76. 23 March 2019
Saturday afternoon. You completed Chapter Two, much to your surprise. - Amorella
1609 hours. I finished "Future Dream Two" without a forethought. Much seemingly extraneous material deleted. I assume my soul was in on the operation because I am without the words to explain why it bothers me to see the words go.
The memories and embellishments were part of your fun-with-life events that you don't want to personally give up. You haven't, but for streamlining the work, not for your sense of personal self-worth, showing the little delights found in everyday living along the way. mh
1621 hours. I liked to talk, to entertain in the classroom. I had to intellectually entertain while teaching literature, grammar or expository writing. Dr. Harold Hancock, History Department chair showed me that most every day in class. He and Dr. John Coulter, Department of English chair taught good stuff and enjoyed doing so. Their teaching methods were unconsciously heartfelt first, an important lesson for every parent and teacher.
Add Chapter Two below and then post. - Amorella
*** ***
Merlyn's Mind
by Richard H. Orndorff
© 2006, revised 2019
Chapter Two
"The Brothers" in the Late Twentieth Century
Robert enters his brother's den and asks, "What are you watching?"
“National Geographic. It's on DNA. A genetics researcher named Wells shows that we men are all sons of a man who lived fifty-six thousand years ago in East Africa.”
Robert sarcastically replies, “Turn us inside out then and now and we mostly look pretty much alike.”
“True,” says Richie, “trade route merchandising moved the brotherhood around pretty fast. Our genetic Eve was someone from hundred and fifty thousand years ago.”
“Men are faster than women,” laughs Rob. “Where’s your latest Harper’s magazine?”
“I have dibs since I pay for it, says Richie, and adds, "I hid it before you got here.”
You are such a prick, thinks Rob. “I give you my poetry mags.”
“After you are done with them." Pause. "Hey, want a beer?”
“What'd you think of my latest poem?” asks Robert.
“What’d you think of my first chapter?” replies Richard.
Since he brother doesn't get up, Robert heads for the refrigerator. “Where did the wives go?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Is the car here?”
“No, it’s not. I thought they were going to look at the flowers at the west side of the house.”
He opened the refrigerator door, “Where’s the beer?”
“In the back on the right side second shelf from the top,” says Richard.
“I keep mine on the top self in the back. It’s colder back there.”
“Yeah, well,” mutters Richie, "next time bring your own beer."
Robert came in a few seconds later and fell back into the large jungle themed green stuffed chair. He sighed, “I got another rejection from The New Yorker.”
“You know just because they publish one of yours, it doesn’t mean they are going to publish every one you send." The National Geographicshow ends. "What do you want to watch?”
“Golf is on ESPN.”
He pushes the remote. "You got it," replies Richie as he pushed the remote.
“Where’s Lady?”
“She’s sleeping on the living room couch.”
“How do you know?”
“Wife’s gone. Wife goes, Richard's American cocker, Lady heads for the couch. She can see the driveway and when wife drives in, off she goes.”
Rob chuckled, “Lady knows you don’t give a damn about the couch.”
“The Lady knows. She’s one smart dog. We share the pizza in secret, she’s my best buddy.”
“Jack’s like that too. One smart terrier. Wife doesn’t give him treats but I do. I trained him too.”
“You got the older wife, sounds just like her.”
Robert and Richie snicker as they watch a terrific putt. When The crowd claps, Robert says, “Wake the old girl up and have her come in and keep us company.”
“Lady!” shouts Richie, “Come here, girl!” A few commercials flew by, “Lady!” Still she slept. “She’s got junk in her ears again,” said Richie, upset because Lady isn't as obedient as Rob's Jack.
“That’s just an excuse.”
“No. Cockers have lots of ear problems.”
Robert, being a bit prickish, comments, “Well, they clip their tails, so why don’t they clip their ears too?”
“Damn dog,” grumbles Richie. He goes in to see Lady unperturbed.
Robert suddenly hear a grow, then the “Damn!” He gets up to see the comedy. “What happened?”
“She bit me on the hand. Look at this!”
“I see the marks but she didn’t draw blood. You must have startled her. He looked down to see Lady now under the coffee table. “Come on out, girl. It’s okay,” he said in a soft voice. She crept out thinking about wagging her tail but seeing Richie keeps her ears down.
