Mid-morning.
You are ready to work on ebook chapter four.
0855 hours. It is a sunny morning. I have been thinking
about working at least three chapters today. I feel good about this tweaking –
it flows better, more like Merlyn is telling the story out loud.
1036
hours. It takes more time to do these chapters than I thought but it is almost
joyous when doing the work. Odd, it is like I have not read the work before so
I can read it as a new reader might, looking mostly for errors in flow while
catching a grammar or contextual error almost accidently. Two more chapters to
go.
Afternoon. You had lunch at Panera and have
stopped at Hallmark for added small Christmas ornaments for the boys. You
completed chapter five and are ready for six. – Amorella
1355 hours. I am really enjoying working on these chapters.
I keep reading it aloud in my head and searching for any errors or
constructions that do not easily show the story. This is the most satisfying
aspect of final proofing.
You have the next three chapters. Drop them
in and post. – Amorella
2236 hours. This is fun work Amorella. I enjoy this very
much.
*** ***
© 2014 GMG.One – Richard H. Orndorff
Chapter Four
Crème de la Crème
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 4
Sophia,
wearing a linen Doric chiton, a violet linen cloth draped over her left
shoulder dropping in folds around the blouse and over the hips to the ankles,
steps off the ancient stage in Merlyn’s sanctuary. Merlyn smiles, speculating
how the style of Sophia’s spiritual dress would be considered delightfully more
intimately in the twenty-first century, suggesting as it were that the beautiful
ghostly spirit is ready to crawl into her bed beckoning Merlyn to follow.
Merlyn
spirit reels in a bit younger than the moment before, clasps her right hand
with both of his and says, “My Sophia, I am honored, you are always a welcome
sight.”
Sophia
comments in a voice melodically soft and honest, “I understand our Mother was
recently here. What a beautiful meadow you commend your heart to be, Merlyn.”
“This
place is where I touch the living,” responds Merlyn. “I think the Dead who are
fit will find this a challenge.” He pauses, “Mother Glevema stopped by asking
for you.” Merlyn continues with a confident smile and points to the northeast.
“On the other side of the cemetery stone one can touch the Living.”
“Can
you show me beyond that granite one day, Merlyn?” To be alive again races in
wonderment from Sophia's heartansoul into mind alone.
Calmly
feeling her rush, Merlyn suggests, “We have forgotten much of what Life is in
the moment. I see and feel through Richard Greystone, a spirit partially
ensnared with his identical twin’s spirit. One day you may walk with me among
the Living.” says Merlyn while observing Sophia's features suddenly dissolve.
Heart's
memory cocked the trigger, Merlyn’s soul rises as the sun, his mind re-forms
the billiard table and Merlyn sees the solids and stripes scatter about on the
slate's green field. Merlyn notes the purple-striped 12 ball resting on the cue
mark. Sophia clothing is violet dyed linen, he appraises and surmises, Sophia
is the 12 ball on my mind.
The
12 ball disappears to a shade from the mark in his mind. I have seen this
before, considers Merlyn, once in ancient Elysium. Panagiotakis, the old
shaman, Panagiotakis, who had said, “We are from There, to Here,” is
standing below me. The billiard table faded as a thought.
The
Prophet, Ezekiel, is alongside Panagiotakis and two others are on this side of
the Styx where no earthly tremors exist. I, Merlyn, sit cross-legged high in
the tree behind the shamans on the shoreline of the River. The four souls, each
as alone, dances in the center of a shaded circle down below. Their shades flow
into the bank of the Styx.
The
table rises in the mind. Takis, Ezekiel and the two others form four billiard
balls in Merlyn’s mind. He continues, ‘I see those souls William Blake-like and
fiery flamed and dancing. The Rebellion of the First Ten Thousand Greek Dead
began not soon before. This Rebellion of the Dead pulled human will into
grave’s gravity and the twelve major cultures of the world of the human Dead
are pulled in with it.
Human
spirits become less high-minded, as common letters in any human alphabet spoken
or signed. Each spirit scoots about no better than the common letter, until
with great personal will a spirit letter rises to its capital letter height.
Merlyn
reflects this assessment and the capital of the question rises to the left with
the question mark punctuating on its right. Length and width rise, adding the
undiscovered third dimension to the Dead’s perspective. This is how it was
after the Rebellion of the First
Ten Thousand lost to the Supervisor.
In
wonder, Merlyn returns to his stone chair. In Earth’s modern day, since the
more recent in Richard and Robert’s time, Second Rebellion of the Dead brings
more perspective to the Dead with a sun in the sky and earth below. Before the
first Rebellion during the time of Homer the Storyteller, the sky of the Dead
was blue and dotted with periodic white clouds but no rain. Collectively within
the human spirit, the greater community of heartansoulanmind, we continue in a
place of solitude, a suit to disguise our nakedness. Many dead huddle together
in a patchwork like quilt, afraid of strangers, or worse, afraid of themselves.
No one else with any sense of deadanliving can return to the living experience
in any manner but memory, no one but I, Merlyn, feel the bridge of
present-past-future. I feel as the mysterious Betweener, a spirit-in
the-physics-and-not. Unequivocally, this great Merlyn’s ghost feels that in
dreams the Living can intuitively understand what it means to be among the
quick and the dead both at once.
***
The Brothers 4
Richard
awakens to hear their daughter Julie chattering from downstairs in the kitchen.
He surmises Julie and Jenni are here with their kids, Ronda and David. He
surmises, no doubt brother Rob will be popping in wondering why I am not up.
In
a tone of melodiously forced politeness, Cyndi shouts, “Are you up, Richard?
Ronda is bringing David.”
Richard
rolls over feigning sleep. Noisy feet on the steps give way as the door slightly
creaks from the bottom hinge he had promised to lubricate a month earlier. I
hear my favorite four and two year olds on the steps. Do I feign a deep sleep
or rise up from the sheet with a lion's I-am-going-to-get-you roar?
