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.
