20. Descriptions, then Story Nine and Comments

 

Friday at dusk. You are at Innis Woods, a Metropolitan Park in Westerville. Carol and Cathy walk the path, waiting for the Christmas/Holiday light to be turned on. The day was quite pleasant weather-wise, but it is quickly cooling. You had a Graeter's treat with Gayle about two o'clock and picked up a late take-home to lunch at BiBiBop. Earlier, you asked Carol if she wants a new Honda Accord as it would be safer, but she said no. Cathy asked if you would buy an electric cart to take you around on 'walking' park visits such as this, and you said no. – Ms. Havisham.

 

1649. I think we are getting too old to buy new things. I assume was are not going to live long enough to get the value out of them. Carol thinks it dumb to buy a new car when we already have the 2005 Accord to run around town if need be – good brakes and tires, six-cylinder engine that is quick and runs well, the car is quite clean inside. The outside is cleaned up with special wax for another couple of years, plus no rust and only a couple minor ping/dents here and there. It is an EX with all the bells and whistles of the time period, good radio, heater, speakers, and tan leatherette interior with dark metallic green paint, and the Honda is fun to drive just like at always has been with less than a 102,000 miles on it. 1658. 

 

You appear to be losing interest in this Blog, Mr. Orndorff. Why is that? – Ms. H. 

 

1705. It appears rather fruitless other than Grandma Earth and editing her stories for a near-future edition. Basically, it comes down to the fact that few people are interested in what I am interested in, and that works both ways; I'm not much interested in what other people are interested in. I am enjoying a quiet time in life. I have always found something to keep my interest as I move along in the world. I read nonfiction of one kind or another almost every day. I have long been a reader and empathic, which allows me to figuratively be in two or three places at once – this is easily seen in my writing and developing stories, but I don't need to write to have this sense of being 'other' than what I am. I was interested in Tesla, but now that I can afford one, I am not so much. We don't go anywhere, and if we do, we will take the Avalon because it is roomier and more comfortable. I have had a good life. No complaints. I have been fortunate, but we have planned and worked with determination for what we earned in life also. We may not be so fortunate in old age. We both are showing memory and physical problems. Such is consciously living a longer life. 1729.

 

* * *

 

Grandma is here while you are waiting on Carol at Kroger's off North State Street. We can work on Story Nine tonight. Drop it in. 

 

 

* * *

* * *

STORY NINE

I listen to everything people are thinking. I got a story that will fit this situation just fine. People discover mysteries in the world and consider some of them are supernatural. Just like the pea-sized ghost a few stories back. It is a natural thing to be interested in the ocean when you are born, raised, and die on an island, to begin with. The sea becomes second nature, so to speak, and second nature is what this story targets.

First, nature is what you see in this story. Second, nature is what you don't see. People think of one's second nature as a habit, but it is more of a habitat instead. The habitat is in the mind of a human being. In this case, it is an aboriginal walking alone along the ocean. Her name was Abbatoot. Three thousand years ago, she was walking that beach at the same time King Simon was being drawn to death for revenge.

Now, you would think there would not become a connection between Abbatoot and King Simon, but nature is not as it seems, just as people aren't as they seem either. Grandma Earth has a few tricks up her sleeve; you see, she always holds a few extra aces if she needs them. Some people silently think they can deal straight on with me even though they say out loud, "You won't catch me messing with Mother Nature." Grandma knows the inside truth.

* * *

"You won't catch me messing with Mother Nature," is what young Abbatoot muttered because a great storm just passed through. She felt lucky to only have lived through it. An old soothsayer had told the tribe the storm was coming because he sensed it in his elbows and knees. When he felt it in four joints simultaneously, he had come to understand it would be one hell of a storm, and that is what he told them. About half the tribe stayed. The other half walked to higher ground, where they felt more protected.

 

Those who stayed knew better, but there is a courageous thrill in meeting Mother Nature head-on. People who are conditioned to weather large storms understand what I'm talking about. It is exhilarating in the moments of confrontation. Suddenly you feel you may not survive whatever it is Mother Nature is throwing your way. You begin to realize the weather is not about you. This is the point when the excitement disappears, and people start praying to the goddesses and gods of their choice to let them survive, even if they stay whimpering.

Abbatoot was whimpering and humbly thankful she survived. She believed the moon goddess had saved her because when she awoke, the skies were clear, and the half-moon sat in the western sky opposite the morning sun. She had heard a story as a child that moon's brother, the sun, followed her across the sky because even though he was brighter than she was, she was a shape-changer, and he wasn't. Shape-changers are not entirely trustworthy because you don't really know who they are. Just because the moon goddess appeared only half full rather than full didn't mean the goddess wasn't completely full all the time.

While walking along the beach, she realizes that the truth in the world is like that, too, that half a truth was sometimes more honest than the full truth appears. Half a reality leaves room for imagination and wonder; the whole truth is a complete fact of nature though some remains are hidden. Brother sun and sister moon still follow one another across the sky east to west. Even the star lights follow this direction.

The north and south sky points hit her questioning mind this morning on her walk. What comes up on the north and goes down in the south? She has no idea. Whatever it is, it isn't visible; it is like half the moon. Visible or not, Abbatoot begins wondering if two objects also move across the father sky from the north to the south. 

The concept allows four points to suddenly come together in her mind. Abbatoot realizes and says aloud, "I am four points plus one, two arms, two legs, and one head." Then observing her right hand closely, she thinks, 'I have five finger or toe points at the end of each of the four points. She creates a distinct sound for each of the twenty points and one more for the head point. I am also twenty-one sound names for twenty-one points.

