Local Travel with Imaginary or Dead Characters from History

Local Travel with Imaginary or Dead Characters from History

fiction
edward w pritchard

I lapse in and out of situations with the great character of history in my muted madness.

However, having forged a practical side to my nature, I have developed techniques to allow my delusional friends, the great personalities from the past and lost other places to enhance my meager abilities and add something to my bumbling repertoire of social skills. The delusional associations have been going on for so long inside my head that like apparitions employed by a flim flam spiritualist, they come forth even if not summoned if random circumstance requires their presence.

Speaking of practical considerations, my budgetary restrictions currently restrain me from traveling beyond Akron, Ohio with or without imaginary personalities as companions. While Akron is my home and familiar and an actual place to me; it just has so many places and things in it capable to be classified as somewhere or something by the observing but uninterested world. As I travel about my area and region fearful in my car, fearful of encountering a check engine light, or if navigating by foot, fretful of a leg cramp from aging, my ruminations and anxieties are relieved by my imaginary historical companions.

Today I am traveling by stage coach on ancient unpaved roads from Warren, Ohio bound for a small Inn East of Cleveland for a night's lodging and fine repast. Of course I am really in my car alone, but Karl Marx the writer and philosopher is sharing the coach with me, for as they say an interesting companion on the road is as good as a fine coach. The stage coach delusion started a few miles back with a historical marker and Karl Marx has been conversing with me since on our mutual messy houses, his lovely wife Jenny and why Akron no longer has many fine Jewish delicatessens. We avoid politics for now, and discussing Nietzsche a subject which agitates us both.
End part 1

part 2

I am with two very intelligent women, Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf, and while I usually preferred Debi's or a couple of Mary-Ann's for company, these two literary ladies are interesting to talk to. Both are a little gloomy at times, Emily is really quite shy and Adeline [Virginia except to close friends] has her good and bad days and Adeline is prone to too much detail in her stories, but both are excellent companions on this trip to the Cleveland Museum of Art to view the Tilman Riemenschneider carvings. Excuse me for a moment, Emily insists, she can't be appropriate company unless she exercises her demons and worries about death, so to that end I promised her a short story"

Story in a story [for Emily]
A new Catholic priest is called in a severe snow storm to hear an emergency confession. He is barely qualified to hear a confession because he has only 90 days on the job and has only been called because he lives close and is young and strong enough to make it on foot through the severe snowstorm which has knocked out all power and communications at a small nursing home in Ohio.

An elderly man is dieing very soon and must be forgiven for his sins. He tells the priest he is terrified of dieing and eternal damnation because of two horrible sins he committed. First while working as a grave digger as a young man he for a joke, used to switch the coffins into different graves than the ones bought and assigned to them. Secondly he had lead a life of skulduggery typical to successful businessmen in our times.

The priest who couldn't consult any authority on how to proceed, because of the snow storm, felt uncomfortable with forgiving the man even though remorseful because the dieing man waited to the very last minute to atone. The priest also will not lessen the mans fears of eternal damnation by using convenient materialistic arguments such as those of skeptic and philosopher David Hume, [ see Dalai Lama's Dream- same author] and the priest decides to give the man with only a few days to live a task to perform to earn his forgiveness and allow him to leave this life at peace.

There are twenty boxes of dominoes at the recreation room at this nursing home and the priest tells the sinner he must construct a church of dominoes and kneel inside and pray for forgiveness. He must use every domino and there must be no artificial support to the structure.

Three weeks have past since the meeting with the Priest in the snowstorm and the man is still working on his tower of babel. It keeps collapsing when he gets in to pray but he is feeling well and wakes every morning with a strong desire to work on his new project.
end

Virginia [ I am tired of calling her Adeline] is telling me about her ideal apartment, at length and length and she won't eat her food in the cafeteria at the Art Museum [ i worry about her weight, she looks of a skeleton]. I listen politely but really want to talk to Emily about her lack of writing success in her lifetime. Maybe later for Virginia wants to go along the lake Erie shore and find a lighthouse.
End part 2

Part 3
This will be a great lunch for I am with the writers Paul Theroux and Bill Bryson, two of my favorites. I have tricked them into lunch at the West Point market in my hometown. Both are skeptical of my claims of it's greatness and both are sniping at each other out of mutual jealousy as writers; putting me in an awkward position for both are heroes of mine.
end part 3

part 4

I have finally went too far. I have angered
God with my writing. While driving along the expressway south recently I stopped to help an old man having trouble with his car and later conclusive evidence has proved him, the old man with car trouble, to be the one and only God and as he gets into my car for me to take him to get some car parts in the next town, God says he has been waiting to talk to me. This is important so I think I will start a new blog story with what he wants.

End part 4
End Local Travel with Imaginary or Dead Characters from History
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