Hope

 

The first egg is always a monumental event.

After a winter of rest, sleep, and using her energy to grow new feathers, one of my chickens laid her first spring egg. I could name her Hope, but I have three red hens, and I can't tell them apart, so I don't know who laid the egg. That egg was from yesterday. Today, I got another. Yea!

 

 ----Imagine strips of paper upon which you have written your insights. 

You throw them up into the wind. And other people, like children running through their first flurry of snow, arms outstretched, instead of catching snowflakes on their tongues, catch those paper strips in their tiny little fists. If they like what's written on the strip, they keep it. If not, they throw it back into the wind to be picked up by someone else.

 

On a day long ago, there were murmurings at the kitchen table that were not understandable to little ears, but I knew something was brewing. My father enlisted in the Navy because he knew the draft was coming and wanted to choose his area of service. The Navy was not to be, though, for they found he was color blind. Therefore, he ended up in the Army. I learned of my father's colorblindness from those murmurings and how that surprised him. Maybe that's why he sketched in pencil or charcoal, a.k.a. black and white. I learned that during the war, he drew portraits for the soldiers, and I remember he said, "You can't put too many lines on a face."

 

Once, he wrote, "You thought I would only be gone for a short time, didn't you?" I don't remember knowing he was going to be gone. If there were any goodbyes, I don't know them. If there were any tears, I didn't see any. He was just gone. He must have slipped out when I was sleeping.

He survived the war, but not his marriage or his fatherhood with me.

Which brings me to a question:

If the civilians on the home front could watch their brothers, husbands, and sons go off to a foreign land not knowing if they would ever see them again, if they were willing to offer their pots and pans as metal for the war effort, if they could have necessary items, like shoes and foodstuffs rationed, and purchase war bonds to help fund the war effort and still maintain HOPE for a liberated future, we can do it.  

 

Those folks back home believed that goodness would prevail and that evil would be vanquished.

Do we believe that now?

Without hope, if we feel that the future will not be better than the present and might even be worse, we will die spiritually.

We have it backward. The opposite of happiness is not sadness. It's hopelessness.

Hopelessness is the root of anxiety, mental illness, and depression. So, why not shoot up a school, sleep with your boss's wife, take illicit drugs, or load up on pharmaceuticals by the bucketfuls?

 

 ----My strips of paper blowing in the wind will contain plain talk about magical things. I am gathering them into a book with the working title of YOUR STORY MATTERS, Living Your Life in the Most Awesome Way Possible.

 I metaphysically use the word magic. I know physics is at work. I also understand that something divine is swirling around that we find impossible to explain. 

 "I may not get there with you," said Martin Luther King Jr., "but I have been to the mountain. Mine eyes have seen the glory…I know that we will get to the promised land." 

He gave that speech on April 3, 1968. On April 4, 1968, he was shot and killed.

There was a man with a vision, a man who believed in non-violent resistance, and a man who had hope. He made a difference.

I know we are made of strong stuff. We must find our courage, integrity, and ingenuity and gather harmoniously. Remember, we are the ones to make a brighter day.

 Once, I watched a T.V. show where the presenter traveled the world looking for the happiest people. He found that the Taiwanese were among the happiest. The reason? 

They believed in hope.

 

 I was poking around in an old website that sat unpublished since 2015.

 

It was my old Blog, Where Tiger’s Belch and Monkey’s Howl.

Now when reading it it seemed happy.

 

Why did I let it go? When I read the  post,“What Makes You Happy?” and came across “Puppy Love,” I was hooked. It has a link to a Budweiser Clydesdale commercial that made me cry/laugh/smile. 

 

I am reopening the Where Tiger’s Belch Blog. I trust that the Universe is guiding me in the right direction.

 

When I read, “Have you noticed that it takes more effort these days to hold up your face?” I had to laugh.

 

Maybe you are much younger than me and haven’t discovered the face issue yet. Perhaps it’s just me. I look at myself in the mirror and don’t look too bad, but when I see a photo of myself, I wonder what happened.

 

Well, I discovered the truth. In the mirror, I inadvertently held up my face, and a photograph caught me slack jawed. 

 

One writer asked, “How does your writing look at its relaxed state? Do you let it drop like our face?”

 

See, someone else knew of this phenomenon. Oh, the pressure to hold up your face and your writing.

 

From Norm Papernick on Tigers:

 

 “Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.”

 

I was more light-hearted then—I’m returning to that blog.

 

Please give Where Tigers Belch a look- see. I would appreciate your thoughts on it. I will clean up some posts, delete some, and check my grammar and spelling. It could be like a high school play that is not perfect; it is not slick or professional, but it has the heart that professional Hollywood plays do not have.

