Notes - hands and a selfie / Custodian who stewards / final Chapter 3 /

         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.

         Really, I would not have guessed. Few will see the dark humor here as you are picking up your head and are about to hold it like Hamlet is holding the skull of Yorick. - 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.

** **

 In this context “steward” is the best word but readers may misinterpret the meaning to think “attendant” or “purser” or even “caretaker” but actually “custodian” fits best in terms of actual ‘operation’ of the Facilities for the Dead, facilities in this case also includes the Dead. Thus, your sentence should read: “I am the Custodian who stewards the Dead.” Add the sentence and post. - Amorella

         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.

***

Notes - Dr. R. and Good Sam team - Thank you

         2222 hours. This is like texting with big keys. I am thankful for Dr. Dan Reilly and the team for a very good day spent as an outpatient and Good Samaritan Hospital. Both hands are well bandages and the pain is presently no worse than before the operations, a 6. I will work on chapter three tomorrow after I complete Dead 4, which I worked on (text on paper) at the hospital.

         Post. - Amorella

Notes - Sunday morning late / final Chapter Two / ebook covers and Coleridge

        Afternoon. Carol has been working on laundry all morning. You played with the cat and did your exercises. You checked to see if there were any clothes to fold but she had already brought up what was completed. You put them away, then read Joel Stein’s column in the newest Time magazine, then played with Jadah the Cat once again. – Amorella

         1300 hours. I am not a captain of industry. Carol is putting up the ironing board so shortly the dryer will stop – easy wear clothes, iron free or whatever. Carol always touches them up. I ask her not to do mine but she does anyway. I learned to iron once. Mom taught me because she said I would never get married, that I’d be like Uncle Clayton. That never bothered me much. I liked Uncle Clayton. Once those iron free clothes came out I never used an iron again except to put iron on patches on casually styled pants once in a while. When teaching I would have three pair of different colored pants for school. The kids (I came to understand later) used to make bets on what pair I would wear on Monday and that would set up the colors for the rest of the week. Two colors would be worn twice so that was the bet. What would I wear on Tuesday that then would set up the bet for Wednesday. I could wear the ones I wore on Monday or the other color I had not worn during that week. They were always interested in seeing me before first period. I never understood why. I thought they liked me and my class.

         You are up to story telling boy. – Amorella

         1316 hours. I heard those stories. Maybe they were making them up for something to talk about. That was the fun of lecturing, I could always find a story to tell and get off track for a few minutes. They mostly didn’t go to sleep (much) except in first period. British lit or logic at 7:30 in the morning was too much for some, especially if they didn’t get to bed before midnight. It didn’t bother me like it should have – I kept thinking on how it would have been if I had had Advanced Algebra first period every day. I would have had my eyes wide open but still been asleep that ungodly hour  -- all for series of common letters and numbers and equal signs thrown in whenever a problem was coming up. I’m done.

         Why don’t you get dressed as you are not going back to bed until tonight; then maybe you’ll find something constructive to do. – Amorella

         Good idea, Amorella.

         Post. - Amorella

         Late mid-afternoon. You had a late lunch at Cracker Barrel, your suggestion so you could have their Sunday fried chicken special. Carol had trout, a sweet potato and coleslaw. You added cooked carrots and mash potatoes with white gravy. No desserts. Carol had tea you had water with lemon while you waited and played their peg-in-hole game. Carol won four games out of four. Before you left you did finish correcting Dead 2, and now that you are at Pine Hill Lakes Park facing east windows up you will work on the rest of the chapter. – Amorella

         1823 hours. I have completed chapter two.

         Add and post.- Amorella

***

Chapter Two

Control

            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 2

            Merlyn sat in his heartansoulanmind’s self-created sanctuary on a large stone north of his rustic hut. The flower-strewed Scottish meadow sits north of the stone. The inner sanctuary is surrounded by mysteriously dark forest. I witnessed much, surmised Merlyn, having been born then later dead during the seventh century according to the Church. AD 670 appears to be either my birth or death date. I do not really care. Dates, being artificial to begin with, are of little importance to the Dead.

            As a Druid I learned Celt, Greek and Latin. I memorized vast tracks of folklore and wisdom. This is what the Celtic society expected, and this is what I did. He notices, rather unexpectedly, the white cue ball materializing on his nineteenth century billiard table mind. Nearby is his memory stone ruin of a childhood stage in the meadow.

