A Drop in the Bucket

 

Holy moly, I just looked at how many blog accounts there are, and the number 426 million came up.
 
Talk about being a drop in the bucket, no I mean ocean.
 
I began blogging before blogging was popular. Motivated by a friend who wrote a newsletter, I decided to write one as well, a journal of sorts, and I called it The Frog’s Song.
 
I sent out a printed version to friends, and it lasted for a few years. And when this mysterious, weird thing called blogging came available on the Internet,  I moved to that.
 
Even after all those years, I am not a big fancy blogger with a million followers or readers.
 
I’m a simple little blogger, who writes for the fun of it, of things I’m interested in, and if I can tweak a thought, or add something of value, so much the better.
 
My readers are people of excellent taste. They either like me, and therefore graciously read my words, or find something here that suits their fancy—Oh gosh, I just saw that someone channeling Archangels is getting a million views.
 
Well, what can I say? I’m not a channeler. And I suppose she is saying/channeling excellent content. 
 
Neither have I paid for advertising. So,  I suppose many people do not know I exist.
 
 Yesterday I watched #Marie Forleo interview #Seth Godin, the el-primo blogger who blogs every day. Imagine.
 
He says everyone should blog every day.
 
I have been afraid people would get bored with me if I blab too much, and blogging every day is over the top for me, but he has a point. If you know you have to say something the next day, you will pay attention.
 
On top of that,  you would leave a trail of where you’ve been what you’ve thought.
 
A lot of people’s thoughts could go in their journal and kept to themselves, but I suppose blogging would keep them on their toes a bit more.
 
Four hundred and twenty-six million bloggers and counting! That blows my mind,  426,000,000,  did I get the zero’s correct? I just wanted to get the magnitude of it.
 
I am happy you found me among the multitude.
 
Thank you for joining me today.
 
Some bloggers wonder if the only blogs read are the ones that tell people how to blog.

 
Okay. How to Blog:
 ·       Turn on Computer
          Put butt in chair.
·         Type.
Write as you talk, and USE CONTRACTIONS. It makes conversation sound like a conversation.

I have a gripe against The Royal Caribbean who chastises email writers if they are not formal. Do not use contractions, they say, do not call a person by their first name, and grammatical errors are subject to severe reprisals.

They must have had the same college English professor I had.

All the students at Oklahoma State University were addressed as Mr., Miss. or Mrs. I was a Mrs, and the professor found that intriguing. Perhaps he didn't know I was 23, while most of the other students were 18 or 19.

And I had an accent. I guess an Oregonian in Oklahoma would. 

·        Lastly—blog brilliant content. Ha ha ha, There’s the rub.
 
James Baldwin—remember him? He would have been 92 on the 2nd of August and was popular during the civil-rights movement. He wrote, Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, The Devil Finds Work,  and an unfinished manuscript, Remember This House, was expanded and adapted for cinema as the Academy Award-nominated documentary film I Am Not Your Negro.
 
From an interview published in The New York Times Baldwin said:

“You is speaking to an old rat. I find much of so‐called avant‐garde writing utterly trivial. If there is no moral question, there is no reason to write. I’m an old‐fashioned writer and, despite the odds, I want to change the world. What I hope to convey? Well, joy, love, the passion to feel how our choices affect the world . . . That’s all. (1979)

Here here, Baldwin.


P.S. Update on my book The Frog’s Song. 
(The frog calls the rain that settles the dust for our journey.) 

This book is a journal about our move to and from Hawaii, of living off the grid, and what strange forces we experienced there. The title is an homage to that old journal once named The Frog’s Song.  I went through about 50 possible titles before settling on The Frog’s Song. I believe it fits.

The Coqui’s, those sweet little frogs that sing their own name lulled me to sleep in Hawaii. When I first moved there, I thought they were birds, and they create a great jungle sound. 

The Frog’s Song is being typeset. Wow, I thought they would go digital. Yea! That seems carved in stone. (And with me and my many boo-boos, that’s scary--and exciting.)

Possibilities

Perhaps you have traveled to a foreign country where you soaked in the local color, the sights, and smells, and you loved it, yet all around you heard languages that sounded like clanking tin. Nothing made sense. Then by some quirk of fate, you run into an English speaking person. Wham-o, an instant friend. You jabbered away at something like back home and where you’re from and how it is traveling. 

They spoke your language.

That happens once in a while at social gatherings—we find an instant friend. 

Someone who speaks our language. 

We search the web and are usually attracted to something familiar.

Oprah speaks of “ah ha” moments, a moment when something clicks. It is a piece of a puzzle we have wondered about or it is a concept we hadn’t considered. Wow. Ah ha, I knew that, I just didn’t piece it together. Something familiar triggered it.

Aren’t we all looking for puzzle pieces that can make sense of our lives, or of the great mysteries of the universe, or how to handle difficult situations? 

