Notes - catch-up / half or so of Dead 20 draft /

         The local news is on and it is suppertime. You are home and Carol is working on bills. You had a bath and feel much better. Tomorrow night you are returning to Kim and Paul's for the night, seeing Uncle John on noon Wednesday, then before the day is out you are home once again as Linda and Jean will also be for on Thursday morning they return to Tampa. Saturday through today has been a good busy with family. The reunion went well and lasted most of the day. Sunday morning most met again for breakfast at Cracker Barrel on Rt. 36 and I-71 the Sunbury-Delaware exit. Carol and the others went to the art fair at Westerville while you spent the day with Kim and Paul and the boys. Today after a left over lunch at Kim and Paul's you headed home while the boys were about to take their nap. Mostly the time out was spent looking at new home models in the area. Paul begins work on the thirty-first. They found a fully Ohio accredited private school with 150 students in full time enrollment (preschool through the third grade if they so desire) which surprised you. Carol however knew they were two similar schools in the Mason area. The price is only a few dollars more than they were paying for both boys in Cleveland. Both feel as good about the place as they did at their preschool. It is about time for the national news. Take a break, later, boy. Post. - Amorella

         2209 hours. Thin and sliced cinnamon bagel from Kroger's with cheese for supper, NBC News, "Falling Skies" and PBS's Mystery, "Endeavor" took up the evening. I did do my exercises last Thursday and Friday but not since.

         You did do some this weekend by walking about and today too for that matter. Let it go, orndorff. We have some time let's get to Dead 20. - Amorella

         2319 hours. Dead 20 is retouched and added to, but hardly completed.

        

         It is a working draft, boy. The fingers will mold it round soon enough. Add and post. - Amorella

         I do not hold your confidence, Amorella.

         You hold nothing, boy. Add and post. - Amorella

***

The Dead 20 working draft: half or so

            Merlyn awoke standing amongst the white foxglove and red poppy just east of the stage ruins. His eyes focused first on his mind's pillar, the giant Oak and on to the boulder and beyond to his hut. His eyes slowly moved to beyond the hut, the heather, the narrow woods and they rested on six tall blades of grass by the river. Six, he thought.

            A billiard table rose from a short muscled contraction in a long fingered hypnotic oak root pointing his way. In a brief uncommon blink the oak tabletop stood beside; felted green from side to side to side to side. Empty it is, concluded Merlyn, but for a solid green ball number 6 directly in front of the far left corner pocket. With no cue ball present his curiosity swept onto the flat green and he merging lightning quick curiosity rose on the far cue spot as a solid yellow 1 ball, equally sized and equally weighted with the nearby solid green.

            I am drawn into the 1 ball on the far cue spot. I must have scratched the cue ball but it doesn't appear pocketed. I am open-minded and ready for almost anything but losing my Vivian to her dusty bones in the material world.

            "You have only my soul to hold onto, Merlyn," coached Vivian from afar.

            "The soul is a mystery," he grumbled. "I have only heart and mind to grasp you with."

            "Not enough to hold in reason alone," set the soft leather tip to kiss the yellow to move leisurely towards the green 6. Close enough for a conversation on the elementary rules between two unlike souls closeting to fellow Druids heartsanminds. "I am the one, Merlyn. Who might you be?"

            "Bracc's ancient ghost, cornered, green with envy, and ready for the pocket."

            "The cue's been scratched."

            "I am stuck still, and in all honesty embarrassed I died in a resort of trickery, to convince the base, the living, that I could speak to the Dead."

            "But you are the Dead speaking in this, my fabled mind, Bracc."

            "Such is your flat humor of last resort. Alas, I am done in."

            "You are on not in Bracc. There is no trickery here."

            "I am but a poor soul caught, trapped, holed up by a pocket."

            Merlyn quick-wittedly remarked, "The economics of the soul have nothing to do with pockets of poverty, I assure you my fellow Druid. You need to turn about like those other once racked fellows similarly endowed round. The green is but a painting, my man."

428 words.

***

             I am not clever and should not pretend to be. This is more silliness and I should dump it all and begin again.