Early for you to be at the park, but here
you are. Carol is out walking. – Amorella
0805 hours. Last night I had the
memory of being asked to take off my beret in Westminster Abbey. The older
fellow looked at me rather sternly and said, “This is a church.” I knew this of
course but at the moment we had just left Poets’ Corner and I was thinking
museum. I dutifully took off my beret and felt rather embarrassed mostly
because my father, in his later years, told me to take my hat off when we were
eating at a respectable restaurant. Then a couple of years ago when we were at
the Wayside Inn near Concord a lady berated me in the parking lot because I had
worn my beret while eating in the restaurant. I told her, “My father didn’t
like me wearing a hat either . . . so that is probably the reason I do it.” She
left in a huff like I had spoiled her dinner. The Westminster Abbey incident
was an error. I was thinking about Chaucer because we had just visited his
burial sight.
This got you to wondering about the chapter
format and segment set up in the Merlyn books. Each segment is under or just
over 800 words. None that you remember are under 700 words. This focused you on
the length of the Prologue characters in The Canterbury Tales and you wonder if
you unwittingly borrowed the segment format from Chaucer. Now, you think, “That
was rather arrogant of me.” – Amorella
0817 hours. It was, if this is true,
that I borrowed from him. I will have to check the word length of some of his
characters in the Prologue to see if there is any correlation. Of course this
is just circumstance and means nothing in itself except to me. – Why dig so
deep as to copy Chaucer? Sheer laziness would have prevented it. I really don’t
know why I waste such time pondering such details that are of no real
importance.
Good reason to stop, boy. I would like you
to mention the incident in Westminster though in Brothers 2.1. – Amorella
0824 hours. Whatever you find useful
is fine with me. Time to just sit and enjoy the birds singing on such a cloudy
day. Rain is coming, or so they say.
1227
hours. I finished Brothers 2.1.
You also completed your forty minutes of
exercise. Add and post. – Amorella
***
The Brothers 2.2 © 2014, rho
“Can
you believe the girls are still looking for new hats?” gripes Richard.
Robert,
sitting in the driver’s seat, sighs, shakes his head sideways in his typically
reasonable manner, “Deal with it Richie.”
“It
just pisses me off. We bought our caps in sight of ten minutes, and we have
been waiting in the car ever since.”
“I
don’t know why we do this every year. The women go out and buy all this stuff
for Christmas and want to have it wrapped even though we know what we are
getting, even the daughters know.” He fiddles with the steering wheel of the
Lexus, “It is just a waste of time.”
“It’s
a cultural façade,” comments Richard nonchalantly.
“I’m
not talking about Christmas. I’m talking about the present wrapping.”
“That’s
just time wasting, like you said. I mean it was okay to wrap all that stuff
when the kids were young and didn’t know any better, but our kids have a kid.”
“They’ll
just say it’s for the kid,” mimics Robert also nonchalantly.
“Women.”
“You
know the old cliché.” The twin brothers’ minds recollected the old banalities
about marriage and relationships.
“Sometimes
it would be nice to not be here, to just go away to some deserted isle and contemplate
the absurdity,” says Richard.
Robert
picks up on the comment and taps his brother on the shoulder, grins and
comments, “That reminds me of the incident in London where the fellow wanted to
kick you out of Westminster. I wanted to be on a deserted island at the moment
and contemplate the absurdity of the charge.”
“It
was absurd,” laughs Richard. “We had just left the Poets’ Corner and the old geezer
says to me, “This is a church, hat off please.” I immediately felt bad, he
thought. People were always telling me to take my beret off out of respect;
they didn’t say that but that is what the meant. We had just visited Chaucer’s
encased remains. He was the first who sparked an interest in the human
condition. “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote; The drought of Marche
hath perced to the roote.”
“What
are you thinking about bro?”
“Geoffrey
Chaucer. He changed my life with . . .
“And
specially, from every shires ende
Of
Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The
holy blisful martir for to seke,
That
hem hath holpen, when that they were seke”
“A
good doctor would have been better than the martyr, don’t you think?” asks
Robert respectfully.
“We
took that pilgrimage too, Robbie.”
“We
did, but we had poems to write didn’t we Dickie.”
“People
had an innocence in those days. And, even today, at least when we were there
the last time, a single burning candle sat on the floor near the Chair of the
first Archbishop, St. Augustine. I thought that very cool. Inspiring even, that
in this day and age someone would light a candle in memory of Thomas Becket,
murdered at the cathedral.”
“It
was inspiring that anyone remembers,” adds Robert thinking on one of his poems
in remembrance of . . ..”
Just
then, Connie and Cindy come out of Macy’s with their load of hat bags. Both are
sister chatting – listening and talking as if it were a simultaneous
translation in the works. Twinning is a process as much as it is a function but
these two aren’t twins the brothers are.
“Finally,
we are out of here,” comments Richard with relief.
“I
couldn’t have stood another minute,” adds Robert, whose point is missed by
Richard.
Once
the women had loaded the car and were sitting comfortably in the back seat,
Connie enthusiastically asks, “Where are we going for lunch?”
“I
would like the Tea and Sandwich Express,” replies Cindy.
“Why
don’t we park there,” says Robert.
