10a. Heartansoulanmind awareness / 10b. Chapter Four

Ms. Havisham here. Time, distance, and place allow for dimensional awareness. What is awareness without time, distance, and place?

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SELF-AWARENESS

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES

Individuals become conscious of themselves through the development of self-awareness.^[22] This particular type of self-development pertains to becoming conscious of one's own body and mental state of mind, including thoughts, actions, ideas, feelings, and interactions with others.^[29] "Self-awareness does not occur suddenly through one particular behavior: it develops gradually through a succession of different behaviors, all of which relate to the self."^[30] The monitoring of one's mental states is called metacognition, and it is considered an indicator that there is some concept of the self.^[31] It is developed through an early sense of non-self-components using sensory and memory sources. In developing self–awareness through self-exploration and social experiences, one can broaden one's social world and become more familiar with the self.

According to Emory University's Philippe Rochat, there are five levels of self-awareness that unfold in early development and six potential prospects ranging from "Level 0" (having no self-awareness) advancing complexity to "Level 5" (explicit self-awareness).^[22]

·       Level 0: Confusion. At this level, the individual has a degree of zero self-awareness. This person is unaware of any mirror reflection or the mirror itself. They perceive the mirror as an extension of their environment. Level 0 can also be displayed when an adult frightens himself in a mirror mistaking his own reflection as another person just for a second.

·       Level 1: Differentiation. The individual realizes the mirror can reflect things. They see that what is in the mirror is different from what is surrounding them. At this level, they can differentiate between their own movement in the mirror and the movement of the surrounding environment.

·       Level 2: Situation. At this point, an individual can link the mirror's movements to what is perceived within their own body. This is the first hint of self-exploration on a projected surface where what is visualized on the mirror is special to the self.

·       Level 3: Identification. This stage is characterized by the new ability to identify self: an individual can now see that what's in the mirror is not another person but actually them. It is seen when a child, instead of referring to the mirror while referring to themselves, refers to themselves while looking in the mirror.

·       Level 4: Permanence. Once an individual reaches this level, they can identify the self beyond the present mirror imagery. They can identify the self in previous pictures looking different or younger. A "permanent self" is now experienced.

·       Level 5: Self-consciousness or "meta" self-awareness. At this level, the self-seen from a first-person view is not only seen, but it is also realized that it is also seen from a third person's view. They begin to understand they can be in the mind of others. For instance, how they are seen from a public standpoint.^[22]

Selected and edited from Wikipedia

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It was only so easy to understand the spiritual self-awareness in the relationship of heartanmind to the soul. Mr. Orndorff chooses to balance the heartanmind with the soul, but the balance is mindanheartansoul, almost as if the heartansoul were a 'natural' unit. The lyrics are familiar. - Ms. H.

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HEART AND SOUL

Hoagy Carmichael

Heart and soul, I fell in love with you
Heart and soul, the way a fool would do, madly
Because you held me tight
And stole a kiss in the night

Selected from – https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/12763427/Heart+and+Soul

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 Why don't people say the phrase mind and soul?

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soul – noun 

1 the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal. • a person's moral or emotional nature or sense of identity

 2 emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artistic performance: 

3 the essence or embodiment of a specified quality: 

Selected and edited from – Oxford/American software

**

A person's moral nature or sense of identity shows the essence of the mind, and a person's intellectual energy or intensity also shows the mind's essence. Understanding a person's spiritual essence, herorhis human spirit requires, it seems to me, either heart/mind+soul or mind/heart+soul. Technically, the soul is regarded as immortal should, out of deference. Be written soul+heart/mind or soul+mind/heart. I, Ms. H., am being reasonable, am I not? I am not. Why? Because of another common phrase like heart and soul, body, and soul. Note, body, and soul sounds correct, not soul and body. How much different would an individual be without herorhis body in such a circumstance? How would it be to be conscious as a human spirit, not as a human body and spirit? – Ms. H.

