That Old Romance and Magic

The shortest short story I’ve ever read was Aloysha the Pot by Leo Tolstoi. In it Aloysha is a roof worker who at the end of the story falls off the roof and his entire life is a big zero.

Oddly enough, Tolstoi is also credited with one of the longest novels of all times titled War and Peace.

These two examples lead me to believe that a writer is never limited by his choice of forms. To be flexible is to give yourself more freedom of expression. I’m sure Tolstoi would have become greatly hungered if he had waited for War and Peace to hit the shelves.

I’m not saying that most of us would prefer to read a story about a pot rather than an epic struggle. If the former was the only thing that Leo had written I wouldn’t be reviewing him right now.

Another author that I stumbled upon in the stacks at the public library was To Mary With Love by Richard Sherman. It is a novella about a sort of love triangle where the narrator is the guy who didn’t get the girl but instead got the misery of watching his female friend get married to a male friend of his. The reader keeps asking why Mary can’t see that the other guy is the better man instead of the best man. What makes this story so great is that it is set in the time of the depression. Historical fiction is always hard to write but Richard seemed to be quite good at it. If you have a romantic bone in your body, then this might be the book for you!

I have read so many novels that I could probably write many more reviews before it is time to go. Currently I am reading the novels of Mark Helprin. I assume he must be a Jewish person as most of his work is concerned with characters of such heritage.

If I were to recommend one novel by Mark it would be Paris in the Present Tense. The narrator is a war hero who is dying with an incurable illness. He is worried that we are approaching a second holocaust and that his survivors will fall victims unless he comes to their rescue somehow. The events in the story precipitates the action, as the Jewish hero (Moses-like) witnesses a violent beating of a Jewish man to near death. He steps in without a second thought and it ends with him killing the (Islamic) person. Now he is a man on the run as there was a witness who doesn’t mention anything about the man who was being beaten. A life insurance policy with future high premiums is purchased as payback for the rich guy who scammed him to write a piece of music for advertising but refused to pay and is also in the insurance racket as part of his global empire. His daughter’s receiving of the policy money is in jeopardy if he defaults on the payment and this leads to an anti-climax where he expires while running, just as he had anticipated in advance because of his terminal condition. But what a read. You will enjoy it. It has a pair of comic French detectives hot on the trail and many other nice touches.

The book perfectly captures the sentiment of doing nothing and refusing to see the injustices that are practiced right in front of our eyes instead of responding to them with compassion. Nice job, Mark.

The novel starts out slowly as the author sets things up, but watch out. This story explodes with meaning as it builds in suspense.

Let me not forget to add that this older Jewish male has a fling with a young girl before he dies, which I found refreshing. If only all of us could be so blessed to be raptured in such a way.

Yep, that old romance and magic is still very much alive and kicking!

Love Poems for a Stranger

I became a writer after noticing a girl at the bus stop. I had been standing there on a winter’s day with no particular ideas revolving in my brain.

She suddenly came into view in a beautiful plaid coat and it only took a few moments for her to cross the street and stand next to me.

I didn’t utter a word. I was speechless. When the bus came we got on it together and rode downtown with me still gazing at her from behind.

It soon was time for her to depart and my heart started to sink. I wanted to run after her and find out more about her, but I couldn’t get my feet to move in realizing the hopelessness of it all because my mouth was numb with novacaine from the trip to the dentist who treated all those cavities caused by sugar addiction with no hesitation at all.

Today I am still looking out for that girl in every note I write. A true romantic will always be wedded to his muse. Thank you my dear angel until we meet again.

My next bus ride could be my ticket to paradise.

The Anatomy of a Biblical Calendar

So when did this guy named Moses exist? When was he born and when did he die?