 

It is fresh.

 

Here it is at https://wheretigersbelchandmonkeyshowl.blogspot.com

 

Soon, it will be www.wheretigersbelchandmonkeyshowl.com. I wanted simply wheretigersbelch.com, but alas, someone else got it. It’s “coming soon.” Please don’t confuse it with mine.

 

 

 

This is What I Have to Say Today, When I Didn’t Have Anything to Say Yesterday

 

 

How do we wake up spiritually, and what does that mean anyway? As writers or bloggers, what can we say that hasn't been said?

 

There is a lot to say, for we live on the leading edge, but there is a drop-off in front of us, and we don't know how to handle it. 

 

Is there an invisible stone bridge across the abyss that blends into the surroundings that we can’t see? Remember Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? (Perhaps that is my favorite of the Jones series—or a close tie with the first. Who can forget the snakes or that incredible ride on the black horse where Indiana forces a rock into the enemy tank's exhaust?)

 

In times of trouble, we can rely on the arts to give us a moment of reprieve or a thought that no amount of preaching or expose' can do. It's the stories we love. We usually want the good guy to win, and happy endings work better than sad ones.

 

See, we are really dreamers and romantics at heart.

 

That is something we have forgotten.

 

Tomorrow is Ground Hog's Day. I will always remember the date, which is also my grandson's birthday. It's time to watch that movie again. Bill Murray, who begins as a pompous jerk, must relive the same day over and over until he is transformed into a nice guy and wins his lady love.

 

Is that what we do with our lives? Must we keep living it until we get it?

 

It tickled me when I read that author Mark Manson said he would like to be a barista at Starbucks and write a note on everyone's cup. It was dismal stuff about the meaninglessness of life, but then how can we send them off with "Have a nice day" when so much depression abounds?

 

"Depression," Manson says, "is a crisis of Hope."

 

"Hope is what we believe to be greater than ourselves. Without it we believe we are nothing."—Mark Manson. 

 

I mentioned Thailand in an earlier blog after watching a documentary on Happiness. The Thai people were listed as among the happiest because they believed in HOPE.

 

"Getting it" is different for everybody. However, I think a few characteristics could apply—take care of yourself, the people, and the earth, be kind, and don't hurt things-living or otherwise. Have a spiritual understanding without beating other people over the head with it. Continue to grow. Believe in hope.

 

We are only here briefly, so we should make it count for something. 

 

 

P.S. I was depressed until I wrote something. That’s a lesson on putting the pen to page and begin.

Believe in Miracles

In searching for quotes for my notebooks/journals, I found this one—one of my favorites, although I did not include it in any of the books:

 

"Changing the toilet paper spindle does not cause brain damage."

 

I told my husband this morning that I didn't have a blog this week. I had nothing to say. He said, “Well, I guess that's it."

 

I said, "That's not an excuse—you begin and see what happens." 

 

That's the writer in me, and that's what I tell creatives. Just do your work, and see what happens. Sometimes we hit, sometimes we miss. Sometimes the wastepaper basket gets all the info, but we keep on keeping on.

 

So here I am…beginning.

 

Perhaps I've gotten caught up in the at-homeness, the covid19-ness, the debate, the confusion. I want to say something positive yet feel helpless to do that.

 

I hear that people are suffering. One couple said that locked up at home, they yell at each other all the time, and that's not good for the kids. Another friend said that this Covid19 has sucked all the joy out of her life. Now she doesn't want to host any gatherings at her house while she used to have many during a year.

 

What should we do with this information?

 

It appears that the power structure is trying—they have come up with a vaccine and now are encouraging, virtually forcing people to take it. Some believe it's a savior; others think it's the devil incarnate.

 

It could be that sinister forces are at work, for when profit is forthcoming, people become suspicious. We encourage profit. We admire people who get rich—but not too rich. Without profit, companies would not exist, but outrageously high profit really is greed.

 

It could be that the power structure—let's start with the doctors, they were at a loss on how to treat this disease. Some wanted to try methods outside the Hospital’s protocol and were stymied.

 

The medicine (I-word) has been shown to heal Covid19 better than any other treatments, yet it wasn’t allowed to be administered in hospitals, even at doctor’s orders. If it is mentioned on YouTube that channel soon goes Bye bye.  The I-word has also been shown to be a preventative, is cheap to produce, and has been FDA approved for 40 years

 

 Research scientists are scrambling to find answers. Politicians were trying, some with an agenda, some with an honest desire to help. The populace was depending on those in the know to have answers. 

 

This scenario was like Hawaii trying to solve their rat problem. Scientists brought in mongoose to eradicate the rats. The problem was, the rats were nocturnal. The mongoose is diurnal, so one sleeps during the day, the other at night, and they both exist happily together.

