And I though Last Week was Tough

When someone asked Isaac Asimov, "If you knew you would die tomorrow, what would you do?"   

He answered:  "I'd type faster.

I have adopted his answer.

Not that anyone told me I was going to die tomorrow, but when you go into the hospital, they always bring up the end-of-life directive. They want to know what to do with you if your heart stops beating.

I had a heart attack this past week and was in the hospital for two days.

But now I'm home and talking to you, and my little fingers (not little) are typing faster.

I had a super stressful event, and I thought my reaction was an adrenaline rush, except that after my daughter badgered me into having a blood test, it revealed that the enzyme that is released when the heart is damaged was in my blood.

See, your heart calls out for help when it needs it.

Take that advice to heart. If you need help or support, ask for it. Our mission is, or should be, to support each other.

And see how often we use the word 'heart'? "Bless your heart." "Heart-break," I love you with all my heart."

Your heart is sweet and lovable—love it back.

The afternoon after I came home from the hospital, I lay on the couch reading a novel. Sweetpea our little dog lay on the pillow beside my head. Zeke, our 3-legged German Shepherd lay on the couch at my feet warming them. And Laffe, the coon-hound lay on the floor beside me.

 This is heaven, I thought.

 

  

Since I believe in the Mind-Body-Spirit connection, that our physical issues are not separate from our minds, and that our minds are not separate from our Spiritual understandings, I'm here to say, I don't know what the f* I'm talking about.

But I do know about being grateful.

I love my life, and I love having one. I love having the opportunity to express myself on the page and having people read what I write. There are many reasons to be grateful.

And today I just had a conversation with my husband about LIFE.

As I have mentioned before, I signed up for a major in Biology after the college professor yelled out over a class of about 200, "This is the study of LIFE."

Biologists study living things—and dead ones. But they don't know about life.

Nobody does.

The subject moves into an esoteric, philosophical, theological, idealistic, and magical reality, and yes, a biological one, but that's the physical part.

We are more than our bodies.

Think about it, we have always been alive—except for First Cause, and I don't know about that. We came from our parents, who came from their parents, back and way back some 300,000 years to the Mitochondrial Eve, the first woman. How did she come into being?

Here we are, a result of that magical progression, and look what we are doing. Instead of saying, "Wow, look at us. Aren't we lucky!" We gripe and complain, and treat each other, as well as the animals and the earth, poorly.  I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the collective humanity. Which, it seems to me, is having an identity crisis right now.

Collective humanity doesn't know who they are or what to think. Or they believe so strongly that they will beat their fellows over the head with a belief system, or shoot them.

Yet, they have the spark of life in them.

Where did that come from?

You might say, "From God," but that is magic. What is Life?

Those ova and sperm were alive before they got together and fired off an entirely new set of instructions.

 

It's time for me to reconnect with some of my long-held inspirations and motivations.

Are you with me?

Here is my oracle for the day from Thomas and Penelope Pauley:

"The sooner you define your life, the easier it is for the Universe to create it for you."

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Week Has Been Tough

My grandson got caught up in the Gaza War. He found a Palestinian man asking for money, and that man showed my grandson his dead little boy, and says he needs money for his little girl—who is darling—looks healthy, plump, and bright-eyed. He says she is sick, on the verge of malnutrition, and needs medicine.

And my young man (grandson) feels responsible. He was in tears, wanting to help, afraid that man would will lose his little girl, and thinking that if he doesn't do something that family will die. He posted something on line and got about 100 hits.

The far reaches of war.

Is that man real, or a hoax?

 Is he bleeding the hearts of people whose hearts go out to people who are suffering?

Well, it worked.

That man has raised $40,000 so far, more than many US citizens make in a year.

And my child is traumatized!

And I can't get people to buy a 99-cent book.

And I stupidly want to be a writer.

 

And words heal so they say. Right, and a sad story sells.

My father went to war, and I thought wars were the worst thing that could happen.

And lo, these many years later, they are still warring!

I feel too terrible to write more…

 

But wait... my husband comes into my office to tell me he's been reading about how scientists are unraveling catastrophic events that have occurred on the Earth in times past.