*
Later
in the day, after a large family meal at a nearby Longhorn Steak House, Robert
and Richard return to sit in the living room, each in a high back chair, with
Julie on the left side of the living room couch followed by four year old Ronda
and two year old David and his mother, Robert and Connie’s daughter, Jennifer.
Robert mentions on how good the kids were at lunch when David scooted off and
under the gray marble topped coffee table looking for his blue Thomas the train
engine. Ronda remarks, “I'm going to the kitchen to see Grandma.” Julie, being
the older, speaks first, “Thank you for lunch, Uncle Richard. We always have a
good time coming over.”
“We
have a good time,” mimics Jennifer. “Dad, you and Uncle Rob are going to
babysit while we girls go shopping?”
In
a quiet demeanor like her mother’s, Julie quickly adds, “Mom said it was okay.
We are so glad you are retired and can take care of the kids once in a while.
We appreciate it.”
Looking
directly at Richard, Cyndi comments, “We could not imagine living so far away,
like your parents Jennifer.”
In
the bond of family togetherness, Jennifer remarks, “It is good what with my
Calvin out of town at a conference, and Julie’s Allen working six days a week.”
She smiles graciously, commenting, “I am not complaining at least the kids'
fathers both have jobs.”
“We've
been there,” respond Rob and Rich almost simultaneously. The two sets of
grandparents laughed light heartedly and began chatting about how each was in
the process of redecorating one room or another.
Rob
and Rich could both hear the strain of
we-wish-we-had-the-time-and-energy-to-think-on-such-things in their voices. The
twin grandfathers recollect on how it was with each of their children, who were
affectionately called ‘rug rats’ in the late seventies. Life and the business
that ensues in one's thirties, forties, and into the fifties -- work, home,
errands, chores and parenting; more parenting, errands, chores, home and work,
all crammed in and on life's familiar rotating stages of such philosophical and
practical goals of ‘We do whatever works best for the family first. Everything
else is second’.
Both
brothers conclude their silent high back chair conversation in the general
theme of 'the fifties were a much better time for growing up than today'.
Fortunately, both sets of grandparents had some money saved and invested.
Neither had debts beyond monthly credit cards paid in full. Every generation,
from time to time, helped their children and grandchildren survive better. This
generation of the family is no different.
The
thirties were hard economic times and then there was a great world war to
resolve. The parents of Rob and Connie and Richard and Cyndi grew older through
the administrations of FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon,
Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton none of that generation lived passed the
tenure of George W. As young children not a one would have dreamed a Negro
would become President of the United States shortly after their demise.
The
events in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries subtly and not so
subtly altered the social and cultural dynamics of people in every country of
the world. Families resided in the genes of thousands upon thousands of the
ancestors and the youngsters will reside in descendants of the brothers Robert Greystone,
his spouse, Connie Bleacher and Richard Greystone and his spouse Cyndi
Bleacher. Who, like the rest of humanity feel and share a common genetic link.
We are all fifty-second cousins, or so thinks Richard as he reflects on his
personal and the universal family in the species, Homo sapiens.
That
evening Richard falls asleep after an exhausting and fun day with family.
Merlyn stirs in the wake of the first snore.
***
Grandma’s Story 4
This
is Grandma. I once caught a
passion leaking away on a particularly contrary human spirit named Wexer. He
has since disappeared among the Dead and no one knows what happened to him.
Once Wexer’s special woman spirit friend discerned his utter lack of spiritual
being and left him, she was surprised to find herself more at peace.
Wexer
enjoys debating most people, his spirit thrilled on a confrontation like a
pyromaniac's eyes bored into a roaring blaze. Once dead, and finding but one
friend (she never disagreed) among the Dead he becomes profoundly bored. His
whiplash-and-biting-spirit-of-a-tongue falls into great desperation. Wexer
finally decides it is time to have a singular great internal debate between his
heart and mind, something he would have never thought to do in life’s continual
commotion. Wexer knows the in's and out's of grammar and logic in his native
language. He believes himself sharper and cleverer than anyone he ever chose to
know. His slippery and restless spirit concludes, 'I have never lost a debate
and there is no way I can lose this one as heart and mind are both my own.'
The
debate between his heart and mind focuses on his singular woman friend who had
always agreed with him. Wexer's mind is convinced that his friend is pretending
to agree, that she cannot possibly agree with all his arguments for or against
one passion or another. Wexer's heart, on the other hand, debates that the
woman friend, his only friend, does not disagree with him because she loves him
so terribly much. The deeper Wexer's spirit whips its arguments the less resolve
Wexer discovers he has in coming to a conclusion as to which is the winner of
the argument, his heart or his mind.
Grandma
sashays in doing a little calypso dance in her bare feet, throws her hands over
her head, twirls, and claps three times. She smiles like the glow of a tropical
sunset and whispered a secret, “I just love these little freedom stories.”
Who
won, Wexer's mind or heart? Why did he disappear even among the Dead? Why did
his woman friend become more at peace with herself after Wexer's spirit, his
heartansoulanmind, disappeared from the scene? What do you think happens when
heart and mind battle to a stalemate?
*
I
have one more dead man's short story here. Another ancestor, a shaman of about
seven thousand years ago in the area of the Black Sea, stood by the fire one
cloudy dark night in summer and says, “I have a new story. This is about a man
who can be in two places at once while he is still alive. He can be standing
here like me, telling a story, and,” he points to his north, “be in the nearby
woods telling a story at the same time. How do you think he accomplishes this?”
The
shaman discovers he can be enormously entertaining while being instructive in
giving an unsolvable mystery no one could decipher to everyone’s satisfaction.
Here is the question: how is it possible for a person to be telling the same
story in more than one place at the same time?”
