73. 10 March 2019
Evening. Earlier you revised and corrected "The Brothers" in Chapter Two. You also cleaned up your northeast corner of the bedroom work area making it more usable and efficient. As you began work on "Grandma's Story: Two" Grandma added a bit about the
human soul in her introduction. This was unannounced and unexpected. This is the newly included conclusion to that introduction. - Amorella
** **
Grandma’s Story: Two ©2019
(Text 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 are forced need to, and they make things appear worse than they are when they feel the forced 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 necessities of the dead.
*
** **
2140 hours. My fingers never stopped lifting and dropping onto the keyboard. I typed the second paragraph above as if it were already there. Originally, I dropped Leo Lamar in for 'Amorella' I thought it was rather clever at the time, but no reader ever called me on it. In fact, I only know of one person who listened intently to all three books through, that was my late in life blind Uncle Ernie Ernsberger. He thought the three Merlyn books were fascinating but needed cleaned up with a different conclusion at the end of book three. I promised him I would even as he was dying of heart and lung complications but I haven't. If I finish this new project I will have done that before following him along. I hope he forgives me if I don't live long enough to accomplish this. I think he will. I love my Uncle Ernie as if he were my own father. I admire and respect his human spirit very much.
Post. - Amorella
2231 hours. Here is the completed draft of the first two sections of Chapter Two.
From two ancient human hearts by the soul made singing
And from old Grandma’s toothy gums
2231 hours. Here is the completed draft of the first two sections of Chapter Two.
***
***
Merlyn's Mind
by Richard H. Orndorff
© 2006, revised 2019
Chapter Two
"The Brothers"in theLate 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
(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 story is 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.
***
***
