Your Story Matters

 

"The first draft stinks," so say the writing gurus. They also say that when you finish a book, go back and rewrite it, for you will be a better writer. 

 

Yeah, but how often can I do that without my head exploding?

 

Most excerpts offer the beginning of their book as an introduction to the work. I'm offering the end. 

 

This comes after my race with the Pink Dogwood Tree's blossoms, where I tried to write 50,000 words before the flowers fell off the tree. 

 

The tree won.

 

However, Mom's Pink Dogwood tree in the front yard came to the rescue. She held her blossoms until June 4.

 

 

 

Chapter 66

 

May 31,2023—50,000 Words

 

Last night, we watched Hetty Lawlor, a 17-year-old fiery red-haired portrait artist, one of the three finalists on the TV show "Portrait Artist of the Year" (2018). She had beat out tried and true professional portrait painters and was my favorite. Her colored pencil portraits were exquisite, the likeness of her subjects uncanny. I loved her. 

 

And then a strange thing happened. As the final selection to win "Portrait Artist of the Year," where they would receive a commission of 10,000 £ and have their painting hung in a museum in Britain, I was suddenly torn. I had a twinge of desire for Samira Addo, another artist. It was a neck-to-neck race. I held my breath.

 

Samira Addo won.

 

Addo came through like a student who aced the final exam and got an A.

 

Lawlor's likenesses were second to none. And yet, and yet I saw the artist in 

Addo.

 

I tend to like realism and exquisite rendering of features, but suddenly, I was thrown into an abstract world. How did Addo do it? How did she capture the essence of a person with so few brush strokes? Faces were not flesh-colored, gray even. Yet there was an artist.

 

I have been rendering my life in Word pictures. I am a painter with a pen and have endeavored to fill in my pen and ink drawings with watercolors. But as I close this page, I am throwing aside the pen and the ink, and instead, I pick up the brush only. I dip it in water, and then the paints. I begin a smear across the canvas—aquamarine, aqua, seafoam green, blues, and green—the seafoam green of the sea, aqua of the reefs, green of an Oregon forest. A girl runs barefooted through the surf. Her filmy dress is white, wet, and plastered against her body. Water flies up from her footfalls and lands on the page in starbursts of white, pink, violet, and orange—sunset colors. 

 

The running girl's hair is entangled with the air-driven water, and with the splatters and sparkles, golden strands among the green and blue.

 

You can't recognize the girl specifically, but you see a resemblance. My hair isn't long, and my face isn't blue, but it's there among the peacock colors.

 

 

 

PS. What would I like for you to carry away from this reading? 

 

Oh gee, I really want to instill in as many people as possible, me included, the wonder in which we live. We're here. We have life, medical care, the freedom to roam and travel, milk and eggs, fingers, and opposable thumbs. We have built monuments, homes, cathedrals, airplanes, books, computers, clothes, a way to go to the moon, and a way to get back home. We can fly in a plane through the sky and SCUBA under the sea. We have eyes to see, ears to hear, and an imagination that goes to the stars and back. 

 

Bless all you have: a roof over your head, plumbing, appliances, a computer, clothing, your ability to see, feel, and taste, friends, money, and the ability to walk, talk, and imagine.

 

I applauded when I read Jen Sincero's (You are a Bada**) comment on the Universe. "What more do I have to do to wake these bitches up?" she wrote, "Make water, their most precious resource, rain down from the sky?"

 

 

 

Blog, Where Tigers Belch and Monkeys Howl is back

https:///wheretigersbelchandmonkeyshowl.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

 

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.