Robert pulled the mostly red right ear. “You’re right. Look at the wax and crude in here. Get some tweezers and swabs,” then adds, “and scissors, she’s got hair tangles in there. I’ll clean this out.” He pet her gently, “It’ll be okay girl. You are such a pretty Lady. Pretty Lady,” he continues, and pet the rusty red and white parti-spaniel until Richie arrives with the small box of ear cleaning material.
Once cleaned up and Lady found herself up on the couch with her belly being scratched. She was off in wonderland. Richie hit the remote during a golf commercial and caught the tail end of a religious broadcast asking for money for the poor and impoverished in Latin America.
“That’s a bunch of bullshit,” comments Robert.
“I agree,” responds Richie as he flipped the channel back to ESPN.”
“Lady’s got a better life than any of us.”
“True,” says Richie, “but she doesn’t know that. We are a part of her pack. We nearly hairless old dogs take care of her and she in turn provides us psychological comfort as only a well-worn mother dog can do.”
“We have to take care of ourselves. No one is going to do it for us. People pray for shit all the time.”
“The miracle syndrome.”
“The miracle is that we have survived at all.”
That’s true, thinks Richie. The fifties and sixties, how did we survive that. No one thought we’d live to be thirty and here we are in our sixties. “It is worse now than it was before.”
“No,” counters Robert, “it was worse then. Terrorists with a couple of nuclear weapons could destroy a cities, but it's nothing compared to what the Soviets and Americans had pointed at each other.”
“I think if a terrorist group was more humane they would explode a nuclear weapon out in the South Pacific away from humanity. Terror would follow soon enough.”
“Why didn’t Truman do that?” said Robert. “Why couldn’t they have dropped the bomb near a city so that the truth of its power could not be hidden from the general population, yet far enough away that fewer casualties would have resulted?”
“War is not humane.”
Robert counters, “But it’s human enough.”
“Old war dogs take care of their own,” replies Richard.
“They hardly ever bite the hand that feeds them,” laughs Robert.
“A bone in the hand is worth a stone in a bush,” comments Richie in a younger man's sense of wit.
***
***
Grandma’s Story: Two
(Mentally delivered to Richard Graystone
by his imaginary Ferryboat Captain, Leo Lamar)
Grandma Earth traces Eve’s DNA back through various shamans of old. Why shamans? The shaman or storyteller understood what I, Grandma, call trance-physics. Any reader who finds herorhimself immersed in a good book or as a moviegoer discovers herorhimself immersed in a good film, understands what trance-physics is. Trance-physics is the vehicle Richard Graystone uses to place himself onto Captain Lamar’s ferryboat to ride into a past or into a future.
Individual souls know what the ferryboat holds. Souls know fiction can show a better or worse past or a better or worse future as well as a better or worse present. People make things appear better than they are when they need to, and they make things appear worse than they are when they feel the need. Lots of fiction in here and in the real world out there too. If you don't believe it look in the mirror and ask yourself who you really are. Separate yourself from your fiction. Souls know all about this, both in the necessities of the living and in those of the dead.
*
This second storyis told by a descendent of the old man mentioned in the first chapter, the shaman who told his audience they could be out in the stars and here on Earth at the same time. He traveled to the Place of the Dead too. Funny, the listener who asked the question should die first, but she did. The shaman lived another ten years after she died. She drowned in a then nameless river. The woman had been his granddaughter.
A direct female descendant of hers traveled from what is now northern Italy to Spain. This was about ten thousand years ago, and within the next thousand years of generations she had found herself on the British Isles with people now called Basques. A few had settled on in lower Western Britain. As the families grew, some moved on to Ireland, others to Scotland and Wales. More than five thousand years later, a shaman appeared who had some tall tales centered on Mother Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, and the Nature of being human.
This particular shaman spent a lot of time walking the woods and day dreaming north of Salisbury Plain and south-east of Scotland. The shaman dreamed a new story.
He was five when he first had the story dream but when he awoke it wasn’t there. The next night he dreamed it again and thought about it for the next fifteen years. The story dream was about a rebellion in the Place of the Dead. This is what he told the tribe:
“The cold, icy fingers of the Dead want to feel their way back home our Mother. The Dead did not have to go all the way to the Stars in Heaven or even to the Moon. The Dead are among us.”