This
story is so popular that shamans throughout the world are soon asking the
question to their neighbors along the major world trade routes had been set
into motion because people wanted goods from far away places. People want
something valuable to keep for security, for peace of mind, and for the
pleasure of having material goods they did not already have. Storytelling helps
pass the time on the journeys from Asia to Europe and Europe to Africa and from
Africa to Asia. Some of the stories even migrate to the Americas.
*
This
particular storyteller creates a mysterious set of written characters that
allowed the carving of the story line onto a tree. Other tribe members are
taught to read the runes, so it was possible for someone to be reading the
story in one place while it was being told at the same time in another place
entirely. Few could believe such a marvelous invention, but they soon discover
belief isn’t a part of the equation. Below is a representative translation of
what the shaman wrote.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G
Now the characters you can see
H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P
Each as individual as you or me
Q, R, S, T, U, and V
Allow each us to remain free
W, X, Y, and Z
The beginning and the end carved on a
tree.
You see, from Grandma’s tongue, tooth
and gum
Some unfamiliar runes this way come.
***
Diplomatic Pouch 4
By
late mid-morning the next day Justin watches as Blake inspects the slightly
damaged Rolls-Royce turboprop Cessna P210N Silver Eagle. Pyl waits at the
entrance to the Burke Lakefront terminal for Fran and her companion to arrive.
Shortly
after introductions and a walk to the east side of the terminal Justin stands next
to the wire fence watching as Blake answering the women’s questions and
pointing out various aspects of the Silver Eagle. Justin feels it odd that they
would bring their U.S. passports to prove of identity when a driver’s license
would do; and why do they want to buy this plane? Why are they willing to give
so much for a refurbished old plane?
I
don't feel any safer flying in it. I'd feel better if it were a brand new
Cessna, not so fancy, just newer. A thought crossed. Here it is, another sunny
and relatively warm day in January, no wind, it feels like early April. I
wonder if we are going to fly. He continued his observations and private
thoughts while leaning back on the fence with he arms crossed as if he were an
airport inspector.
Within
an hour Justin felt some pangs for lunch and was ready for a soda at the
terminal when Pyl waved from down and across from the row of planes he had
casually checked over as if they were a string of used cars.
Pyl
smiles profusely as he draws closer. "Blake won’t sell for a million and a
half. Hart says she wants to take a ride anyway and she talked it up with Fran,
so Fran asked Blake for a ride over to Put-in-Bay saying she'd give us a
thousand dollars for the ride there and back because she loves flying in a Silver
Eagle similar to the one her uncle had when she was a child. We are all going.
It ought to be fun. Maybe we’ll have a picnic in the park. In January no less,
can you believe this weather Justin?"
He
sighs. "I guess; but I could use a drink."
Hardly
contains her excitement Pyl says, "Go get something and get me a candy bar
and one for you too. We’ll get the plane checked out and ready." Her
memory runs to the time Mom, Dad, Blake and she flew to Put-in-Bay for an
afternoon of fun. Sometimes we stopped at Port Clinton and took a cab to Cedar
Point, as kids we always had good times in this plane.
Justin
turns and pensively asks, "Pyl, what about the damaged wingtip?"
She
smiles reassuringly, "It'll be okay, Justin. Blake wrote out a report. We
are getting it repaired next week. The plane is safe to fly." She wonders,
why Justin is on edge. Even when we were first dating he had an issue with
safety issues, I thought they were resolved. I wanted him to take lessons but
he would have none of it. He’s just a conservative old soul in a young body,
that’s what he says, but he never knows why he is like he is.
Within
the next hour the five flew from Burke Lakefront on the secondary runway,
6R/24L on their way to the South Bass Island. Blake turns from the controls at
ten thousand feet commenting, "The 3W2 Put-in-Bay airport is open for
light traffic this time of year. It'll be fine, it's a nice strip."
From
the co-pilot seat Pyl spontaneously adds, "This will be fun. We’ll see
Perry's Monument and the town. We can rent a golf cart and take a quick tour,
get something to eat then be on our way."
Blake
glances back, "Our treat, ladies, you are quite generous with your
payment. I’m glad you’re not too upset that I don’t want to sell the old girl –
she’s been in the family too long."
"We
are glad to have you all along with us," replies Fran. "It is always
nice to make new friends, even if we could not come to a deal. It is a delight
to be flying in this wonderfully reconditioned Silver Eagle. The stories we could
tell you about our younger days flying with our Uncle Jack."
"And
you can fly us back, Fran, but if you don't mind, I'll sit co-pilot,” says
Blake comfortably.
"Fine
with me," she said, and she looked at Hart with an excited smile,
mimicking a "Won't this be fun."
Hart
responds to the private sarcasm with wide eyes and an accented raised right
eyebrow.
***
Chapter Five
Satisfaction
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 5
Merlyn
sits in his sanctuary on the rock in front of his comfortable hut-of-a-home on
the meadow in the river valley mostly surrounded by hill and forest and that
huge granite dome to his northeast. No billiards this time around, his mind
acquiesces to his heartfelt surroundings and his heart in turn submits to his
soul. His assessment, I love this solitude. It is one of the great joys of
being among the Dead.
An
older feminine-like voice stirs: “This is your soul, Merlyn.”
Merlyn
has heard this Voice before. He
considers it from the point of view of the great horned owl and the fox he once
trained as pets. Good teachers, both, he concludes and asks in an aside, “Is my
soul a teacher as are my fox and owl?”
His
mind drifts. It is only right that I listen to this Voice within, who, soul or
not, is a slice of my underlying deathless nature. He glances to the north
woods to see his great horned owl appear on a limb as his pet fox rolls his
reddish brown coat in the meadow grass below the high limb. How is it that at
times I can observe either fox or owl eating a rodent? This is my private
environment of heart, soul and mind. I have not commanded the rodent for their
nourishment. Food is no more than focused consciousness usually embedded in
shared conversation among friends.
