Great Merlyn's Ghost: One: An Encounter in Mind

By Richard H. Orndorff

The focus is on using reason and imagination in scoping the human reality of being dead and and of being alive in a fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483534541

Book preview

was."

ONE

Slavery

Merlyn 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 the clay

On Judgment Day.

The Dead 1

This is Merlyn. The date is 15 December 2009. I have been entangled between the Living and the Dead, since Orndorff’s third book Merlyn’s Mind was published in May 2008. Your twenty-first century Earth is not the Earth I left in the seventh century. This for me is a quantum entanglement within heart and soul and mind.

This is Merlyn's Supervisor and through no fault of my own I am entangled also. Merlyn resorts to a billiard table mind with six standard pockets but he cannot know which is the pocket to the heart and which is the pocket to the soul in the table or elsewhere. No one knows how or why the secret tunneling exists to heart and to soul. Glevema is another nearby spiritual entity in The Dead segments. Being the ancestral mother of all living human beings, Glevema speaks to the many Dead, and in here her voice may be heard through the ancient antennae-like spine living humans have but rarely use for such a listening purpose.

Merlyn, says Glevema, you are indeed knotted as a belly button between me and our descendants.

Merlyn felt the smoothly rolling and solid black mother in 8 ball on his tabled mind whisper, 'Life is the spirit’s armor.' The balled concept invisibly black 8 moves on across his green felted table to strike at the bumper boundary of Merlyn's soul-pocket, spin, then run the green only to fall into Merlyn's heart-side pocket where Glevema rolls unceremoniously into darkness.

'Mother vanishes below and I am sick at heart,' pops roundly yellow onto Merlyn’s mind table as a now cautionary yellow 1 ball stopping at near the center of the table.

Mother of the eight ball reappears from near left pocket and rolls to a set on the white cue mark. Merlyn, commented Mother in slight irritation, it is confusing for me to be so mind-placed on your thinking table.

Merlyn’s quiet smirk rose in a burnt orange 5 ball near the far side pocket in open confrontation.

Mother reappears from the side pocket catching the intended smile. Resting marked and cued. She comments, You have been on Earth for almost three years and are still adjusting to the twenty-first century.

The reality shocks Merlyn's mind into a full table of sixteen scattering balls and he finds himself sitting instead on his favorite large piece of tabled granite, a slab resting in the ever adjusting meadow-of-his-mind. He finds himself suddenly staring at a petite and beautiful womanly spirit with the darkest of eyes. Her long curly black hair swirls over her magically feminine arms and fingers and legs and toes. Mother appears as he secretly endearingly imagines — a legendary Celtic faery without wings or wand. Such are the distractions that come from the depths that coil on the divide of the Living and the Dead.

Merlyn queries, Are you our once original ancestral Mother, Glevema, the granddaughter of Panagiotakis the Shaman, or are you her later ancient Greek look-alike twin, Sophia? he paused, Are you Sophia the Greek during the time of the First Rebellion in HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither? Or are you something else, a shape shifter?

Mother replies, "I am Glevema, Merlyn. I am your ancestral Mother of the Dead and all those presently living within Earth’s boundary. She stands slim, dark skinned and royal at her former living height of five full feet at less than ninety pounds. Now, you see me as I am."

Merlyn bows slightly in the humility and whispers, m'Lady.

Amused, Glevema asks, When did you last see Sophia?

Merlyn responds, She was in charge of constructing a bridge across the River Styx. Seemingly this event was only hours ago, realized Merlyn, that I was delivered to the presence of Sophia’s spirit, to witnessed the beginning of the Rebellion of the first fully conscious ten-thousand human spirits in Elysium, the Place of the Greek Dead. The first revolution of the Dead happened during the earth time of the great Greek storyteller, Homer, who lived in the ninth century BCE.

A brief and passing thought encompassed itself and rotated slowly into the shape of a solid green 6 ball to the center billiard table . . . 'Wait,' thinks Merlyn, 'Today is a present earth date. I am a fully engaged human soul entrapped within a living human mind and body of Richard Greystone who is stuck not so solidly in the once familiar world of three-dimensional physics.

...

The Brothers 1

Robert Greystone sits down at his desk giving a glance to his younger brother and asked, Richie, what the world are you talking about?