He related this to others and said, “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 Earth again, and best of all, they will have no icy cold fingers reaching out to us, the Living.” And, he continued, “You can close the burial spot with stone. Stones don’t move so easily as the spirits do.”
This shaman also became interested in crystal. He had found himself in more than one cave with crystal. Crystal was to him the skull bone of Mother Earth, and it produced a vibration this shaman could feel in his fingertips. A small piece of crystal in his left hand produced an empathy with whom or what he touched with his right hand. With the seemingly magical crystal in one hand the shaman could sense a movement within particular stones with the other hand. No one knew this wasn’t possible, so it was.
The stones never move themselves, but people claimed that with the right crystal you could sense the stone moving within itself like people move within themselves. People have a spirit and so do stones. That was the logic. -- Eggs like fragile stones can appear dead on the outside but be living on the inside. People can appear living on the outside and be dead on the inside just the opposite of a pebble or stone held in the hand. Stone and people have that in common you see.
*
Grandma smiles and winks. The crystal worked its empathetic magic on human beings. It worked for the shaman so he told it as a true story. Stones are like bones. You line them up just right and they lie, that’s the truth of it.
Grandma glanced beyond the dark sky above. The white in her eyes could tell you her dark pupils were disappearing inside that earthy head of hers. I got me a chant, she says, to take us from a past to a future. I’m the board on which the Shamans dance. Grandma rushes from past to future, just like young lovers do. She says:
From two ancient human hearts by the soul made singing
Return this story to where passions are ringing
This well-known Druidess and Druid will do
In the same spirited body that make up you.
Within the corridor where stirring memories show
Vivien and Merlyn now, on Charon’s Ferry flow
And from old Grandma’s toothy gums
Something oddly familiar this way comes.
***
***
"FutureDream: Two"
by Ferryboat Captain, Leo Lamar)
Sitting copilot, Pyl Burroughsstares at the sunlit mist over Lake Michigan. Long, sun-blushed clouds set like puffy islands in the distant forefront. She muses; this is a very different place from where my Justin soon awakes. Pyl’s sight dropped to Lakeshore Drive northbound. Pyl glanced across her left shoulder to the Sears Tower, and straight west to the X-framed John Hancock building. The steel antenna punctures the sky, and I am sitting with my brother in Daddy’s plane. Pyl smiles Mona Lisa-like flashing to the memory of Justin bringing home a piece of ancient Mediterranean pottery from a long-forgotten dig . . .. She turns to her piloting brother, “So, Blakie, where’s our old runway?”
He pointed, “Northwest, see it ahead.” How could you forget, he thought, you are a much better pilot than I. Checking his air speed,Blakebanks the plane left towards North Chicago. Twilight is my favorite time, muses Blake, I love the beautifully reflecting clouds. He smiled with self-confidence and within minutes began his approach -- air speed in the green, altimeter fine - we ease down. Both hear the thump of the landing gear extending and lock. He obtains a clearer visualization of his private runway. Shortly they touch ground. Air speed diminished a bit rapidly and Blake worked the throttle, revving the single engine slightly. Pyl smiles. The Cessna drops to within ten feet of private asphalt runway. I wonder if Pyl noticed the over-revving, thinks Blake as he chops the engine; the blue and white reconditioned Cessna Centurion thumps the asphalt. He chuckles, “Great landing, huh?”
“I like the way you fixed the landing field, it’s nice.” I’m surprisingly you didn’t tell me, she thought, then added in her light, sarcastic tone, “You over-revved the engine, Blakie dear.”
Blake eased into parking and shut the engine. “You keep the plane most of the time. I don’t get as much practice as you.”
Dad flew many clients across the States in this Cessna, she thought, a six-passenger high performance 1970’s aircraft, Dad used to add, ‘the only single engine with a pressurized cabin.’ Pyl smiled; it still has great instrumentation. I love the leather seats. “Our plane, Blakie boy.”
“Okay, our plane on permanent loan.” responds Blake.
“Dad’s expensive plane. He would have been proud of your landing,” says Pyl, grinning as she climbs out. “I spent about sixty thousand reconditioning her. How’s our old Victorian home?”
“I’ve spent about the same amount on it too.,” says Blake. “Mom and Dad bought it in 1942. It needed work.”
Pyl sisterly nudged him, “You need a woman around Blake.”
