Notes

         Late afternoon. You spent most of the morning helping Carol clean off the kitchen island. Stacks of coupons, papers, books and magazines more than several inches high. You have been wondering what a righteous heart is as, at least in the book, Ezekiel has one.

         It has been in my head because I am not sure of the elementary elements of the human heart as seen in the books. If the consciousness is composed of separate clusters of specialized networks then what are the specialized networks of the heart as seen or discovered in the books? I suppose in a theoretical analogy a moral aspect would be one network, but what would be the others? And how many? At least for the book. It is interesting to think about and I cannot image the heart being much different as it is no more physical than consciousness is. Mind and consciousness might be synonyms for all I know. It is difficult to imagine the soul having a similar analogy of specialized networks. I think of it as a simple metaphysical/(human)spiritual network solidification, a protective shell for the heart and mind, that’s what I always come back to as an analogy. Whatever. The ‘networking’ systems all need to work in context of  the Merlyn series, that is my main desire here.

         You wish to add particulars to the books’ metaphysical engine that can deliver from book one through book six. > However, you spent the evening watching three copied TV shows. Tomorrow, you and Carol want to leave by eight-fifteen to arrive at University Heights to meet daughter and go to lunch before she prepares to leave at three to go to her friend’s wedding rehearsal dinner in Columbus.

Notes

        Mid-morning. Up at dawn, breakfast and the news-media. You remembered an article from the Times yesterday and copied it this morning for further reference. The focus is on measuring human consciousness. I have one paragraph for you to insert here.

         I don’t even have it in front of me Amorella and I haven’t read it through since yesterday. Okay – let’s see what the paragraph is. I am curious. > The New York Times of the 20 September article is “Sizing Up Consciousness by its Bits,” by Carl Zimmer.

“. . . Dr. Tononi’s theory is, potentially, very different. He and his colleagues are translating the poetry of our conscious experiences into the precise language of mathematics. To do so, they are adapting information theory, a branch of science originally applied to computers and telecommunications. If Dr. Tononi is right, he and his colleagues may be able to build a “consciousness meter” that doctors can use to measure consciousness as easily as they measure blood pressure and body temperature. . . .”

         This is the fifth paragraph in an article five pages long. I haven’t reread the article but it seems to me there was another paragraph far more interesting than this.

         Add it then, orndorff. – Amorella.

         “For the past decade, Dr. Tononi and his colleagues have been expanding traditional information theory in order to analyze integrated information. It is possible, they have shown, to calculate how much integrated information there is in a [brain] network. Dr. Tononi has dubbed this quantity phi, and he has studied it in simple networks made up of just a few interconnected parts. How the parts of a network are wired together has a big effect on phi. If a network is made up of isolated parts, phi is low, because the parts cannot share information. . . . 

           "Networks gain the highest phi possible if their parts are organized into separate clusters, which are then joined. “What you need are specialists who talk to each other, so they can behave as a whole,” Dr. Tononi said. He does not think it is a coincidence that the brain’s organization obeys this phi-raising principle.”

         We work from different perspectives, orndorff. The substance of this article shows an example of it. Post. – Amorella.

         Late afternoon. Sitting at Kroger’s on Mason-Montgomery Road after other errands. Chips and celery tonight for snacks while watching one or two of the new shows, NCIS and NCIS Los Angeles as well as Detroit ??? at ten. You both enjoy the characters and the plots of the police or detective shows.

         We were both brought up reading Sherlock Holmes and listening to ‘Yours Truly Johnny Dollar’ and the like before we had televisions. Comforting entertainment for us I suppose. There used to be a lot of mysteries on the late forties and fifties radio shows. The Green Hornet was another. I cannot remember the names. One was an FBI show and maybe even Dragnet was on radio. Anyway we listened to them as well as adventure shows where the characters were in Latin America or exotic places such as India or Tibet or the Congo in Africa. Loved those shows. I remember a little bit of Indian Jones in several of them. Tarzan too was another. I ought to check them out online. Some may still be played on one of the internet old time radio stations. It’s all in what you grew up with.

I still enjoyed listening to radio shows throughout the fifties. I mostly kept it to myself and almost always listened in bed on old post WWII headphones which were bulky but cool. I had antenna wire stretched around the floor of my bedroom from 1953 until we moved from Minerva Park in 1959. Then when in college I stretched it around my room at my grandparents on the corner of Walnut and Knox in Westerville. Also, Ellery Queen, This Is Your FBI, and Suspense were three more radio shows worth listening to. CBS and ABC Radio Mystery Theatre(s) were others. I could check them all out but not worth the time now. Maybe when I am older, beyond the writing stage of my life. Nothing like a good mystery or who-done-it almost anytime, that’s what Carol and I think.