 

We have science to help us, but mother nature is complex, and we are babies in our efforts. 

 

In 1859 Thomas Austin, a wealthy settler who lived in Victoria, Australia, had 13 European wild rabbits sent to him from across the world (So he could hunt them, wow.) He let the bunnies roam free on his estate. 

 

From this one backyard sanctuary, it took only around 50 years for these imported rabbits to spread across the entire continent.

Australia was fertile ground for bunnies; literally, its ground is excellent for burrowing. The climate is warm, grasses were available for food, and rabbits had no natural predators. If times get tough food-wise, rabbits will eat about anything—and everything. Soon they invaded crops and land, leading to soil erosion and the loss of native plants and animals. Farmers were leaving their decimated land.

 

Fencing, killing, poisoning. gassing their warrens (where a group of rabbits live, and raise their young.) didn't do the job. Birth control would only affect one rabbit at a time. Once, the government offered 3 million dollars to someone who could come up with an effective bio-control. None worked efficiently enough. Rabbits soon developed immunity. 

Scientists created a rabbit-specific virus, and that works somewhat.

However, in January 2020, it was estimated that approximately 200 million feral rabbits inhabit Australia.

 

This is what we are dealing with now with the virus. Evolutionists Heather and Brett Weinstein have a podcast where they have been talking about Covid19. (Yes, Evolutionists, that dreaded word that simply means biologists who study how organisms change) offered a description of how variants appear. 

 Let's say, Heather said, that we want to kill jaguars. We create a device that finds spots. Soon, we have detected and killed all the spotted jaguars. However, a few have non-issued spots, and they slipped past the detection device. With the regularly spotted jaguars gone, what is left is the irregularly spotted jaguars, and they take over.

 

Mother Nature knows how to balance, but we, the people, do not want to be casualties, so we try to intervene.

 

So where does that leave us? 

I want to add something positive, so here are some ideas:

 

• That we weigh consequences. That we do not rush to a conclusion without trying in every way we can conjure to consider the consequences. Scientists aren't gods, and sometime they hit, sometimes they they miss. (Ever see a rocket go up in flames?)  In our desperation to have answers, we should not give companies Carte Blanche with no consequences.

•  When we stopped driving so much during the lock down, we found the air got better. A few of us wondered if our past two glorious springs was nature having a breather. What if we did that regularly without being forced?

•  We found that pure water was precious, and we ought to make sure it stays that way. 

•  We found that if we up our immune system with supplements and healthy food and take care during flu season—like washing our hands, not touching our faces when we are out, and avoiding crowds, we have fewer colds. 

• We found that we don't need to consume as much, for it wasn't fun to shop during the pandemic. We discovered that we can get by with less. 

•  As we are getting fatter while perceiving that we are eating about the same, we wonder if something besides calories is at work, perhaps interfering with our chemistry.

 

We know stress interferes with biochemistry. We know that chemicals in our houses ought to be replaced with natural substances. We figure that genetically altered foods is suspect. What about the excessive use of plastic?

 

Grandma's food tasted great, and nothing was genetically modified. The organic farmers have a point. They can produce beautiful, healthy fruits and vegetables without chemicals. (The marijuana growers have perfected this craft.)

 

What about chemicals to make the cows produce more milk? Come on, stop it with the cows. Stop throwing chemicals on the ground and into animals. Now people injured with the herbicide, Round-up-- that has been used extensively in Oregon, are getting compensation. What does that say about its use? 

 

• We want a cell phone that works great, but we don't need a new one every year because it's a fun toy.

•  We found that working 9 to 5 in  crowded buildings isn't the most efficient way to accomplish business. 

•  We found that we value our friends and miss them when it becomes impossible to see them.

•  We found that being outside is not only healthy but healing and safer as far as contracting diseases.

 

Nature takes her time. We don't have the time. I guess that's the battle.

 

We love our Momma (earth). So, let's not make it hard for her.

 

Here I am talking about world conditions, while on the other had I’m walking in the forest and talking about creating our own reality. Perhaps they will mesh eventually.

 

 

"Why should we use our creative power…? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold, and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting, and the accumulation of objects and money."

--Brenda Ueland 

(This did make its way into "Breathe.")

 

And I thought I didn't have anything to say.

A virtual hug,

Jo

P.S. the I-word is I-ver-mect-in.

My notebooks, or journals, by jewell d are for your exquisite thoughts, or stuff you can't remember but need to. They have lined pages, and quotes scattered throughout for fun and inspiration.

Chirp is live, Believe is alive, Breathe is in review.

On the back cover of Believe:

"I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles. " --Audrey Hepburn