As I watched Opi, sweet Obi, our cat, old and frail and growing thinner by the day, lick the light stream of water from the kitchen faucet—he likes his water fresh and flowing—I knew he would soon leave us and join Zoom Zoom, the cat who traveled to and from Hawaii with us. Zoom Zoom spent the better part of a year on my desk, getting off only to use the litter box—thank heavens for that. He even ate on the desk. (I had a long, wrap-around-the-corner one.) Those wild pigs that marauded in the night were more than he could handle. A mouse that big? No way.
In Eugene, Oregon, a group of five women, a
like-minded group, who had similar spiritual understandings, studied ancient
mysteries, went to lunch together, celebrated birthdays, and parties where we
dressed up. Someone sang or recited a poem they had written.
Now there is only one—me.
Those women walked the earth; they lived their
lives—some lost spouses, some divorced, one remarried—they raised their kids,
and developed their place on the Spiritual platform of life. One taught us how
to die; she knew it was time, she stopped eating and died.
Joy dropped from them like diamonds.
I will be forever grateful to have known them.
You’ve heard of the butterfly effect. Ray
Bradbury wrote of it in a short story. Arrogant time travelers went back to the
dawn of life on this planet to see dinosaurs. One person slipped from the
wooden pathway that kept curious onlookers from disturbing the ecological
system and accidentally crushed a butterfly. That small step altered history
forever.
We don’t know how we affect the people around us—the
air, the water, the plants, the animals, the planet.
What did John F Kennedy say?
"Our problems are man-made;
therefore, they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No
problem of human destiny is beyond human beings."
See why there was such hope then? See why the young
people rushed from their college studies to join the Peace Corps? See why we
believed we could send a man to the moon?
We had excitement. We had hope.
Well, it’s been a wet week in Junction City. And I had
been putting off painting the Tiny House because it was too hot to paint
outside. You could call it Resistance, procrastination, or "I don’t want
to do that," but I committed to doing it. We debated about the
color. I couldn’t find one I liked. Okay, we agreed on a color. I bought
the paint, brushes, roller, long handle, and the following day it rained. For
three days it rained.
I negotiated with someone to paint it for me, for it
has a high peak, and I’m not so steady on a ladder anymore. I’m not ready to
join my friends on the other side.
It isn’t painted yet.
And then yesterday, old friends came in the form of
BOOKS. Daughter Dear came into my office carrying a box, and asked, “Do you
want a box of your old books?
“Sure,” I said, not knowing that they had been buried
with my husband’s old research materials and shop supplies.
Wow! What a find! There's that Orchid lei book
my son-in-law gave me for Christmas in Hawaii. I had looked all over for that
book, but not in the right place, obviously. There was the Kumulipo, A
Hawaiian Creation Chant, translated and edited with commentary by Martha Warren
Beckwith. I excitedly found that book in a bookshop in Hawaii years
before we moved there. I knew it existed and never thought I would have one. Wild
Mind by Natalie Goldberg, one of the all-time great writers on writing,
and Seabisquit by Laura Hittenbrand. What a writer! The first paragraph in
the Preface of Seabisquit has my vote for being the best written:
“In 1938. Near the end of a decade of
monumental turmoil, the year’s number-one newsmaker was not Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, Hitler, or Mussolini. It wasn’t the Pope Pius XI, nor was it Lou
Gehrig, Howard Hughes, or Clark Gable. The subject of the most newspaper column
inches in 1938 wasn’t even a person. It was an undersized, crooked-legged
racehorse named Seabiscuit.”
“In the latter half of the Depression,
Seabiscuit was nothing short of a cultural icon in America, enjoying adulation
so intense and broad-based that it transcended sport. When he raced, his fans
choked local roads, poured out of special cross-country “Seabiscuit Limited”
trains, packed hotels, and cleaned out restaurants.”—Laura Hiittenbrand.
And you know I love horses.
Diamonds appear all around us while we feel hamstrung
by a man who wants to rename New Mexico for heaven’s sake. He’s like a bird who
steals other birds’ eggs or an old dog who pees on everything and says, “Mine,
mine, mine.”
"Our problems are man-made;
therefore, they may be solved by man.”
We need a champion like Seabiscuit, who helped
people out of the depression.
Any volunteers?
I love you guys. 💗Thank you for the honor of your
attention.
P.S. Why are the cats champions? Because they brought
us joy.