Catastrophic events! Augggh!

And I believe as Kermit the Frog sang, "Sing of good things not bad, sing of happy not sad." (Written by Joe Raposo for the TV show Sesame Street.)

Watch this video, and you will feel better: It's The Carpenters singing "Sing, sing a song.)

Sing

 

And then there is Gary V “Fight for enjoyment.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/DN5icBLDh28/

 

Mice, Ash, India?

I awakened this morning with my mind awash in memories.

I was running events through my head to find the one memory that would volunteer to open my memoir. You don't have to begin a memoir with "I was born in …" It can start anyplace. Playing in my mind, what fun! Often, when I come to my office, I get distracted, but in bed, memories flow.

Ideas, so said one writer, are like shooting ducks (Don't do it!), but the idea is the same: shoot quickly for they will be gone in an instant.

I hit a memory of my daughter who found a nest of baby mice in an old chest of drawers she wasn't using. She and her son thought those babies were so cute—they had fur, but their eyes weren't open. And since my daughter and son feared that the mother wasn’t coming back, they began feeding the babies with a teeny bottle.

My daughter had planned a birthday celebration for herself, which included a two-night stay in a hotel with a room that featured a jacuzzi tub. She didn't trust her son to take sufficient care of the baby mice or me either, or didn't want to bother me, so she took her little stash of mice on a trip, smuggled them into an upscale hotel, fed them, had her stay, and smuggled them out.

The mice thrived, and when they were old enough — with eyes open and eating regular food — she and her son took them to a field near a pond and ceremoniously released the city mice to take their chances as country mice.

I have heard some people say that the best thing you can spend your money on is something to make memories.

Last night I completed a novel where the author said, "It takes a lot of funds to be a Vagabond."  She wished she could travel the world. A present, she was being a paid companion for a disabled girl. They were following a trail from the girl's mother that led to India. What a description of India: "The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendour and rags, of palaces and hovels…the land of a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions…" --Mark Twain.

India: After a 14-hour flight six of us from San Diego landed in New Delhi, India.

Three were seminar leaders quite devoted to the “Holy” man we were going to see. We three women were not Devotees, but considered ourselves open-minded. One woman left early, so that left Florencia and I as traveling companions.  (I loved her, one couldn't ask for a better traveling companion). We opted for the chance to visit a guru, who, so it showed us via a movie, could produce vibhuti (holy ash) from his hand, and kept a giant jug flowing with vibhuti as long as his hand kept stirring it. (Don’t get me, I’ve seen better magic acts.)

So, we visited an ashram and slept in a cement room, ate cayenne pepper coated cashew nuts and drank lime soda, for we were afraid to eat the food. (We did eat in their cafeteria once, a rice dish all participants ate with their fingers.) Following that, we traveled by train across the countryside to visit the Taj Mahal. On the way home we made a few airline stops. Yet when we landed in New Delhi, the windows of the airport looked like my car window after the dog's nose had circled it a dozen times, and walking outside, the scent of baby poop hit me. It seemed to permeate the air, and if you remember, baby poop has a basic sweetness layered with others.

I understood why the Indian people are strong on incense.

These descriptions are cryptic; I’m saving the full ones for the memoir, which, instead of calling it a memoir, I prefer to call it "A journey."

A memoir sounds so staid. A journey is fun, an adventure, and isn’t that what life is? There was a time when being a Vagabond sounded appealing, but for now, I'm letting my fingers do the walking, aka typing. My memories are like a river flowing through my mind, and I never know where it will splash next.

  

 P.S. This past week I ordered the teeny paper book Where the Frogs Sing Café’ I have been talking about. It came in two days. Whoa, and that was with on-demand printing. 

It cost me $4.60, so see I am starting out in the hole.

An now I found that the price went up to $5.20 after I joined UK.

It is presently being offered for FREE on Kindle Unlimited, and to purchase the Kindle version is 99 cents. Remember, I am keeping my WHERE series under 10,000 words, so as I said, the book is small.

Since not everyone has a Kindle, I am offering a FREE transcript on a private site that I will link to you via your email address. 

Click here: Yes, Please 

 

 Yep, there is a physical copy in on my desk.