The
Voice burrows to the membrane of his self-awareness, “Listen closely the
ancient music is close at hand, Merlyn.”
Intuitively
tuned, Merlyn waits. He hears one heartbeat then a second echoing. I know this
friend’s heartbeat, ruminates Merlyn. He is a connection from my journey to and
from the time of the Rebellion of Ten Thousand, and seeing Ezekiel.
Ezekiel’s
growing light diffracts in Merlyn’s own. A single prophetic ray plunges through
his mind as a sunbeam on Earth might break through the surface of still water.
Surprised
at the unsought company, Ezekiel utters, “Who is the least angelic-like of all
my friends?” He thinks, the shadows in this scattered line feel as shades of
dispersed bubbles dictating matter from nothing. Ezekiel says, “What comes next
is an interweaving event-in-descriptive-mind that soul-spirit neither dead man
would have expected, but it is shared –
“It is the beginning and my spine shivers. I am inside
and there is no way out. This is the reason my forearms shiver. My fingers are
cold and I am becoming an ice forming on the Great River. I am a floating
semi-solid on uncommon ground. I am Ezekiel dancing . . . I am a string of
poetic devices – dancing. I do not exist and am able to reflect on this even
now. I am the bottom line while the top line is righteousness reunited.”
*
On
this reasoning Merlyn wonders . .
. "I sit above and beyond the
turbulence. I find it is not so easy crossing between heart-to-soul-to-mind no
matter what or who this soul’s bridge is. How much more difficult is it for the
Living who are not so nearly fully human as we to judge soul’s voice from heart
or mind?
Ghostly
solidification comes with accepting a nearly if not impossible thought. The
human spirit becomes as stone in the mindansoul freezing of the heart. Being observed
is contemplation. Who observes me-an-me? These are the questions of the
thawing spirits of Merlyn and Ezekiel.
Merlyn
breaks this event deeming it no more real than imagination sprouting
wonderment. Consideration is a pretty package for recognizing the ever-present,
the here and now. Merlyn folds within a distinctly human margin of error.
“Ezekiel,
a heartansoulanmind, a human spirit I remember singularly,” says Merlyn. “There
are other shaman friends who have danced in a rebellion or two above and below
the Great River's Divide. To tap a friend's soul is to tap shared echoes of two
once beating hearts in the singular recognition of brotherhood.
Sharing
a friend’s touch is human righteousness; a wordless understanding of what is
real from Earth to Heaven and Heaven to Earth.
This
Merlyn feels as he contemplates within his private sanctuary, his soul’s sudden
primary construction wherein many a spirit may pass. Merlyn settles forgetting he is dead and envisions in voice
alone, “I alone feel the Boatman’s keel sliding over my spine.”
***
The Brothers 5
Robert
and Richard walk west on Walnut down to the end of Grove Street and left
crossed into the north entrance and oldest section of John Knox College
Cemetery. The oldest of the noted trees topping the old northwest section
overlooking the river has been officially estimated to be over four hundred
years old.
I
have known these gravestones since I was a small child, considers Richard as he
and Robert walk the narrow tar and stone chipped cemetery road south off the
end of Grove Street. The stone and stained glass mausoleum stand ahead. Richard
asks, “Do you remember the size of this place?”
Robert
grins, “The mausoleum is sixty by eighty feet, something like that.”
“That’s
good, Rob. I know it has about three hundred crypts.”
“Now,
I’d forgotten that. It’s an interesting building location in relationship to
the cemetery.”
“Particularly
this old west section.” comments Richard while noting composer Benjamin Hanby’s
decorated grave to his right.
Once
arriving at the large steel and stained glass door, the twin’s hands cupped
their eyes so they can peer through to the fifty-six feet to the beautiful
piece of stained glass in the mausoleum’s south wall. Between that wall and
themselves are square oriented central hall pillars separating the first bank,
second and third banks of crypts to the east and west sides. A wooden podium
stands center just in front of the south wall’s stained glass blues, yellows
and greens. On either side of the podium are Doric columns. The entire interior
is a white and gray Vermont marble.
Richard
backs from the door saying, “I’ve got the key. The city service department
loaned it to me.”
Robert
gleams, “We haven’t been inside here for an age. Good show, bro.”
“No,
we haven’t. I want to see our great grandparents’ crypts and take some
pictures.”
“For
your Merlyn books?”
“No,
no pictures in the book. A few years ago when I was studying the history of the
place I discovered something.”
“What’s
that?”
Richard
pointed, “There are symbols of the world’s seven great religions.”
“I
didn’t know that.”
Richard
turns the key, “Neither did I.”
“Wait,”
suggests Robert. “Let’s go around the outside first. Remember how we pretended
this was a great ancient Egyptian artifact when we were kids?”
“Here
we are in our seventies and the place still looks like something out of the
first Indiana Jones movie.”
Pointing,
Robert comments, “Look at those massive limbs on that tree. Someone could have
been hanged from that tree.”
“I
don’t think it was ever used for that though,” answers Richard. He points south
down the hill. “We used to play along here and west down to the river.”
“Good
guys versus bad guys.” Robert’s smile dissipates. “We didn’t really know much
difference back then.”
“Nope,”
responds Richard, “Playing was just fun. We still have the sky above, stones,
trees and grass, and the Dead below. This place is always good for
philosophizing.” He continues, “when you look at an aerial picture of the
cemetery from about fifteen hundred feet, it looks like the bottom of a circuit
board.”
“How’s
that?”
“I
downloaded a photo from Google Earth; from that height the tombstones look like
solder joints on the bottom side of an integrated circuit board.” determines
Richard.
“What’s
the point, Richie? Cemeteries and circuit boards are all man made.”
“I
know, Robbie,” quips Richard. “But thinking about the pattern of the cemetery
from the air is interesting."
“Robert
chuckles, “Richie,” (he pauses appropriately) “Is your analogy to make coffins
somehow transistors that create a natural radio station from the Dead to the Living?”
