Before
breakfast. You and Carol woke before light. You woke at four and have not gone
back to sleep. Your hands, still bandaged, are on the board in the proper
places but you are moving your fingers to their proper letters slowly. They
rest higher on the board because of the padding in the palms and at the top of
the wrists under the gauze-like elastic bandages. The hands ache at five/six
pain but if you hit the hand the pain is sharper, up to a quick seven/eight.
Carol is going to get you wet wipes and disposable baggies for necessities. The
bandages can come off tonight but you think tomorrow morning might be better.
The right hand fingers are twice as swollen as the left. Getting out of the
black lounger chair in the bedroom took some practice. You cannot lift yourself
up by the arm rests but you get to the front of the seat and slowly roll out
onto the carpet using elbows and shoulders then swing your right arm up to
catch the southeast corner of the bed and pull yourself up by the upper right
arm. You also find that you cannot lift your computer except by the way you
would lift a dinner plate full of food and not for anything but the shortest
length of time. Here is a flipped selfie as you are ‘sitting’ back in the
lounger. Looks just like you, orndorff. Post. - Amorella
0824
hours. I was just funning Amorella.
Short
before noon local time. You are working on chapter three and you want to add
the line (in reference to the Supervisor who has just spoken, “I am a higher
advisor of this sort.” Your first approach is to discover another word for
‘higher’ here but cannot find one and you are coming to think there is good
reason for this. The
Supervisor (played by a selection of myself here) is not
‘higher’ or an ‘advisor’. This is a problem of language. Look up supervisor:
** **
supervisor – noun
manager,
director, overseer, controller, superintendent,
governor, chief, head; steward, foreman; informal boss.
selected
and edited from the Oxford-American software.
** **
2028
hours. I have completed the final of Chapter Three.
Add and post. – Amorella
***
Chapter Three
Circumstance
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.
I,
Merlyn, have this little ditty above memorized to the point it sets stemmed in
letters out of which each four-leafed chapter dreams grow to clover size. I
knead the dreams into a word stream of music for the heart and soul and mind
with hope that when read, these stories cast a light into those living with an
imagination that casts no shadow.
The Dead 3
“These
are a few social rules. Having higher consciousness is not free. Each pays the
Boatman,” begins the Supervisor, “Living or dead human beings sometimes
deserve to have some free time without interruption. The dead like company just as the Living do. Why, because in
here the dead are still human beings. What would Heaven be like without having
your humanity, you tell me? Presently the Place of the Dead has adopted a new
name. The primary reason the marsupial-humanoid human-like spirits long ago
chose to call this Place of the Dead, HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither. The Earth
centered human spirits saw humor in their own language translations because
there are times people want to keep to themselves and usually the more secret
these reasons are, the more the personal hell there is. People who have no
secrets are entitled to a free pass. The dead have come to accept themselves,
secrets and all. It’s relatively simple really. The human spirit, Earth or
ThreePlanets’ centered, reasons and makes a fair or just worthiness of her or
himself. The gravity or the passion that holds one's centeredness, one’s
self-worth and dignity, to the spiritual rails of conscious as well as
unconscious memory, the freer one is. Knowing one's self is balancing one's
spirit of who one was in life and of who one now is. A few of the dead in these
dreams remain silent for a distinct period of time-which-isn’t for good reason;
learning to know who one is, is generally a prerequisite to learning who the
other dead are. Allowances are made. The recent dead are entitled to a close
friend to help or to an advisor to manage when such service is needed. I am the
Custodian who stewards the Dead.
*
North
of Merlyn’s roughshod though comfortable wooden hut, sits our protagonist on
his smoothed stone Druid’s chair. This, his throne as it were, rests on a
well-laid non-granite slab to the immediate right of the large tall and stately
non-oak that isn’t, of course. 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. This sanctuary,
a vivid dream from life is a vivid reality after transition.
To
the northeast of Merlyn’s chair rests the moss-blotched two-foot high flagstone
front stage ruins, mentioned earlier, on which he had first magically danced as
a child. Around and beyond the stage are a continuation of a favorite Scottish
meadow of grasses and flowers. A brush of bluebells and ox-eyed white daisies sets
to the left and a caress of white foxglove and red poppies to the stone stage
right. Further north a large stand of Scottish Pine grows grandly tall on a
higher rising sloop. These are the quiet friends who interlace the solitude and
Merlyn’s good fortune.