These questions become kind of moot when you realize that the books attributed to him, five or six in number, were actually written down during the Davidic and Solomonic reigns in Jewish history. This is the only possible time when the land acquisition that is promised in Genesis to Abraham in order to gain a kingdom was realized. From this we know that the prophecy is actually a looking backwards instead of forwards. A 360 days calendar that helps us to pinpoint the beginning of the Great Flood is a neat trick requiring mathematical skills that few of us attain. What was the real calendar in use by the Priests to order things within the timeframe of the Kingdom of Israel?

This is actually not all that hard to figure out. It involves a 28 years cycle that closely aligns with the 365.25 days cycle in four years in our own time, only that it takes 7 times longer to reach its destination (Not too shabby considering that the Babylonians waited 8 years the Assyrians required 19 years and the Egyptians needed 1461 years to complete their own calendars.).

364 days is the basic yearly unit with the 7th, 14th, and 21st years having an extra week of 7 days. The 28th and final year has two extra weeks. The total days in a cycle were 10227 days with 1461 weeks.

In this manner, the days of the years can be divided by 7 without any exceptions.

If I start out with Adam and go to the end of Shem’s line at the person of Lot, the total number of years is 2156. This number can be divided by 28 with the result of 77 cycles.

Here again it may seem like a trick of magic, but if the shoe fits wear it.

It there wasn’t a P document to confirm this, it might be hard to prove. But since we do have one, it is no problem at all.

The Great Month Before the Great Flood

There is something poetic about that title, don’t you think?

What do I mean by “The Great Month”. I thought I just went over the fact that 600 years transpired in Noah’s life before the flood occurred.

Who or what came before Noah then? Could that have something to do with this new puzzle for the mind? It certainly could. Let’s investigate!

The seven days of Creation came first according to Genesis one. 7 days are 7 days, right?

Not exactly in this case. 7 days is more like 504 years if each of the 7 is a Great Day.

What’s the difference between Being Great and not so great?

Great is when a single day takes 72 years to complete. The explanation is that every 72 years a day had to be added to the calendar back in ancient times. This turns out to be the clue in figuring out the Genesis timeline.

The next step is to add 23 more Great Days to the 7 Great Days of Creation and suddenly, by accident or by crook, I have accumulated a Great Month.

A Great Month is defined as 30 x 72 or 2160 years. This is the actual time from Creation to the beginning point of the flood.

Starting with Adam there were 1056 years to the birth of Noah. Simply do the math and you can see that 2160 years passed before the Great Flood happened.

504 + 1056 + 600 = 2160 years

There are 12 Great Months in one Great Year. Then the whole cycle begins over again.

So can you figure out how many years are in one Great Year?

12 x 2160 = 25920 years.

According to Genesis we are getting close to the end of the 3rd Great Month that began with the advent of Jesus in the sign of the fish, or Pisces.

The first Great Month began with Creation evidently and the Second Great Month was ushered in by Noah and the Flood in the sign of the Ram, or Aries.

What special events will precede the coming of the 4th Great Month?

The problem is that the astrology of the ancients overestimated the time for one cycle to complete. It should be closer to 2149 or so. So maybe the next Great Month has already started. That’s something to ponder if this is making any sense to you at all. Obviously this sort of metaphysics is great for making up stories about time. Perhaps you will author a myth and it will become associated with our place in the universe at this particular moment.

How’s that for solving a riddle?

One Hell of a Flood!: Getting the Right Perspective

Imagine if you could gain new insights into the Great Flood narrative in the book of Genesis. With such an expanded range of vision, what would you discover there?

That’s what I wanted to find out when I began a study at the beginning of 2012, nearing my 60th birthday. At the start of 2016 I still hadn’t found the secret doorway that would let me go inside further for more details, but I was getting close. Finally the revelation came into focus. Five years is a long time to wait for something. Was it worth it? I’ll let you decide. Read on!

The first step was to visualize two different calendars being used to give the ages of Noah and his son Shem. Noah was on the lunar and Shem on the solar. The lunar basically involves 354 days a year while the solar has 365 days. Suddenly the numbers started working whereas before they had no special significance.