            I rather enjoy these Scottish trees and the flowering meadow, thinks Merlyn. He observed the billiard table and ball dissolve in a wispy white cloud of early morning mist. A short thought later in the corner of his mind, Merlyn witnessed the billiard table reappear; this time on the meadow near the giant Oak.

            ‘You did not hear the cue ball tap one of your solids?’ asked the Supervisor of the Dead.

            This is coming from heart or soul or mind, which? thought Merlyn who immediately responded into himself, 'I did not. I thought I was alone.'

            'I tapped the solid burnt orange into the far right pocket.'

            Merlyn lightly smile and asks, ''What unconscious thought of mine did you just put away?”

            'The Boatman,' evokes the Supervisor.

            Merlyn more fully smirked in defensive surprise declaring, 'I don't have to pay the Boatman.'

            'You pay, boy,' snapped in Merlyn's tabled mind. 'Everybody pays the Boatman. I, the Supervisor of the Dead, pay the Boatman.'

            Merlyn mutters, 'In friend Sophia's ancient Greek day the pearly white Gate of Heaven rested on the far side of her rubescent River Styx.'

            'The Styx is where you are,' dryly commented the Supervisor.

            Merlyn’s mind registered 'Richard?” in the solid yellow 1 ball resting near the far left corner pocket. Merlyn’s mind grumbles, 'Richard Greystone is where I am.' My heart is not sure. My soul hold my mind table. Merlyn notes an itch near his left fourth finger’s nail; a nail that is no more real than he is.

            The tiny heart naked winged faery of a Celt whisked herself from the fourth finger's nail. 'Prick this fingerless finger,' suggested the faery charm as a butterfly’s flutter within Merlyn's ear memory. I am being seduced, thinks Merlyn as he watches his fingerless finger move into a more natural position for this growing faery’s feminine comfort.           

            'Whoa,' whispers Merlyn while flashing an image of his first love, Vivian. This faery suddenly kissed and slowly sucked down Merlyn’s now seemingly fully fleshed and solid boned fourth left finger. I am becoming a body. Merlyn smilingly in pleasure watching the event, understanding full well that I don’t really exist in skulled brain of Richard Greystone in the early twenty-first century.

            This is the Nature of we Dead, announces Merlyn. I am borne into continually envisioning the Earth’s genetic mother of an eight ball setting alone on the very center of this, my green-felted mind-slate-on-a-Victorian-table. I have no other balls, shuttered Merlyn, not even a cue ball to strike this Mother of an Eight Ball off my mind’s center.

            The Supervisor, being wise in forethought and likewise twined in SheanHe form, sits in Merlyn’s private sanctuary. SheanHe balances nakedly leafed high, above the now seemingly younger spirited Merlyn.

            Merlyn looks up naturally, points his forefinger aggressively, and dictates, “This, my human spirit, runs on a deeper gravitational energy than what you, the Supervisor, take for love. I am hot in unrealized passion and here, among the Dead, I am as fully married to Vivian the Druidess, as Earth’s iron is married to carbon to make steel.”

            The Supervisor of the Dead grinned surmising, ‘Merlyn is a wound alarm clock of unalloyed consciousness. Merlyn’s bells will ring when the Boatman demands it, not me.’

This dream then disappears — a thought without entrails to show Merlyn what he has foreseen.

The Brothers 2

            “I see we are at your house again today. What are you watching?” asked Robert.

Richard not stirring from his comfortable easy chair, said, “An old National Geographic rerun on DNA. A genetics researcher named Wells is showing that we men are all genetic sons of a man who lived fifty-six thousand years ago in East Africa.”

Rob frowns slightly, “So what else is new?” He sits next to a tall brass stick lamp their parents had bought a year before they died. Turn us males and females upside down anywhere in the world and we look enough alike; I don’t need any DNA evidence.”

“True,” replied Richard. “But it's interesting that by sailing the oceans those early sailors moved the brotherhood around the known world fairly quickly. Our genetic Eve existed about one hundred and fifty-thousand years ago or so. It is almost a hundred thousand years between the genetic parents of we who are now living.” While speaking he glanced out the front window of their old white painted wood frame built for five thousand dollars by their grandfather in 1903. We sit across from College Cemetery; he ruminated, half a block west of the corners of Walnut and Knox. My eyes bridge the dead everyday just as they did when we were kids using the cemetery as a playground whether it was prudent or not.

“Men are faster than women, that’s the difference in the hundred thousand years,” chuckled Rob. “You got anything to read? Where’s your latest Harper’s?”