On
Merlyn's nearer right is a great bald granite dome. Skirting the granite
mountain is a fence of purple heather. Watching his yellow sun rise over such a
large and handsome dome of graveyard recognized cemetery head stone is a
continual reminder to deadanliving Merlyn that his granite dome is how close
the present physical universe lies.
The
southern aspect of his domain lies in a valley of thick oak forest blotched
with hazel bushes and stands of birch. Further into southwest of this druid’s
domain are two wild apple trees with red melancholy thistles scattered about,
both a delight to Merlyn’s heart and mind.
Merlyn’s
private sanctuary to the West, not far from his hut and nearby granite slab on
which Merlyn sits, he sees through the slightly camouflage of well-leafed young
trees and bushes to the slowly moving narrow river. Merlyn has a one-man tanned
leather and stick framed Celtic boat, a curragh, resting on the bank. On
the other side of the fishable stream is a stand of tall majestic oak.
Quite
satisfied with his spirit’s projected surroundings, Merlyn glances up beyond
the blue and sun to see the faint outline of his basic chess-squared
mind-spirit weaving his imagination and reasoning into the design and spiritual
reality. It is here that Merlyn flashes his entangled consciousness of presence
into the here-and-now of Richard Greystone, younger twin brother of Robert.
Merlyn has met all Grandma’s storytelling ghostly Greystone and Bleacher
ancestors, some in his lifetime. Such are the connective realities a living
person rarely zooms in on. Merlyn calls this interconnection of ancestors soul-threading
and in here Grandma Earth is the Needle. This otherworldly connection of
Merlyn’s has recently been adapted in real life through examples of Linked In
and Facebook. The Dead share but it is of roundabout construction.
*
Glancing
at his stage, Merlyn views a fellow spirit appearing beside his stone appearing
ruins. "Hello, Merlyn, this is Sophia your friend.”
Merlyn
smiles with pleasure.
The Brothers 3
The
following day Richard walks up the steps and down the hall to Robert’s study.
“This
room is like our old club house,” announces Richard.
Both
laughed, and Robert adds, “We were two of six in that club.”
Richard
adds, “While walking Lady, I picked up the wilted flowers on Mom and Dad’s
grave this morning. I thought I’d drop them off here before heading home.”
Robert
noted his place the recent Atlantic Monthly and closed it while saying,
“Connie knows Memorial Day is coming up. We’ll put some more on.”
“I
still like walking Lady through the cemetery in the morning.”
“Just
like Papa used to do with his dogs,” smiled Robert. “And, Dad too. I sometimes
walked Jack past the mausoleum and down the hill to the river."
Richie
mirrored his smile, “The stones, trees and mowed grass; it was a kiddy park for
us.”
“Fun
times,” declared Robert.
“You
know," said Richard, "People still say it's haunted on the west side
of the Mausoleum where the old trail leads down to the woods.”
Robert
sighed, “Dad never agreed, but Mom thought it was haunted too. There was an old
story about seeing dead people walking. I have a poem about it somewhere."
"Published?"
"It
was; some years ago in our own Riverton Historical Society Bulletin."
While
finger tapping on both arms of the chair Richard commented, "Mom always
believed in ghosts but Dad never."
In a
sadder than expected tone, Rob replied, "I don't think Dad ever believed
in anything."
"Not
in our lifetime anyway.” Both chuckled. “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 book store.”
"The
old white church on Worthington-Dublin Road?” suggested Rob.
"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 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 is
"Coney Island of the Mind # 5". It’s my favorite too."
Rob shook
his head in dark surprise, "I can't believe Julie has a popular unit on
fifties Beat poetry," he paused, "she didn't have to take my signed
copy though."
"She’s
your daughter. Give her a call. Do you want to go booking or not?"
Robert
mumbled, "Old books and poetry are what have long held in common. Let's
go." Getting up Rob smiled while watching his brother heading to the door;
“we have long held those Bleacher girls in common too. It was inevitable that
we would marry the sisters – one of those things that was meant to be.”
Sitting
at the kitchen table Connie and Cyndi are drinking tea with an opened House
and Garden and a Money magazine underneath.
"It
is hard to believe the boys just turned seventy," whispered Cyndi.
"We're
not too far behind."
