What Shall We Talk About?

Talk about #Out of Africa, this picture is too good to pass up

What shall we talk about?

The state of the world?

Nope.

As it relates to politics…that is verboten here.

As it relates to the world in other ways…okay.

I have been tied to the keyboard of late, and not in a good way. In previous months, I was having fun working on my manuscript. Over the past few days I have been as frustrated as a cat with four mice.  

I've been trying to fix  my computer. Not only that but I have killed more websites than shooting ducks at a gallery. My many words have crashed them.

As a result I have not been taking in as much of the grandeur that is outside. the flowers, leaves, grass, green, green everywhere. 

Driving up the Columbia River Gorge a week ago I saw green dripping from sheer cliffs.  There is a tree in our neighborhood that has little sprouts coming from its trunk and they, too, are in blossom—little puffs of pink stair-stepping up the trunk. It just couldn’t help itself.

 Now, if people would do that—that is, bloom in every area they could, wouldn’t the world be transformed into beautiful people?

All photos are from our property--look at all the flowers the wonderful previous owners planted for us.

I wonder sometimes why people don’t get it that we are all in this together. We are all floating around on a big blue planet in an immense universe. We ought to get along, however, many people hardly acknowledge that their fellow travelers exist. But when you meet that friendly live-wire doesn’t it just warm your cockles?

My reason for being tied to the keyboard is that my computer has been having fits. I restored it back to a couple of weeks ago, and all hell broke loose.

For one, I lost my PDF files from Pictures where they had been stored for years. I finally found them but couldn’t attach a file, until many hours and swearing later I found an answer—it had been Rube-Goldberged.

And with my technology challenges, before driving to Portland last week, I wanted to photograph a little house and send the pictures to my daughter. What? A red dot? I can’t take a picture?

The sun was slowly setting, time was of the essence. This was my new phone, and I didn’t know it would set itself. Found the solution, simple if you know how to do it. It was on timed photos. Okay that done.

As husband dear drove up I-5, I texted, except my new phone likes my fingers better than the stylus, as my other phone did, and my fingers lap over onto the next key. 

I got that done in time to set the GPS to find our hotel. Well, we were there by the time I got that set.

And then falling into a bed the size of an acre, (We have a King sized bed at home that isn’t that large) I had a postage-stamp sized area. My husband said, “I’ll move over.”

 “No," I said. "This is funnier.”

My complaints are only the minutia of traveling through life. And that’s how I see us, as Fellow Travelers. Thus, that was my intention in starting the blog www.traveling-thru-life.com, although we are doing fine here on www.wishonwhitehorses.com.  

My perspective is that we are all traveling through life, and I believe the one thing people want most is to master life. They want to know how to manage their emotional states, how to get along with their fellows, how to have a loving relationship, how to have a spiritual connection that is meaningful to them, and fits in with their belief systems.

That is what I wanted to address, and I hoped that readers would chime in.

A fascinating aside is that #Mauro Biglinos, who was a Hebrew translator for the Vatican before they fired him, said that the Old Testament of the Bible was never meant to be a spiritual guide. It was the story of one family, the Israelites. There was no mention of God. It was The Elohim, Yahweh, Jehovah, not God. There was no word for God. This was not what the Vatican wanted to hear.

You see, as we are traveling through life, all sorts of tidbits come up.

And now for the Whoopee! 

Just this day I got my manuscript Song of Africa onto a website. With enough tries even a technologically inept person can do it. For the ones who asked, and those interested I am offering Song of Africa Free to my blog readers only. (Forty years in the making, cast of, well a dozen or so.)

You guys have stood by me through good times and bad. I thank you.

To read please go to song-of-africa-complete.blogspot.com

Oh my goodness, I just found it goes to the place left it..
I wonder if that work for you.

If you have problems, please let me know.

I don't know how long I will leave this site live, so if you want to read it at your leisure, please grab it. If you prefer a PDF file email me.