* * *

The question above cannot be as completely discussed orally as it can be written. This story is about a beginning of writing. – Grandma Earth

 

CHAPTER FOUR

Grandma sashays and does a little calypso dance in her bare feet, throws her hands over her head, twirls, and claps three times. She smiles like the glow of a tropical sunset and whispers a secret, "I just love these little freedom stories because, in my eyes, they are real enough to be as true as any sunset or sunrise."

 

One ancestor, a shaman of about seven thousand years ago in an area near the Black Sea, stands by the fire one cloudy dark summer night and says, "I have a new story." This is about a man who can be in two places at once while he is still alive. He can be standing here like me, telling a story, and," and while he points to his north, continues, "be in the woods telling a story at the same time. How do you think he accomplishes this?"

This question invited the listener to give herorhis own plausibility. The shaman discovers he could be entertaining while instructive; he gives an unsolvable question no one can decipher to everyone's satisfaction. 'How is it possible for a person to be telling the same story in more than one place at the same time?' 

* * *

This story became famous because shamans worldwide were soon asking the question along the significant world trade routes. Storytelling helped pass the time on the journeys from Asia to Europe and Europe to Africa and from Africa to Asia. Some of these stories even migrated to the Americas.

This particular storyteller created a mysterious set of written characters that allows the story line's carving onto a tree. Other tribe members were taught to read the runes. Thus, someone could be reading the story in one place while it was being told simultaneously in another place entirely. Few could believe such a marvelous invention, but they soon discovered belief wasn't a part of the equation. Below is a modern translatable representation of what the shaman wrote.

* * *

A, B, C, D, E, F, G

Now the characters you can see

 

H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P

Each as individual as you or me

 

Q, R, S, T, U, and V

Allow each of us to remain free.

 

W, X, Y, and Z

The beginning and the end carved on a tree.

 

And from Grandma Earth's tongue and hum.

Some familiar runes this way come.

* * *

Thank you for reading, it is our pleasure to write. – Ms. Havisham

* * *

 9. A Holistic Consciousness?

You feel you have an interesting article from Science Alert. Drop it in, please. Ms. Havisham

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Science Alert: HEALTH

BRAIN SCANS CONFIRM THERE'S A PART OF YOU THAT REMAINS 'YOU' THROUGHOUT YOUR LIFE 

MIKE MCRAE

27 NOVEMBER 2020 

At the very core of your identity, a kernel of self-awareness combines memories of the past with the fleeting sensations of the present and adds a touch of anticipation for the future.

The question of whether this ongoing sense of 'you' is as robust as it feels has intrigued philosophers and psychologists throughout the ages. A new, small psychobiological study weighs in, looking at brain scans to conclude that at least some part of you is indeed consistent as you grow and age.

"In our study, we tried to answer the question of whether we are the same person throughout our lives," says Miguel Rubianes, a neuroscientist from the Complutense University of Madrid.

"In conjunction with the previous literature, our results indicate that there is a component that remains stable while another part is more susceptible to change over time."

Self-continuity forms the very basis of identity. Every time you use the word 'I,' you're referring to a thread that stitches a series of experiences into a tapestry of a lifetime, representing a relationship between the self of your youth with one yet to emerge.

Yet identity is more than the sum of its parts. Consider the allegory of Theseus's ship, or the grandfather's ax paradox – a tool that's had its shaft replaced, as well as its head, but is still somehow the same ax that belonged to the grandfather.

If our experiences change us, swapping out components of our identity with every heartbreak and every promotion, every illness, and every windfall, can we truly say we see ourselves as the same person today as we were when we were four years old?

You can be forgiven for thinking this sounds more like philosophical navel-gazing than something science can address. But there are perspectives which psychology – and even the wiring of our neurological programming – can flesh out.

Rubianes and his team focussed primarily on the 'how and when' of neurology dealing with familiar faces, relying on previous research that suggests visual self-recognition can work as an indicator of making a connection with one's impression of self.