“And,
we’ll walk across the street to Taco Bell,” completes Richard.
“What
have you two been talking about?”
“Memories
mostly,” responds Robert.
“Were
we in the conversation?” questions Connie.
“Of
course. We were thinking about our last trip to London,” notes Richard, “and
Westminster.”
“Oh,”
says Cyndi, “you were talking about being asked to take off your beanie.”
“Beanie,
that’s a good one,” notes Rob.
“You
know it’s a beret,” directs Richard.
She
responds, “Just trying to get your goat, dear.”
“Remember
when you two were college freshmen and had to wear those ridiculous beanies,”
says Connie.
“I
kind of liked them,” comments Cyndi. “They both looked cute and innocent.”
“No
one’s is ever innocent,” remarks Robert.
“Babe’s
are,” badgers Cyndi.
“Depends
on their age, isn’t that right, Robbie.”
“Hey,
our two babes are always innocent,” replies his twin. All four laugh.
***
1716
hours. The time has rolled by. I have completed Grandma 2.1. It appears intact.
I manipulated the ingredients into a new recipe by cutting the work in half and
dropping it together on the run, so to speak. It appears to have worked. I will
better be able to judge this in the morning.
You had the time, Carol was either napping
or on her Mac. Here it is. Load and post, boy. No more tonight. – Amorella
***
Grandma’s Story 2.1 © 2014, rho
Criteria
and Renaldo had a big wedding in Greece. Plenty of money flowed from Criteria
side of the family. Once established that the Queen of the Scotland is a
cousin. Criteria buys land and a comfortable house fit for the now Lady and Lord
in Scotland. Both give up previous Catholic duties as story gatherers and live
peacefully on the Isle of Arran off the southwest coast of Scotland where the
warmer Gulf Stream flows. The birth of their first child brings immediate
problems, says Grandma.
*
Criteria
lies exhausted. Two servants, Kirsten and her sister, Flora, work to control
the birth baby’s periodic seizures. Between the baby’s muscle twitching and
salivating, the child stares blankly and falls limp. The babe rejects any
substance. Crying would start then stop. The open eyes become motionlessness.
This sets Lord Renaldo on his knees in fully intense private quiet prayer.
In
her late thirties Criteria is seized by the newly felt pain of a mother’s
world. Immediately recognizing that praying
is not the answer here.
Two
days and nights fly by. The newborn boy sporadically takes in nourishment then
lies still only to be plagued with outbursts and seizures. Everyone in the household becomes
nearly physically exhausted and emotionally devastated.
This
child should not take so long to die is the silent unshared thinking. This
concludes with a ‘May the good Lord take now.’ The unsettling wonder is who the
prayer is actually for.
“His
head is fighting his body,” says Kirsten.
“How
can a newborn know which is which?” asks Flora.
“Angels
know things,” notes Renaldo. “He is a fighter.” He thinks, this boy is a warrior.
If he survives, he will become a warrior for God. If he dies, he will rise as a
new angel among the rest. His body moves in spite of his head. Doubts rise like
blackened suns. A retired order of God should not be the Lord of anything. What
would Criteria have me do besides pray? What else can a retired monk do?
*
“I
see a runner,” says Flora the next mid-morning. “A strange man running this way.”
Silence for a moment.
“It is Merlyn!” shouts Renaldo, “Merlyn!
Merlyn is here at our manor! Merlyn is here!”
Tam,
the head servant, opens the door and immediately bows. “It is an honor, a
blessing. The baby. You came to help the baby.”
Merlyn
acknowledges the bow with a slighter one. He hears the immediate cry up the
stairs. He commands, “Let me see
this child. I shall have a way with him.”
Merlyn
holds him. The swaddling clothed boy trembles at the fingers while his elbows
shake to a different rhythm. “Get me sea salt,” he orders, and head servant Tam
is on his way. Merlyn holds the child carefully and observes the boy’s every
movement and recognizes there was an order to it. The twitching slows and the
blank staring begins. With a blink the boy drools. Limpness. A few drops of
urine. The tiny, vulnerable seeming infringed upon body stiffens. The twitching
begins at the extremity of one limb or another. An elbow or a knee would then
quiver. Trembling and quivering and crying or screaming commences. Merlyn sees
the boy in and out of this world both at once and suddenly foreshadows his own
fate -- how it is it that I, Merlyn, will experience this terrible sensation in
my own life? How is it that I will find myself in two places at once like this
poor child . . . I am stuck frozen and flat in this future place.
The cold stone surrounds a pond of stars. I am here then and now. I am the
shaman dancing. A shaman I do not know looks at me and points to a not so
bright star, and says “We are from there,” then he points to the soil beneath
my feet, and continues, “to here.” Here, his vision ends.
*
It
seems like half a day, which it is not, when Tam returns with a sack of sea
salt. Merlyn makes a solution in a bowl of water and put a cloth to soak within
it. He takes the cloth and squeezes a few drops into the child’s mouth. He does
this several times in the afternoon, and thus Merlyn saves the firstborn son of
Lady Criteria and Lord Renaldo. By evening the young babe begins to become a
stronger, healthier and well-reasoned child.
Merlyn the
Magician has an unknowing trick up his sleeve
His mind is
in a nature for his dreams to slide and weave.
***
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