Nathaniel – real, and not as real

Monday, October 23, 2017

2:15 a.m. Just for a moment, it came clear. Can I hold it long enough to express it? We are real as characters, but not as what we think we are. We are, as was said yesterday, a half-step less real than the next level of reality. And I suspect that that half-step away from reality is another of those “as above, so below” progressions.

I have been reading a life of Ernie Pyle, and specifically have been reading about Hollywood trying to get a handle on him, in making “The Story of G.I. Joe” in 1944. They took the facts and tried to turn it into myth, which is, after all, what story-telling does. And as always I have been reading a steady diet of light fiction, only with new eyes now. And suddenly, as I say, just as I was getting back to bed, for a second everything crystallized, and I understood, or I suppose I should say I saw, only sort of understanding. And the process of putting something seen, or felt, or intuited, into words – well, it’s easy to lose the nub of it, or in fact to never quite grasp it.

We – our essence – are one thing. We – the characters we create and play in this improv performance – are not the same thing, not quite as real, not quite us, just as we appear while we are doing the improv.

It may sound like playing with words. It isn’t. But it’s slippery to hold on to. I’ll check it with Nathaniel and company, but maybe not just now.

5:50 a.m. Nathaniel?

That’s the sense of it. It is one way to see who and what you are. It is not analogy or metaphor or fairy tale or “let’s think of it this way.” It is accurate, factual, plain. Only, it isn’t the only way to see yourselves.

But as a corrective to other views –

Yes, excellent corrective. It’s hard to put this clearly enough to be sure you have both halves: It isn’t the only way to see yourselves; it is one, valid, illuminating way.

But you are too tired to have a good session, plus you haven’t been taking time off. Type this up, send it off, and be on your way for a while. If you ring us too soon, maybe we won’t answer the phone.

“Your call is very important to us –“

But not important enough to pick up the phone. Right.

Okay, well, maybe later today, maybe not. Thanks – and thanks to whoever it was sent me that clarifying thought in the night.

Nice try, but you won’t be tempting us into conversation at the moment. Go away for now.

Okay.

 

4 thoughts on “Nathaniel – real, and not as real

  1. Thank you very much in telling this Frank.
    I have thought upon the same topic in what Nathaniel & you are telling here and now.

    And nowadays when to read the books. My own thoughts being almost absorbed by the authors story in these latest paticular books to read.
    Such as when to read Adela St. Johns book “Tell No Man.”
    Actually, it is felt as to be INVOLVED into the story and the personalities among the peoples involved there. How explaining it ? Almost as “walking into another dimension or a paralell world “?
    I found to read the book before bedtime because at daytime I am felt as “drawn into it – as it is FELT “participating within the stories” told in the book. The peoples there becoming ALIVE, and I am “with them.”
    DUNNO (love the word) how to explain it — but it is FELT AS “to have known” the places and the particuar society, even their own ways how to behave so to speak. I am becoming so very much INVOLVED with the book as never to have been by any other reading before. VERY PECULIAR.
    The book is ALIVE.

    P.S. The “stories” about the Angels during WWI at Mons, a small amount of the French/Belgian and a few english soldiers(approximately 80 –
    100 soldiers of the alies left) defending their last “stand” before the border of France would have fallen. And the few defenders left without a chance to survive against the many hundreds of the attacking Germans soldiers. And the Germans with their new equipment of tanks, the first tanks made in WWI.
    I have HEARD the very same story long ago. Wonder if not to have read the same in one of the old history-books, of War, about WWI !
    The German soldiers there on the same battlefield SAW and WITNESS the very same as the alies there upon the same area and place did.
    The German Army never managed to “broking through” the alies lines there, they were Forced Back by “an unseen Force of Power.”
    Later it was told many of the soldiers on the both sides of the battlefield could see JEANNE D`ARC in “the Air,” in front of an army of Angels.

    And then you have the story from RAF, during “the Battle of Britain.” THAT story is well-known within MY GENERATION likewise. I have known the story very well of old.
    Air Chief Marshal Lord Hugh Dowding who had commanded the RAF in the Battle of Britain wrote a book about it after the war.
    All to know(that`s for sure) The Famous Words by Churchill:
    “Never had so many owed so much to so few.” The RAF fought amongst enemies by planes outnumbered — by the German planes so much better, and outgunned 100 to 1.
    Afterwards, how they won the Battle of Britain — even now, with the hindsight and the information, nobody can figure that one.”

    Amen….And so it is.
    APPENDIX:
    Quote from page 29: Please realize that it was told by the man who planned every move of strategy of that flying show that saved England when she stood alone to save the free world.

    “The RAF Air Marshall told us that night (about THE FEW PILOTS LEFT to fight), that ANGELS had flown the planes for pilots already dead. When they came down the crew told him their pilot had been hit by the first burst, but the plane kept flying and fighting, and sometimes they saw a figure at the controls and none of them were startled by this — by this time they were beyond human limits anyhow.”

      1. A good Morning from “over here.”

        Thanks once more for a new recommendation. But Frank? No, I have not read the above mentioned book by Dion Fortune at all. Well, well, now I have to search for the above mentioned book at Amazon anyway….and laughing heartily. I have come to a conclusion about my own purpose & desire in this life time around as such. It must be the purpose in reading as many books as possible !! Weird as it is but it is OBVIOUS to have had “the TIME” in to do it since to be born — to be born with the opportunity in doing it — within a family reading books.
        Amasing it is !

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