"They
been going to that used bookstore for at least forty years."
"Was
it ever a church in our lifetime?" asked Connie.
"I
suppose it was. It’s the closest the boys will go to step in a church setting;
and they always seem to come back with an old book or two."
"Julie
often borrows a select old poetry book or two to show her classes."
Whispering,
Connie for no reason, 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 were."
"Julie
didn't want to be either," summed Connie. "She always wanted to be a
teacher like Richard."
"Does
she still call him Uncle Dickie?" giggled Cyndi, quietly proud of Julie’s
choice of careers.
"That
was Robbie's doing." Both laughed. “I used to call him Dickie when we
dated.”
“You
were always the cock-teaser," joked Connie; then she abruptly changed the
subject, “What kind of countertop do you really want Cyndi?"
Exasperated,
Cyndi snapped, "Richard says he doesn't care. He says that, but he won't
like whatever we end up with."
"They
are both stubborn and single-minded. We knew that when we married them. Both
burrow into themselves – a linked personality quirk, I suppose."
“How
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 laughing first – one of the minor differences between the closest
of sisters.
Grandma’s
Story 3
“In this story a girl-child’s heart is born from sheets of
ice piled over solid stone depressed by weight. Warmed, the water flow inward,
creating a landlocked seacoast with green hills, a place subset between two
deep memory faults. I am in view of a young woman consciousness,” Grandma
continues, “Qwinta is the girl’s name, and she is standing, staring at a
multi-shaded orange tinged maple leaf in her hand. Qwinta stands within heart
memory sight of a body of lake water, some eight thousand years after her
lifetime on Earth, is identified as Lake Champlain. This ecologically setting
is between the heart eastern Canadian provinces and two U.S. states. Today the
world understands the orange shading in the maple leaf is caused by a complex
of the photosynthesis of carbohydrates using the energy of sunlight not by the
color of magic within a suggested thought.
Eight thousand years ago, Qwinta imagined the orange hue of the beautiful
autumn maple leaf to be that of the ghostly kneeling Princess, a royal
canoeist, in an artfully orange decorated sun regal dugout. Touching this
enchanting and perhaps magical maple leaf Princess Qwinta unknowingly creates
the self-imprinting of this inner fantasy . . .
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-paddle-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 Princess 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, am a Princess spirit and mind,
am the causal connection between the Living and the Dead just as the once
decorated tree, the wood paddle and canoe, are the causal connection between
the sun, orange and this fallen maple leaf. To doubt this is sensation of being
is a truth is to doubt my own existence because to do so I would have to deny
that I hold a truth between finger and thumb and I watch as sun touches the
leaf to gold before it falls.
Grandma
all wonderfully black, full hipped, full busomed, and colorfully costumed in Caribbean
Island attire sashays and ripples her own waters by suggesting, “There isn’t a
reason on this Earth for people to be touched by Perfection even in fantasy. I
dance the physical sciences – matter and spirit each has its own interests
which can be observed in Quinta’s ghost.”
Quinta,
while once living, is abruptly interrupted by three squawks of a crow then
silence like the black eyes of night. Doubt and perfection cannot coexist like
the color of sun and leaf. My family has light skin and blue eyes, she
ruminates consciously. No one knows why. Some say we are the children of the
blue sky and white clouds come to life, but why would that be? In our family
tears are not the rain and this is plain to see. Our greater family rule is to
avoid contact with outsiders. The sun and moon do not avoid us. They are the
outsiders. We have a sun and moon inside, as the Earth has a sun and moon
outside. Body and spirit, spirit and body, who sets these rules of rising and
setting — of the green leaf and the orange leaf?
Human
species, be they marsupial or primate in these books, enjoy imagination and
reason. I, Grandma, operate by Necessity and human have the necessity to
operate.
Muddy waters
run full and fast
And show a future in
this woman's past,
Thus in old Grandma’s
waves of rain
A leaf of maple and
imagination sprang.
Long ago, a memory stirs, a spooky thought re-occurs, ‘I, Quinta once a spirit,
become a leaf and princess both subset between two faults of unseen
consciousness. I am the water the paddle strokes, a reality, not a leaf of
orange.
Diplomatic
Pouch 3
It
is another pleasant Cleveland day in January. Pyl, Justin and Blake had a lunch
of ham and cheese sandwiches each with a side of chips. Getting up from the
table Pyl checks the tree-lined backyard for blown small branches and sticks.