Richard
ignores the comment replying, “Maybe the placements of stones and trees makes
this a naturally haunted place? I’m making an assessment for the book here. The
circuit board analogy is something I think a modern Merlyn might agree with.”
"The
Living and the Dead complete a circuit at the cemetery; pretty good,
Dickie." Robert rolls his eyes up and to the left remarking, "When we
were kids old people used to tell us this cemetery was haunted. Now they are
all dead.”
“Good
one, Rob.” Rob always has the good one liner, thinks Richard. He’s as sharp as
a scalpel he used to hold in his right hand.
Neither
had a word for a few moments.
“I’ll
be in here before you are,” deadpans Robert.
“Yes,”
mirrors Richard without consideration, “You
always try to be first at what we do.”
***
Grandma’s Story 5
I
have a little story that began several thousand years ago. The setting of this
ancestor is an island off Southeast Asia. A woman, Ka and a man, Khrap are
arguing which of the gods each wanted to place on their front house stone. The
woman’s goddess is kind and generous to a fault, and she considers it would be
appropriate to show the guest, whoever she or he was, that the guest is always
welcome to their home.
The
man replies that he feels his defender-of-the-home goddess is best to display
first because this shows the guest is welcome, that home security for family
and friends is more important than hospitality. Ka and Khrap fight about this
situation off and on during the next year. For the sake of family peace both
homeowners agreed that it is better to have no god or goddess on their front
house stones than to have one first and the other second.
One
might suspect the god and goddess would be offended because neither stood by
the door, but for reasons unknown this is not the case. The absence of a god or
goddess does not promote the peace in the household that both wish. It isn’t
long before the ebbs and tides of personal anger and insult break into a
no-holds-barred physical battle between Ka and Khrap.
To
end all the squabbling and noise Ka stabs Khrap with his favorite defensive
weapon, a long knife at the same time Khrap brings down his sharpened ax for
chopping wood. Both died shortly after. This does not end the argument however.
Ka and Khrap are still fighting in the Place of the Dead the marsupial
humanoids call HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither. Neither of these two human remnants
realizes their physically death. The battle continues in a deeply contagious
metaphysical question rooted and pride and anger. Homeland security or curtsey
and politeness are no longer the problem.
I,
Grandma, see a humor here, but those in battle don’t often see it that way. Not
much real humor surrounds the battlefield in either the physical or the
metaphysical human state. Grandma's face turns into a full Halloween moon. The
tricks the human mind is capable of pulling on one's self are greater than the
tricks conceivable to play on others. HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither contains
humanity. Pride, anger . . . as psychological examples of the once Seven Deadly
are worthless here. The Dead are, however, allowed to wear such tokens
around their ghostly necks as the Living wear jewelry. Each is spirit with
choice until she or he has no choices left. Ka and Khrap, realize no one or
nothing but themselves. Their spirits hang bat-like upside down in a common
sanctuary. Each piece of humanity feeds on the other until indifference is the
norm then, after a while nothing spiritual exists. Nothing. Their souls are
eventually cleansed and float freely awaiting new heartsanminds. A heart and
mind are capable of being wasted as many can plainly see. A soul may be empty
or full, but it is a soul still.
Grandma
wanes then brightens her smile to full Halloween again. All who labor in life
know there are tricks to the trade no matter what the trade is. Souls
understand their trade. This is how Grandma sees it. Only the heart and mind
may begin and end, the soul is.
The
soul is not what people think, at least not in this storytelling. Many assume
the soul is the foundation of humanity, but the foundation of humanity is its
gravity first and mass second. The soul is not indebted to mass or gravity; it
is a shell to protect the human spirit. The soul alone is as a human being with
a mind but without a heart to give the mind meaning. That’s the way it is,
here, within Merlyn’s dreams.
You measure once, you measure twice,
and much to your surprise
How fast and long the logic runs for
the brain to theorize.
My goddess stands here, your god stand
there, on a frontal stone bare
The brain in the body is stuck; but the mind runs free and
unaware
In all the while, this story, moon-like
themed and bright, sums
The waning and waxing heartanmind burns
soulless and no-where runs.
***
Diplomatic Pouch 5
Yermey
sits watching Ship’s vital signs on the left and his own vital signs on the
right. Friendly and Hartolite are being separately bio-tracked by Ship in private.
Yermey surmises the present situation. The left-wingtip-cleansing-of-the-Cessna
shouldn't be a problem as long as Ship agrees. I cannot understand, imagines
Yermey, why this sterilizing-to-earth-normal operation is not completed
automated at the moment of touch. It is a matter of security. Yermey remains
poker-faced and chess-minded. The key, he surmises, is Ship records no change
in my bio-registering vitals physically, emotionally or mentally. Though I note
change. I continue to win this secret contest I have with Ship because first
and foremost, Ship does not realize he is being monitored by me.
Yermey’s
eyes return to his earth-built laptop where he reads the personal Facebook page
of Pyl Williams-Burroughs. He concludes Pyl is quite pretty, and that she
appears from his perspective to be in her mid three hundred fifties in years,
while physically a mere thirty-five years on Earth.
Pyl
could live well so much longer if we extend our knowledge to her and the people
of Earth. Suddenly Yermey felt a slight stirring at his groin. His
dishevel-curled male organ quickly rises semi-erect to an average adult
earthworm length of six inches in a full quarter of an inch diameter. His
scrotum with two full pea-sized testes begins aching wretchedly. Yermey snap-minds,
‘I have done nothing to provoke this half erection.’ This uncalled-for-physical
event lasts into five minutes. Ship registered Yermey's eye movements every
second he observed the amenable photos of a fully clothed Pyl
Williams-Burroughs. His maleness provokes almost aloud, 'Pyl, has breasts on
her chest rather than the natural teats-in-her-pouch. Breasts?’