           Recollection is a pleasurable pastime for older folks. From my perspective it helps keep you young-minded. At least no one is forced to listen to your stories, or mine either for that matter. Not to either of our likings. Post, orndorff. All for today. – Amorella. 

Notes, Asimov to Ezekiel to Takis - scene six completed

           Late morning. You are waiting for Herb from Handyman Connection to come fix the squirrel’s entrance to the attic. This time you are using wire as well as wood. Yesterday, a former student, Eric G., gave you an idea as he had written you a note mentioning Hari Seldon, a fictional character from Asimov’s Foundation series. You wondered aloud to him how it would be to have such a character in HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither. From Wikipedia you have found and slightly edited the following material:

Hari Seldon, a fictional character, is the intellectual hero of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series. In his capacity as mathematics professor at Streeling University on Trantor, he developed psychohistory, allowing him to predict the future in probabilistic terms. His prediction of the eventual fall of the Galactic Empire is the reason behind his nickname "The Raven" Seldon.

Psychohistory is a fictional science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make (nearly) exact predictions of the collective actions of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942-1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 novel Foundation.

Axioms

Psychohistory depends on the idea that, while one cannot foresee the actions of a particular individual, the laws of statistics as applied to large groups of people could predict the general flow of future events. Asimov used the analogy of a gas: an observer has great difficulty in predicting the motion of a single molecule in a gas, but can predict the mass action of the gas to a high level of accuracy. (Physicists know this as the Kinetic theory.) Asimov applied this concept to the population of his fictional Galactic Empire, which numbered a quintillion. The character responsible for the science's creation, Hari Seldon, established two axioms:

that the population whose behaviour was modeled should be sufficiently large

that the population should remain in ignorance of the results of the application of psychohistorical analyses

There is a third underlying axiom of Psychohistory, which is trivial and thus not stated by Seldon in his Plan:

that Human Beings are the only sentient intelligence in the Galaxy.

The above is excerpted from Wikipedia

***

         You taught book one of the series, Foundation, as an introduction to your Futures Studies/Science Fiction class at Indian Hill in the seventies and early eighties. To you Hari Seldon was the master fictional hero of Futures Studies in real life. Hari predicted eight Seldon Crises in the series that were resolved with one action.

         Again, from Wikipedia, a definition:

A Seldon Crisis is a fictional socio-historical phenomenon. They are part of the field of psychohistory, and refer to a social and political situation that, to be successfully surmounted, would eventually leave only one possible, inevitable, course of action.

They are named after Hari Seldon, who founded the field of psychohistory, and who appears as a pre-recorded hologram at the climax of each crisis. Before his death, he used psychohistory to predict and manipulate each event. A Seldon Crisis usually involves both an external pressure (such as threat of attack) and an internal pressure (such as threat of revolt). Both pressures will come to a head simultaneously, and be resolved with the same action.   Edited from Wikipedia

***

         The concept and follow-through of a Seldon Crisis is one of the most profound pieces of literature that I have ever read. Rather than serendipity (luck and coincidence) Hari creates a situation where luck has little to do with it, and what is thought of as an event of coincidence is a socio, political, religious, and economic manipulation to allow people to better survive a crisis of power or lack of it, and live more peacefully and humanly. That was and is my take on the subject.

         This, orndorff, is what is being done through the Merlyn books.

         I cannot imagine such a thing.

         Of course not. Lay the books out and see if there is not a truth in what I say here. – Amorella.

         That would be too much trouble, too much time. Let’s just say, “I have my doubts that such a concept follows through the Merlyn books.”

         That, my friend, is the thinking that allows me to write six books rather than the original three you charted (Stuck, Home, On Earth). All for now. Post. – Amorella.

         A piece of leftover pizza for lunch. You have the material gathered from the basement for help in controlling the squirrels from entrance. Herb should be here within an hour or so. You and Carol are both still fighting a common cold and are physically worn from it.

         It is not that bad, Amorella. How embarrassing of you to suggest such a thing. Okay, I am feeling bad about having a cold but so what, people feel bad about lot worse things in life. Lord, give me a break here.

         Do not erase, boy. Thoughts on paper, that’s what you wanted.

         I don’t like using ‘Lord’ here. I hardly ever say it even in this context.

