Shortly after your local noon. Jared is
cleaning your driveway and this time you compensated him monetarily even though
the snow-blowing machine is half yours because? – Amorella
1217 hours. In past years I did his driveway sometimes
and he did mine. Now he is doing both. Normally we have a barter system of
sorts because we take his mother’s paper and mail up everyday we are here and
she knows we are on call anytime she needs anything. Normally, this works but
this year with all the snow he has done all the work which he says is okay
because once he gets the machine running it does most of the work. This is
true, but today the snow has a bit of ice encrusted on the top, about a quarter
inch and we had to break a path with shovels first (the snow is three to four
inches deep on average). Anyway, I thought it was best to just put the money in
his pocket, which I did. He protested, but I was stubborn about it. I feel better
and he has some pocket change he can keep for himself if he wishes. If we have
more snow I’ll do the same, at least this winter. With the carpel tunnel it
hurts if I lift the shovel with the snow and ice (which it did and I only went
about fifteen feet). Life is what it is. The snow is pretty and it is not that
cold. I think we are going to have another month of it off and on. Poor kids.
Missing a little school is okay and fun but making it up not so much. Alas,
I’ve been there many times. Once out of school adults can easily forget how it
can be (as a kid) having an unscheduled day off.
You are thinking, ‘why don’t we just have a
four day work week?’ when in the book the marsupials have a three and a half
day work week – 35 hours worth, the other three and a half days another crew
does the work – the weekend becomes a thing of the past. – Amorella
1233 hours. I understand Amorella but I can separate
fantasy from reality. I just finished the Pouch 14 segment. When I first wrote
those words about how the marsupials live back in the drafts of 2005 it was a
dream. It could never be a reality because in some ways their lives were too
harsh psychologically. It is no utopia. They are, as it were, bound by the
tribe, by the species to treat people well and humanely too. And, the Family
Parents in Charge (for a period of ten years once only) paid everyone off with
security and a hundred thousand dollars a year before a ten percent tax. The
marsupials took a bribe. Each year a good part of the debt was forgiven because
marsupials are not perfect and are not fully bottom-liners, that is they are
worth more than the monetary exchange that they cost for social services.
That’s their belief system. It is only a dream. I know this, but I write it out
again in these reworked drafts anyway. I’m a dreamer. I don’t like to admit it,
but at least I am being practical about it. Writing doesn’t do any harm and I
get it out of my head. It feels good to let dreams go. To die with all these
words still in me would be hell as far as I am concerned. This way I am free. I
can live with it and it doesn’t cost me a thing but time and my love of the
fingers on the keyboard. (1247)
You had leftovers for supper,
meatloaf, the same as last night but tonight with cottage cheese and not a
salad. You watched “The Black List” from two weeks ago and last night’s “NCIS”
as well as NBC and ABC News. Now, you have updated The Dead Fifteen, mostly by
making it easier to read by adding more paragraphs so the reader can stop and
assess what Merlyn is thinking. Add and Post. – Amorella
***
(final) The Dead 15 ©2014,
rho GMG.One
Merlyn has the taste of non-existent
honey and sunflower seeds still on his tongue as he glances up to see the
mid-morning sun. At his feet he is in a layer of fog about a foot from the
stream in his sanctuary. He turns to the right and walks northeast away from
the water with the sun behind him. I walk on out passed the great Oak and the
ancient theatre ruin towards the great granite boulder, more than half a grand
Scottish Highland hill high in my estimation.
In
life I used to love walking the Scottish hills and woods enjoying the nature of
sounds along the path, thought Merlyn. The further from the stream he walked
the more a silence filled his mind and dissipated into the cool sunlight of his
spirit, his heartansoulanmind.
A
lone billiard ball lay centered on the table’s far cue point. The cue ball sat
on the nearer cue mark as Merlyn watched from the near end of the reduced green
on table due to the new acquiring dense fog. "What ball is this?"
mumbled Merlyn aloud. He comfortably sat down on a nearby stump in his head,
the closed to his present location, about half way to the high granite hill.
"Hill between me and the Living," he grumbled, still talking between
himself and an important memory.
Merlyn
squinted his eyes, sifting through the now layering white mist in his mind and
the ball centered on the far side of the table. He whispered, like he was
hunting a "Solid red . . . 7 ball. Who might that be a-calling from my
heart?"
"It
is but a first memory, Merlyn, no one but you," said a woman's voice
though he fully understood it was his own. She continued quietly and assuredly,
"The fog tapped it forward."
Merlyn's
voice continued, "I see an almost perfectly round deep red, beautifully
polished granite ball with a circular ivory inlay and a glossy black onyx
number 7 centered and embedded within the ivory."
Memory
spoke automatically as if it understood the present connection with the past
sits in the present and future at once. The soul coils the transmission, the
heart generates the energy and the mind is as nothing that nothing can be.
Memory's
silent picture - sharp and detailed - viewed a full eclipse of the sun. "I
stand on solid ground and from between the boughs of an Oak and Birch my eyes
see the flame on the pond. No, the flame is from the water.