Justin
and Blake moved to the couch and chairs in the nearby Bose media room. Once settled Justin asks, “How is
the family company doing?”
Once
Blake adjusts the sound of smooth jazz playing and sits relaxed, he talks the talk of the CEO of Electronic
Communication Software. “You know Dad,” says Blake, “he started in a small
empty space that had been a small used book store near the college campus. He
took classes at Fenn College, in the early sixties then transferred to
Case-Western. We grew up in the three-story off West Fairmount in the Heights.”
“We
drive by every time we come up,” replied Justin. “The old screened porch is
still awesome.”
“Dad
had it screened. He reconditioned the old electric fan motors himself. We used
it full time in the summer. In the late seventies he thought about building
chips for the radar detector business but decided it wasn’t for us.” Both men
sat chilling on a long George Benson's guitar piece.
Pyl
strolls in from the back yard. “I love that big old sugar maple, look, it’s
January and I found this beautiful orange leaf by the bushes.”
In
a perfectly cadenced tone Blake added, “I'm thinking about cutting that maple
down, Pyl. It's old and the highest tree out back. If we get a terrible storm
it could come down on the house.”
Glancing
at the rising anger in Pyl’s face, Justin turned up the next piece, a Walter
Beasley sax rendition of "Do You Wanna Dance," thinking on how Blake
sets the bait and on how Pyl almost always picks up on it.
*
Hartolite
mummers, “Do you need a little more action, Yermey? She notes his typical
nonverbal smile as his right hand slowly sinks into her silky smooth and toasty
warm pouch.
Yermey
words stumble out, "It's been five years since I've had my hand undressing
this far down." He muses, whenever the women have big decisions a hot itch
comes, and there is not a ThreePlanets man alive who can satisfy it. My right
hand rests in Hart’s dreamland and it is one of the very real pleasures in
man’s life.
Friendly’s
head moves from his stomach and giggles, "It's been ten years if it's been
a day since we’ve seen you in this position." Hartolite echoes the
snicker.
Yermey
unslides his hand-in-pouch, abruptly sits up and jumps out of the
bed-from-of-the-wall. He grumbles and pulls fresh overalls from the nearby
dress chute. He lazily one at a time drops his legs into them, pulls overalls
up feeling the cloth methodically unwrinkled and automatically adjusted to his
size. A general distain floats like smoke in his mind, 'The women pop us in
those pouches when we are tiny crawlers and never let us go. We men grow
expecting, at any time, to see a woman’s seductive glance, to be politely and
judiciously asked to put a hand-in-a-pouch. His old heart scoffs, ‘Such is our
biology.’
In
such moments Yermey usually turns to philosophizing on ancient ThreePlanets
children’s tales. He thinks, ‘I don’t believe the myths of our clergy and their
ancient fableizing. Strange, there is such a close species connection of the
Concept-of-God and a Fall from Grace. These earthy High-Primates have a similar
story. How is that?
Friendly
now fully dressed catches the corner in his eye. She is always upbeat and
positive. Hartolite is one good handsomely suited cuddlanbabe. I imagine
resting my hand in your pouch almost every night before I go into a deep sleep.
We do our life’s series of services-for-the-species, imagining and creating a
more comfortable educational and entertaining setting for our community-of-families.
We create the safest, most efficient and easily manipulative devices possible
for our species’ healthy growth and well-being. We attempt to treat ourselves
humanely in our ThreePlanetCommunity; and we will for Earth too, if they can
accept such gifts free and without obligation.
Within
the half hour, Hartolite and Captain Friendly come to a mutual conclusion.
Friendly declares, “We buy the Williams’ plane tomorrow or leave them two
hundred thousand U.S. dollars, and commandeer it. I want done with this. We
must create the most efficient and resourceful way to directly contact this
High-Primate species. The shock of us will do them well,” concludes Friendly.
Yermey smiles and Hartolite’s facial expression makes Friendly quickly ask, “Is
it ‘do them well’ or ‘do them good?’”
Eyes
gleaming, Yermey asked, “Who are you two going to be?”
Responding
in a mischievous tone, Hartolite comments, “I’m Hart and she’s Fran.”
“We’re
sisters,” adds Friendly.
***
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