         You imply it more than you think. It is like OMG, orndorff. Mostly cultural, though you are trying to be polite in this blog. Even one of your long-standing friends, Alta B., who has read all your notes and books, said, while on the trip into Michigan, “[The blog] is less honest than your [earlier] notes.”

         She did say that or its equivalent, then went on to add that ‘the blog is for a different audience.’ It bothers my conscious some because it is a true statement on her part. I don’t know how to rectify it. I don’t like to think I am writing for an audience other than myself and those same close friends and their spouses who are mentioned at the beginning of book three. What it comes down to is my desire to remain ‘authentic’ in purpose and style whether notes or books. These are the matters that are the most important to me. I want my inner ‘centeredness’ to show through. That’s my point. I would hope it is consistent, but perhaps it is not. Such is life.

         Post for now. Time to work on home economics on the computer. Real life. Economics. – Amorella.

        The handyman is working. We completed all the check transactions for the last month and a half. I’m glad Carol is in charge of the finances as she is much more focused on numbers than I am. I notice that in my fictional Elysium there is no word of economics of any kind, that is other than living with one’s self and others, or at least that is how it seems. No wonder it’s fiction. I cannot imagine a real HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither not having some sort of economics as it seems to be built into our humanity into our concepts of order and balance as well as fairness and justice. Hmm. And our senses of  equality and hierarchy and power.

         Politics of the U.S. today slant towards liberal socialists on the left and capitalistic tea partiers on the right.  And, that doesn’t include the various religious persuasions in our culture. The closest thing to an actual Seldon Crisis (in my mind) was the end of the Soviet Union. I would hope it doesn’t come to that in our country, but if it did I would not be surprised.

         You hesitate but here is what you are thinking without much articulation. “Individual freedom has become a kind of sacred deity.”

         I would just as soon not see this as a thought.

         Why?

         Because it does not help me to think such things. I gain nothing from it, and it is not provable in any case. Pure opinion, and I don’t put much stake in opinions.

         In the books the Dead have an economic system based on a sense of righteousness. (Notice I did not say self-righteousness.) – Amorella.

         I need to see the dictionary here.

Righteousness: 1 : acting in accord with divine or moral law  : free from guilt or sin
2 a : morally right or justifiable  *a righteous decision*  b : arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality  *righteous indignation.  [From Merriam-Webster]

***

         Uh,  this is making me uncomfortable.

         Why? You cannot have the books' ‘Rebellion’ without it.

         I would as soon avoid the subject directly so as to avoid appearing self-righteous, that is, in my pursuing such a subject.

         Satire is your game, orndorff. What do you expect, boy?

         Indignation. That is what my satire rises from.

         So, why not admit the truth?

         I do not feel worthy to have as much indignation as you are suggesting. This is a highly uncomfortable subject for me to think on, Amorella.

         I have said this before, “You are arrogant.”

         I intend for this blog to remain respectful and polite.

         I am referring to the Merlyn books directly not to any notes.

         I need a break from this.

         Post, and take one, orndorff. Meanwhile, you have to live with who you are. These things need taken into personal account. – Amorella. 
***

Scene Six

         Ezekiel’s inner light diffracted at his edge of consciousness. A single ray quietly plunged into his mind as a sunbeam may break through the surface of water.

         Surprised, Ezekiel suddenly consciously pronounced, ‘Who is the least angelic-like of all my dead friends? And then he declared, ‘That is who I most wish to see.’

The shadows of this scattered thought felt as shades of dispersed bubbles of mind dictating matter. ‘I wish for G-D himself,’ uncommonly came to pass between the dark balloon-minded chimera below and the inner light above.

As Ezekiel had not just wished for G-D, his consciousness froze at the thought.

What came next was an event-in-mind that Ezekiel or anyone else could not have expected in either life or death.

It is the beginning and my spine shivers. I am inside and there is no way out. This is the reason my forearms shiver. I am non-thought. My fingers are cold and I am ice forming on the Great River. I am a floating icy continuity of uncommon ground. I am Ezekiel dancing . . . I am namelessness dancing . . . I am as a string of poetic devices – dancing. No-thing.

h-e-r-e

To exist and not to exist at once. Unthreaded and detached logic scurries off on the tails of nonlinear un-dotted explanation points. To exist and not to exist. A  dash of one and a zero. A dash of zero and a one.

To this Ezekiel thinks, ‘I do not to exist and am able to reflect on this fact at the same time. This is the bottom line of being Dead. The top line is that the righteous will be reunited with their loved ones, that is the spirit of the words.’

