It’s Tuesday-Late in the Day Already…

Dear Characters in the Drama of Life,

I heard one novelist say she likes to throw her characters into hot water and see how they get out of it. I think some of us are suffering from burns, but we’re still here. And some of us still believe in the goodness of people.

Yesterday, on our night walk with the dogs, I commented to my daughter that we’re all immigrants unless we’re Native American, and then it dawned on me that they are, too. Scientists/historians believe they crossed the Bering Strait (between Alaska and Russia) into North America before the ocean invaded the land bridge. My daughter said some Native American DNA shows that they came from the South.

We all came from somewhere, although it appears that the Africans were created on the spot.  

It’s been a mine-cart/roller coaster ride, hasn’t it?

I am launching a new website this week.

Just what the world needs, right? 

Another website.

Yes, we need magic, fun, and laughter back in our lives.

And after all my years of writing, I need one that pays for its keep. Not that I’m charging you guys, but I am offering some mind stuff, and physical stuff for sale—all optional.

Think of this: your mind can create the fragrance of freshly made sourdough bread that runs through my site. I know bread has been maligned, but sourdough is the very best for you, and the scent and taste are subline, so when I read a novel that kept describing the fragrance of sourdough and gave a recipe for making your own sourdough starter, I had to include the recipe.

I’m way into the day with this blog because I have spent so much time on the other site, and it is not complete, but I know how engineers work, (although I’m not one) they are still dinking with their product as it is being pushed onto the display floor. Yesterday, I got immersed in my story, Where Tigers Belch, by rewriting it, cleaning it up, and feeling a respite from the cares of the world by reading it. I wanted to include it on my new site.

Today, I put in a Table of Contents, it got screwed up, so I took it out. It only has 10 short chapters, so it doesn't need one. I posted Where Tigers Belch, some time ago on this site, you may have read it, but for those who haven’t, here is the new Introduction: 

Where Tigers Belch

by 

Jo Davis

 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."

Where Tigers Belch is another quest as a young college student sets off into the jungle to find her purpose and reason for being. The spot will be, she says, “where tigers belch.”

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, and 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 one’s 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. This will be available as a Pdf to download on Travels with Jo--coming up this week. 

And now dear ones, for those who are reading my book, Your Story Matters, here is the next Chapter: (Are you still with me? Daughter dear says that people don't read, however, I figure you do.)

Chapter 51

 

Badass Training 101

 

Have you ever read a well-written story, but you felt miserable after reading it?

 

I won't tell you where I found the story I’m talking about, I read it by accident. The Title lured me. That shows the value of a good title, doesn’t it?

 

If I tell you what it was, you will read it. The author will get ten thousand hits, and publishers will think that's what people want and publish more depressing stuff. And I will be home sucking my thumb, and you will be depressed because you read about another miserable life. 

 

While I found that miserable story, I also found this:

 

It was a three-line blog by Seth Godin:

 

"How much of what we want, really want, is due to the ideas that culture has given us, and how much do we need?

 

"If a memetic desire isn't making us happy, perhaps we can find some new ideas."—Seth Godin.

 

My response? What’s a memetic?

 

I looked it up. 

 

 

“Memetics are ideas that become a kind of virus, sometimes propagating despite truth and logic."

 

A memetic belief isn't necessarily true, as rules that survive aren't necessarily fair, nor are rituals that survive necessarily necessary. 

 

These beliefs are good at surviving.

 

Isn't that odd?

Some liken a memetic belief to a virus, while others say they are more like genes, replicating themselves. Robert Aunger says, "A memetic is more like a benign parasite incapable of or reproducing without a host, and the mimetic’s host is the human brain."

 

The word was new to me, while the concept was not.

 

It was one of those facts we know to exist. It lurks in the back of your mind, irritating us without our knowing why. You know something is wrong. Our internal knowingness recognizes it as absolute nonsense, but our conscious mind is muddled.

 

We know that rules grow and reproduce until we have dogmas, governmental ones, religious ones, and metaphysical ones. Ideas get passed around, repeated, and disseminated until people speak the same jargon and spout the same opinions. That belief has taken on a life of its own. 

 

It takes a Badass not to do it.

 

Today I watched and listened to Oprah Winfrey's commencement speech at Tennessee State University, her alma mater. What a woman. She can put it out there like no one else; I was motivated, inspired, and deeply moved. 

 

When she said she had never felt out of place, not enough, or an impostor, I saw how this woman had achieved heights few women ever have, and she continues to be out there to inspire. “Start by being good to one single person every day. You can be a lifesaver to the one who receives it. Be someone's hope.”

 

The Gap

 

*

“What you think you become. 

“What you feel you attract. 

“What you imagine you create.” --Buddha

 

Well, well.

The Gap is the space between where we want to be and where we are. 

You’ve probably heard a lot about The Law of Attraction—that we draw to ourselves what we resonate with. The above quote of The Buddha pretty much describes it. 

