2014.02.09 13:00 - Exit strategies and Mowbray tartans

The Guardian for this meeting was Aphrodite Macbain. The comments are by Aphrodite Macbain.

Aphrodite Macbain: Hiya Bruce
Aphrodite Macbain: glad you came.
Aphrodite Macbain: I see Blub has a new friend
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, this is McBlubson (aka Scottish son of Blub.
Aphrodite Macbain: I see; he's not wearing a tartan though
Bruce Mowbray: I got home from Quaker Meeting about two minutes ago.
Bruce Mowbray: The roads are really treacherous with snow.
Aphrodite Macbain: was it a good meeting?
Aphrodite Macbain: glad you came back safely
Bruce Mowbray: Nope, McBlubson saves his tartans for parades and funerals, etc.
Aphrodite Macbain: as do the Macbains
Bruce Mowbray: Well, my typist definitely drove faster than he should have...
Bruce Mowbray: but who am I to judge?
Aphrodite Macbain: This afternoon I'm going to a séance to see if I can trace my Macbain ancestors
Bruce Mowbray: Oh wonderful!
Aphrodite Macbain: Here is the story of my husband. Hands Bruce a notecard
Bruce Mowbray: TY!
Aphrodite Macbain: I am hoping I will be able to reach Hubert's ghost to find out the watery details
Bruce Mowbray: OMG!
Bruce Mowbray: Well, then, I hope your dear departed husband will make contact....
Bruce Mowbray: but not tell you the details of his tragic end.
Aphrodite Macbain: there will be a seance held in the Villa at Rocca Sorrentina
Bruce Mowbray: cool. the perfect place for it.
Aphrodite Macbain: I often wonder how accurate the stories are....
Aphrodite Macbain: about his death
Aphrodite Macbain: perhaps he is still there living among the natives of Alaska. Maybe he didn't want to return to England...
Bruce Mowbray: Oh -- on more careful reading I now see that your husband and Captain Cook were not the same person....
Aphrodite Macbain: oh no!
Aphrodite Macbain: James Cook was his captain
Bruce Mowbray: but I'm confused....
Aphrodite Macbain: how confused?

Bruce Mowbray: Well, you DO know how the Captain met his Waterloo, no?
Aphrodite Macbain: yes
Bruce Mowbray: I was reading them as the same person.
Aphrodite Macbain: Cook was killed on the Island of Hawaii, a few years later
Bruce Mowbray: but obviously, one was named McBain.
Bruce Mowbray: So, stupid of me (blame it on my typist).
Aphrodite Macbain: nods quietly
Bruce Mowbray: The good Captain was eaten by the cannibalistic early Hawaiians. Maybe your husband will tell you something about that in the seance.
Aphrodite Macbain: he died before that happened unfortunately
Aphrodite Macbain: I may find out more at the séance
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, I know, but maybe they met up in the afterlife.
Bruce Mowbray: and shared war stories with each other, as it were.
Aphrodite Macbain: Giggles. Do you believe in an afterlife Bruce?
Bruce Mowbray: Of a sort, yes.
Aphrodite Macbain: as a gathering of atoms?
Bruce Mowbray: It seems important to my typist to have his physical remains put back in circulation.
Bruce Mowbray: No, a whole new configuration.
Aphrodite Macbain: oh? why his "physical" remains? Are they, somehow, more "real"?
Bruce Mowbray: as for myself and the fish....
Bruce Mowbray: well, a redistribution of electrons and photons would be fine.
Aphrodite Macbain: ah I see
Aphrodite Macbain: a quantum reincarnation
Bruce Mowbray: I think my typist loves the idea of circulating -- recycling in new forms, that sort of thing.
Aphrodite Macbain: It is a cheerful thought, isn't it?
Bruce Mowbray: better than being trapped in a lead box for centuries.
Bruce Mowbray: of course, even those boxes will one day get recirculated,
Bruce Mowbray: but my typist is too claustrophobic for that.
Aphrodite Macbain: Nods. But the problem is with our consciousness - which will disperse with the rest of us
Aphrodite Macbain: will your ashes be scattered?
Bruce Mowbray: Isn't consciousness getting dispersed all the time, though?
Aphrodite Macbain: I don't know Bruce.
Bruce Mowbray: My typist's ashes will be scattered from one of the nearby bridges...
Bruce Mowbray: into his favorite skinny-dipping creek.
Bruce Mowbray: It is all arranged.
Aphrodite Macbain: perfect!
Bruce Mowbray: nods!
Bruce Mowbray: The mortician is a cousin of my typist, you see.
Bruce Mowbray: and he has done this sort of ash-casting before...
Bruce Mowbray: so, he was totally amenable to doing it again - for my typist.
Aphrodite Macbain: I want to be scattered by my hiking friends from Skoki Mountain in the Rockies
Bruce Mowbray: OH YES!
Bruce Mowbray: Wonderful!
Aphrodite Macbain: I hope someone will still be able to get up there then
Aphrodite Macbain: It's quite a climb- that I made in my 50s
Aphrodite Macbain: Blissful and beautiful
Bruce Mowbray: My typist has a friend in Anchorage who wants his ashes scattered at Broad Pass.
Bruce Mowbray: one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.
Aphrodite Macbain: what is Broad Pass like?
Bruce Mowbray: between Anchorage and Fairbanks.
Aphrodite Macbain: a wide valley between 2 peaks?
Bruce Mowbray: well, it is surely a b-r-o-a-d p-a-s-s.....
Bruce Mowbray: No, it is an enormous valley.
Bruce Mowbray: incredibly beautiful.
Aphrodite Macbain: with a river running thru it?
Aphrodite Macbain: sounds wonderful
Bruce Mowbray: probably, although I don't recall the river.
Bruce Mowbray: I took many photos (my typist did.) I've been up there twice.
Aphrodite Macbain: I would like to visit Alaska