P.S. Peaches checked in on www.dogblogbypeaches.blogspot.com

Ramifications

This morning I  sat in my pick-up truck with my little Sweetpea dog beside me.

Those who read of my Hawaiian experience know that my truck is my second office.

So, here in Oregon, on some days when my daughter is home with her son, and I am free, I take the truck, order coffee, and read, write, or go somewhere.

This morning I sat and read the manuscript of my novel Song of Africa.

You may be tired of me talking about this book, but please bear with me. When you begin something 40 years earlier, it is telling to read what you wrote then, and what you think now.

Some 40 years ago when I began writing Song of Africa my protagonist Miss Sara Rose, asks some of the questions I asked myself then. "Is there a God?" "Why do people say that God harmed people so He would be glorified?”

Those questions bothered me then, but no more.

I have come to an understanding.

And so does Miss Sara Rose my protagonist.

Forty years ago I didn't know how it felt to be a 65-year-old woman. I made it up.

Now I understand more.

Have a dream and go for it.

For Sara Rose, it was to ride a river in Africa.

She set out, and as told by her Goddaughter, "Once we begin weaving the gods will provide the skein," Sara finds a new life, new love, and an event that leads to the next generation.

We never know the ramifications of our lives, do we?

The first chapter of Song of Africa is boldly displayed on

www.song-of-africa.blogspot.com

Tame the Brain

Listen to the marketers and they tell is things are not so good, and they are going to get worse.

#Seth Godin (blogger) wrote: “Turn back the clock just 60 years. If you lived in 1957, how would your life compare to the one you live right now? Well, you have access to lifesaving medicines, often in pill form. You can choose from an infinite amount of entertainment, you can connect with humans all over the Earth, for free, at the click of a button. You have access to the sum total of human knowledge. You have control over your reproductive cycle. You can eat sushi (you've even heard of sushi). You can express yourself in a thousand ways that were forbidden then...

That's in one lifetime.

Strange isn’t it, with all the access to goodness we have now, we focus is on our belly buttons.

You know what I mean, worrying about the next stock crash, the next mortgage crash, worrying that we’re not happy, worrying that some crazy kid will shoot up a school.

If we think back 60 years the worse things did kids did in school was chew gum or smoke behind the bleachers. Well, pregnant senior girls attended my graduation—but they graduated.

As the daughter of a sixteen-year-old mother, I’m not condemning anyone, bless my mother’s heart, she had me.  The pill would have eliminated me. I‘m grateful to be born. Not only that but she was a good mother—got married, divorced, remarried, wanted babies, didn’t have them for 21 years.  See, I had to come into the world when she was sixteen.

If you’re frustrated with what you hear now, don’t listen.

I am a believer that what we focus on brings more of what we are focused on.

It’s a weird Quantum Physics thing.

You’ve noticed that on crappy days more crap comes your way?

On the flip side, you are bopping along, feeling good, and good appears to drop from the ethers.

Some say that positive thinking doesn’t work, but it feels a heck of a lot better than the alternative.

It’s not easy to “Accent the positive and ignore the negative, as we are evolutionarily programmed to look for danger.

Being on the alert worked in the past when stepping outside the cave was risky—risky in the cave too if we stumbled into the hovel of a bear.

Bears inside, Saber-toothed tigers outside, and animals that would carry off your toddler if it ventured out into the night.

No wonder we got hot-wired for worry.

Ever notice how if you are basking in the beauty of a peaceful hillside, the grasses are lush, little yellow flowers dot the hillside, and something moves…

Your eyes dart to the moving object. Maybe it’s as small as a mouse rustling the grasses.

But we see it.

Clearly, that is a protective mechanism.

Notice though, that we don’t live in a cave, and there are no Saber-toothed tigers.

We have other things to worry about, true, death, taxes, finances, our health, our education, a successful endeavor. I admit it’s not simple. But we can begin by deciding for ourselves and not let the fear proclaiming voices of the world decide for us.

They know that fear gets attention.

Tame the brain!

You own that beautiful object, your brain, it doesn’t own you.