***

         Takis caught hold in Thales’ heart and antenna-like directed Ezekiel’s words indirectly from himself to Thales . . .  “the spirit of the words,” entered Takis’s mind from soul or heart, Takis knew not which. Reunited, thought Takis, the Dead and the Living. What appears to be a one way street need not be. If the Living can come to the Dead, then the Dead can return to the Living. But first the Dead must return to the centeredness of our Mother’s heart. It is the heart not the soul or mind that brings the Dead together. We shamans have focused on the rhythms of the soul not the turbulence in the heart. One does not dance to a rebellion, one drives a rebellion with righteous indignation. 

[End of scene six for the present]

Notes

        After twenty-three hundred hours. Busy day, harboring a bad cold, errands, yard work; Papa John’s veggie styled pizza for supper, and finally Masterpiece Theatre with Inspector Lewis as today’s treat.

         For all of the day I ‘got’ yesterday’s journal joke after the fact. Such classic gallows humor in my last paragraph. That last sentence just flew onto the page without so much as a conscious thought. I was too tired to write today and thought something might pop up just before bed, but nothing has. I used to feel useful when teaching. Perhaps that is what this is about, an old man attempting to make himself useful by writing down his thoughts while secretly hoping something worthwhile may come from them. I taught students, now I attempt to teach myself, to learn some intimate details about living consciously through sub-conscious or unconscious –like writing.

         Another squirrel was caught today and a new trap took the used one’s place. That is the best I can do tonight.

         You are without thought, orndorff. By the way, more to go on scene six tomorrow. – Amorella. 

          Strange, I wasn't even considering scene six. Never entered my head today until now.

Notes around an ancient circumstance

         Late afternoon. You are waiting at Kroger’s on Tylersville after a late lunch at Panera. Earlier you and Carol spent some time putting six shade plants in the ground out in your ‘woods’. More ferns and a few ‘toad flower plants’. Things like this make Carol excited – yard work – something you don’t have the same value attachment for.

         I did the digging as the ground is hard from lack of rain. Plus as there are many trees, their roots also exist. We need to buy a tree to take the place of the one we cut a few weeks ago. I don’t mind but as I am off the pills walking  down the hill and on the uneven stone path makes me a bit more anxious about accidently falling. It takes about a week for the pills to take their fuller effect and only a day or two for their use to markedly dissipate. I become physically older without use of the Celebrex or its generic equivalent no question about it. We both have colds for the first time in a couple of years. All the usual symptoms – which is the reason for Kroger’s today – tissues and over the counter cough medicines and the like, plus lunch meat and baked beans for lunches or suppers though last night I had cereal which to me is as good a light supper as any.

         I do not know if we are finished with scene six or not. I am thinking not. I don’t particularly like yesterday’s work as it seems, at least at first, like a cop-out. Yet, after consideration I don’t know what else I would have expected. It all comes down to a mental event that cannot be described with words, which under more usual circumstances I would attribute to imagination. It wasn’t even an ‘unworldly event’ – nothing at all supernatural-like. In some ways it reminds me of an imaginary ‘visionary-like’ event in which I swam upon a small rocky island and saw a huge snake that could easily swallow me whole. I understood that he was the way into the place (which I assumed at the time, may be Hell) – anyway, I chose to be eaten, so I could find out, and was so consumed, whole. (no gnashing of teeth as if he were a Grendel). I came out the snake’s other end at the other side of the rocky island as a dark splotched, cream-colored eggshell of all things, nothing inside that I can remember. Odd dream. One of several during those late eighties. I would call the ‘snake eaten affair’ wholly natural and imaginary.

         Perhaps, orndorff, as this unconscious event of yours contains no parts of speech, the stories you are being transcribed are but an outline, an outer parameter as it were, of the shape of the said event.

         I could not imagine such a thing as a shape in connection with the circumstance as it had no physical features. The pronoun ‘it’ does not work here either as one cannot have a pronoun without an antecedent. > Such silliness to even mention it in context. I do not have anything else to say.

         As such, you might as well post. – Amorella.

         I don’t care, Amorella. It is useless to talk about this, and in doing so the words are meaning less all the way around. I don’t want to talk about this ‘event’ business any more. Wordlessness. A writer might as well be dead as to think on such matters.
 

Notes and scene six (at least some of it) of chapter six of book four

         Early afternoon and you are sitting in the Natorp’s Wholesale Nursery Outlet on Snyder Road while Carol looks for items on public sale.

         Let’s get into chapter six.