Fire
and water. Slowly, so slowly my widened eyes and beating heart strain for the
fire's lengthening blade of silent flames to provide an upward thrust into the
invisible side of nature's air. The spritely mix of orange, yellow, and red
flame with a flash or two of white the surrounding air glowed an eerie green
when rose the handle as yellow as the sun. The hand showed its natural clasp on
the surreal object to make the think the white skin ice itself. Frozen
it was and clasped to the sun, without a hint of power. And quiet froze my soul
on the spot. It's eye accepting something akin to itself made visible only a
short distance away.
And,
as I drew closer the calm waters edge of surrounding trees and foliage took on
the imagery of dark gray lashes, such as I was seeing the single eye of a most
unnatural being as one of its lashes. It did not blink red or any other color
and neither did I.
In
all the things I did unnaturally observe, in the minute and whole of the
singular event my wonderfully fine eyes focused on the most natural thing I had
ever seen birth, the slim, white hand, appearing as human and more delicately
feminine than my own, I saw a once powerless woman's hand rise as a goddesses
hand holding sun, water, and a thin fire pillar in multitudes of colors and
imagination.
Its
owner is not a goddess, in fact and description, but rather, a naked human soul
existing outright and in place with no need of anything but being flesh and
blood. Such was my heart and soul and mind so re-conditioned that day.
The
sword, the bone of the soul, I never did see it as the others. The mightiest of
swords ever held by human hands held no power whatsoever; yet Arthur and the
populace thought that it did. And, in the end, the king and his country tried
to make the sword, like love and the purest of gold, something it is not.
***
2105 hours. I will but there was something in the nature
of “The Black List” plot (create more perfect babies and put them up for
adoption) that brings back Huxley’s Brave New World. We will have the
ability to genetically create a healthier (both physically and mentally)
species of ourselves. People may think it morally wrong to mess with genetic
structures (we have been creating hybrids of corn) but when it is on the
genetic level people feel it is immoral and Dr. Frankenstein-like. I don’t see
the difference in allowing sick people go to the hospital to get better. We
have various organ transplants that prolong peoples’ lives and that is
considered okay yet, -- let’s say a young person has a heart transplant and
survives – sheorhe grows up and marries and has children. A hundred years ago
those children would not have existed because the person would have died. It
seems that if there is a destiny for the species (not individuals) it would be
modified by human intervention.
I
am thinking of Shakespeare’s MacBeth now. If he had died of an accident before
he kills Duncan he would (in context with the play) have gone to Heaven, yet he
lives long enough to commit a murder and for this he goes to Hell. We used to
talk about this in class and I am still stumped by it. Even with Free Will of
the individual to do or not to do something an eventually destiny for the
species still is allowed to occur. A flower seed is destined to become a
flower. The individual seed is not always significant in the long run of
things; however if the seed is manipulated to become healthier its potential is
greater within the greater species continual evolution.
Now
I am thinking on the marsupial humanoids being some twenty-thousand years in
scientific advancement – many live to 500 years of age. Let’s say the first
fifty as youths still in school and early work assignments. And, the last fifty
as people of older age until they essentially wear out. Why is it in the story
that they do not make clones or something science fiction like and live for a
thousand years or two thousand years for that matter? What caused them to stop
such technology? Is it for the same reasons people do not want genetic
manipulation to make people healthier?
I
am having trouble with what happened in those twenty thousand years to make
these people like they are. I know it is fiction but a social reasonableness
has to have taken place. Early on in the first books we find they had had wars
and famines and that only a few survived so they had to begin a new culture.
Technology had gotten far enough that a few could escape to the other two
planets, like us surviving long enough that we can eventually have a colony on
Mars that is self-sufficient. Basically this is a form of self-pollination. But
what do I devise as the reasons, the social history if you will, of the
marsupial humanoid species to have become what they are at the point of time
they meet humans face to face – and what will become of their social structure
after having met us.
It
seems to me it is reasonable for both species to change socially. To be honest,
I can’t imagine this to be in the best interests of either species, yet here
they are at a crossroads just as we are at a crossroads also, with or without
alien involvement. Our politics is outdated, even countries as such appear
outdated. Cultures are not. Languages are not though a common earth language
will be a necessity. Here is the rub. Eventually, what we think we have to do,
the choices we make both locally and worldwide will be a necessity for our
species, our humanity to survive.
I
think I have rolled this back into Asimov’s original Foundation series and the
necessity of Hari Seldon. Here is a selection I found in Wikipedia that relates to
my thoughts. (2142)
** **
Paul Krugman
At
the 67th World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal, Quebec,
Canada, Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate in Economics, mentioned Hari Seldon.
According to Krugman, his interest in economics began with Asimov's Foundation
novels, in which the social scientists of the future use
"Psychohistory" to attempt to save civilization. Since
"Psychohistory" in Asimov's sense of the word does not exist, Krugman
turned to economics, which he considered the next best thing. In his column he
considers Ibn Khaldun having done "a pretty good job" of setting
himself up as the Hari Seldon of medieval Islam.
selected from Wikipedia – Hari Seldon
** **
You needed to get your thoughts out where
you can study them. I understand you would like a general social history of the
marsupial humanoids to exploit in the novels, is this correct? – Amorella
2151 hours. I don’t like “exploit” but I catch your
drift. We ‘human’ beings are naturally exploiters of situations. This is how we
adapt for survival in the physical world.
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