Notes - working up the investigation / con't. ** /

       Mid-morning. You just checked. Your mother was born 29 July 1918 and your father-in-law was born 31 July 1917. - Amorella

       0918 hours. I knew both were born about now. Somehow I have it in mind that Mom was born on the 27th and Dad H. was born on the 29th. That's always my intuitive guess. When I check I know better but every year the birthday pops in my head on the 27th and Dad H.'s is a day or two later.

       Today you are going to focus on that metaphysical event that needs to be clarified once and for all. - Amorella

       0923 hours. It seems like a lot of work. I understand what you are saying Amorella. I need to have down all the particulars that I have in my notes. I should start with the spiral notebooks from the late 1980's.

       Yes. Earliest notes first to see if or how the notes changed over the years. - Amorella

       0926 hours. That's a good idea. I never thought about the notes changing -- if they did or if they didn't.

       Since you are going through the effort take a snapshot of the relevant material from the old notebooks. That way you don't have to look it up again. You also will have the context of the written page in your own hand. - Amorella

       0930 hours. I don't see how the context of the written page is relevant, but I can take the picture of the page. Sounds weird though. This investigation is not that important, or doesn't seem to me to be -- to be so fussy over something that truly may of happened or may not since the event of meeting an angel is entirely subjective.

       Orndorff, one of your once a year questions to your classes (particularly in focus on Milton's Paradise Lost was a seventeenth century metaphysical question: How would you know there was an Angel in the room? So, since you brought it up for at least three decades, why don't you apply it to yourself, don't you think you should? - Amorella

       0939 hours. Such questions were used to stimulate my students' minds, something for them to wonder about. They weren't test questions. In fact, they were more important questions as far as I was concerned. I mean, how would you know if you and an angel were in the same room? What would be the clues, particularly, if it were in intuitional sense that first, "Some one or some thing else is in the room with me? I can't see it, but it is here." I used to show them the old poem that got them to laugh; but some took it in deeper, I could tell. (Teaching was so much fun.)

** **

Antigonish (poem)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Poem

Inspired by reports of a ghost of a man roaming the stairs of a haunted house, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, the poem was originally part of a play called The Psyco-ed, which Mearns had written for an English class at Harvard University, circa 1899. In 1910, Mearns staged the play with the Plays and Players, an amateur theatrical group, and on 27 March 1922, newspaper columnist FPA printed the poem in "The Conning Tower", his column in the New York World. Mearns subsequently wrote many parodies of this poem, giving them the general title of, Later Antigonishes.

Text

"As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there!
He wasn't there again today,
Oh how I wish he'd go away!" 

When I came home last night at three,
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall,
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door...

Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...

Selected and edited from Wikipedia

** **

       See, you are having fun with this. Nothing wrong with that, boy. Post. - Amorella

       1255 hours. Carol is cleaning closets upstairs. When we are dead the whole lot of stuff will go.

       Shortly you'll be off to lunch . . . somewhere, someplace. It will help if you bring up five spiral notebooks at a time. Begin with the oldest. Note: book number, date and page. - Amorella

       1302 hours. You are going at this with a bit more energy than I am. I don't think there is going to be much 'evidence' to find. I am interested though.

       You are apprehensive. You need to think on why this is so.

       1305 hours. I don't want to make a fool of myself, Amorella

       Once home from a tasty lunch Piada Street Italian you trimmed the west side of the flower garden and path into the woods with the heavy and awkward stick lengthen battery powered electric. You discovered not as sure stepped on a hill as you used to be and about fell twice. Not good. You then trimmed from the garden to the south on the west edge of the woods. Carol is sacking the remains presently. Yesterday and today you answered two questions on Quora, both dealt with a grammar problem. Been looking like it is going to rain all day, but so far looking is as close it has got. - Amorella

       1450 hours. I think it is going to be difficult reading through those old notebooks. I don't really want to go back there, Amorella. I was in an alternate mindset, much more a transcendentalist than I appear on paper today. I did not see you as a friend as easily. I had a more -difficult time distinguishing angelic -like figures, i.e. the good angels from the bad.

