Where Tigers Belch

 

I saw that my little book, Where Tigers Belch, is available For Free on Kindle Unlimited.. ("For how long? I don't know. They decide.)

That inspired me to offer an excerpt as you might read in a bookstore with a hard copy in your hands.

 Where Tigers Belch is that spot that lights our fire.

 This road to the tiger will be an adventure. While adventures are often wrought with strife, and the possibility of all hell breaking loose is ever present, there is a gift at its end.

 Joseph Campbell called it a "boom."

 A boom is a gift the adventurer takes home to the tribe.

 I read a story about a woman who wanted to watch soap operas all day. This was before smart TVs and Video recordings when we were forced to watch our favorite shows when the studios aired them. People often missed their favorite Soap Operas and thus missed out on some important plot twists. She decided to write a synopsis and print it in a little booklet that came to be known as The TV Guide. (Boom.)

 Another successful entrepreneur loved her husband but was tired of his grunting and answering in monosyllables. She watched a show on training exotic animals and applied their training methods to her husband. It was, basically, "Reward what you like, ignore what you don't like." After collecting data, she wrote a book, What Shamu taught me about Life, Love, and Marriage. It was a rousing success and gave the tribe a new perspective.

 To find what you want to do, Martha Beck suggested sitting in a room and allowing your eyes to glide over the objects found there. When a particular object attracts you, stop and ask yourself why you chose that. Next, write down its characteristics. Third, ask how those characteristics pertain to your business. And what business might that be?

 Don't judge yourself. Be as stupid as you can. That frees your mind. Allow yourself to keep doing it over and over. In the process, you may hit on that one thing or more than one. You're allowed.

I tried the experiment. My eyes landed on a little plastic orange pill bottle on the bookshelf.

 What attributes did it have? Well, it was a container that held something good and intended to be beneficial and healing. It was a small container, ordinary, apparently insignificant, but held mighty ingredients.

 How could I use that as a business? A webpage is that. Small, ordinary, apparently insignificant, but holds mighty ingredients.

 

***

 

I began another website, named it Travels with Jo, then found it was confusing to google, for it wasn't a Travel Blog. I renamed it "Wonder with Jo." 

 To wonder and invite others to wonder with me.

 

https://www.wonderwithjo.com

 

I am including "Where Tigers Belch" on both sites. However you will find other info on Wonder with Jo. 

Here is the Introduction and the first chapter:

 

Introduction

You might have read Paulo Coelho's book, The Alchemist, where a shepherd boy begins a quest to find a treasure and something he calls his" Personal legend."

Here is another quest as a young college student sets off into the jungle to find her purpose and reason for being. And she declared it would be where the tiger's belch that she would find it.

Have you ever had one of those days where you felt off? You were out of sorts, irritable, thinking nothing was going right? You were mad at the world and mad that things weren't going according to plan. You were angry that you aren't further along on your enlightenment trail, wondering what enlightenment is anyway.

 You could search for years and never find that spot where the tiger belches, where you are calm and believe all's right with the world. It is the place where you feel invincible. 

I understand the gap. Best to back off. Go into your hut, nap, pet that baby cheetah on your bed, and listen to it purr. (I've heard that they have a purr like a lawnmower, and if they lick you, your skin will feel like it has been sanded.) Decide at that moment that you will be fresh tomorrow, and you are not going to push it today.

 I've decided that tomorrow I will take my backpack. I will add a few bottles of water and a couple of sandwiches and set off to find my destiny.

This is the purpose of Where the Tigers Belch. It is an investigation into finding our purpose and learning that we are magnificent beings on the road to greatness.

We're not on safari here, although I wish we were. We're here to find the spot that lights our fire. That's where the tiger belches. I could say sleep, lies down, or roars, but I like Abby's lyrical poem, so I'm saying, "Where it belches."

While in Africa, Martha Beck found herself in an awkward and dangerous place. She was between a Momma rhinoceros and her baby. Standing there looking at an animal the size of a Volkswagen bus, she experienced a strange phenomenon. She was frightened, yes, but she was also elated. She was at a place she had dreamed of since childhood, and at that moment, that rhinoceros represented her one true nature. She felt that, somehow, she had come face to face with her destiny. (Between a rhino and a hard place?)

