Yes, all that stuff about theatre in Mansfield Park. I learned what to say
sufficiently to pass as a lit crit altar boy; but never empathised

and there's an oddity for me in Trolopppe (can never remember if it's one
or 2 ps, so I have added them together) in Mr Scarborough I think where to
be declared illegitimate changes everything - there almost a litany of
authorial voice sins given as a consequence

I'm not sure that differences arise the further we are away in time; but it
cuts in quickly. I'd be lost in the world of my own youth - they do things
differently there

L



On 7 June 2015 at 19:23, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Thanks for all this, Lawrence.
>
> I too have had one experience of the ‘transcendental’ or whatever.It was,
> surpassingly, walking back to my digs after having see a fine production of
> Endgame: suddenly I was way above myself,watching both me & others arose
> the street, waling along. from my advantage point.Then I was back in my
> body, & wondering…
>
> Does make a person think, about the potential in our mind/body, at least…
> As a reader of SF & F, I am willing to be speculated upon…
>
> For the rest, yes, alien indeed, that Elidus, & others. I used to suggest
> that my first year student read Jane Austen the way they might read a SF
> novel about a very different culture, but this one was in the sat rather
> than the future.
>
> Doug
> On Jun 5, 2015, at 5:19 AM, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > Thanks for this Doug
> >
> > Bluntly, he can access those levels to the degree I can; and I am writing
> > him! Because I am writing him.
> >
> >
> > I make it less easy for myself by not being clear when he lived. In the
> > whole, still in the writing, I invoke exile for heresy (4th century C E
> the
> > only recorded instance) and a possible meeting with Olaf Tryggvason (10th
> > century). Though I have a way round that. Ways.
> >
> >
> > There's such a wide range of shifts in knowledge, understanding blah blah
> > in those 6 – 7 centuries
> >
> >
> > I have difficulties with belief whatever the creed. On the other hand I
> > know (believe!) from my own experience of the transcendental.
> >
> >
> > Some years ago I spoke here of seeing a ghost and was “chided” by one who
> > does not believe in ghosts. I replied that I don't either; but I had seen
> > one.
> >
> >
> > Whether there was anything substantial there to be seen, I am rather
> > doubtful. I suspect my brain added to its input or modified it.
> >
> >
> > It is the same I suggest with the transcendental. I realise that I am
> > using that very loosely, too loosely, ill-digested Harry Stottel via
> > ill-digested Coleridge and perhaps with a smidgen of Harry Potter.
> >
> >
> > Bliss was it to be alive, stuff.
> >
> > Mood swings.
> >
> > Pursuance of the beautiful.
> >
> > A doubting materialist.
> >
> >
> > I had an RC upbringing and practised till I was 14; and I sometimes won
> > prizes – plastic Virgin Mary's; so I have a start; though how helpful
> that
> > is to deal with Celtic church miscreants I am doubtful. (There's an event
> > at the beginning of the 13th century in west cornwall where an inspector
> > called from Exeter and found them worshipping God and his expanded
> heavenly
> > family in the church + what seems to have been a water goddess. And up
> the
> > road at Zennor there is in the church of St Senara (first mentioned with
> a
> > similar name 10th century) where mermaids lure men from church and there
> is
> > a mermaid's chair, carved with water spirits, with no date but maybe 600
> > years according to one date perhaps plucked from the soggy air.
> >
> >
> > Scilly / Ennor was then much more remote – separated by the lost lands of
> > Lyonnesse and also by the geological impossibility of Lyonnesse having
> sunk
> > there
> >
> >
> > So that's the context of Elidius.
> >
> >
> > Help. (In case I have never said: I have met a man who seriously – took
> me
> > a while to take him seriously – believes (in quotes) that he was
> piskey-led
> > and left alone and palely loitering. That would have been during the
> latter
> > half of the last century – 1970 +)
> >
> >
> > That gives me an insight to my construct Elidius; but no more. MY
> > construct.
> >
> >
> > As I find it impossible to cope with such beliefs, as opposed to accruing
> > evidence of them, I find it difficult to portray a dark ages evangelist
> > surrounded by such hocus pocus, especially when he's half inclined to
> > disbelief.
> >
> >
> > I think it is inevitable that I will misconstruct him. So much of the
> past
> > is not understand and often assigned to “ritual purposes”. Perhaps if I
> > could be true to the potential reality it might be less interesting than
> I
> > hope it is.
> >
> >
> > I suspect that I at any rate would find the real E alien – just as the
> > folk “Cuddy” is probably more amenable to us than the real St Cuthbert –
> I
> > just grab that comparison without much thought.
> >
> >
> > L
> >
> >
> > On 3 June 2015 at 21:30, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> >> I do too, but feel a sense of many times layered upon one another.
> Almost
> >> feel that first line should be ‘else when’ in that the metaphorical
> >> connections seem to be as much to computer readouts as to vellum, which
> the
> >> ‘memory updates’ also suggests.
> >>
> >> Elidus, or we, access a  number of possibilities, here across the
> >> centuries which he’ apparently, can on some level access…
> >>
> >> Doug
> >> On Jun 2, 2015, at 10:52 AM, Sheila Murphy <[log in to unmask]>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Lawrence, when I read this, I go somewhere that is powerful in terms of
> >>> integration of feelings from multiple places. I am not inclined to
> >> analyze.
> >>> Instead, I go with you, I go with what you propose. It is a very strong
> >> and
> >>> honest venture. I really love the power of it.
> >>>
> >>> Sheila
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 9:27 AM, Lawrence Upton <
> [log in to unmask]>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> If I lived elsewhere, this version had died
> >>>>
> >>>> in draft, crossed through and much overwritten –
> >>>>
> >>>> as once I was foetal, fishlike. There are,
> >>>>
> >>>> of us, ocean qualities; though we need boats
> >>>>
> >>>> for life, bringing us to dry mountain tops.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Ghosts jangle their ways into their lost peace,
> >>>>
> >>>> denying that which they must acknowledge.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> What I have been, my pen pushes through me,
> >>>>
> >>>> writing all that I am since becoming.
> >>>>
> >>>> My hand and I are guided. Like a beast
> >>>>
> >>>> led to new pasture. Or a well-fed horse
> >>>>
> >>>> suddenly burdened by someone not itself,
> >>>>
> >>>> of doubtable love, spurring; who does no harm
> >>>>
> >>>> yet leads it into harm. I am too young
> >>>>
> >>>> in brain to do anything otherwise. I am
> >>>>
> >>>> here now; and now is all I’ve ever known.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> He whose experience taught me of him
> >>>>
> >>>> is not accessible today. Not here.
> >>>>
> >>>> My memory updates a teacher’s chalk list.
> >>>>
> >>>> My imposed tasks and my weird brief identity.
> >>>>
> >>>> All of my now lost years are new leaf mould
> >>>>
> >>>> and myth. My poor recall’s a charm on the dead.
> >>>>
> >>
> >> Douglas Barbour
> >> [log in to unmask]
> >>
> >> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations &
> Continuation 2
> >> (UofAPress).
> >> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
> >>
> >> There is no life that does not rise
> >> melodic from scales of the marvelous.
> >>
> >> To which our grief refers.
> >>
> >>              Robert Duncan.
> >>
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2
> (UofAPress).
> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
>
> There is no life that does not rise
> melodic from scales of the marvelous.
>
> To which our grief refers.
>
>               Robert Duncan.
>