TGU on who they are

Friday, April 26, 2019

5 a.m. [Some construction work on the novel I’m writing.] Very satisfactory. Rather than get right down to work, let me ask instead something about the process. I spent a good deal of yesterday reading Jill Payton Walsh [who wrote sequels to Dorothy Sayers’ Peter Wimsey novels], and thinking myself a great slacker for not working – then at 4:30 or so finally got to work and wrote to the end of “Sunday.” Why the reluctance and what broke the log jam?

Does it matter? All’s well that ends well.

Third-tier viewpoint if ever there was one. Don’t look under the hood?

Look if you wish, but we are not obliged to describe. Suppose it is not in your best interest to know? Suppose it would cause writer’s block, or have some other undesired consequences?

And I hear it, this can serve as springboard to a larger discussion.

Most things can. It remains a question of “Which you,” only in a different light, which might be phrased, “Who are we,” or perhaps, “Which us?” Leaving “The Guys Upstairs” vague has served you well, in keeping you from the strait-jacket of definitions. But from time to time we have sniffed around the subject, showing how wide the range of influences anyone in 3D may be subject to. The slippery point is that we in non-3D are not as distinct from one another as you in 3D see us, or rather –

Yeah, I know. Breathe. I’ve gotten so I can recognize the potential log jam that is “too many things to say,” which sometimes causes me to freeze up.

A pause and then a methodical setting out of elements to be addressed serves you well, as it accords with your mental processes. Otters will find other ways serve them better.

In any case,

  • You in 3D are part of something much larger
  • You are composed of many strands, hence are a community as well as an individual
  • Nevertheless your separate bodies emphasize to you your unity
  • And your discernment of strands emphasizes your community aspect.

As with “you,” so with “us,” because, remember, that distinction is not nearly as clear-cut as it appears to you. If you extend into the non-3D around you (as you do), then that is another way of saying we extend into 3D (as we do). We each share something of the other’s situation. So, your “guys upstairs” may be any or several or all of many kinds of relation to your 3D being.

  • Your strands’ extension into non-3D

I could feel a list coming on, only that first item seems to encompass them all, really.

It does, in a way. So let us consider all other items as sub-categories of “strands’ extension into non-3D,” for the moment at least.

This life:

1) Blood relatives

2) Friends and associates and enemies.

These are the relationships that do not vary (though their importance may vary at different times in your life). Blood is thicker than water, and so is an emotional tie.

By strands, the same:

That is, the relatives and emotional ties of each strand remain active for each, so what you may call past-life relatives and emotional ties affect you in unpredictable and varying fashions.

Beyond these two sets of two categories are more evanescent but not negligible influences. Call them relationships by affinity. Every strand had them in its own 3D life. You have them in yours. And they interact, of course.

As, say, David Poynter the journalist and psychic investigator bled through into my life and shaped it.

That’s a reasonable example.

“Reasonable” rather than “good.” Why?

Well, there is a sort of background assumption of one unit into another unit, you know. however, that isn’t wrong – talents may be inherited via genetics or via strands – but let’s say slightly misbalanced.

“Misbalanced”?

We didn’t want to imply “unbalanced,” nor “misshapen,” but did want to convey that the emphasis wasn’t quite right.

I understand.

Perhaps leave this at this. Shorter passages will encourage readers to chew over what was given, rather than merely accepting or rejecting what a longer passage might say.

And it will save some steam for the novel

That too, but you’ll find you have plenty of time and energy. Constricting factors are other, and no, we do not intend to spell them out.

And so we come out the same hole we went in. okay, thanks for all this. Next time.

 

One thought on “TGU on who they are

  1. After the back and forth today of which “I” is doing things, I was reminded of this (gem) poem.

    —————

    “I Am Not I”
    BY JUAN RAMÓN JIMÉNEZ

    I am not I.
    I am this one
    walking beside me whom I do not see,
    whom at times I manage to visit,
    and whom at other times I forget;
    who remains calm and silent while I talk,
    and forgives, gently, when I hate,
    who walks where I am not,
    who will remain standing when I die.

    Juan Ramón Jiménez, “‘I Am Not I’” from Lorca and Jiménez: Selected Poems. Translation by Robert Bly (1973).

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