Perhaps that rhino was a talisman for her, a representation of what she could become: big, strong, able to overcome obstacles, that thing that both scares us and elates us. We hope we live to tell of it when we find ourselves in that place.

Being at a spot where a tiger belch has a gentler ring than coming face-to-face with a rhino. The purpose is the same. However, which would you rather face, a wild tiger or a wild rhino?

I don't think we can take credit for all we have produced, for I believe in muses and divine intervention.  However, we can take credit for searching. I search for my figurative or literal spot, where the tiger belches.

 Come along for the hike.

 

Chapter 1

 

You might think I spent the night quivering in my debris hut, listening for the footfalls of wild animals.

  I did.

  I'm joking. I slept like a relaxed dog with all four paws in the air.

  I was on a mission and wouldn't let a minor inconvenience stop me.

  Ahead was the goal of my life.

I spent yesterday walking, but when a washed-out area of the path dropped me in an avalanche of mud, I slid downhill screaming and grasping at the vegetation alongside my slippery slide. My careening stopped short of a stream, thank heavens, for my hands were scraped and my throat dry from the screaming, but I survived to the tune of the screeching and flapping of a great flotilla of birds filling the sky in a paint brush smear as though I had touched the brush to every color on my palette.

I washed my hands in the stream and ate one of the tuna fish sandwiches I had placed in a plastic container to keep them from getting mushed. I drank my bottled water and gathered sticks and debris for an enclosure where I spent the night.  

 Now you might be waiting for me to fall on my nose, and I may—I slid down the muddy slope, didn't I? But what if we travel through life knowing it will turn out well for us?

I crawled out of my enclosure, stripped off my clothes, and bathed in the stream.

Figuring that the stream—which flowed at a pretty good clip—was pure, I filled my empty water bottles.

 And when I put the bottles into my backpack, I found a surprise. (Did I tell you I had lost my backpack on the way down that embankment and had to climb, holding onto vegetation for support, back up to get it? I slipped back down again--but I had saved my backpack.)  I had used this pack before and had left a pen and a paper pad in its zipped-up compartment—Good. I searched to see if I had anything else tucked away.

I found three sticks of gum, old and dried up, a chocolate mint from a restaurant long ago, melted, flattened, and re-set, but still in its foil wrapper. A few crumbs of left-over peanuts left salt in the bottom of the pack. I dipped a wet finger in the salt and licked my finger. It gave me the taste of having potato chips –a good after-taste to my tuna fish sandwich.

 Okay, dry, dressed, fed, and invigorated after that cold bath I began skipping down the new path.

 After that fall from the path above, I felt that destiny thrown me onto this path. Besides, following a stream leads somewhere. Water goes downhill, not in circles, as I am apt to do.

What if I get lost, I think as I walk along—a moment of doubt. What if I run out of food or get eaten by a tiger?  Well, I'd be dead. I don't know where I am now anyway. I might as well proceed. I'm determined.

I take off my tee shirt, dip it in the stream, and put it back on to cool my steaming body. I sit beside the stream, gather some reeds, and weave them into a ratty-looking hat. It protects my head, and the wet grass helps keep me at a tolerable temperature.

I keep walking; the sun beats down hot, and it is mucky under the forest's canopy.

 Occasionally a monkey screams at me, sometimes they sing in a full-on chorus of screeching, but I keep on.

 Another night in the jungle? What did I get myself into?

 Suddenly I hear someone humming.

 Am I coming upon an encampment?

I stop and hold my breath as I peer through the jungle thicket. I see only one hut.

Standing there where I am, hidden in the trees, I see an old woman come out of a shelter. Her white hair frizzes out in a tangle flowing down her back. She is wearing a sarong tied above her bosom. Her shoulders are bare. She ambles, carrying a jug to the stream where she dips it into the water. She hefts the filled jug out of the water and settles it on her hip.

 As she is walking back to her hut, she calls out to me."why are you standing there gawking? Come on in out of the heat. I've been expecting you."

 

To see "Where Tigers Belch" on Kindle, please Click.

 

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Stacks and Miracles

 

This looks like the drafts for one manuscript.

However, this morning my desk looked more like this:

One of the advantages of cleaning a drawer—this was a file drawer where I had slipped in receipts through a slot I made by leaving the drawer slightly open is that I find something of value.