“I hid it before you got here.”

“I give you my poetry mags in short order.” complained Rob. “By the way, what did you think of my latest poem? You’ve had it for a week.”

“Hey, what’d you think of my first chapter?” snapped Richard. “You’ve had it for almost a day now.”

Restless, Robert headed to the refrigerator, “Where’s the high test Coke?"

“Where it always is,In the back on the right side top shelf.”

“Golf's on ESPN,” commented Rob coming into the room.

“You got it,” said Richard as he pushed the remote.

“Where’s Lady?”

Richard spoke lazily in empathy with his pet cocker, “She’s sleeping on the living room couch. When Cyndi's gone Lady heads for the couch. She can see the driveway and when Cyndi drives in, off she goes.”

While watching a terrific putt by Mark Wilson both snickered imperiously as the golfing crowd clapped rewardingly, Robert says again, “Where's Lady? Wake the old girl up for me.”

            “Lady!” shouts Richard, “Come here, girl!” A commercial later, Richard shouts again, “Lady!” Still she slept. “She’s got junk in her ears again,” said Richard brooding on how, Rob’s fox terrier named Jack is always obedient. He adds, "Cockers have ear problems.”

            “So do you,” parried Rob.

            “Damn dog,” grumbles Richard as he rolled out of the couch.

            Robert heard the growl then another “Damn!” He got up to see. “What happened?” he asked impatiently.

            “She bit me on the hand. Look at this!” groused Richard.

            “I see the marks but she didn’t draw blood. You must have startled her, Dickie. Rob looked down seeing Lady cowered under the coffee table. “Come on out, girl. It’s okay,” coaxes Rob in a soft voice. Lady crept out with her ears down. My Jack would never bite me, thinks Rob. His slight brotherly smirk makes it clear to Richard what Robert is thinking.

            Robert pulled up Lady’s right ear. “You’re right. Look at the wax and crude in here. Get some tweezers and swabs,” then he adds, “and scissors, she’s got hair tangles in there. I’ll clean this out.” Rob gently pets her, “It’ll be okay girl. You are such a pretty Lady. Pretty Lady,” he continues stroking the venerable tan and white cocker spaniel until Richard arrives with the small box of ear cleaning material.

            The aging cocker soon found herself with cleaned ears and quickly leaped up on Rob for a wonderland of a belly scratch.  Richard hit the remote during the next commercial and caught the tail end of a broadcast asking for donations."

            “Everyone wants a donation,” said Robert.

            “I agree,” responds Richard as he flipped the channel back to ESPN. “I'm tired of all of it, charity, religion, politics - all of it."

            Rob counters, “Our two dogs have a better life than either of us.”

            “True,” says Richard as he reached and stroked Lady, “but she cares for us as only a mother might.”

            Rob responds on cue, “We have to take care of ourselves. Nothing's free.” He groused, “It's a miracle our species has survived this long.”

            “The fifties and sixties,” comments Richard, “how did we survive that? No one our age thought we would live to be thirty and here we are seventy this year. “And, the world is worse now than it was then.”

            “No,” argued Robert, “it was worse with the arsenal the Soviets and Americans had pointed at one another.”

            “One day some crazy group will explode a nuclear weapon somewhere in the remote Pacific and then say they have another, that's all it will take, even if they don’t have another.”

            “Why didn’t Truman do that?” questioned Robert. “Why couldn’t we have dropped the bomb near Japan so the power would not be hidden from the general population?”

            “War is not humane,” comments Richard.

            Robert counters, “But it is human enough.”

            “War dogs take care of their own,” noted Richard.

            “War dogs hardly ever bite the hand that feeds them,” snickered Robert.

            “Remember Rob," jibed Richard as he stuck his right forefinger in the air, "a bone in the hand is worth two in the bush." Both laughed at their by now stained adolescent joke.

Grandma’s Story 2

“Grandma traces Homo sapiens’ genetic Eve’s DNA through various storytellers known as shamans because they understand Merlyn's use of trancephysics. Trancephysics is a vehicle Merlyn uses to slide his human spirit into the essence of Captain Lamar, which is, in reality, the human spirit, the heartansoulanmind of Richard Greystone, the younger twin.” 

She continues, “One might consider trancephysics a retro version of quantum entanglement in modern times. For example, Sir Phillip Sydney, a tolerable Elizabethan poet of a few hundred years back created two quiet philosophical lines about this trancephysics in his poem, ‘Arcadia’."