The Great Flood started one hundred years after Noah reached 500 years of age. That seems pretty simple. It means that Noah would have been 600 at the time.

Noah’s son Shem was also born at this time. That would seem to imply that Shem was one hundred years of age when the flood began. But the text later states that he only reached 100 years two years after the end of the flood. That would be impossible if both individuals were on the same calendar.

Ok, so if you know algebra you could then do like me and set up an equation for finding out how long the duration in days of the flood was from beginning to end when the waters fully dried up from the ground.

Let x stand for the unknown quantity of days that we are trying to solve.

100 (354) + x = 98 (365)

x = 98 (365) – 100 (354)

x = 35770 – 35400 = 370 days

The flood endured for 370 days if Noah’s age is recorded with lunar and Shem’s age with solar. It seems to work and wasn’t all that hard to figure out.

Despite having a solution to the problem in the text about Noah and Shem and their respective ages, I still didn’t have a common notion of when the Great Flood began or ended. I got different answers from each person’s calendar.

Noah at the start of the flood = 600 (354)

Shem at the start = 581 (365) + 335 days

Noah at the end of the flood = 601 (354) + 16 days

Shem at the end = 98 (365)

Using two different calendars to keep track of events sure does get confusing. There must be a simpler way to determine when the flood began and when it ended and all under only one calendar system for comprehension purposes, but what’s the magic formula?

The text gives us another clue to help us with the solving of our problem. The flood started on the 17th day of the first month and ended on the 27th day of the first month a year later.

That means that a year was 360 days long, if the flood length was 370 days.

Now we can put Noah and Shem under the same calendar system. We no longer are looking for the exact moments when either person turned into a certain age. Instead we are focusing on the flood itself.

I can start again with Noah at age 500 and then add 100 years of lunar.

500 (360) + 100 (354) = 600 (359)

The flood began on a totally different calendar system with 359 days in a year.

We need to figure out a way to confirm that the math was done correctly.

Let’s use Shem and work backwards in time.

The text states that Shem’s line lived for 500 years after the flood ended. This must mean that it ended with Lot since Lot did not have any sons, only daughters, so that the line officially ended with him.

Let’s use the same calendar system that we just found for the start of the flood and then add 100 years of solar for the birth date of Shem.

500 (359) + 100 (365) = 600 (360)

I have solved the riddle and now both individuals are on the same calendar, that being the 360 days one.

Adding the ages of Noah and Shem results in a span of 1100 years.

500 + 600 (360) = 1100 (360)

Why did it take so long for me to decipher this one? It is a classic example of not taking the time to examine a problem more closely and accepting the falsehood that it is unsolvable.

I can do all things through he who strengthens me.

Let me continue this discussion in the next post and delve further into the Genesis timeline for more insights to be gained.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE GOLF COURSE!: PHIL MIKKELSON ADMITS TO HAVING THE FRIGHT HICCUPS BEFORE THE UPCOMING OPEN

Phil Mikkelson is playing some of the best golf of his career but he’s not winning any major tournaments.   His game always comes up short of the mark that is needed to win on tour.  Second, third, tenth are no problem for Phil, but sinking the final putt for a championship trophy is just something that no longer is happening for aging Phil.  He’s not even sure if he can make it to the U. S. Open this coming week. The plane schedule is bad for getting him to the first tee on time in this out of the way place on the map (Wisconsin), and if the plane is going to be late in arrival Phil would just as soon watch the action on his chrome box with me and a million others who are merely practiced observers and not legendary players of the gentleman’s sport.

Dustin Johnson mysteriously hurts his back before the Masters.