I thank God I don’t have to peel potatoes three times a day.

And I can order out for Pizza.

Obi Likes It

A friend started a course for a job selling a Remedial Reading program. Well, she liked reading, and she wanted to help children read, so she signed up, only to find herself so bogged down with the training program that she told them to take their job and, well, she’s a nice person, so she probably said, “No, thank you.”

If they released my friend to her own devices, she probably would have sold reading courses, the company would have benefitted, she would have made extra money, and the children would be good readers.

Do I listen to a different drummer?

Once I volunteered at Terry Cole Whittaker's Church in San Diego California. I was on a hotline. They pointed me to the phone and said, “Go for it.” I didn’t’ know what I was doing, but took the calls, gave advice when I could, the callers and I had a great time. The staff told me I had done a good job, and that was it.

I felt I had to call upon my inner resources, and they answered my call.

Today I hear that old How-to books are dying on the vine. The reason is, they are still addressing the corporate rule on how to fit in. As did the Remedial Reading Company.

Are you living life on your own terms?

We hear a lot about that these days.

Thus is born the entrepreneurial spirit.

I do wonder about marketing and selling. And how we must to “talked into” things that aren’t fun, like Life Insurance that won’t keep us alive, and Health Insurance that won’t keep us healthy. Things we “need,” and are mandatory like car insurance. We hate to spend the money on things that don’t show and aren’t fun. And so enters the salesperson, talking us into buying from them instead of a competitor.

And since the company requires that they sell on commission they must hustle. That gives them a less than stellar reputation and us a bad taste in our mouth.

.  

I’m not a salesperson, but don’t tell that to a Publishing House. They would then drop me like the proverbial hot potato.

 I am, however, wondering what to do next with my book, Song of Africa.

 It should be good to make people want to read it.

People should know about it.

They must like reading.

They must like what I am offering.

They must find value, learn something, have fun, or be entertained.

Both cats love my manuscript. One day one cat is sleeping on my printed out version. The next day the other cat is.

See, it has good cat vibes.

Sigh

On Thursday night I turned off my cell phone in a movie theater and it took off for tall timber never to be been seen again.

Well, that sucks.

On top of that my website Wish on White Horses also sucks according to one analyzer—the readership is so low I don’t count.(My other site traveling-thru-life.com has been found by Smut people, so I'm taking the comments off although I got a couple of good compliments from "Mental Health.")

Sigh.

Of course, if I pay the analyzer, they will amp up Wish on White Horses for me.

Well, I don’t believe you would be reading a really sucky blog, so it can’t be too bad.

You make my day.

Rewind back to Thursday before I reached into my purse and found my phone missing. I came home from a movie that had so much violence and CGI, I felt slimed, and so wanting to relate to a film that had sweetness and light,  I asked my daughter if she knew the lyrics to the Muppet song,” The Rainbow Connection.”

A portion of that song had been cycling through my mind for the last couple of days—you know how that can be, a song goes round and round in an endless loop:  “Have you been half-asleep, have you heard voices, I heard them calling my name…

“It's something that I'm supposed to be
“Someday we'll find it
“The rainbow connection
“The lovers, the dreamers, and me.”

The following morning after asking my daughter about the lyrics, I found a note sitting atop my computer:

“Why are there so many songs about rainbows?

“That’s part of what rainbows do.

“Rainbows are memories, sweet dream reminders. What is it you’d like to do?”

That was the refrain from the Muppet Movie.

Jason Mraz wrote the song, not Jim Henson as I thought. Henson aka Kermit the Frog sang it.

Isn’t it odd how when we get into a state such as I was after watching that Thursday movie, that we allow ourselves to go into a slump, and enter into its state instead of maintaining our own?

You don’t?

Well, I did.

It happens.

And then to add a big exclamation point at the end of my mood, I lose my cell phone.  What was that telling me? (“To not to?”)

Okay, all’s well. I ordered a new phone from  #eBay, and bought an intermediate TRAC phone so my grandson and I wouldn’t be without communication as well as no vehicle for a week.