Bruce Mowbray: So, your seance will be going on during Berti's meditation?
Aphrodite Macbain: yes from 2-3
Bruce Mowbray: kk.
Aphrodite Macbain: Funny how important it is to know where "we" will end up...
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, it is comforting.
Aphrodite Macbain: though it won't make a bit of difference to us when we're dead!
Aphrodite Macbain: Pharos worried about it 4000 years ago...!
Bruce Mowbray: interesting that the age of reason would have included spiritualism....
Aphrodite Macbain: It is isn't it?
Aphrodite Macbain: although it seems they viewed the phenomenon with some criticality
Bruce Mowbray: sort of like 21st Century folks still rejecting evolution.
Aphrodite Macbain: Very likely the contemporary audience was more well-informed about the operation of the magic lantern by the 1790s than it was in the 1780s, so it must have been more difficult to deceive them anyway.
Aphrodite Macbain: Members of society don't all develop and learn at the same pace

Bruce Mowbray: Looks to me like some magic has happened to your cookie jar.
Bruce Mowbray: It changed color!
Aphrodite Macbain: It changes colour whenever I come here
Bruce Mowbray: Oh!
Aphrodite Macbain: Matching my outfit each time!!
Bruce Mowbray: I thought you might be trying to copy the colors of my fish!
Aphrodite Macbain: lol nope - that would be too hard
Bruce Mowbray: That is amazing!
Aphrodite Macbain: Is it?
Bruce Mowbray: Well, I'd never have thought to do that.
Bruce Mowbray: cool!

Aphrodite Macbain: I was thinking just now it might be nice to curl up like an embryo in a cookie jar and be buried that way - like they did with the Incas
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmmm.
Bruce Mowbray: Still too claustrophic for moi.
Aphrodite Macbain: cosy though
Bruce Mowbray: Well, different strokes for different blokes.
Aphrodite Macbain: especially on cold days
Aphrodite Macbain: :-)

Bruce Mowbray: Heya, druth!
druth Vlodovic: heya
Aphrodite Macbain: Hiya druth
Aphrodite Macbain: GTSY
druth Vlodovic: blub got a new coat?
Bruce Mowbray: That is McBlubson,
Aphrodite Macbain: there are two fishies
Bruce Mowbray: Blub's son.
Bruce Mowbray: (the green one).
Aphrodite Macbain: lol
druth Vlodovic: mc means "son of" so his name is son of Blub's son
druth Vlodovic: grandkid :)
Bruce Mowbray: yeppers. Well decoded, druth!
Aphrodite Macbain: really? didn't know that
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmm.
Bruce Mowbray: Son of Blub's son?
Bruce Mowbray: I guess you have a point there.

druth Vlodovic: heyari
Bruce Mowbray: Heya, Ari!
Arisia Vita: greetings all
Aphrodite Macbain: Ari - what a nice surprise

Arisia Vita: a nice surprise for me too although I've come to expect them when I attend these sessions..