In what's known as the self-reference effect, we do a better job of recalling or recognising information if it's personally connected to us in some way, such as seeing our own face in a photograph.

While there's plenty of evidence supporting the phenomenon's existence, the exact timing and mechanisms of the process in our brain remain an open question.

Conflicting studies have highlighted different neurological processes for distinguishing our own face from others, highlighting diverse regions of the brain used to recognise and attribute meaning to sets of familiar features.

Determining the kinds of neurological activity involved can tell us whether we're simply triggered by recognizing our own face, like meeting an old friend, or making an actual connection with the self it represents, both past and present.

To work this out, the team conducted a recognition task with a group of 20 students. Each was presented with 27 images, including some of their own face, the face of a close friend, and an unfamiliar face, all at different life stages.

Each image flashed up on a screen one second at a time, during which the participant had to press a button to identify who they saw: self, friend, or stranger. A second trial asked them to identify the person's life stage: childhood, adolescence, or adulthood.

Meanwhile, dozens of electrodes were busy scoping out the mix of brainwaves buzzing from their grey matter, painting a map of activity.

That map, and the timing of the participants' responses, strongly suggest that our impression of self – that sense of 'I' – gets updated throughout our lifetime, giving it stability. We really do process that gap-toothed portrait of us in fourth grade as ourselves, not just a familiar image of a kid who happens to share our memories.

The study also uncovered interesting similarities in how we process impressions of our past self and our close friends, hinting at complexity in how time might shape impressions of our identity.

Of course, it's important to note that this study was conducted on small sample size and is far from the final word on the topic.

Finding a rigid neurological underpinning for our sense of self that is tweaked by time and experience neatly reflects other studies that suggest there are also cultural influences over how we perceive identity.

Significantly, neurological descriptions of the specific brain bits responsible for sorting oneself from strangers can better understand why some people don't share this impression.

Disturbances in that thread of recognition often define conditions such as schizophrenia, putting individuals at increased risk of self-harm.

"This demonstrates the importance of basic and clinical research alike in the study of the role of personal identity, as this promises to be a much more important concept than was previously thought and may play a fundamental role in psychological assessment and intervention processes," says Rubianes.

Some days we all feel a little like we're uncertain of just who we are. Rest assured, there's a good chance that deep inside your brain, you're always going to be there.

 This research was published in Psychophysiology.

Selected and edited from -- https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-scans-confirm-there-is-a-part-of-you-that-remains-you-throughout-your-life

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Continual visual self-recognition appears to be a reality in this small study. Still, from my perspective as your heartansoulanmind, the conscious and unconscious self-recognition takes place in the designated area of included time and experience within the human spirit, no matter what name you give to it. What good would it be for your spirit to survive physical death if it did not retain the meaning and depth of personal pronoun, "I"? – Ms. H. 

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I (PRONOUN)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The pronoun I is the first-person singular nominative case personal pronoun in Modern English. It is used to refer to oneself and is capitalized, although other pronouns, such as he or she, are not capitalized.

The grammatical variants of I are me, my, mine, and myself.

ETYMOLOGY

English I originates from Old English (OE) ic. Its predecessor, ic had, in turn, originated from the continuation of Proto-Germanic *ik, and ek; the asterisk denotes an unattested form, ek was attested in the Elder Futhark inscriptions (in some cases notably showing the variant eka; see also ek erilaz). Linguists assume ik to have developed from the unstressed variant of ek. Variants of ic were used in various English dialects up until the 1600s.^[1]

Germanic cognates are Old Frisian ik, Old Norse ek (Danish, Norwegian jeg, Swedish jag, Icelandic ég), Old High German ih (German ich), and Gothic ik and in Dutch also "ik."

