Tribe

A tribe of Aborigines in the outback of Australia wake up each morning like little chicks, excited to see what the day will bring.

Imagine

A few years ago, a group here in Eugene Oregon, invited author Marlo Morgan for a potluck.  She was promoting her book Mutant Message Downunder where she chronicled her walk-a-bout across the outback of Australia with a group of 63 nomadic Aborigines.

Morgan’s book was criticized because authorities can’t find the tribe she spoke about or some of the spiritual sites she visited. She isn’t revealing their whereabouts because she doesn’t want the government to confiscate any of the people or sites they visited.

Those authorities believed her story was fiction.

Now, here’s a clinker, she was criticized by an Australian elder who said, “It damaged Aboriginal woman because Morgan had supposedly seen and done what Aboriginal women were spiritually and culturally forbidden to do.”

That sounds like a case for Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg—oh, rats, that’s out of her jurisdiction. 

Margo commented in an interview that these people have never endangered a species, never destroyed a rain forest, never killed a person, and they believe in Oneness, while civilization believes in separateness. 

Well now, there’s a reason to criticize her. If she made up her story as some claim, she did a darn good job.

Morgan said that once a year her particular tribe of aborigines go to the ocean, build a raft and go out to sea to play with dolphins. Morgan tried to tell them about a paddle, an oar, that would assist their paddling.  

“Why would we want to do that?” they asked.

“Well, to get you where you want to go.”

“But then we will have missed the Oneness.” (That is they trusted the Oneness to take them where they were meant to be. She rested her case.)

The Aborigines told her that if she was lying in bed at night and realized she hadn’t laughed during that day, to jump out of bed and do it.

I began to write about Marlo Morgan for the Travel spot in http://www.plottwist747.com, then quickly realized I was writing for Brunch for the Soul, see, I can’t help myself, it all blends. All I have to do now is throw in The Farm and Writing, and I’ll have what I’ve done for years on www.wishonwhitehorses.

I follow some bloggers who travel full-time, and they are not only escaping te cubicle and the mundane of life but, also to obtain a connection with the Oneness that Marlo speaks of—although they may not call it that. 

When traveling, we ought to run toward adventure, not away from problems.

This is the daily life of one lost tribe of Aborigines.

P.S. When I read Jeff Goins say what it takes to succeed in blogging I found myself coming up short.

 To succeed in blogging you need just four things, he said.

1.      A clear message

2.    A powerful platform

3.    A committed tribe

4.    A product to sell

You guys are my tribe, thank you.

My platform is shaky.

My message is unclear.

I have no product.

Well, one out of four isn’t too shabby.

 "You’re highly aware of what is happening, how things move from one day to the next, and how to flow with change.”

 –Caz Makepeace from YTravelblog.com

The Nervous Button Finger.

I did it. I pushed the “Send” button.

It took both hands to do it.

Not for this post, but for my manuscript, The Frog’s Song.

Holy Cow, I just heard a God-awful sound coming from the backyard.

It’s the peacock!

I hope his visit is a good omen.

My Frog’s Song editor suggested that I place the Leaving Hawaii Chapter (aka, “Screw It!”) nearer the end of the story. I had it in the middle. In Titanic, the ship hits the iceberg smack-dab in the middle of the movie. (Open a novel, and you’ll find something significant happening right in the middle.)

But here in The Frog’s Song we are going to build up to the leave.  So I’ve been doing the Froggie Shuffle—that is shuffling chapters while taking care that I didn’t say we were gone before we were.

Thus the nervous “Send” finger.

Editing in the Yard

With a Friend

Earlier in the day, to stretch my legs after many hours at the computer, I took a clumsy jog down the walkway in our backyard—a whole sum of 30 feet. As I turned around, there was a chicken at my heels. I trotted back to the house with Chick-a-dee waddling her cute little fluffy butt right behind me. 

We moved to this house a year ago, bringing Chick-a-dee and her sister with us, but alas, something absconded with sister. That left Chick-a-dee alone.

But not really alone. She has us, and she wants to be with us as much as possible. She sleeps on the back porch right outside our bedroom window, and she knows that Lafayette, my daughter’s dog, can push open the back door if I don’t lock it. Thus she is right on his heels and sneaks into the house if given half a chance.