I once heard a psychologist tell about being assigned as a therapist to boat people, refugees. She knew she wasn’t equipped to deal with the horrors many of them had endured, leaving their home, their people, their land ravished by war or some disaster.
However, when she spoke with them, they said such things as “I met this guy on the boat, do you think he likes me?’

See, people aren’t so different,  And affairs of the heart are high on the list of concerns.
There were Shamans of old, wise men who did know more than the rank and file, and then Fakers came in and made a muddle of it. 

Rather like today.

But maybe we can sort it out, what’s real, what’s not. 

What to choose?

The familiar, or the unfamiliar?

Long ago when I was into Egyptian lore, I read that when a stranger wandered into their village, the Egyptians would ask that person who their god was. 

They didn’t care. It was not a test. They just wanted to know. These inquiring people believed that God had so many aspects that all was possible.” 

Are we into survival or into a belief in possibilities?

I experienced a crack in conscious this past week when I watched a YouTube sent to me by a fabulous Wish on White Horses reader.  It was The Three Amigos, a question and answer session with Gregg Braden, Joe Dispenza, and Bruce Lipton.*
You know how we can have our set of beliefs, and we keep recycling them until they become cemented in place? 

A long time ago Dr. Ighaz Semmelweis (1865) declared that the reason woman got and often died of childbed fever, was because doctors didn’t wash their hands after autopsies, but went straight to examining a woman in labor. Germs had yet to be discovered, but he had a piece of the puzzle. He felt that the doctors had some cadaverous material on their hands. 

The doctors felt that because they, being illustrious gentlemen, couldn’t possibly have dirty hands. Semmelweis was ridiculed and ended up in an asylum. Now he is called “A savior of women.”

We need a crack in consciousness once in a while to let in a new thought.

Mine came when I heard Gregg Braden talk about  “The field.”

The field, says Braden, is where all experiences lie. I’m new to this and found it fascinating, but since I don’t know much about it, this is a teaser. If you have more to add, feel free.

Scientists now believe that space is not empty, but filled with “Dark matter.” Not dark meaning sinister, just not seen, therefore dark. And light cannot find it.
So how did they find it? 

Gravity, and other measurements to complex for me. Like how in the heck can they weigh the universe? 

Gregg says the field holds all our collective experiences and that we can access it. There are proteins on the skin that act like antennas that can reach into the field.
(Is this the Akashic Records?)

Braden calls this field, “The Divine Matrix,” a primal web of energy that connects our bodies to the world and to everything in the universe.

It opens the door to a powerful and mysterious possibility.


*https://youtu.be/P_FIYwg2oU4


P.S. I found the perfect watch for me.

August? What’a-’ya- Mean it’s August?

I’m anxious to see the cover art for my book The Frog’s Song. They say the proofs will be available for my review at the end of August—one good reason to say, “Hi August.”

And I’m excited for my publisher Regal Publishing (the house that Jaynie built).  Jaynie Royal is a force to be reckoned with. Regal has recently signed with IPG (Independent Publishing Group) a trade distributor for on-the-ground sales.

Imagine getting into Costco—don’t know if that will happen for me, but I can imagine it) plus, Regal has attracted the attention of Forward Reviews, a Purple Cow, Blue Ocean company.

If you saw a Purple cow standing in a field, wouldn’t you want to tell somebody?  (Purple Cow is the name of Seth Godin’s book.) And regarding a blue ocean, if your water is running blood-red with competition, wouldn’t you want to move to blue waters?

Long ago when I was into horse training I learned from #Pat Parelli, a horse gentler, that whatever everyone else is doing, do the opposite.  And I learned from my horse that she would go where I placed my focus, no reins required. 

Amazing.

I wonder how I can apply that to my business.

Focus—that’s good. Maybe I will go where I place my focus.

 I’m scared though.

Seth Godin wrote: "The growth of audiobooks is outpacing reading.”

We can still read though, he says, but pushing ourselves through a chapter is difficult.

And here I am writing words.

 

I like to read. I like to hold a book. I like to smell books. I like to feel their paper—and some of the covers these days feel like silk.

Don’t you sometimes wonder what happened to books, and when did bread disappear from our table?

I don’t know if thinking back is romancing the time or wanting to preserve it. Place it in a Mason jar and put it in the pantry I guess. It might be opened at a later date and found useful.     

Remember when you went to the library, and the librarian shushed you, but you cased the joint and found treasurers? Ray Bradbury educated himself by starting at one side of the library and reading around it.

Now the internet can serve that same purpose.

It’s not better or worse, just different.

Remember when you went to record stores, and comic book shops and inspiration was out in the world, rather than at your desk. It had to be sought out, in museums, in the forests, and in picking up shells from the beach.

Am I showing my age?

My hero.

 Ray Bradbury