The Proto-Germanic root came, in turn, from the Proto Indo-European language (PIE). The reconstructed PIE pronoun is *egō, egóm, with cognates including Sanskrit aham, Hittite uk, Latin ego, Greek ἐγώ egō, Old Slavonic azъ and Alviri-Vidari (an Iranian language) اَز az.

The oblique forms are formed from a stem  *me- (English me), the plural form *wei- (English we), the oblique plurals from *ns- (English us), and from Proto-Germanic *unseraz, PIE *no-s-ero- (our, ours).

CAPITALIZATION

I (and only this form of the pronoun) is the only pronoun that is always capitalized in English.^[i] This practice became established in the late 15th century, though lowercase i was sometimes found as late as the 17th century.^[2]

Selected and edited from -- Wikipedia

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I have a comment on the subject also. Though I am a personification, I understand Consciousness existed before the physical Universe. Some philosophers and mythologists have suggested everything has a consciousness of one sort or another. – Grandma E.

How a piece of nonliving matter might have a sense of self-awareness is beyond me. However, matter may perhaps have an essence of being.  Gravity, Space, Time, and Matter, might in some part including the four basic elements: earth, air, fire, and water, and the four conditionals: hot, cold, wet, and dry may have a transcendental soul sense (a holistic, metaphysical body) through inner connectional physical and metaphysical-like tensions and/or forces. As long as the proposition in this blog holds G-D is G-D, it is a plausibility. Consciousness (awareness), or its intent, has to begin with something living or nonliving. This is enough for tonight. Happy thoughts. – Ms. H.

* * *

 

 

 8a. 53 years / 8b. Grandma: understanding

One month before Christmas, and you are sure Owen and Brennan are getting excited. You are excited too, but for today. For the first time in decades, you and Carol are eating out for your anniversary; this is your Fifty-Third. You remembered at five-twenty on the clock last night, and you both rushed to Hallmark (also a tradition) for the card exchange this morning. Last night you also thought you'd pull a joke on sister Cathy and send a note asking if they wanted to go to 101 for dinner at five o'clock. Surprisingly, she said yes – you thought it was too close to Thanksgiving (as you always do) for evening restaurant food. So, now you are going. Tomorrow morning Carol is baking a crispy custard pie (her Mom's recipe), which everyone loves. She bought an apple pie from Kroger as a second choice or if anyone wants a second piece or both. One pie will do six to eight people in your family. – Ms. H. 

1251. We cleaned up this morning, and Carol is taking a needed nap. It has been a good day, which began with a delightful kiss, not the usual peck (if any) for a retired man's get up and stay the day. We snuggle. 1254.

You are reminiscing your first date with Carol. Carol's roommate was your sister, Cathy. This was her first semester at King Hall, Otterbein College (now University). Cathy wanted to go to the Varsity Club (a restaurant) across from the OSU football stadium on a Friday night. I was to provide transportation. I decided to ask our cousin David Short to come along, so he did. This was the makeshift date. We were sharing our first pitcher of beer and sandwiches when I noticed David was attracted to Carol. I was acting like an older brother, which I was, and didn't like that Carol was attracted to David but not in the same way David was attracted to her. At least, this is how I saw it at the time. I immediately discovered I was jealous. I couldn't believe it. Carol was my sister's roommate, and I was about five years older. David was four years older. Later, and time to take the girls back to the dorm, you dropped David off at his house in Westerville and took the girls on campus. Once at King Hall, you asked Carol out, and she accepted, assuming I would be a fun and safe date. Cathy was not too happy, not at all. Cathy's boyfriend was back in Cleveland (where Cathy lived with your parents) going to Cleveland State. On most of the early dates, Cathy came along with Carol. You didn't mind because the three of you had a good time checking the local bars around the OSU campus. Westerville was a dry town at the time, famous for being dry. Students who wanted to drink had to bring it in (not allowed on campus) or go to the bars outside. This is your heart talking, of course. – Ms. H. 