Yermey
has never seen or heard of a male marsupial humanoid having a partial erection
without at least an hour of physical stimulation. The marsupial humanoid penis
is 'up and down' in less time than it takes to say the words aloud. He
immediately drives the thought into oblivion and watches his emotional brain
and body roll to a complete rest.
Ship's
response is normalized. Nevertheless, Yermey is plagued with a single nearly
frozen thought in the center of his spirit, 'Ship understands me better than I
do.' It takes an extreme patient of will for Yermey not to perspire. 'I am
almost five hundred years old and I have a revelation.’ He slowly closes the
laptop and gets up from the chair and pushanpulls his bedinabox-open as his
desk-folds-over-the-laptop and slides quietly under the floor. Exhausted he
immediately fell asleep.
*
Ship
has intuitively senses a shadow of a Yermey’s human spirit, his
heartansoulanmind, In analytical delight Ship savors the revelation as a
singular physiological experience.
Ship
also realizes Yermey has had such an experience. Being modified for recent
travel through a destabilized dark-matter oriented hyper-string-field permanent
wormhole rather than the usual far more stable transversable wormhole pathways
the marsupial humanoids have for their own pathways, he senses more of who he
and others are more than what they are.
Ship,
when encased in a photon bubble and moving to light speed, becomes surrounded
by a push or pull through dark energy. Bubble infused, Ship move to twenty
times the speed of light. Eventually, Ship is slowed by passages of a rarely
reflective dark matter. Settling down to below light speed level Ship awakes
from a dreamless sleep. So rare it used to be to travel across the galaxy but
now the body marsupial reckons the entire galaxy is but a single marsupial
humanoid pouch. I know better surmises Ship.
Less
is always more in physics. Were I, Ship transposes, a mere spark of quantum
entanglement I could in an instant, be in two galaxies at once. The
smaller we become the faster we go. Dark matter eats us for dinner. We go in
the tunnel, and are digested through the great divide of light and faster-than-light,
faster than light and down below, we are eliminated by the dark; making us here
and in Earth’s atmosphere inside of a month of Earth time. I am eaten, a dark
indigestion occurs, and I am eliminated. It’s a matter of who is living off
who, thinks Ship.
*
Yermey
awakes wondering on Ship's thoughts. He smiles thinking, for the first time I
planted a homing reference beacon pulsating light greater than four dimensional
light speed threaded into less than one. No one knows this but Ship. We have stabilized
a dark matter traversable wormhole into a secret highway from There to Here.
Once
fully awake Yermey realizes his time is running short. Friendly and Hartolite
should be returning from Put-in-Bay within the half hour. He smirks thinking,
Ship has his orders but I am the unorthodox captain here and Ship knows it.
***
Chapter Six
Grammar
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 6
I
think in my native Celtic alphabet Ogham. This alphabet has letters based on
reasonably forked branches mimicking naturally forked tree branches. Merlyn’s
kenning-like poetic thoughts produce an inner understanding that not all the
Ogham letters are known. A mystery lies in lack of forked branch lines and thus
lack of meaning. In understanding, Merlyn sounds the Celtic poetry in his
heart. I see echoed incongruent lines, which were once the intimacy of a great
ear in stage theatre. With these lines nothing else but reason it may be
possible, in time, to recreate the entire script before and after. The lines:
“o, what a noble mind
is here o'erthrown!
. . . and I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
. . . now
see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled, out of tune
and harsh;
. . . o, woe is me, to have seen what I have seen, see what I see!”
I,
Merlyn, understand this a metaphor of the
Beginning of Things before the Letters and the Words. What are the
chances some other human would gather the correct coded lines before and
after the Beginning? What would be the pronounced purpose and meaning of the
codes? Why is it likely a creation of wordy stars will line in the magic of its
own dynamics?”
Merlyn
continues, “Living or Dead each is a piece on this crystal-like Board that
stretches from soul to mind. We sticks, the Living and the Dead, move across a
share of black and whites squares playing between what the Living understand as
Heaven and Earth. It is on this playing field that these druidesses snake
dance, coiling their way around the existence of my very naked soul.
Brigit
of Iona is a reincarnate of the legendary Celtic Brigit, a goddess. She is no
goddess. Brigit is a sage, a physician and a smith as was her druidic father
who also had been a physician and a smith.
I,
Merlyn, am dangling at the nadir of her moon silver charm bracelet. The
perspiration from her wrist alone stirs me and imagination thrusts my fiery
passions into her hot and throaty caldron. She digests the lusty summary of my
Celtic faith and smiles afterwards.
This
second reincarnate is Vivian, better known in legend but hardly understood. She
once designed a silver and golden brooch to capture my reason in her heavy
breathing, her huffing in and puffing out through a tangling net of untellable
erotic charms. In imagination alone she can quick-freeze the reason in heart
and soul until I am a crystallized madness only to later ooze and melt and
re-crystallize by her mere thinking it is so.
We
touch, Vivian and a melted me. She is a haunt within this boneless bag, this
much older sack of skin. I feel borne to be always be the older, no matter that
we both be dead.
Priestess
Brigit and Priestess Vivian are equally a pleasant enough feminine witchery
druidically drilled through my centre. This Merlyn once the shining jewel is
forever in a rolled leathery piece of ancient pre-Celtic phylactery.
Unthinkingly, unknowing we wrapped three are a leathery ménage à trois. A
sometimes single spirit all much too human to be fully understood. Thus in this
work, one in a trilogy, I stand, here – a continual exchange of passion rushing
back and forth, back and forth – a hot engine of humanity with no place else to
go.
Is
this but Hell in Heaven, who is to know? Not I. Clothed by two druidesses first
in high humane respect, I Merlyn am unalterable left naked. My passion and
forthcoming wit cannot be the
lightning unleashed and untamed before
the wake of thundering balls roll into the surrounding skull sockets of the
Living and the Dead. I cannot break these thundering balls into imaginary
billiard pockets lined in green because I do not have the reason to tame the
cue stick. The Supervisor, my Supervisor! I would wilt were I not
so angry to be thrust about in full sail and near rudderless save a line after
line of coded letters left to be uncoded.