“I enjoy living by myself,” said Blake. “I fixed up the basement, that’s where I began the experiments. I have a small office and an interview room - a toilet, wash basin and even a cot by the computers.”
“Did you do it yourself?”
Blake replied, “I helped with the framing, did the insulation and the electric, and contracted the plumbing.”
“I’m anxious to see it.” It’s good to be home, reflects Pyl. I’m glad Blake has the house. She conjured a whimsical look as they approached the vintage car near the runway, “Why did you buy another restored car?”
Blake smirks, “I sold the Cord because I worried about it getting dings when I drove it into town. I know you aren’t supposed to drive a car with historical plates for errands, but I do; and look, a column shift. You don’t see shifts like this anymore.” They climbed in, and Blake switched on the old AM radio.
Pyl immediately turned the volume down, “What year Ford is it?”
“Forty-nine, with the original V-8, it was fast. Chevy’s were only six bangers back then.” He patted the large steering wheel, “Older cars have their own personalities. Besides, my first car was a 1949 Ford, not Dad’s old Cord. I spent a bit getting it fixed up enough to sell. The interior was all redone but the outside needed some work.”
“I guess,” she replied. “What’s with the back fenders on this Ford?”
“Those are fender skirts. You never did know much about cars, did you Pyl?”
“I know about planes and horses.” Along with art history, she thought.
Blake ignored her comment and tuned in an all news station while waiting for Pyl to put on her face. “I changed a few things.”
Pyl checked her lipstick then looked in her purse for her compact. “Did you pay a lot for lab equipment?”
“Not really.”
Blake interrupted, “Did you just hear that?”
“What?”
He turned the volume up. “The radio says there were a couple minor tremors near the Dead Sea. Isn’t that where Justin’s dig is?”
“No,” stated Pyl. “He said he’d be in Jerusalem.”
“Here we are. The house looks pretty much the same from the outside.”
“It has a new coat of paint,” she said as she thought, it’s all a cheap white? It looks ridiculous. Blake you are an idiot. You never study up on things. The glossy black shutters look ugly. Mom and Dad would turn over in their graves. You made a beautiful old Victorian a black and white. Pyl smiled politely, “It looks nice and cleaned up, Blake.”
“Two coats,” he replied proudly, “and three on the west side.”
“Can you still see the stream from the deck?” she asks, “and the clump of trees where we used to play as kids? Where you used to play with matches?”
***
Meanwhile, on another part of the world Justin Burroughs sits on the bed in a small hotel staring at the artifact on the table. Observing the piece closely, he speaks into a digital recorder, “Brown to grayish marble sealed urn about the size of a man’s fist -- Greek or Assyrian. The cap has two ridged levels with the higher ridge smaller than the first and a smooth-pointed top. The base is stable -- it probably sat on a table or mantle. Several nicks and chips -- reminds me of an odd-shaped ossuary. A larger jar of this type might hold human remains somewhere about King Herod’s time up to the destruction of the temple.”
Justin uproots his tall, slender frame from the bed, pulls the chair out, sits, and dictates, “The urn is the size of a drinking cup though it has a sealed marble lid.” He holds the urn in his right hand. “The outer base is five and a half centimeters in diameter and half a centimeter high. The urn proper is seven centimeters high, bulging with an egg-like curve. A black substance is hermetically sealing the cap with the urn proper. The sealing between the cap and the base appears to be similar in color and texture to the tar and gum used in Egyptian mummification. The chipped cap appears browner than gray-though the colors are consistent with the colors of the base. The cap has a diameter six centimeters and has a number of scratches and four major nicks.”
He thinks, when I return to the States I can have the university drill the urn, check the air and carbon date any salvageable contents. This artifact may contain a piece of family jewelry or the cremated remains of a family pet. If Karl can help me get this registered with Israeli Antiquities, everything will be fine.
***
>This isSoki. Blake won’t tell you he thinks people are mostly hot air, but he does. ‘Life’s a scientific experiment and people are the lab rats,’ fits a Blake commentary to a tee. Justin thinks he knows what it is to be dead because he once napped in an open grave. Justin Burroughs uses the dead and their remaining artifacts to make a living.