1327. It wasn't that long ago. We were married in 1967 in Alexandria, Virginia, at a Methodist Church near where Carol's parents lived at the time. Dad Hammond was at the State Department on two-year home leave from the American embassy in Saigon, after which he and the family returned to South Vietnam to live. Mom Hammond took Carol's three sisters out on the last government loaned plane. Dad stayed until the last moment at the embassy with other American and foreign personnel trying to get their South Vietnamese employees and their families out to the United States before the Fall of the country. 1337.

Those are the quick memories that come to heartanmind. This personal memory business will not be typical, Mr. Orndorff, because this blog is not about you per se. It is about how understanding some things is, at times, more important than actually knowing things. – Ms. H. 

* * *

Understanding how to fish is better than knowing how to fish. Reinforcement below. – Grandma Earth

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understanding - noun 

 

the ability to understand something, comprehension: the emotional heart

. 

• the power of abstract thought; intellect: the human mind

 

• an individual's perception or judgment of a situation: this is between the heart and the mind

 

 

• sympathetic awareness or tolerance: empathy in heartanmind

 

• an informal/unspoken agreement or arrangement: trust in heartanmind

 

 Selected and edited from the Oxford/American dictionary

**

What role, if any, does the soul play in human understanding? Ask I, Grandma Earth.

What role, if any, does the soul play in human behavior? Don't forget to define "soul" from your perspective before expanding your private thoughts on the subject if you have any. If you don't have any thoughts on why you do or do not have a soul, this is not the blog. Have a good day in any case. – Ms. H.

You, Carol, Cathy, and Tod had a good red wine with dinner, your treat. Everyone enjoyed the conversation, and Joe, the head chef (and their son-in-law), stopped by a couple of times to chat before and after your eating – a quite enjoyable wedding anniversary dinner. Cathy was at the wedding, and Tod was almost family at that time. They were married on August 3, 1968. Carol was in the wedding, and you were an usher. – Ms. Havisham

* * *

 

7a. Commentary with Ms. H. / 7b. first three stories

You found yourself weeping to watch the President-elect Joe Biden with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris introducing and listening to the short speeches of each of his first six Cabinet up for Senate confirmation. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken; Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas; Chief of Staff, Ron Klain; National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, National Intelligence Director, Avril Haines; and U N Ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Your joy was inspired by each of their individual voices, unique government services, and diverse backgrounds – a new team of eight as of now. G-D bless the United States and the World to help make things more humane for the people on this planet, so says your heartansoulanmind, your human spirit. – Ms. Havisham

1646. You embarrass me. 1646.

You are humbled by observing humanity-in-its-circumstance, not embarrassed, Mr. Orndorff. Let's move on. Grandma Earth has some thoughts for consideration. – H

* * *

Grandma here. Somewhere, within these first three short stories, you will have read finishing this chapter, two families will discover genetics links. This linking will continue through the next forty-four stories. With this novel's conclusion, the two unique families will have merge at least twice; the second time when two sets of twins marry in their hometown of Alumtown, Ohio, in 1970. The purpose of these stories is to inspire readers to wonder about their own genetics. The book about family genetics is inspired by a family tree following the bloodline of a very ordinary family through its historical heritage and a reinforcing DNA background that allows for such plausibility. Of course, it helps that Grandma Earth binds the settings, characters, and conversations in place. 

Here are the first three short stories in order. The third being the newest one.

* * *

CHAPTER ONE

"I have an old story," says Grandma Earth. A man is in worldly trouble long ago. The characters in my stories could be one of your or your friends' ancestors. Without your ancestors, you would not exist. Your genetic Mother, Mitochondrial Eve, may have lived one hundred and fifty thousand years ago. That's what science suggests in the twenty-first century. Everyone alive connects to the Y-chromosomal Adam genes of someone in East Africa who lived perhaps as recently as one hundred twenty thousand years ago. These are Mother and Father genes we all share in our mix. One recent estimate states we are each 50th cousins; another says we are each 70th cousins. In any case, we are each human cousins. These stories are a selection of some of our direct ancestors, no matter who you are. That's the sense in this book, so say I, Grandma Earth. 