Some days my resonating stinks, so it’s a good thing the Great Spirit is forgiving, or I’d be in deep doo-doo. 

Elon Musk is in the Gap with Starship Rocket prototype. That rocket takes off, a glistening silver sliver aiming for the sky, nose up, a blazing trail behind it. The rocket goes to its designated height, beautiful. It lays on its side and slowly descends back to earth, like a little flying squirrel with its side flaps extended. Right before touching down on the launching pad, Starship pulls itself together, turns its nose up again, and slowly descends. Unless it lands squarely on its feet, BAM! It explodes.

Four have exploded. One sat on the launching pad for about ten minutes after flying, with a slow burn happening around its perimeter, then Bam!

You see, each time a rocket doesn’t work, the scientists learn about what isn’t working.

Thomas Edison said he found 1,000 ways not to make a light bulb.

I’m in the gap with a little notebook I wanted to print. My thought was to Print a blank book, people like those little books with pretty covers. 

I do. I use bound booklets for my computer data. And they can be journals, or whatever you want to record, an address book, press plants between the pages, whatever you can think of. Add a few quotes, and they are more fun. 

I wanted lined pages, ha-ha. Trying to get lined pages formatted for a physical book is another story. I’m learning 1,000 ways not to make a booklet. Either the lines are screwed up, or something is wrong with a page, and the launcher shows that I have a blank page. 

Fix it.

I’ll get it. I’m determined.

I’m in the Gap.

On www.bestdamnwritersblog.com, I spoke to writers. If you’re a writer, you know what I am talking about. You have good taste. You recognize exquisite writing when you see it, but then you look at your own work, “Uh oh. Rats!”

You’re in The Gap. 

Keep on. Keep practicing. It isn’t all talent, and what in the heck is talent anyway? Einstein said it’s 90% hard work.

Apparently, people are interested in this old principle now called The Law of Attraction. The Buddha tried to tell us. Ancient scriptures said, “Ask, and you shall receive. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” The Secret tried to tell us. Justin Perry regularly talks about The Law of Attraction on YouTube, and he has over a million followers. 

I used to hate it if things were going badly when someone would ask me, “What did you do to create that?” 

“Well, if I could create my current situation, I certainly could create you not being in my face.”

That question was rubbing salt in the wound.

If The Law of Attraction was as simple as some make it out to be, we’d all be rich, beautiful, and abundantly happy. My twelve-year-old grandson scoffs if he hears us talk about it, for I think he has the idea that we mean just ask, and it will show up at your door. Maybe it will, perhaps it won’t. It is not as simple as that.

We’ve thought or asked or prayed for many things that didn’t happen, and a good thing too, sometimes we change our mind. And then we thank the great powers that be that that asked for something didn’t happen. 

Gaps help sometimes.

Contradicting thoughts, exist in the gap chasing away your desired outcome.

In the gap are subtle, unconscious, emotional components. That’s the reason attracting what you want is so tricky.

The Buddha said, “What you think you become. 

“What you feel you attract. 

“What you imagine you create.”

He said that about 500 years before Jesus, before Mohamad, before Krishna. Before, the new thought gave us the idea that thoughts create.

 

We know, stories become exaggerated over time, but perhaps there is still a kernel of truth. It is said that Prince Gautama, who become the Buddha, had a favorite white horse named Kanthaka, who it was said to be 18 cubits in height. (Eighteen hands in measurement is a tall horse—18 cubits would be outrageous.) No matter. Kanthaka and the Prince proved to be a formattable team in contests such as horse-rider ability, archery, and sword fighting—a prince had to prove his metal. Kanthaka pulled the chariot Guatama, and his servant Channa used to ride through the city while Channa showed the Prince the ways of the world.,

 The Prince had been sequestered in the Palace for 29 years, hidden from all misery, age, or ugliness. It had been prophesized that the Child Guatama would either become the most powerful of all leaders or leave the ways of the world and seek his enlightenment. His father wanted to keep him to be a leader and so imprisoned him. 

Who helped him escape?

Kanthaka.

Kanthaka leapt the gates and fled with The Prince from the imprisonment of the Palace. 

Further embellishment said that the gods held their hands under Kanthaka’s feet so the clatter of his hooves against the stone pavement would not awaken the guards.  

In this story, the role of Kanthaka illustrates the reverence, respect, and dependence between horse and human that has endured for centuries. 

(Hee hee, I got a white horse in here.) 

Although I ascribe to the idea of the Law of Attraction, I know we are still in a physical world. We still have a pandemic; we still have situations, not of our choosing.

We’re in the Gap.

All I can say is, “Be a person worth saving.”

 Astronauts made it home safely in a recycled rocket.

P.S. I have 17 blank pages in my booklet, augh!

*The  picture at the top is of Gautama riding Kanthaka with Channa running beside them.