            My true love hath my heart, and I have his,

            By just exchange one for the other given . . .

            “Merlyn intuitively sides with the poet,” winked Grandma, “though he appreciates the modern sciences, particularly those of Quantum Mechanics and Chaos Theory. Anyone who has ever been deeply in love like Merlyn is with Vivian better understands the intimate event Sir Phillip Sydney so eloquently describes.

            This unconsciously connected ‘invisible bond’ is an undeniable human experience beyond the “I love you’s” mutually understood between two or a family. This trancephysical bond also extends those who may rarely if ever meet while living, and this is somewhat how it is between Merlyn and Richard Greystone and all other humans living or having lived, who share Mother.” Grandma pauses to reshape herself without consciousness.

“When Glevema physically died in an accidental drowning,” declares Grandma, “she came to more fully understand her grandfather’s earlier story of humans being both out among the stars and on Earth at the same time. She also discovered other heartsansoulsanminds who already occupied a region within the Place of the Dead.” Here is a selection from Glevema herself.”

Glevema quickly realizes these otherworldly human-like spirits with heartsansoulsanminds, have a facsimile of a physical body, but noticeable differences — the nearly naked women have the manifestation of a pouch on the lower belly and no breasts. The men have nipples below the belly and a small earthworm-thin curlicue of a penis. As Glevema was the first representative of Homo sapiens to find her way to the Place of the Dead she was politely allowed to stay, but once a few other primate oriented spirits followed their mother, Glevema was allowed, if she wished, to form an original Homo sapiens region to more easily comfort her descendants. Once freely removed the re-focused the Homo sapiens spirit adventure continues.

“Generations flourish,” continues Grandma, “and spread flower-like until some ten thousand years ago when one of the many descendants of Glevema found herself on the British Isles mixing with a trading group from Europe called Basques. A few traveling Basques settle in lower western Scotland. As the families mix and grow, some move to Ireland while others drift to Wales and England.”  Five thousand years later still in the Isles, another shaman of the same direct line appeared. He had some tall tales centered on Mother Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, and the Nature of human beings. The shaman told such stories in a make believe circle on England’s Salisbury Plain,” said Grandma. “Here is one of shaman’s stories.”

“I had a dream and I thought about this for the next fifteen years. The dream was about a great Rebellion in the Place of the Dead. The dream began with the cold, icy fingers of the Dead feeling their way back to Mother Earth. The Dead do not go to Heaven or even to the Moon. The Dead are still within us.” He continued, “If you cremate the Dead, their bones will be blackened like the night. They will not have to see their bodies rotting and the animals won’t dig them up, and the quicker they will be a part of Mother again and best of all they will have no icy cold fingers reaching out for the Living. Close the Land of the Dead with well placed stones. Stones don’t move so easily as the spirits do.”

Grandma snickers.  “Stones, a few of them, are like bones,” she said, “line them up just right and they lie right in front of you, that’s the truth of it.” She added with a wink or maybe two, “I got me on a Merlyn chant to take us from the past to that future dream which includes those humanoid figures Glevema first met being dead.

From the two venerable Celtic hearts created to sing

Return this story to where other passions ring

The well-known druidess and druid will do

In a similar spirit body that is dressed like you.

Within a corridor where stirring memories show

Vivian and Merlyn on Charon’s ferry flow

This time when Grandma chants and hums,

The marching future this way drums.

Diplomatic Pouch 2

            The next morning Blake rambled down the stairs to find Pyl and Justin sitting at the breakfast table with toast, cups of coffee and sections of Cleveland Plain Dealer unevenly placed on the table. "Morning," murmured Blake. Glancing out the large back kitchen window and added, "Looks like quite a few dog walkers out at the park."

            "Joggers were out earlier," commented Justin.

            "Right."

            Pyl put down the editorial page and said, "Are you really willing to sell the plane?"

            "Three hundred thousand is much more than it’s worth."

            "Why is that?" confronted Justin. "Pyl and I were just talking about this."

            Blake walked to the cupboard for a mug, the refrigerator for skim milk, and the pantry from instant cocoa mix. He tore the package open and added "Odd that she brought up her top price rather than low-balling. I will say that." He nuked the mixed milk and powdered cocoa hot.

            Pyl commented, "Justin thinks the woman has a strange mix of Boston accents. I agree that her voice is unusual."