* * *

It is the beginning of dawn, and my shoulders shiver, and the shivering is the way it is here. I hear the crickets and other small creatures around the swamp. I am inside a hole in the wall, and there is no way out. I am stuck. I cannot get out -- let me out. Let me out.

It is dawn, and my forearms shiver. Trembling is the way it is. I hear the crickets and the other small creatures. I am in a hole in the wall, and there is no way out. Holed in is the way it is. I cannot get out.

My fingers are full of ice. Again, it is dawn, and I am ice on the river. I am floating and cold. I am common ground with icy hands floating on the river.

I had a frigid dream last night, and it was a whopper. It was about these people who live way out among the stars and how they are stuck too. I will work on this floating block of ice and let you know how it is. I will tap out my message from here as we people who are caught in a cave do. As long as I have icy cold fingers, the Dead living in me, move. I have all the time in the world. That is how it is in my cold late dawn of almost eighteen thousand years ago. I am stuck frozen and flat across the vicious circle of stone surrounding our pond of stars in the heavens. I am here, and they are both at once. I am a shaman dancing on the board between mind and spirit. Where are you, listener?

The old shaman pointed to a not so bright star in the night sky and said, "We are from there," then he points to the soil beneath his feet, "to here." That is all he says. Nobody in the group slept that night.

One of the listeners tosses and turns, and suddenly unexpectedly, she thinks, 'How can we be here and there at the same time?'

If I remember right, says Grandma, she was the first human being who died and did not die at the same time. The woman asked others the same question in the morning.

Eventually, their small human band concluded how it is possible to be in two places at once. Later in life, the woman died and found herself waiting for her group members to join her once they died physically but did not die consciously. People then began respecting the Dead more and burying them with rites and passages to help accommodate both the Living and the Dead.

The Living were afraid the Dead were going to forget those Living. That is the way Grandma remembers it. The Living were made conscious of being in two places at once, and they hoped the Dead would remain mindful of those still living.

* * *

In the story, this particular shaman is long dead, knows you are reading his thoughts, smiles Grandma, who appears black as the richest soil on the planet. Her white teeth gleam as white paper unsoiled with ink or paint. She looks out into the eyes of her young listeners. Children, she says, "You don't have a clue on what words are when they come out of the blue. I'm going to sit on this stump and hope it won't stain my pretty blue and white dress that likes to float in a gentle breeze. You look at Grandma as you look deep down into your child self. I am in your inside nature and out. The scarf on my head is nothing but the stars in the heavens. You keep that in mind. Freedom stories aren't for everyone.

Grandma glances up beyond the dark sky above her head and out to the Reader far away. The white in her old eyes shows you her dark pupils are rolling up and disappearing within her skull. Grandma Earth closes her eyes by rolling them back within. The shaman opens his eyes to see the white in hers and thinks, I now have the parchment; I need to unfreeze the black letter-forms to dance upon the white in Grandma's eyes.

* * *  * * *

CHAPTER TWO

Grandma traces Eve's DNA through various shamans of old. Why shamans? The shaman or storyteller understood what I call trancephysics. Any reader who finds herorhimself immersed in a good book, film, or play discovers for herorhimself – engagement in an altered reality.

✶ ✶ ✶

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 that the listener who asked the question would die first, but she did. The shaman lived another ten years after she died. The woman drowned in a then nameless river; she 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. 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 human nature.

This particular shaman spent a lot of time walking the woods and daydreaming north of Salisbury Plain and southeast of Scotland. The shaman dreamed of a new story. He was five when he first had the dream, but it wasn't there when he awoke. The next night he dreamed it again and thought about it for the next fifteen years. The vision settled in on 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 to the Stars in Heaven or even to the Moon. The Dead are among us because the Dead live within our ancestors and us."