A vision flashes. What would I be without any points at all? She imagines a body without the limb extensions. What would be the point of no limbs but with a head? 

All thought and no action. What can you do but dream your life away? Thought dreams are what you can see as concepts while awake, but you cannot first know the images unless you are asleep.

The sun and moon move from east to west, so what moves from north to south? Thoughts move from the north, and dreams move from the south. Who chases whom across the sky of the mind? Ideas come in waves. The beach, which stretches east to west following the sun and moon, is real, but dreams are different. A thought or a dream, which is first and which comes second? Thoughts are cold as the moon appears cold; the sun is hot, as are the sex organs south of the head.

Cold moon thoughts and hot sexed sun dreaming. What a mix. She glances over her naked body. I have twenty digits plus two arms, and two legs equal twenty-four numbers, plus a head, and I have twenty-five digits. I have a nose and two ears, and thus I have twenty-eight extensions; men have twenty-nine. 

A moon from quarter to half to quarter to full is four in twenty-eight to twenty-nine days. Therefore, the moon and human extensions have a commonality. We women, too, have this natural rhythm. 

'Whenever the sun and moon do meet, thoughts and dreams center at the feet. Toe touching is where we human beings most often touch our Mother."

I keep an eye on incidentals and fish along the beach's way and think of Mother and how she would walk through the Dead. 

As I walk nervous and faster, I find my thumbs touching the inner part of my middle fingers, which bend slightly as my forefingers extend somewhat. 

Abbatoot observes a large tower cloud separate at its head out over the ocean and another to the west. Two wispy clouds spread like long thin wings with a 5 or S shape in the middle. Abbatoot stops and, with a shell, made a replica in the sand of the S sign of the cloud. She concludes the cloud sign is significant.

Abbatoot glances back up as the cloud sign drifts west. Suddenly and without provocation, she turns around and heads back to her tribe.

It is right not to go on, thought Abbatoot. It is better not to kill the Shaman who ordered us to leave our place. He had a right to the request. Likewise, we who decided to stay and weather the storm had the right to remain. We each determine our own way.

Following the beach back to her people, Abbatoot thinks how grateful she is to still have her limbs attached to her body. She never deciphers the 5 or S sign with wings, but she is sure the moon has something to do with it. When Abbatoot returns to her tribe, she says to the group, "I know something I did not know. The moon makes cloud signs in the sky."

Later, the Shaman is amazed that she discovered this about the moon, and he spends days making the 'S' mark she had copied from the wispy cloud wings in the sky. 

Even more astounding to the Shaman is the fact that Abbatoot mentioned a human body without limbs. In those days, only the Shamans knew that the eternal ancestors, the Ungambikula, rose up in Dreamtime before humans were wholly created. 

They found the humans doubled over in clumps of shapeless sacks near the water holes, and with stone knives, the Ungambikula carved limbs and faces and hands and feet and finished the humans. After this carving was completed, the Ungambikula went back into the earth, into the eternal great sleep, but the Shamans knew this. 

The Shamans also knew another great secret: that ancient Dreamtime still exists between the beat of each person's heart.

 

How did Abbatoot know the fact that humans at one time had no limbs? How did she make up the sounds for the counting of numbers? No one knew. The old Shaman was passed the age of worrying and trying to comprehend such things. If she knew something he did not know, he would take the time to learn it.

 

Abbatoot helped the Shaman memorize the distinct sounds she gave to the numbers of digits human beings had, right up through twenty-nine. What he liked best, though, was her description of dreams. Dreams are reliable, she told him. Dreamland is invisible on the outside, but it is a reality, nevertheless. The Shaman pointed to the north and secretly told another Shaman, "We know Dreamtime, now we two know the Ungambikula's sleeping place. It is presently under the lands in the north."

 

Grandma laughed, "Those two Shamans kept at it until the end of their days. Neither could understand how Abbatoot could have learned a secret about Dreamtime and gathered something from the moon goddess they did not already know. Besides, she named things that didn't exist, the numbers from one up through twenty-nine. 

Some tried to imagine one more extension on the human body, but they could not come up with a place or a name, and neither could Abbatoot. Then, one-day, Abbatoot came running to the old Shaman and excitedly says, "I thought of one more extension; the belly button!"

The Shaman laughs and replies, "Don't tell anyone." The old Shaman did not know what else to say, yet he continues, "The belly button is not an extension, Abbatoot; it is something less than one."

* * *

Grandma bends over and slaps her thighs. Then, as she stands and unconsciously readjusted her enormous bosoms, she breaks into more laughter. Grandma notes, "I guess you had to be there to get the intent. I sent my warm bosomy winds out of nowhere, and . . .."

Abbatoot sniffs breeze and suddenly thinks:

 

The button is rounder than a digit of one, 

And sits in the belly as a visual lesson.

 

What once was for feeding and appearing quite square

It is left as a no-thing but a fleshy dip in air . . ..

* * *

Grandma Earth whispers another stanza:

Alas, today Abbatoot would be considered quite a hero --

Discovering or inventing a no-thing, the skin-sinking zero.

* * *

Grandma Earth and Mr. Orndorff feel this story is dark-humored and laugh out loud funny. I think it is sad that Abbatoot didn't get the significance. She didn't put two plus two together. In my sense of the spirit world, zeroes don't exist as long as there is One. – Ms. Havisham

 

2225. Where in the world did this come from, Ms. Havisham? 2226.

 

Where do you think, Richard? Ms. H. 

 

2228. I reflect, but I am no reflection, Ms. Havisham.

 

Neither am I, Mr. Orndorff.