I guess after insulting my phone by calling it a smart alec phone instead of a smartphone (it had stuttered and disconnected in the middle of a conversation), it decided to take off and leave me standing in the dust.

Back to the Muppets: Do you remember the old Jimmy Dean Television Show? Or was that before your time? You know of him, for you can still buy Jimmy Dean Sausages in the grocery store. Jimmy Dean first introduced Rowlf,  “I’m Rowlf, Rowlf the dog.” Rowlf was a wise-cracking big brown hairy dog who sat on a piano stool tickling the piano keys. 

Jim Henson created Rowlf, and he and Frank Oz, performed the puppet on The Jimmy Dean Show. (The picture above is of Rowlf.)

Henson was so grateful for this break that he offered Dean a 40 percent interest in his production company, but Dean declined on the basis that he did nothing to truly earn it and Henson deserved all the rewards for his own work. For the rest of his life, Dean made it clear that he never regretted that decision of conscience^.”

Henson took his love for puppetry and created an empire. See, people do love love, humor, and sweetness.

Muppets:
All of us watching, and wishing we'd find it;
Fozzie:
I've noticed, you're watching too.

I've heard it too many times to ignore it
It's something that I'm supposed to be
Someday we'll find it
The rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers, and me

Love,

Joyce

I must have seen a really good movie the day I came out of the theater to see this. The rainbow is in the eastern sky. The western sunset behind me is reflecting on it. 

Jimmy Dean and Rowlf:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pbKHDpOmYU&list=RD-pbKHDpOmYU&index=1

Have We Lost Our Joy?

Did we ever have it?

This question came up for me when I saw the documentary #Kedi, about the cats of Istanbul.

For thousands of years, cats have roamed the streets of that ancient city. Cats sit on the sidewalks to be petted by pedestrians, some come and go into the home of their chosen person, some weave their way around the ankles of people sitting at outdoor cafes, some wander in and out of fish markets, or paw a restaurant window asking for food. One cat found a wallet for a man who lost his boat in a storm. “If you don’t believe this story,” he said, “you’re a heathen.”

A woman on the show commented that cats bring the joy people are dangerously in danger of losing.

The movie Kedi documents seven cats from the thousands that roam the streets of Istanbul. The people say they do not pen them up so they can pet them, but allow the cats to come and go. They feed them, care for them and tend their wounds. One man said, most of us have a running tab with the vet.

Where they had giant rats, the cats took care of them. A former psychotic man said the cats saved him. He could not laugh but now finds joy with the cats. He tends them and brings his bunch of cats about 20 pounds of chicken daily.

“It is said that cats are aware of God’s existence, while dogs think people are god.”

You guys have heard me go on and on about the #Tony Robbins Event I attended in November, and now I see that the Los Angeles 3-day event such as I attended in San Jose, is sold out, even the high-fa lutin' expensive tickets.

That tells me that people are attracted to joyful events. That tells me that people want to know themselves better.  It tells me that they are seeking something, whether it be motivation to go faster and farther in their businesses, or to go faster and farther in their life experience. 

Some go to the event to heal old psychological wounds. Some go because they are desperate, some are depressed, some are suicidal. (Of the more than 100 suicidal people Tony has counseled, he has not lost a single one.)

People are attracted to high energy people who want an exciting, meaningful life.

That is what I wanted on this site, and why I began  www.traveling-thru-life.com to connect with other seekers.

Remember what I said about out psychological holes not matching the other person holes? Because of that phenomena, we can help each other.

Yep, come on in, state your gripes, complaints, Kvetch a bit. We will slap you with a pillow and tell you to get over it.

I don’t mean to belittle your life issues, but to add a little lightness to them, and to state that maybe instead of problems, we could call them challenges. Challenges spur us forward; problems weight us down.

I have heard it said that “If we focus on crap, we will become a crap magnet."

Don’t have any problems? Great, share that too. I want to hang out with high-flying people. 