This shaman relates this to the others and says, "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. The quicker they will be a part of Mother again, and best of all, they will have no icy cold fingers reaching out to us the Living from beyond the grave."

He continues, "You can close a burial spot with a stone. Stones don't move so easily as the spirits do."

This shaman also became interested in crystals. He found more than one cave with crystal. He surmises crystal is the skull bone of Mother Earth. This unique crystal can produce a vibration I feel can in his fingertips. A small piece of crystal in my left hand creates empathy with whom or what I touch with my right hand. With the crystal in one hand, I can sense a movement within another stone held in his other hand. No one in the clan knew this wasn't possible, so it became real when others witnessed it and tried it for themselves.

The stones never move, but people claimed that you could sense the stone moving within itself if others carry a crystal within the left hand and another stone in the right. 

The shaman then suggests that human beings carry a spirit, as do unique crystals from the cave. This was the logic. Someone in the clan indicates that eggs are fragile stones, and eggs can appear dead on the outside but be living on the inside. Thus people can be living on the outside but feel dead on the inside. Crystals and eggs have something in common with human beings, and even human bones and stones have something in common, you see.

✶ ✶ ✶

Grandma smiles and winks. The crystal works its sympathetic 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 have a secret, says Grandma to the Reader; I am the Consciousness on which the shaman dance to understand their nature.

* * *.  * * *

CHAPTER THREE

A middle-aged woman by the name of Qwinta stood staring at a multi-shaded Maple leaf. Orange it was, and the hue was complexed by the photosynthesis of carbohydrates using the sun's electromagnetic energy-light. She was standing within sight of the east coast of a water body that some eight thousand years later would be identified as Lake Champlain on land presently called Burlington, Vermont.

Qwinta thought the hue of orange evolves in this leaf as a canoeist's ghostly princess grows in a streamlined and artfully carved royal dugout. The maple paddle and I, the Quinta, become one in mind, but the head and paddle are two in the body. I know and understand this to be a natural circumstance. Two arms become one in mind as both drop and swirl the paddle through the water. When the paddle is lifted from the water, a ripple ensues. The rippling is like a wave of orange seen in a Maple leaf. The thinker whose mind dips like a paddle into the River of the Dead also lifts up and leaves a ripple as it passes from one side of the profound and ethereal current to the other. The swirling spirit of sculling manifests itself as the tree reflected water is swirled into this leaf as the oar rises. This is an entirely remarkable concurrence in thought. I, Qwinta, in both body and mind, am the only causal connection between the Living and the Dead, just as the Maple is the only causal connection between the color and this fallen leaf.

* * *

Grandma, wonderfully black, full-bosomed, and full hipped, is colorfully costumed in Caribbean Island dress. She sashays around and says, "there isn't a reason on this Earth for people to be touched by Perfection. Since I'm out in the universe's science and physics, I don't see any reason to be touched there either. Matter has its own rules. Reason with capital cannot exist in such rules."

Grandma sometimes settles on earthquakes as a reminder of what she is when there is a construction underneath both the Living and the Dead's feet. You get in the way, and you pay. That is a rule. Human beings are not perfect forms, but they have the Imagination for something less than Perfection. Reason plus Imagination may equal Understanding, but it is a human equation. Though Grandma rests in all human beings, Alive or Dead, old Grandma must settle in her rocker from time to time to ease the tension. "I operate within Necessity," she says, "and so do you."

Grandma beamed but did not move. Her hands were on her hips like there was work to do, and she better get to it. Always composition to do. Physics runs its course, and we all run with it. Organic chemistry is added to the road within living: you Homo sapiens and millions of other life forms run with that.

* * *  * * *

Consciousness is the awareness of who you are and what you are made of, the physical self, and the spirit that moves you. Attention is paid or not paid to self, friends, neighbors, and other citizens of the world community of humanity and the settings to live where life and learning can warm the heartansoulanmind. Have a good evening. – Ms. H.