Jewell

 

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Jewell

 

I followed Indiana Jones's example and named myself after my dog. Sometimes I use the name Jewell as a nom de plume.

 

I say that Jewell was my dog, although she started out as DD's. DD was in high school, and Jewell was a puppy when they found each other. The Roly poly puppy, basically all black then, chewed on my diamond ring on the way home and earned the name Jewell even before her personality told us she was one.

 

I wouldn't have parted with that dog for anything except to save my kid's lives.

 

While we were still living at Rancho Santa Fe, CA, Jewell contracted Parvo, a dangerous disease to dogs, probably because, as a pup, she had the propensity to munch on about anything available. Now, they have a vaccination for Parvo, but then, all we could do was wait and have her quarantined for a while. During that time, I wandered into the canyon below our house praying that she would survive. 

 

She recovered and put aside her puppy ways of munching and became a beautiful lady, a gray Malamute-shepherd-husky. A perfect dog. 

 

She and I were a part of the caravan that snaked its way up the long state of California into Oregon when we moved back here after the girls graduated from high school, and both were accepted into the University of Oregon in Eugene. Lisa accompanied by her boyfriend drove her Rabbit vehicle. DD and a friend drove her (not new) Porsche, and Neil drove a Rider Rental truck loaded with our belongings. Neil was still working in California part time, so he was traveling a lot. I was the den mother to three students going to the University while Jewell and I spent our lives together.

 

When I studied The Course in Miracles, I found a card that said, "Live forever, you holy Son of God." I know it sounds like swearing but say it kindly. I kept saying that to Jewell. However, when she was old and infirm, I tried to take it back and release her, for it was hard for her to let go. I grieved terribly when she died. I don't like to take a life to its end, but Gabe came soon after, and we got the puppy Peaches, who used Gabe as a footstool to get onto the bed with us. That seemed to please him, and I believe it prolonged his life.

 

Jewell and I were a team. We went hiking into the forest behind our house on Hendricks Hill when the land was wild and unfenced, where I imagined a fern grotto (my name) beside the path was harboring fairies, and an old rose garden hidden in the forest produced large rose hips in the fall.  Why would a rose garden be hidden in the forest unless once there was a homestead there, or indeed, fairies had planted it?

 

I loved all our dogs, but Jewell planted a diamond in my heart. 

 

Live forever, you Holy Daughter of God!

Mary Trump has written about her uncle for years in The Good in Us. In it she has told that he has been a bully all his life. Now, she wonders why in the world the polls say the Presidential race is 50/50.

A comment from one of her supporters:

 “It’s not Trump they want; they will get rid of him in a minute. It’s the puppet Vance.”

Oh, my heavens.

Remember Plato? That guy born approximately 428 BC? Plato suggests that ideas are the only constant, and that the perceived world through our senses is deceptive and changeable. Because Socrates, his teacher, constantly questioned the values of society, criticized politicians, and proposed ideas that made the establishment nervous, he was finally put on trial for corrupting the youth and for not worshipping the correct Gods. Plato’s dialogue The Apology portrays Socrates defending himself against the accusations of the state. After being sentenced, he willingly drank hemlock, saying, “I do not fear death.”

After the oligarchy was overthrown and democracy was restored, Plato briefly considered a career in politics, but the execution of Socrates in 399 B.C.E. soured him on this idea and he turned to a life of study and philosophy.

Good plan.

Windows

Can you believe this? Some 400 years before Jesus was born, a man said this:

 

“Someday, in the distant future, our grandchildren’ s grandchildren will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms. They will spend many hours in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to know the difference between light and knowledge.” 

 

--Plato (PLATO’S DOCTRINE: 909 Relics of Greek Philosophy).

 

 

Reality is so compelling. It has so much momentum going it’s hard to stop or change direction. 

 

Brother, are you having a problem with life these days?

 

 Maybe it’s just me.

 

I was cruising along pretty well, not worried, then I felt something was bearing down on me. Yes, I know better. I know that when you are resonating with the good, you feel good. When you focus on the dire, the dangerous, the sick, you feel down, depressed, complaining, or just off-kilter.

 

So, how do you lift yourself up when something knocks you off-kilter?

 

When I realized that we don’t know what to believe anymore. I see that people believe lies, and we don’t know who is telling them to us and why. I saw that someone can drop a dire something on us, an insinuation, and not even sign their name to it, and what happens? It becomes spread into society. People glom onto the sick and disgusting. 

 

It has something to do with the way our brains work, how we can’t stop looking at a train wreck. It gets the adrenaline up—hell's bells, take a roller coaster ride, that will get the adrenaline up too.

 

We know that fear sells. Fear keeps us off-kilter. Fear makes us uncontrollable, but we can’t help it. Fear runs us. We let the media, and who knows what all, to affect us. I read that Memes are driving our culture. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram--these are all windows for us to peer into. When people have death, sickness, unrest, unemployment thrust into their face for over a year, it wears on them. We weren’t built to live under constant threat. 

 

Darn, I was looking out the wrong window. I have a philosophy about which window to choose—this is all figurative, you know. One window shows kids playing in the street, riding their bikes, and laughing. Another shows the neighbors quarreling. Some windows even look out upon downright fighting. 

 

And then I approach my kitchen window—this is real—and there is an orchid growing on the sill that has sent up a new spike and is budding. This is its third year to bloom. Maybe because it is looking out the window to the maple tree in the back yard that is bare now of leaves, but the tree and the orchid believe that spring will come and with it baby silky leaves that will flutter in the backyard.

 

We have to focus on the good, the healthy, the beautiful. 

 

We came here for a reason, and it wasn’t to suffer. We thought this time on Earth would be a grand vacation, a joyous one, so why isn’t it? Has the outside world done it to us? Could it be that our belief in suffering and decline has been passed down from generation to generation? Well, folks, now is the time to stop it. 

 

Now is the time, as Ralph Marston wrote, To “Breathe in the sweet air of limitless possibility and make life as rich as you know it can be.” 

 

Breath wrote Dido Owlnute:

“To pause

To make space

To collect your thoughts,

To remember,

To face the next moment, 

To choose.” 

 

“Remember, you made it this far through difficulties that seemed impossible. Remember how many times you were saved at the last minute—this time is no different.”—Bryant McGill.

 

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy. They are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” --Marcel Proust

 

I came upon this picture, taken in Greece, of my daughter at 16. It is a beautiful window to look upon. She wasn’t posing but just standing there, and I snapped the picture.

 

 

 

“Truth isn’t always beauty. But the hunger for it is.”—Nadine Gordimer.