If you aren’t flying high now, you soon will be.

Have You Ever Wondered...

1.      Why women get excited about having a pot filling faucet over the stove when after their spaghetti or whatever is cooked, they must then carry that hot heavy pot to the sink.

2.    Why we have televisions in restaurants.

3.    Why the obsession with cell phones.

4.    That we find what’s wrong with others and indeed within ourselves instead of finding what’s right.

5.     That we live on a water planet and have a water shortage.

6.    That we fight.

7.     That we let the media decide for us, and we believe the pundits. (Pundits were originally wise respected people, now often they are hacks. They are a commentator, one person’s opinion.)

Here’s a thought from Shark Tank investor, and Real Estate mogul Barbara Cocoran:

“Last spring, I tweeted a thought, which brought on an avalanche of criticism. The backlash was intense, and I was accused of giving “retro” advice. But I haven’t backed down from what I said, nor will I, to this day.

Here’s my tweet (and brace yourself):

I find running a #business in a man’s world to be a huge advantage. I wear bright colors, yank up my skirt + get attention. #womeninbusiness.

Get a grip folks, doesn’t a man use every advantage he can think of.

I love it.

A Little Voice Spoke to Me This Morning

"Stop being such a smuck," the voice said. "Put Song of Africa, your novel's excerpt, out there and let the chips fall where they may." (Actually, the voice was nicer than that.)

No signing up. No exclusivity. 

Just click on song-of-africa.blogspot.com 

and Viola' you're in.

I want this to be as though you are in a bookstore: 

You are attracted to a book titled Song of Africa. (By me, Jewell D or Joyce Davis, of those, I haven't decided who I will be yet.)

 You pull Song of Africa from the shelf, 

go to the coffee counter, order a good strong brew, fix it to your liking, and sit down and read the first 37 pages. 

Oh, you say, "I forgot to drink my coffee. I was so engrossed in what happened to the two Saras, their lovers, to Patrice, and to that infamous painting,’ The Girl on The Pier,’ that I forgot to drink it.”

You gulp down the now cold coffee, go to the checkout, plunk down your credit card, and after purchasing Song of Africa, you tell the clerk:

"Order more of these. This book will sell like hotcakes."

You Know Better Than That

 “Books are old fashioned,” my eight-year-old grandson told me this morning.

That hurt my heart.

I think of #Ray Bradbury’s book #Fahrenheit 451 where books were burned and how the people each memorized one book to keep it alive.

This past Thursday National Achiever’s Congress, the presenter, Michael Burnett, told a similar story.

When Nelson Mandela was in prison, the prisoners had to do hard labor, and that was to break up sandstone rocks. Sunlight on sandstone creates quite a glare, and it is hard on the eyes. Mandela asked the guard if they could have sunglasses to shield their eyes.

You know the answer. “No.”

Later on, when they had nothing to do in their cell, Mandela asked the guard if they could have books to read.

“You aren’t here to have sunglasses and books,” he said. The answer was, “No.”

So the prisoners devised a plan. They would have a one on one, each sharing what they knew with the other, and thus when they were, at last, released from prison,  each was smarter than when they entered it.

We are all living books filled with experiences, insights, and garnered wisdom. If we shared it, just think where we would be.  I guess that’s what the internet is, but I still want books.

We have this extraordinary quality of desiring to create beauty,  love and learning around us, but with our two-million-year-old brains—evolutionarily speaking—we are, instead, on the watch for danger. There are fears all around us, internal and external. We hang back, afraid to go for our dreams, afraid to go into uncharted territory, afraid to speak up, and afraid of our own shadows. We often think, we aren’t good enough, loved enough, or smart enough.

You know better than that.

If you agree, laugh out loud.  If not, keep quiet.

High five,

Joyce

P.S. The Peacock is back:

There must be one feather that is in focus. I was in a hurry to catch him, I had to show you that my totem animal is real. After two months of a no show, he appeared yesterday. He drove Layfette (that’s one dog) crazy.