Surprise! A great accumulation of papers, receipts, car repairs, and health information were stacked up in a great pile inside the file drawer. The pile expanded when I took it inside the house to the dining room table. But surprise, surprise, I found a paper I was looking for, and while sorting through my stack, I found this:

From Desmond Tutu:

"We have to stop pulling people out of the water. We need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in."

Right on, I thought, remembering the conversation I watched some time ago of Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop of South Africa, and The Dalai Lama. Those two clearly loved each other and were as mischievous as six-year-olds, teasing each other relentlessly while sharing their spiritual practices. At one point, one poked the other and said, "Act like a holy man." Tutu got the Dalai Lama to take communion, and you couldn't help but laugh when The Archbishop persuaded the Dalai Lama to dance.

The Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, an advocate for civil rights, is married, has four children, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his role in anti-apartheid. In 2009, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 1989, Tutu spoke out about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, asserting the right of the state of Israel to its territorial integrity and security against attacks by those who would deny its right to exist. And now, 35 years later, we still have that conflict. Sigh.

Yet those two spiritual friends, after what they had gone through, got together in a spirit of joy and colluded to write THE BOOK OF JOY: How to Find Joy in the face of suffering.

Well, I have to buy that one even though it costs 16 bucks on Kindle.

When Tutu asked the Dalai Lama how long he had been exiled, he answered 35 years, then added:  "There is a Tibetan is saying, "Whenever you have friends, that's your country, and whenever you receive love, that's your home."

Thanks for reading. Thus, I have a reason to write this blog, find that quote to give you, and find "The Book of Joy," which I intend to read.

You see, miracles happen every day. (And all the pages are in their own little file folder.)

My next to last chapter from Your Story Matters is here:

Chapter 59

 Aloha

Two months after moving to Hawaii, Little Boy Darling turned one year old on Ground Hog’s Day.

 

Neil was on the mainland completing a project, and the rest of the family, DD, Little Boy Darling, and I, decided to celebrate at the beach. 

 

The beaches on the Hilo side of the Big Island are rocky, so it is necessary to drive a distance to enjoy a sandy beach. We aimed toward Hilo, but instead of turning right, we turned left toward the town of Volcano and kept driving until we came to Punaluu, Black Sands Beach. 

 

There, the sand is black and worn round and smooth as caviar. It is where the Hawkbill sea turtles, giant as manhole covers and dressed like warriors in full battle regalia, sun themselves on the warm sand. 

 

The water is treacherous there, but DD went in until she felt the surge and decided that wasn't a good idea. In ancient times, the strong swimmers, the men, would dive down, holding an empty bottle covered with a finger. At a spot where fresh water enters the sea, they would remove their finger, allow the bottle to fill, and stop it up again. On the surface, they would offer fresh, cold water to the family.

 

Freshwater percolates through the sand there on the beach, and it was said that in ancient times, the turtles came there to help the children, for they dug troughs where the freshwater could collect. 

 

Someone had built up the sand to form ponds about six inches deep at the surf's edge. It was in the ponds that Little Boy Darling spent his day playing in the caviar sand, smearing it on his legs and tasting it occasionally.

 

As my daughter and her son were thus occupied, I wandered down the beach and found a lady sitting in the sand, searching for tiny white shells that could sometimes be found sparkling in the black sand. She was there also celebrating her birthday with her grown son and daughter from the mainland. As her children played in the water, the lady and I sat in the sand and visited.  

 

She said she and her husband used to come here and search for the tiny white shells. The one who found the smallest shell would choose the restaurant for their dinner. Six years ago, her husband came to the Island and bought a house, for it had been his dream to live there. Since she loved him, she agreed to move. However, it rained more than she could take; she couldn't find the items she wanted, she missed her family, and she would stand in the backyard and cry. Her husband said they would move if she was so unhappy. 

 

She decided that she would adjust, so she stayed, and now she won't leave even when the kids beg her to do it.

 

Her husband died two years ago, and a "friend" stole their money. She lives on Social Security, $700.00 a month, in their little paid-for house. She is happy. "It is ALOHA," she said. “Aloha is a way of life; look it up. It means to give without expecting anything in return." 

 

It also means, "Hello, Goodbye, and I love you.

 

Aloha,

 

From Jewell, Joyce, Jo