Richard Greystone continues his spiel, The brain and the mind are separate entities. As such it is possible to be in two places at once.

And, who is it that writes these books for you?

My imaginary Captain Lamar brings me slave stories on his ferry across the Ohio River in my head. Lamar is my writing persona.

"Right. Lamar’s small ferry travels from Mason County, Kentucky to Ripley, Ohio in your head.

You are being too literal, Robbie. Captain Lamar follows the famous route of the historic Underground Railroad in my head. The words travel through the underground in my head.

Richie, why conjure up such a literary devise? You don’t do this when you write poetry.

The underground in my head surpasses the cultural slavery too long held in modern times.

Robert quips, We are all cultural slaves, Dickie. This is the way the world is, this is the way the world works. Society is not slavery, he thought, it is the way things get done. How else would things get done? Why don’t you sit down and quite pacing.

Richard sat in the only available chair facing his brother behind the desk. My stories are corded in the spine first then to the brain and then on to the mind, responded Richard, from concept through word order and grammar – that’s Captain Lamar’s underground. Secret words come from secret places, thought Richard. I know I am right.

Why don’t you stick to writing the poetry?

Richard’s eyes narrowed, Why? You are better poet.

Robert smiles, True. I am.

Your poetry is clear and concise with no nonsense.

Robert expresses his amusement with the ‘yes, of course’ chuckle he knew his brother hated. He remarked, "That’s because my brain and my mind are in the same place. I don’t have an imaginary old Captain Leo and his whimsical ferry, Johnny Sprout, creating me poems hot from the northern hills of the Kentucky my mind."

"It’s Jonathan Sprout not Johnny, grumbles Richard, Captain Lamar just delivers the stories to me, Rob.

Johnny Sprout the musician. It’s all in your head, Richie.

A spot of anger rose, Of course it’s in my head. I know where it’s from, Robert, but the mind is not the brain.

Is this what floats your boat, Dickie? I mean we’re retired, you should know better. Richard continues his verbiage, Neurologists argue on the definition of mind. Here’s the first revised Merlyn chapter, read it over.

"Why didn’t your grand Captain Leo deliver your final Merlyn books the first time around? Why are you now redoing the works?

Richard truthfully responds, It’s Lamar not Leo, Robbie; somberly he adds, I have a better understanding of Merlyn’s circumstance today. We are all slaves, thought Richard, but the Dead aren’t slaves to anyone.

Robert reckons, I know where this is from, then he drew the mirror of a waggish smile, Do you remember when we first went to Ripley to see the Underground Railroad?

Richard sits drumming his fingers on the soft chair arms, Sure, I was about eight. Grandma and Grandpa took and showed us where John Rankin lived, the setting in Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Richard chuckles, I thought there was going to be a real railroad.

Rob softens, So your stories float up from the underground railroad in your head.

Look Robbie, people still want freedom from slavery, comments Richard but he dared not say it without further consideration from the Captain.

We live in America. We have freedom, says Robert. You liberal thinkers are all alike.

Richard retorts, This is not about politics, Robbie. God, don’t you ever get away from politics? You are an old fart just like always, a conservative cardio surgeon, once and always. He fusses up, I hate politics and religion too, what’s the goddamn difference?

Seeing a win on the horizon, Robert taunts with reasonableness and control, Too many years being slave mastering to your students has gotten to you, Prof Dickie.

I wasn’t a slave master. I never had a student do anything I hadn’t done myself.

The way I remember it, you enjoyed whipping the college freshman in your expository writing classes every year for thirty five years, man.

Richard scoffs, Bull, but remembers when his students told him that some called his class Suppository Writing 101. One student had even told him in private that the few who failed the class called him, Professor Dick. What humor, he surmises. I heard wonderful college humor interspersed with many fun years of teaching; how I miss the classroom.

Robert skims the first half page of manuscript in the nondescript blue folder and said, Is this a final draft?

It is the final, one chapter at a time.

I’ll read it, says Robert abruptly, but who's to say this will be any better than your first self published attempt?"

You are, smarts Richard. Surely, you, the significant poet, can understand how novel writing is. Wrong word choice, he realizes.