Pyl's father gave her a pretty name, Philly, as in ‘my silly Philly,’ which she thought was funny. She loved her dad’s laugh when he called her Philly. Brother Blake though, could only say Pyl when he was young. Sokismiles. People spend a lot time on stage without checking the construction underneath.
In here, relays the Soki, many a dead person thinks sheorhe has to define a sense of justice sheorhe can ‘live’ with to defend one’s self before the Heavenly Court. The first questions may center on ‘how am I innocent?’ and ‘what am I really guilty of?’
A good, honest response doesn’t come so easily. Fortunately, the dead have plenty of time to spend on life’s major moments. The living spend too much time on the stage construction they are singing, dancing, or preaching on. They miss much of the drama because of set construction.
The Dead in the "Grandma's Story" survive by developing a sense of humor and wit to counter the morbidity and irony of the situation they find themselves in. People know more about life than I would ever care to know. To be honest, I want to go home, but I have no inclination of what or where home is. Like Trexer the tall marsupial, I am trying to gather my bearings in this wordy text.
Friendly thinks I, the Soki, am swimming in her head like a fish. She thinks I am a creation of her imagination. She is wrong in that thinking. I was shoved or pushed into this textual universe. I first found myself in the South African character, Mexito, one of the four adults who survived the 1988 Earth Friendly and Fargo first found themselves on. Then I moved into Friendly.
I float balloon-like. I float, but I do not eat, sleep or dream. Being conscious is interesting, is it not? Blake thinks the unconscious is even more interesting. Pyl is not concerned, and Justin is not sure what he thinks about being conscious. Everyone has herorhis own point of view. Maybe that's all there is to this consciousness business, says I the Soki. You among the living or the dead, what think you? <
*** ***
1953 hours. Yesterday in Notes 76 Miss Havisham said:
In here, the soul is as a drop of spiritual water. Spiritual ice and spiritual steam cannot exist in the spiritual world of human beings living or dead. mh
The above is a simile.
** **
Simile vs. Metaphor
Many people have trouble distinguishing between simile and metaphor. A glance at their Latin and Greek roots offers a simple way of telling these two closely-related figures of speech apart. Simile comes from the Latin word similis (meaning “similar, like”), which seems fitting, since the comparison indicated by a simile will typically contain the words as or like. Metaphor, on the other hand, comes from the Greek word metapherein (“to transfer”), which is also fitting, since a metaphor is used in place of something. “My love is like a red, red rose” is a simile, and “love is a rose” is a metaphor.
Selected from Merriam-Webster.
** **
2032 hours. My question is why not use the metaphor: The soul is spiritual water.
This is to save confusion because obvious or not, the soul is not spiritual water. mh
Drop in the definition of analogy, orndorff. - Amorella
** **
Definition of analogy
1a: a comparison of two otherwise unlike things based on resemblance of a particular aspect
b: resemblance in some particulars between things otherwise unlike: SIMILARITY
2: inference that if two or more things agree with one another in some respects they will probably agree in others
3: correspondence between the members of pairs or sets of linguistic forms that serves as a basis for the creation of another form
4: correspondence in function between anatomical parts of different structure and origin — compare HOMOLOGY
Selected from Merriam-Webster
** **
2046 hours. The problem with analogies for me is that sometimes I 'see' "a resemblance in some particulars between things otherwise unlike," whereas no one else sees the resemblance. For instance, my thought is to use color to depict the heart and mind -- red for heart and blue for mind -- the mix at any particular 'balanced' time would be magenta. ["Magenta is a color that is variously defined as purplish-red, reddish-purple, or mauvish-crimson. It is made by mixing equal amounts of blue and red."] Is this a plausibility for clarity in defining the spiritual aspects of both the mind and the heart in context with this blog?
In here, the clarity within soul cannot perceive 'smoke and fog' like the human heartanmind does. mh
2109 hours. Whoa. The soul, in this capacity is almost angelic.
In here, when something is soulfelt it is not an angelic-like feeling, Mr. Orndorff. - mh
2115 hours. Enough for me tonight. I never thought about having empathy for a soul, let alone my own (in this blog's context). To see the heart and mind with such clarity would be too much of a shock. Fog and smoke would be a welcoming blessing, at least to me.
Don't go overboard, orndorff. This is prep for our defining the soul, what it is and what it can do within the confines of this blog and your Merlyn books. Post. - Amorella
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