The majors are losing some of their prestige is how I would describe this sudden absence of the best players on the tour from high profile matches. Phil seems to be miffed about the location selected for this year’s open for some reason. I haven’t played there before, he matter-of-fact-ly states to an interviewer after this week’s play, and there is no opportunity for a practice round to get accustomed to the course layout before the tourney begins. Then he goes on to mumble something about he’s no longer accustomed to being in the lead, and absolutely not prepared for winning either. It is all such a big shock for him to be doing so well late in his career when others are floundering and driving their balls into hidden hazards of late. Does this make any sense at all? Who are these so called pros as Phil trying to fool?

Isn’t winning everything? Is Phil simply the old man on the course, who has no real chance of winning a major again, or is he simply attempting to psych out the other players, like pretty boy Sergio Garcia who tasted victory for the first time at the Masters, in discouraging them from adding the 2nd leg of the four majors for this season to their vastly improved resumes?  I just don’t get it!

I wouldn’t stand for it if I were Phil. I’d get my butt out on that course and give everybody a lesson about what true golf is!

I think Phil and Dustin and Justin are just happy to still be playing and not having to worry about how to spend all that loot from winning yet another major against a field of tough opposition. Let Ricky Fowler or one of the other up and rising wannabes on tour have this one. Nothing lost, just less autographs to sign for the fans. It can get very uncomfortable when a younger player shows you up, but not a problem if you just stay at home and grab a nice cool one out of the icebox and become a fat slob.

I commend them for not being over-eager to put their names in the record books alongside those of Nicklaus, Palmer and Player, but I don’t really understand the psychology behind it. Doesn’t anybody want to stop the likes of  guys like the Aussie from winning everything outright? Apparently Jason Day just needs one more trophy to add to his collection to take that fourth spot away from anyone else who is crazy to think they could be in that company of hallowed immortals. Phil and the other past winners can gather together all their green jackets and underwear to be dry cleaned and nobody will notice that they were from yester years and not current ones when they put them back on and prance around. Once a champion, always a champion! Who believes in that rhetoric anymore?

Dustin Johnson might still be the course favorite, but who is going to take him on and prove that they are still in the game to win rather than to merely settle for second or third place?  I guess we will all have to wait to find out at week’s end. Or it is time to tune out, ourselves, and wait for the next BIG minor tournament to happen, as we watch and wait for the second coming of Tiger to redeem the sad state of affairs. BTW, where does Tiger hide out when he’s not dosing on pain meds on the side of a road?  He sure isn’t coming to the course this week to hang out with the guys to regain his former self.  He’ll be one of those who are resting at home, like Phil and Dustin are likely to be doing, while the new breed figure out a way to steal yet another cup away from them.

RIDING THE TRAIN

UNHAPPY CHILDHOOD

You got that all wrong, said Emmy Truong

Without the words, there ain’t no song;

Without a melody, it’s just a clanging gong

What you need is what I have got strong!

Prose is not something to sniff at with your nose. Sentences that are long do belong in every piece of composition that has a beginning and a close. I leave it there, because you make me want to rhyme when I only wish to repine. There I’ve said it, don’t despair! Take your lumps and your grump, and get out of here.

GHOST WRITER

It’s the ghost writer in you that talks about mending fences after the horses have already left the corral. You’re still in riding mode due to pretences that you have allowed yourself to become saddled with. You need to loosen the reins on your imagination in order to be carried away by the geese overhead who are flying towards the sinking of the light. If you can’t write what you have wrong, then don’t expect me to edit it with precise and credible diction. Your friend, the Inkpot

mother was a goose

I once knew a scholar who sat in the bower of his own lofty tower thinking on the morrow and what he might borrow from the tax on all his sorrow.

Pigeons they fly, he reasoned with a sigh, and so will I before I die.

He tied feathers to his arms, took flight for a star, and fell in the moat.

I wish I had a boat now, he exclaimed. A quack acquiesced with a duck!

6-9-2017 dal

A NEW POEM

MERE WORDS

Summer’s not here, and neither am I

Where you heard a voice speak in rhyme

It was someone else, not myself this time.