       It was not an easy time. You used Paradise Lost allegorically, especially Milton's character, Satan. You had read several books about angels but they did not seem to be what you encountered, in your head or in a nearby physical-like presence. - Amorella

       1501 hours. I used the washer on the low end of a string. Holding the string with my thumb and forefinger it dangled, straightened then moved out or sideways [yes: north-south or no: east-west]. I observed that if I were unconsciously fearful the string would sway north-west to south-west. I would avoid that sort of invisible presence. [This is so weird to think about today, but the situation still appears timeless in my mind.]

       You need to free yourself from this apparent timelessness. - Amorella

       1509 hours. But it was [as] real, Amorella. Goosebumps would raise up on my arms and the back of my neck. The physical was my own but it reinforced to me that these small private events were 'real enough'. What was I going to do? I loved teaching. I didn't want anyone thinking I was crazy. I remember I confided in Gary P. my closest friend, a school counselor. I asked him to observe me and to discretely check with students to see if I ever reacted irrationally in class. I felt better after this because I would quit teaching if I ever thought I was doing a student any sort of harm -- that is frightening them with my thoughts. Do no harm is appropriate for everybody, that's my thought. It still is. (1518)

       Gary P. is a witness of sorts as is Fritz M. because you confided in him and Bob P. also early on you sent copies of all your notes to Fritz who said he would check them for any sort of off the wall irrationality, i.e. madness. He was concerned but a solid friend. - Amorella

        Oh my, I cannot believe I am writing this down. I thought it all might be real at one time. I was so afraid I was going off the deep end, but my curiosity was set because the string and washer apparatus was told to me by Dr. Payne, my U.C. psychologist who taught me how to use self-hypnosis to help me lose weight. He didn't see a problem with me experimenting, particularly because my focus was on bettering my writing by learning to use my sub-consciousness or unconsciousness more effectively. (1552)

       Post. - Amorella

       To the Basement

       1702 hours. I found a box that has my composition book of word sketches/poems from 1961 and: Notebook #1. 10 April 88; #2. 29 May 88; #3. 1 July 88; #4. 30 July 88; #5. Missing; #6. 12 October 88; and #7. 12 December 88. Most of the notes focus on Spice drafts, the first book with marsupial humanoids. I also have notebooks for 1989 and 1990. Surely some have personal data.

       Go through each, I will show you what, if anything, is relevant. You also found earlier notes but the focus was on novels not personal notes. Call this preliminary research if you like. - Amorella

       I cannot remember when the actual metaphysical event took place but I'm sure it will come up. It was either in 1987 or 1988. The event absorbed any aspect of time. I'm sure I wrote it down, I know I did. I can remember doing so. (1718) -- Already I am forgetting to put the time down when I begin a comment. 

       Post. - Amorella

Let's drop some of your composition from 1961 for an early perspective on your focusing. I'll choose and date. - Amorella

Selections from 1961 Composition Book

Page 1.   this is truth as i see it; humbleness is the greatest virtue -                   richard henry orndorff

Page 2.  "With what shall I come before the Lord,
              and bow myself before God on high?
              Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
              with calves a year old?
              Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand rams,
              with ten thousand rivers of oil?
              Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
              the fruit of my body for the sins of my soul?
              He has showed you, O man, what is good;
              and what does the Lord require of you?
              but to do justice, and to love kindness,
              and to walk humbly with your God?

                      Micah of Moresheth
                                          8 BC

***

       You read over your composition book and found nothing worthy to show here. I found one that shows a truth of your youth. Here it is. - Amorella

       "Life is too short to make up stories on how you are going to live it." Written in June 1964.

       2035 hours. At least it is short.

       All for tonight. Post. - Amorella

       2038 hours. I am tired. Tomorrow Jill comes to clean. We will make ourselves scarce. I'm copying Rachel and Lawrence tonight. Almost every day there is something new going on in Washington. I am so tired of it, but we tune in anyway. How will it end, how will it end? Certainly not with a bang or a whimper. We find ourselves living in a national  fiction. Amazing.

       Tomorrow on to the other spiral notebooks in search of observations. - Amorella

       2046 hours. I expect some disappointment, Amorella. There is probably nothing in them on private points; I assume they are the first draft of Spice written in pencil. Spice was self-published in 2001.