Resetting his tone Rob comments, I don’t know why you can’t just stick with poetry. We could publish a good book of poems together. This is what we were going to do when we retired, write books of poetry together and have them published.

It appears golf is more important than getting any of The Brothers Poetry published.

A different vocation. I have room for both. I have been working on a couple poems.

Richard smiles nonchalantly, Balls and words both cut and slice.

Robert looks over his glasses after a quick skim of the chapter. There are four segments in each chapter? Why? You had three segments.

Old Merlyn is dreaming four stories simultaneously, one with the Dead, one in the present, one in the past, and one in the future. The Dead dream in a verb tense disorientation, declared Richard with an air of unconscious authority.

Rob smiles, Where’s more of The Brothers segment?

Read what you have, carefully please. I'll get it to you. I'm reworking, states Richard who left Robert to read his draft more closely while he headed downstairs to see Cyndi and Connie. Of all things, he fancied while traveling the stairs, here we are, two at-odds, lone wolf identical twin brothers, each married to the most compatible and popular of sisters, Connie and Cyndi Bleacher who were born a year apart but who are otherwise almost identical twins themselves. What were we thinking?

...

Grandma’s Story 1

This is Grandma Earth. I show selected examples of stories of human spirits, ghost stories going back almost eighteen thousand years in the direct genetic lines of the two Greystone and Bleacher families. The human spirits in these stories are connected to some of you readers also. That is both the lighter and the darker humor resting in the margins. Homo sapiens come onto the earth whole and a selection of that whole, the spirit, survives, at least in here, whether one likes it or not — just like when being born. The species provided the ancestors of Robert and Richard and their chosen life partners Connie and Cyndi. These stories are plucked from their genes, you see. Human beings are haunted.

Grandma’s old dark eyes glance off the page to view the reader, with clarity she says, "You forget your ancestors, and you forget what you are, don’t you think? I have a long ago story for you, remarks Grandma. This dead man is still stuck.

It is dawn and my shoulders shiver. This is the way it is. I hear the crickets and other small creatures around the swamp. I am in a hole on a wall and there is no way out. This is the way it is. I am stuck. Let me out. My fingers are cold to ice. It is Winter in Spring. The birds sing. I am no bird. It is cold, and I am ice forming on the river. I am floating and cold but I am not the river. I am the common ground frozen, asserts the dead man.

He turns to better face his audience. I had a dream last night, and it was a whopper. The dream was about people who live out among the stars, and how it is that they are stuck too, like I am. I remember my own cold dawn. I am almost eighteen thousand years old by Earth’s gauge, and I am stuck flat in the ice near a surrounding the pond of stars. I am the first wizard and though now solid I still dance.

Much later in the time of the world, the first shaman, Panagiotakis, alive on Earth also looks to his audience and in a dancing memory points to a not so bright, and seemingly solid northern star in the night and reveals from an unconsciously driven genetic memory, We are from there, then he points to the soil beneath his feet, to here. No one who saw this shaman point and speak those simple words slept well that night.

One of those attentive listeners is Glevema, Panagiotakis’ granddaughter. She tosses and turns in the darkness and a question unexpectedly brightened her mind, ‘How can we be here and there at the same time?’

Later in life, she died and found herself waiting for members of her tribe to join her once they died and discovered they did not die in consciousness. People had become respecting of the Dead by the time of Panagiotakis and his granddaughter Glevema. People had begun burying the Dead with rites and passages to accommodate the living and the dead at the same time. These few living had made a conscious decision to be in two places at once, to be with their living friends and to be with the memories of their dead friends. Glevema becomes the first human consciousness-in-spirit to enter a Place of the Dead because she accepts her immediate spiritual condition.

.

Glevema knows Grandma Earth with her white teeth gleaning as a white cloud usually unsoiled behind wordy shadows. Grandma stares out at her listener thinking, the living and dead passing as wordy shadows on the whitest of walls. Child, she says, I’m gonna sit on this here stump and hope it won’t stain my pretty blue and white dress floating along in a gentle breeze. Grandma Earth sits down and expounds, "You may not like it but I am your Nature inside and out. This kerchief on my head ain’t nothin' but the stars and the Beyond."

I did not know I was in a dream, responds ancestral mother Glevema.