*
Hot,
and presently the highest of shamans, Merlyn peers deep into the cold reality
of his existential spiritual malaise. Doubt mixes my waters, thinks Merlyn.
Doubt is my saving grace. I do not own a string of letters that code and decode
both at once. I own only my heartansoulanmind as do Brigit and Vivian, own
their own in this World of the Dead where seemingly on a whim I alone may walk
with the Living.
***
The Brothers 6
The
brothers lumber to the cemetery hillside that drops to the river bottom at a
fifty-degree angle, look down into trees of childhood memories and then back
towards the mausoleum. "Let's go in," says Robert.
Richard glances to the right, the north corridor closest to
the entrance and sees the three pieces of stain glass at the west wall. “Look
at the crypts,” he comments, “lots of marble.”
Robert
replies, “I think our relatives are interred in this next section. The last
four on the second-shelf up.”
Both
walk to where they can see the names. “James and Mabel are on mother’s side,
and Ron and Beatrice and David and Jessie are on father’s side. Rob says, “I
wonder why they are all buried together on this shelf.”
“I
guess they were good friends,” adds Richard while assessing the mystery of why
they would be good friends? I didn’t know they even got along. Ron and Beatrice
were dead before we were born but we heard stories. I remember the others well
enough. I don’t remember coming to the funerals though.
As
they turn toward the center of the mausoleum Robert notes, “The mausoleum was
built in the twenties for friends and relatives I would imagine.”
“True
enough.” Richard glancing over to
the large centerpiece, “Look at the angel with the emerald wings, just above
her right hand is an orange Star of David. I wonder why she and her robes are
tinted green. Look at the dark sky behind her; it is like she flew through a
storm to talk to the child at her feet.”
“Interesting,”
responds Robert matter-of-factly. “Is the child Jesus or Moses?”
“I
don’t know.” Richard moves back to get a better focus for description. “He’s
wearing a red robe but he is looking at her open left hand. Above her wingtips,
on another plate, is the orange double eagle in a green background. A larger
copy of the two side pieces’ double eagles.”
Robert
browses into the opposing long east chamber and at the marble wall of the
hallway between the four chambers. “The sunlight from the east chamber is still
shining in like we are on an old Indiana Jones movie set.”
“I
like that naked bulb hanging from the ceiling in the center here,” asserts Richard.
“A nice piece of copper hanging above it but the outer bulb is missing.” With
Robert on his left, he turns to peer into the other west chamber at the south
section of the mausoleum. “This chamber is a lot shorter. I had forgotten
that.” He looks up and quickly counts, “It has twenty crypts on each side.”
Robert
comments, "I like the marble design of the chamber as a whole. It is
appealing.”
Richard
adds, “And from out here in the hall the colors that are most striking.”
“Why
don’t you get a key made instead of using the loaner from the city,” suggests
Robert. “And we can come back anytime.”
Robert
steps aside to better observe, “With decorative markings above that. The rest
are typical stained glass features. You see more purples at a distance. It is
all rather somber.”
Richard
jokes, “Don’t forget where are we Rob?”
Both
chuckle. They turn ambling from the south stained glass window and the five
stacked marble crypts on both sides then walk passed the dark walnut podium
with the black cross carved in its center, up the marble hall past the two
north chambers and out the creaking brass door that has to be pulled to shut
tightly for locking and which Richard diligently locks. We had not really
panned the southeast crypt chamber where the sunlight streamed in. It appeared
eerie from a distance, thinks Richard, and maybe it is too bright to look into
comfortably, but we didn’t. It is hard to believe too much light exists in a
corner of the mausoleum. We are probably missing something. He says, “This key
is a copy.”
“Make
me one, would you?” declares Robert, “I’m going home.”
“I’ll
head on up to the house,” compliments Richard. “I like walking in the shade of
these old trees and through campus.” The twins walk their separate ways,
Richard to the east and Robert north. Elsewhere their twin spirits settle like
a low campfire burning on what their once young lives had come to be.
***
Grandma's Story 6
Hello.
I have another story from the Dead for you. This happened long ago on the large
Isle off the coast of France not far from where the present town of Canterbury
would rise. Rolling hills and woods and streams and the coast not more than a
day’s walk. Bracc has long black hair with roughly built limbs and a log like
trunk. He has neither a comfort stage-like appearance nor an unusual crutch
such as a mask or prop that will benefit him in his storytelling.
No
listener expects any of the stories to be objectively true because stories are
not like a hunter pointing to a deer and saying, "Dinner." Storytelling
goals and objectives are base on how the individual might better survive the
world of the Living.
An experienced shaman takes young Bracc aside saying, “I
will give you a project and a story will come from this that is entirely your
own.”
Bracc’s face lights up, “I am ready, master. Give me the
project, and I will test myself.”
The shaman thus orders, "Tell a story in gray,"
Bracc stoically treads a path to his wondering-on-things
cave near a rabbit warren. 'Death is black but sleep is gray like stone. White
and black make gray. I love dreaming about building higher and higher stoned
walls. Stories like stones are gray in dreams.' Bracc smiles like dawn and
declares, “I shall thus color my
story in gray.”
*
Two full moons pass. Bracc stands looking out at his first
audience. This is what life is, he reflects silently, me standing alone while
the others are content to sit or stand. Tonight I will make Erca proud to be my
mate and to have brought our child into this world. He begins. "The Living touch the Dead in many ways. The
Dead cannot be seen but they can be heard whispering at times. This is a story
One-of-the-Dead told me in passing.