Aphrodite Macbain: we are speaking about Blub's lineage and how we want to go when we move into the next life...
Aphrodite Macbain: among other topics
Bruce Mowbray: a very short lineage, actually.
druth Vlodovic: is that your own tartan Bruce?
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, that is my tartan.
Bruce Mowbray: Would you like to see the whole outfit?
Aphrodite Macbain: Mowbray tartan?
druth Vlodovic: sure
Aphrodite Macbain: sure
Bruce Mowbray: kk, just a sec, please.
Bruce Mowbray: (he said modestly).

druth Vlodovic: my landlord's caretaker just passed on
druth Vlodovic: had a heart attack and went into the hospital for fatigue
Arisia Vita: oh dear druth
druth Vlodovic: they sent him home, and two days later I heard
Aphrodite Macbain: I'm sorry druth
Bruce Mowbray: Oh dear! I am also sorry, druth.
druth Vlodovic: he was 66
Bruce Mowbray: still a whippersnapper.
Aphrodite Macbain: really

Aphrodite Macbain: You look very handsome Bruce
Bruce Mowbray: Thank you, dear lassie.
Aphrodite Macbain: Is that Guinness ur drinking?
Bruce Mowbray: Actually, it is very obscure and rarified Scotch.
Bruce Mowbray: made only in the Highlands.
Bruce Mowbray: WAYYYY up in the Highlands.
Aphrodite Macbain: Glensomosggle?
Bruce Mowbray: almost impossible to find in the Western Hemisphere.
druth Vlodovic trying not to say anything about obscure and rarefied Scots
Bruce Mowbray: The McBlubson clan makes it.
Bruce Mowbray: WHERE are my antlers!!!???
Bruce Mowbray: Whew!
Aphrodite Macbain: The scoch dissolved them
Bruce Mowbray: I panicked there for a sec.
Bruce Mowbray: Where is my kilt????
Aphrodite Macbain averts her eyes

Bruce Mowbray: sry.
Aphrodite Macbain: whew
Bruce Mowbray: there it is.
 

Aphrodite Macbain: How are you Ari?

Arisia Vita: great

Bruce Mowbray: whew, again.
Aphrodite Macbain: It disappears when u sit

Aphrodite Macbain: Do you feel much older than you did a week ago? Ari?
Bruce Mowbray: (Wonders if Navi has problems keeping all their "parts" together.":
Aphrodite Macbain: Ari always looks well put together
Arisia Vita: Not really, unless you count our tail disappearing when we sit :)
Aphrodite Macbain: yes- or it would be rather uncomfortable
Arisia Vita: true
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmmm.
Bruce Mowbray: Empathizes with that tail-disappearance thing.

druth Vlodovic: so what were the thoughts on exit strategies?
Aphrodite Macbain: Bruce and I are getting our ashes thrown
Bruce Mowbray: You mean, pushing the "off button," as it were?
Aphrodite Macbain: mine from a mountain top
druth Vlodovic: nice
Bruce Mowbray: I believe the term is scattered, Aph, but I prefer FLUNG!
druth Vlodovic: joining your friend from the musky broads
Bruce Mowbray: Mine into a skinny-dipping creek (near my typist's farm)
Aphrodite Macbain: I just need to make sure one of my friends will be able to still climb that mountain when I'm 100
druth Vlodovic: flang :)
Aphrodite Macbain: flunk?
druth Vlodovic: skinny dipping creek?
Bruce Mowbray: fling, flang, flung.
druth Vlodovic: ummm
Bruce Mowbray: yeppers.
druth Vlodovic: ick
Aphrodite Macbain: lol
Bruce Mowbray: from a bridge over that creek.
druth Vlodovic: a good view anyway
Bruce Mowbray: ;-)
Bruce Mowbray: oh yeah.

Aphrodite Macbain: I am afraid I have to go to a séance now and see if I can communicate with my dear departed husband, Sir Hubert Macbain...
Arisia Vita: I too need to go, though to Bert's meditation :)
druth Vlodovic: aww
Bruce Mowbray: I should probably get rid of this Scotch before heading over to Berti's.
Bruce Mowbray: Good luck with that, Aph!
Arisia Vita: good luck
druth Vlodovic: advanced meditation :)
Aphrodite Macbain: Thank you. I'll let you know what he has to say
Aphrodite Macbain: Bye all
Arisia Vita: bye
druth Vlodovic: maybe we should compare alcohol consumption versus meditation traditions across the world
Bruce Mowbray: Bye for now!
druth Vlodovic: ttfn