she still make pronouncements?"

         "An oracle needs not Delphi or any other place. Besides, what is more sacred than Elysium?"

         Merlyn observed Senecio smiling then nodding politely before fading like worn colors in a rainbow and an old thought wandered into sight, 'perhaps Avalon is more sacred than Elysium'.

         "Senecio and I will talk later, Merlyn."

         Merlyn turned to his left to see an attending fair and vibrant female physique personify from air. I am reminded of the sword thrust only this graceful fresh hand grasps the blade and pull rather than push from the hilt.

         "Xaire, Pythia, how kind of you to join us," commented the now world-weary Plutarch in the land of the ancient Greek Dead.

         She appears Celtic rather than Greek, thought Merlyn. Coal black hair falling near, parsing her wide-open green eyes slanting his direction as thin theatre curtains. 'What a wonderfully well looking woman you were in life' flew into his mind as he bowed slightly and said, "I am Merlyn, a sage of Caledonia, old Scotland."

         "I know your name."

         "This is during the First Rebellion," responded Merlyn. I am not yet born to physically die and move on."

         She noted, "Yet here you are, and we three talk together as though we three are livingandead at once."

         "We speak through our heartsanminds," recited Merlyn confidently, "not our souls as you think."

         "The soul is first," disciplined Plutarch, "our souls gathered for this meeting."

         "Souls do not display purpose," revealed Merlyn unapologetically. He asked, "I cannot foresee the future and am looking for a clue as to how the Second Rebellion will help or hinder the future Living?"

         While seemingly speaking from her soul, Pythia remarked, "I see your many eyes, Merlyn."        

         Merlyn's hand rose gently and he touched her left cheek without caution saying, "I have only the two eyes I had in life."

         Plutarch grumbled, "You cannot be alive and dead both at once. This is a dangerous illusion Merlyn. This meeting is in a fact, unconstructible."

         Pythia gathered her face into Plutarch and reasoned, "I know what Merlyn wishes and you may speak my response to him."

         "The lumpiness under a bushy tops hold the dusty desert to the ground, Merlyn," said Plutarch in feminine voice, "While the small wind-made dry furrowing arteries blast free from below the bushy tops."

         "A riddle for the Living, not for me," declared Merlyn with a grin.

         Coiling within mind Pythia whispered to the inner heart of her oldest of friends Plutarch, "This man walks with eyes in the soles of his feet, and I swear that upon the touch of his finger on my cheek I felt a tear."

805 words

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