Grandma glances up into this dark sky and continues, "I got me this chant to take us from the Dead and the past to Merlyn’s dream story future set. I am the heart on which shamans dance. Nobody dances alone. Most everyone has a love to dance with and Merlyn’s no exception. He dances with Vivian.

From these two ancient hearts by soul made one

Show these stories where passions are begun.

Our well-known druid and druidess will do,

They are the same, human spirits that make up you.

In a timeless corridor where musing memories rightly tie

Our Vivian and Merlyn do consciously lie.

From anecdote and Grandma's tooth-filled gums

Our past shaped narrative to a future dream story comes.

...

Diplomatic Pouch 1

Pyl Williams-Burroughs sits next to her brother and pilot, while they await departure instructions from Detroit to Burke Lakefront in Cleveland. Pyl turns excitedly, Justine, what'd you think of this year’s automobile show?

I liked it. I liked the new plug-in hybrids the best.

I liked them too, she replies. Which ones did you like best, Blakey.

Right now, I like the sunny and mild weather — not bad for a third of the way through January. He pauses, and matter-of-factly remarks, We are a go on 33.

Justin leans forward pushing himself back to sit up straight and adjusting himself to better observe the instrument needles fluttering as the worn asphalt runway began to swiftly disappear beneath the fuselage. ‘We are up,’ rests his anxiety. Justin’s next thought, ’now all we have to do is come down safely.’

An hour into their flight Blake and Justin were enjoying the meticulous drone of the Rolls-Royce engine in line with the darker blue above and the gray blue waters of Lake Erie ten thousand of feet below. Dusk will be around five, brooded Blake, as the tip of the Cessna Eagle’s left wing appeared to lightly tap onto an unseen object. He mumbles, What the hell?

Was it a bird? asks Pyl cautiously.

Justin comments, It sounded like a car tire kicking up a stone.

Blake picks up the small binoculars for a quick inspection, There's a crack near the wing tip light. His puffed lower lip and grouching demeanor lead to another round nervous of cabin silence into a satisfactory landing at Cleveland’s Burke Lakefront Airport.

While Pyl and Blake visually inspect the landing light held fiberglass wingtip of the parked Cessna more closely Blake observes a minute gray spongy substance within the slight crack. This is secondary to the reassuring fact that the crack appears easily repairable.

What is that gray stuff? asks Pyl.

Blake replies, Probably bled out bird gut.

Scrape me some, orders Pyl. I'll have it analyzed. I want to see what kind of bird was flying that high.

Her husband Justin moans, What for? Jeez, Pyl, it’s ground bird guts.

Pyl ignores the comment saying, Justin, get me something to put this in. We were pretty high for it to be a bird.

At that point a stranger walks up to the wing and begins inspecting the damage.

Pyl asks politely, May I help you?

I saw you coming in. I am interested in buying an old Cessna P210N like this one.

The woman has such an odd dialect, thinks Justin as he picks up a small plastic envelope for Pyl. Noting the stranger’s dark Mediterranean-like eyes, he first gives Pyl the envelope and then extends his hand, I'm Justin. This is my wife, Pyl and that's her brother, Blake, on the stool. In curiosity Justin continues, I’m surprised you just didn’t call the plane, the Eagle or Silver Eagle, that’s what people who know her usually say.

The female marsupial humanoid quickly gathers herself into a warm smile, Hello, I’m Fran.

That's your name? questions Pyl.

Yes, as she gave her hand to Pyl she caught her error and adds, My given name is Francis Parker, and you are Pill?

Pyl giggles, My brother couldn't pronounce my real name so I have been stuck with P-y-l ever since.

The easily disguised humanoid turns slightly and shakes Justin's hand, And you are the brother?

No, he's my husband, answers Pyl. My brother Blake is inspecting the damage.

Blake quibbles business-like, We think a bird hit the wingtip light. A slight crack, but it appears repairable.

I have a trace of the remains, adds Pyl. I'm going to have it analyzed to see what kind of bird it was.

A slight crack, thinks the humanlike Francis Parker. Ship was considerate with the tap and would have been more had he not allowed the touch at all. Interrupting her thoughts Francis says, Well, good luck making the repair, And quickly adds, Blake, how much would you give for her?

Pyl moans, "Daddy