Winter’s begun, and the snows lie deep

Bare elms and time now slip out of mind

Your song bird has left shrill notes behind.

Something was said that made you sigh

Nothing more than words that bleed the soul,

Go now to find somewhere to dig a hole.

6-9-2017 dal

TWO POEMS FOR EMMY TRUONG

An Elegy for Emmy Truong who still lives

One September day you laughed at me

Told me that November was soon approaching

I gazed into your sunshine reflection

And saw that storm clouds were gathering.

Come with me to live in Paris, I sighed

You jumped naked out of the pool in shiver

I can’t be with you anymore, old friend

I’ve given my cold heart to December!

I’d give you flowers and your heart’s desire

If you’d only say you’ll stay a little longer

But a bird must fly, as wings are known to

I’ll see you next in April’s heavy shower.

6-9-2017 dal

April would be happier for me

If I were planted out in fair garden

I’d be watered by rain, and touched by sun

A silly daffodil or a crocus gay,

Reaching out for a glimpse of May!

If I were a bird with feathered wing

I’d not park among the lowly thing

My song would fill the air and be everywhere!

Freedom is reborn in the Spring.

6-9-2017 dal

RESTING VERSUS WRESTLING

I joined this facebook group for a few days called Practical Metaphysics.  I would term the goings on as progressive thinking, but there are always of course the way out ideas expressed, and the persons who offer them sometimes seem a bit aloof.  We call these sort of outlooks by names such as Wicca, etc.  It is impossible to totally feel comfortable in such an environment and the urge is to attempt to convert the other person(s) to your ways of thinking.  Nothing wrong with that approach as long as everyone taking part has equal status.

Suddenly one person posted a message questioning that others were not doing anything for God.   Not taking a stand.   I assumed that the person was a Christian, but probably not a very mature one.  I found myself the only poster who was able to give her a constructive reply.  Everyone else was being nice about it, but saying things like we’re all different and we shouldn’t judge each other but just try to get along, and that sort of sentimentality that is always used to combat our perceived foe traditionally.  We try to befriend them and make them less hostile towards ourselves.

My response was Biblical based, and not of my own opinions.  That makes a big difference.  It sets you apart from those who are merely looking for an easy answer  but have no real basis for their conclusions and good wishes for the other person despite their belligerence.  And so the argument continues comment after comment among the responses in a circular manner with everyone getting their licks in instead of becoming a closed issue that has been resolved in some way, either Christian or Judaic or pagan, whatever best suits the particular problem, if there is one.

So how did I respond?  What was the knowledge that I employed to get a clearer vision of the situation of being accused of not being Christian in purpose, or the perceived view by  some persons that Christians don’t do anything, but are simply brainwashed by the ideology of an organized religion.

The concept that God is resting is what I used out of the book of Genesis.  The implication is that we should also be resting. Our job is not to rush about and find ways to fix all of the problems in the world, but to rest in the knowledge that God is in control, that things are moving in an orderly fashion towards the preset goals that He has made, and not our own ambitions or plans for the future.   Yes, the spirit can convict of something we have left undone or ignored, but that’s not what makes us Christians.  Love is at the heart of our relationships with each other.  When we lose sight of this, then all the arguments begin to crop in and we lose our sense of charity for others.

When I had this revelation it seemed like my purpose for being in the group had vanished.  I made my statement and it seemed like the right time to move on.   Whether the people there accepted or rejected my counsel made no difference.

In these sort of situations you instinctively know what you’re up against, and you have to decide if the conversations you are having are accomplishing anything.   It takes practice.  The thing is to not back down, to be sure of your stance, and deliver it  with confidence.   Resting, not wrestling, is how you deal with other persons who are becoming combative.  People desire a mind satisfying answer to their questions.  If you can provide one to them, then you have no reason to be apologetic or defensive about your position.  Christians are not jelly fish, but in being timid it shows that you are lacking a back bone.