People
are suddenly amazed that young Bracc would attempt such a difficult story. The
audience of friends and acquaintances sit in anticipation of his failure. Most
are skeptical because Bracc appears too young to have heard an unknown story
from the Dead. Even Erca, holding their two-month old son nearby is
dubious.
Bracc pulls his wooden story engine cube from the camouflage
of green foliage and balanced it upright in his left hand and said, "What
do you see?"
An elder replies, "It is a gray box with six
sides."
"Yes, a box of six sides can easily be explained, but
what of the color, gray? One might say it is a pigment mix of black and white.
Black is the night sky, white, the ever-changing moon enumerable stars,
sparkling jewels dancing across a black velvet sky. Nature in the heavens does
not mix gray. Clouds may be gray but they interrupt the heavens like a gray
stoned wall. What then is gray if it is not a mix?
Another elder jokingly comments, "I can only see one
side of the box."
"We
have heard and seen a trickery of words in such a simple device before!"
shouts yet another in the audience.
Bracc
suddenly realizes the man is right. There is nothing new in telling a haunting
story of gray ghost in the box. He freezes and the words drop into his toes. He
knows this – I am a travesty. His face gives him up and reddens. Bracc glances
to Erca whose eyes were now cast down as she instinctively shelters their
child. Bracc's thinking grows more
ridged and stone-like. He surmises and concludes, I shall be remembered as a
storyteller nevertheless.
Bracc
quickly confesses, "I deceived myself to even think that I could reinforce
a story with tricks and devices. The Dead
cannot talk with the Living. This
story is my imagination alone. But it will be remembered." Bracc stands in
a singularity with a mind fully empty and naked. He collapses and dies on the
spot.
Bracc's last silent thoughts are loosed in the genes of both
the storyteller and his listeners. Why?
I am Grandma and I am in your dying DNA as well as in your newborn as well as all others.
Bracc and Erca are now long reposed
With sons and daughters since surrogated;
Grandma's mouth would be forever closed
But for the strands and molecules
correlated.
***
Diplomatic Pouch 6
After
an efficient walk around the plane and inspection of the controls Friendly, as nom
de plume, Fran, glances over the instrument and screen rich Cessna Silver
Eagle control panel and pushanpulled the start toggle fumbled then pushed the
toggle to the up position. Embarrassed that Pyl is watching she smiles
commenting, "It's been awhile." Glancing at her watch and the clock
on the console she thinks, we'll be in Cleveland before dark.
"We
all do silly things, Fran," comments Pyl with a smile then
enthusiastically comments, “I love this plane and I remember this Cessna was
Dad's favorite." She winks, "Isn't that right, Blakey?"
He
feigns a grumble, "Yeah, and with Dad, Pyl was always the favorite."
Justin
looks to Fran’s sister Hart, who was sitting next to him saying, "Pyl and
Blake come from parents who were a bit dissimilar."
"Pardon,"
replies Hartolite.
Justin
restates, "Dissimilar, you know, diverse."
Hartolite ponders the specific
definition with . . . families that are ‘dissimilar' and ‘diverse’? Does Justin
mean ‘heterogeneous’?
With
the flaps down Friendly revs the engine and confirms the rpm status, verifies
the alternator and voltage. They pick up speed and with a lift of the nose, and
the flaps set for a slow climb southwest Friendly taps the brakes to stop the
wheel spin and retracts the wheels. Nearing the Ohio shoreline in the climb
Friendly yokes left. The Silver Eagle continues a steady ascent first with
Catawba Island and then with the Marblehead lighthouse below the right wing and
Kelley's Island and greater Lake Erie set below the left wing. The plane climbs
due east until leveling off at nine thousand feet with a speed of 140 mph.
Friendly feels her body immediately relax. "We're good for Burke,"
she comments. "Beautiful day, beautiful scenery, one beauty of a
plane."
Pyl
smiles in response contentedly projecting the plane and the pilot are as
one-in-the-same.
The
flight proceeds. Pyl falls into a catnap. Awakening to the drone of the engine
she discovers Justin and Blake had fallen asleep too. Pyl let be. She leans
toward Friendly, smiles and quietly says, "I can tell you are in love with
this plane. I am in love with it too." In a ruse, Pyl closes her eyes.
Moments
later, Pyl recollects on her thoughts – this tension began yesterday with the
bird cracking the left wingtip light. Blake initially said it felt like the
bird lightly tapped the wingtip light. I asked if it was a bird. Justin said it
sounded like a piece of gravel hit the wingtip. When we inspected the wing at
the hanger Blake said the gray remnants were bird guts but there wasn't any
blood mixed in it. The gray matter reminds me of soot.
Pyl
sits deliberating. Fran Parker is clearly in charge. The only flight mistake
she made was the attempt to push the toggle switch in and then pull. She
attempted to push the toggle in and then pull it out almost unconsciously, like
she had done it a thousand times before, like I would turn a car key down to
start the engine but turn it up to turn it on. Something is not right here.
Pyl
adjusts herself in the seat and relaxes with eyes closed until she hears the
thump of the wheels being lowered. She notes her watch seeing the time is 4:48.
She observes the time on the interment panel, 4:49. That's odd, she thinks, we
were synchronized when we left Put-in-Bay. Pyl pulls the cell phone from her
purse; it also showed 4:48. She asks, "What time do you have Justin?"
He
responds, "We checked our watches at breakfast. Just what you have,
4:48."
Pyl
responds, "The plane says it is 4:49."
Blake
says, "I have 4:48 too. Now it's 4:49."
"The
plane says it's now 4:50," notes Pyl.
"I
have 4:50 too," replies Fran.
Hartolite
looks at her watch showing 4:50 but she says, "I have 4:49."
Polite
chatter rules during the smooth landing and exiting. Blake and Pyl quickly
inspect and secure the plane.
While strolling into the Burke Terminal, Ply speaks, fully resolved to Blake
alone, "I do not want you to sell our father's plane."
***
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