The other day I found her in the front yard, happily pecking at a snail. After a peck she would wipe her mouth on the grass.—I guess eating snails is a sticky business.

On Sunday when daughter and grandson visited, Chick-a-dee stole a drink from my virgin strawberry Margaretta –that was before any snail slime had passed her lips.

Before this experience with Chick-a-dee, I had no idea that chickens could be so social. Our other three hens, penned in the chicken yard coop, squawk and run if I so much as drop a bucket. And catching them? Forget it.

We don’t really live on a farm, only one-third of an acre on the outskirts of town, but here I can legally have chickens. (I had Chick-a-dee and her sister illegally at our other house.) In Eugene, you can have chickens, but here in our little town, anything considered livestock is verboten. (Delusions of grandeur.)

You know what being out of the city limits means?

No sidewalks.

And here people walk a lot, esp. with their dogs, and we all walk down the middle of the street—much to Lafayette’s hound-dog announcing delight, but not to our ears.

After my rant in the last blog about being inadequate to write Brunch for the Soul, I’m doing it. I include it as one subject in http://www.plottwist747.com.

My daughter says I should write a blog where no one I know reads it, that way I wouldn’t censor myself, but I don’t think I am, so it doesn’t matter. If you censor yourself, because of what others might think, you aren’t worth a rip as a writer.

My care for the soul advice today is: avoid negativity—your’s, mine, the world's.  It isn’t possible all the time, and if it isn't, know that it does not belong on you. If you can raised your energy level, do it. Another option is to say, “I’m sorry for your pain,” and leave.

 “It’s not my monkey, not my circus.”

 The best advice I heard this week.

Ha.

Well, without planning to do it, I covered three subjects out of the four I intend to cover in Plot Twist—#Brunch for the Soul, (#Travel, nope, except that's what The Frog's Song is all about.)  #Life on the Farm, and #Writing.

I Found It

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.” --Henry Ward Beecher

Ever since I stumbled upon a guru who said “If you’re angry you’re  stupid.”  I’ve been angry.

I am tired of all this BS about how wonderful we should be. We can’t even use our God-given emotions to express ourselves, for heaven sake.

That’s stupid.

If I were being chewed on by a lion, I’d be pretty pissed off.

See why I shut down my website Brunch for the Soul?

While I believe in Brunch, and I believe in the Soul, I have too much of an edge to write about it, except in the terms I am about to put forth.

I knew I could write about the soul, and I knew I had psychological insight, but also I didn’t want to be syrupy sweet. I didn’t want to stand in front of a mirror and tell myself how beautiful I was. If I knew I was beautiful I wouldn’t need to stand in front of a mirror and tell myself lies.

If I knew I was rich, I wouldn’t have to give myself affirmations about richness. I would be it.

All this belief that we ought to be happy all the time is just telling us that we aren’t.

If we feel unhappy, we feel bad about being unhappy.

Then we feel guilty. Then we feel bad about feeling guilty. If we get angry, we feel bad about feeling angry.  If we make a mistake, we feel bad about our ineptitude.

We wonder what’s wrong with us, and that little voice at the back of our head agrees with our badness and says, yep, you’re not good enough.

No wonder people go out and shoot things/people up.

If this loop has ever caught you, you know what I am talking about.

You are going to feel bad sometimes. You are going to be angry. So what?

You’re human.  If you’re an animal, know that yep, you’re going to get angry too.

Humans, though, have a particular brain that thinks about what it is thinking. I don’t know if animals do.

This morning as I perused Instagram (I do love it) I saw pictures that were so gorgeous and of far-away places that they looked straight out of National Geographic. Normally, I oh and ah, but this morning, I said, “Oh for heaven's sake.”

I felt small in photographing my red peony carried into the kitchen from my backyard.

Hey, it’s my life, and I’m not apologizing for it.

Comparison is something we can drop too.

Know that I love you,

Joyce

P.S.  Brunch for the Soul morphed into this: Don't know how it will twist yet.

http://www.plottwist747.com

 Think of this as an Oregon pinot noir--(One of Oregon's best), pairs well with CHOCOLATE