        

Scene Six

         Ezekiel’s inner light diffracted at his edge of consciousness. A single ray quietly plunged into his mind as a sunbeam may break through the surface of water.

         Surprised, Ezekiel suddenly consciously pronounced, ‘Who is the least angelic-like of all my dead friends? And then he declared, ‘That is who I most wish to see.’

The shadows of this scattered thought felt as shades of dispersed bubbles of mind dictating matter. ‘I wish for G-D himself,’ uncommonly came to pass between the dark balloon-minded chimera below and the inner light above.

As Ezekiel had not cognizantly wished for G-D, his consciousness abruptly froze.

What came next was an event-in-mind that Ezekiel or anyone else could not have expected in either life or death.

It is the beginning and my spine shivers. I am inside and there is no way out. This is the reason my forearms shiver. I am non-thought. My fingers are cold and I am ice forming on the Great River. I am a floating icy continuity of uncommon ground. I am Ezekiel dancing . . . I am namelessness dancing . . . I am as a string of poetic devices – dancing. No-thing.

h-e-r-e

To exist and not to exist at once. Unthreaded and detached logic scurries off on the tails of nonlinear un-dotted explanation points. To exist and not to exist. A  dash of one and a zero. A dash of zero and a one.

I do not to exist and am able to reflect on this fact at the same time. This is the bottom line of being Dead.

***

         The species is Dead and Living, orndorff. This is a fact in these Merlyn books. Being one of the Dead is not the Dead. The species appears a greater linear unit as is an explanation point, a reflective one at that.

         This does not make sense to me, Amorella. This is not right-minded in its creation.

         And logic finds the world, your universe, is?

         I will stick out this chapter and hope for Reason to prevail.

         You live long enough and it will, orndorff. And, quantum mechanics will have little to do with the conclusion. – Amorella. 

          

Notes

         Late lunch at Panera after errands. You slept much of the morning with a throat cold which Carol also has developed. A squirrel has returned while you were on your Michigan holiday and a trap (at the same place near the corner of the northeast roof) has already been set but so far, no takers. Once home we can work on finishing up your email and then hit the scene you had not got to.

         I am curious about yesterday’s comment on knowing the depth of friendships and the like when dead. Is this coming up in the book? It appears impossible to me to ever deluding myself into thinking I have the ability to chose strengths of friendships or love of any other kind. Why would the Dead find this attribute useful? It would appear to make friendships a competition, such as, ‘who is your best friend?’ Is your oldest friend the best because of duration? What constitutes strength in a friendship? Is it your spouse? Your mother? Or favorite aunt or uncle? A sibling? “Best friends forever – BFF”? As for respect for the Dead, with all the Dead it would seem one would have to minimize the individual and think of the entire group. I am simple-minded when it comes to these things. Though, without too much thought, I have made such an existential decision in life. Oh, my . . . how could I have forgotten such an event?

         Yes. You see you once declared such a position when you realized you had no choice.

         Was that the real reason? If so, I feel I should apologize.

         For what? Your humanity? You have learned not to be so arrogant as that.

         It is true. I have. It was an impossible moral dilemma, Amorella.

         You gave up a lot, boy. No mistaking it.

         I had no choice. It was not right for me to do anything else.

         You see, you did have a choice, boy, and you made a decision you can live with and die with too, as far as that goes.

         Let’s set up a fictional scene that gives a flavor to your decision, one that old Ezekiel can be dead with too. My decision, boy, not yours. This is something you can still learn from. – Amorella.

         Presently, the words that come to mind are not worthy of repeating here in this context.

         That is precisely the point. Decisions that go beyond the vocabulary to express them are what these stories frame. – Amorella.

         I have more to think on with this subject. Humor is needed in the framework too. I cannot believe it is all that important in my life, yet it has become that as witnessed by these notes and recently focused (Merlyn) work for the years since 1988.

         The geography of my heart, soul, mind and consciousness was forever changed by internal events that could not be helped and cannot be rectified. Within, I have stood like Martin Luther, I could do nothing else, nor can I today. Such drama begs for humor.

         Such an added humorous framework to such a personally staged drama is easy to image, old man, and you have done so. The joke is that the words are not yet humanly created for its description and so much better for you the writer, to be in such a predicament.

         The humor is indeed well heeled and something my consciousness must march to in any case. Let’s see what comes of this next scene tomorrow. Such a small pebble of a thought that cannot be unthought. Such a scene for the echo of funnies. Ah, to bed with a smile. What could be better.  – rho.