            Blake laughed, "Maybe she’s a business woman who studied to hide her family’s true language accent." He surprised himself in sympathy but he hated the culture injustice that sometimes comes from not learning to speak properly.

            Pyl caught his facial language and voiced, "You've taken a liking to her sudden friendliness, huh, Blakey."

            Justin popped in with instant humor, "Sell the plane and gain a businessman’s wife, is that the plan, old man?"

            "Then we'd have the plane back," joked Pyl.

            "Don't you two have some work to do today?"

            "Just to jerk your mind, brother dear."

            “Why don’t you two work with me, here in Cleveland. It is our family owned business." suggests Blake dryly; hopefully wishing they would help run the company.  “We can live here in the old family house.” Blake trails off in the silence then sighs, “You’re right, it wouldn’t work now any more than it would have worked ten years ago.”

*

            Mid-morning. Ship hovers well above the air traffic and well below any orbiting satellites. Lake Erie is straight down. Friendly sits around a handsomely dark p2wooded table-from-the-floor with Hartolite and Yermey. They are drinking a good-for-you yummy twistanshake and nibbling on p1green-forest-nuttleberry treats. All three sit bare breasted in colorful boxershort loungers relaxed on comfortchairs down so their clean bare feet and well trimmed toe nails are firmly snuggled in the greenest plushest living blades of grass this side of HomePlanetsThree. Ship's floor is a living piece of bio-diverse machinery from his outer hull to his antigravobars pulse that allows these three perspicacious marsupial humanoids to serve as Ship's heart, Ship's humanity, but not Ship's mind which is mostly his own.

            For safety’s sake, the worst that can happen is Ship, with for his living crew attached, will run naked to HomePlanetsThree. When it comes to fight-or-flight the marsupial humanoids have always had some place to run for their own survival and safety. They have not had a stand-an-fight event for over twenty-thousand earth years. A very strong social consciousness is necessity.

            "Do you think he'll take your offer?" asks Hartolite.

            Yermey responds, "I'm more interested in why Ship allowed the Cessna wingtip's touch. Ship knew the plane was close and he chose to do nothing until after the touch."

            With gazed eyes narrowing Captain Friendly recounted, "Ship allowed a touch not a collision. I too wonder about this. For now though we need to go with what is. Unknowingly to her this woman Pill may have scientific evidence of our existence to be analyzed, and there may be microscopic evidence, traces of blackenot mass on the wingtip. I think still it would be easier to buy the plane and allow them to make a healthy profit in the process. Besides, an electromagnetic anomaly may have allowed the plane to tap Ship. Godofamily only knows stranger things have happened to us.

            "What do we do?" questions Hartolite. "Ship is autonomous as we came here on our own orders, not from ParentsinCharge." At least this is my assumption, she thought. If we don’t know the truth, surely Ship does.

            Friendly interrupted Hartolite, whispering, "We came to save this species of primates from the most abominably of plagues, perhaps the same one we had over twenty-thousand years ago." 

            With his impish smile Yermey calmed the notion, "We cannot know this plague is for certain.” Pausing in the further reflection of a man who is nearly five hundred Earth years old, he said, “it is highly probable though, highly probable." Yermey thinking continued with, “or otherwise I would not have volunteered for this surreptitious expedition.”

***

         You have been toying with ebook conversion services as you are not in the mood to do it yourself. You want world distribution because the iUniverse books have that. You have a plain book cover on those books.

         2201 hours. I want a simple white print on a blue background like what I have on the softbound Merlyn books.

         Find and drag a copy on here then post. All for tonight. You have to have blood drawn for Dr. B for Thursday and you have to be at the hospital at ten for your operations. – Amorella

           2220 hours. The truest blue color photo is the first one, but the set up and style is the same.

           I agree. This book is about when you are dead and an angel asks you to tell a story about yourself. You can say I have one in three volumes. It is a mystery about being human. Merlyn the Bard is the only character. He dreams my story in four clover leaf segments per chapter for twenty-one chapters. The first segment is titled "The Dead", the second is "The Brothers", the third is "Grandma's Stories" and the fourth is "Diplomatic Pouch". - Amorella

          2234 hours. I don't know that this bodes well. It was my own entrapment for focusing on the story for self-validity and consistency. Not for selling the book. I am not interested in selling the book. Sharing the story makes me free not selling it. 

         Who are you, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner now? - Amorella

        2238 hours. Time for bed. Good night, Amorella.

         Good night, boy. - Amorella