Is This Your Lucky Day?

This morning I reached into my sock drawer and pulled out two black socks from the pile of black stockings. And by some quirk of fate, I had a pair--they matched. Now, that is as rare as a mouse who while playing on the keyboard, managed to type out a complete sentence.

 

Does that mean this is a lucky day?

 

Do you believe in synchronicity? Or the Muse or that stories are circling in the either and are determined to find a teller? Steven Pressfield tells the story of Liz Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) meeting a fellow writer and found that the story she began years ago but dismissed was picked up by this new friend who lived miles away from her.

 

My daughter said we should complete a story we began some time ago before someone else picks it up. I’ve heard of this before. The Red Balloon was written by two people almost simultaneously but was printed by the author who ran to the publisher first.

 

Sometimes the world seems magical. Other times it appears determined to pelt us with monkey wrenches.

 

Do you have an answer for that?

 

I could say it’s our mindset or our attitude, but maybe there is something else playing with us. Perhaps the Muse is as fickle as we are. 

 

In Hawaii, there is an ongoing belief in Pele, the goddess of the volcano. They treat her as a living entity who can be appeased with gin. But, so the story goes, she has a fiery temper, and a benevolent side, such as helping drivers on the road. She burns down some people’s houses while stopping short of others, and has been known to make an abrupt turn thus saving a sacred site—of which there are many scattered around the Island. (You probably wouldn’t recognize them for often they are rocks stacked upon rocks.)

 

Oh, I have an explanation: There are magnetic lines in the earth called lei lines, and sacred sites are built at their junctures. Suppose--and this is a big suppose—that the lava followed those lines and turned when they turned. 

 

Prove me wrong.

 

Then, there is the story of Ruth, who, years ago, saved the town of Hilo on the Big Island. When molten flowing lava threatened Hilo someone suggested calling Ruth, who had a reputation for controlling lava flows. She lived in Honolulu and was a large woman, so special arrangements needed to be made to transport her. 

 

Once in Hilo she requested they build a straw hut for her, provide her favorite libation, and then leave her alone. Someone spied and said she just lay down in front of an advancing lava flow and meditated.

 

The following morning, she was alive, and the lava had stopped short of her. 

 

Boy, that’s almost like laying down in front of a freight train and figuring it would stop before it ran over you. 

 

 

I just opened my book The Frog’s Song (about our adventure in Hawaii) to see if I had written about Ruth—I didn’t find that I had, but I found the Signature Tree that I had forgotten about. 

 

There was a tree on the property we bought called a Signature Tree by the owner who showed us the property. The tree was large, like an apple tree, but evergreen with somewhat succulent leaves. It looked like a deciduous tree, that is it didn’t lose its leaves—at least not all at once. If you wrote on a leaf, your writing would last until that leaf was displaced by another.

 

On one of the leaves, we found this note: “Goodbye farm,” signed by the owner’s two little girls.

 

When we left, we signed our names.

 

It’s been eleven years. Our leaves have probably dropped off by now. 

 

 

P.S. I wanted to tell you that my book, The Frog’s Song by Joyce Davis, is on sale. Maybe I should have titled it The Song of Hawaii, but the frogs sang louder, so they got first billing. It was on sale a week ago, but is now back to its regular price. Sorry. I have no control over its price.

  

“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”
​— George Bernard Shaw ​

 

In case you missed it:

Patagonia now has a new Stockholder—THE EARTH

 

Patagonia’s founder Yvon Chouinard gave away his business.

It’s revenue in 2022 reached 1.5 billion.

Here’s how it works: 100% of the company’s voting stock transfers to the Patagonia Purpose Trust, created to protect the company’s values; and 100% of the nonvoting stock had been given to the Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting the environmental crisis and defending nature. The funding will come from Patagonia: Each year, the money we make after reinvesting in the business will be distributed as a dividend to help fight the crisis.-Yvon Chouinard

 

 

Buy from Patagonia!

 

Mr. Chouinard doesn’t believe anybody should be a billionaire. I agree, a couple million ought to keep a person for life.

 

Founder: Yvon Chouinard

Headquarters: Ventura, CA

Customer service: 1 (800) 638-6464

CEO: Ryan Gellert (Sep 24, 2020–)

Founded: 1973, Ventura, CA

Revenue: 1.5 billion USD (2022 estimate)

Number of employees: 1,000 (2017)

How Long Since You've Used Pi?

 

 Pi, you know that magic number 3.1416 is conveyed by the symbol p. No pie crust, berries, or lemon custard, nothing as great as that, just a mathematical formula.

Why am I concerned with pi? My real Estate Studies made me do it. When calculating the Area of a circle, it is Area =p r2, where r is the radius of a circle multiplied by itself.

Who discovered these things--and long, long ago?

I suppose it will be handy should I ever need to find the area of a geodesic dome. Some irregular rooms can use a circle, but I don't want to go there.

 If someone asks me to calculate the area of their irregularly shaped bathroom because they are putting down linoleum, I will scream and run in the opposite direction.

One of the questions the makers of this course asked before I began it was, "Can you stay calm when everybody else is going bonkers?"

 Nope. I'm already bonkers.

 My brain has turned to oatmeal this week in Junction City.

 

And how was your week?

 

Let's clear the brain... Did you read about the Finnish fellows having a pint in a pub and talking about their country?

They lamented that people didn't want to travel to Finland, their beautiful country with great utilities.

"But it's quiet," said one.

Well came the brilliant other, "The world is too noisy, and people are stressed by noise, so let's sell silence."

They agreed that people would pay to go to a spa and have a respite from the world's noise. Now their slogan is "Silence, please."

 

Sue, how long has it been since we visited Mother Meera, the silent Avatar in Germany?

Two friends and I had read about this young woman acclaimed as an Avatar, that is defined as a Deity in human form, and we wanted to experience her. She gave silent darshan. A darshan is simply being in the presence of a holy person. We three climbed aboard a jet plane, rented a car, and rummy from travel, with me as the designated driver, I drove in circles until we found a rot iron gate with a peacock shape built within it. That was Mother Meera's house. Why this Indian lady lived in Germany was a question we asked each other, but no one knew the answer.

Come evening, we attended a gathering of maybe 100 (maybe more) silent people sitting shoulder to shoulder on cushions. No one coughed, sniffed, cleared their throat, whispered, or talked. Silence spilled over us like syrup. One by one, we went up to the beautiful young woman dressed in a vibrant sari sunset colored. In turn, we knelt before her. She placed her hands on our heads, and it was said she was removing blocks.

When the evening was over, and we exited into the evening, as I moved my hands through the air, it felt soft and smooth and thick as though infused with gelatin. And the air pressed back at me just as softly. I thought, "I'm never going to speak again."

Well, that didn't last long.

However, the memory of that evening did.

 

This moment of silence was brought to you by someone who has 3.141592653589793238 running through their brain, not to mention what in the heck is a habendum clause?

 

1949 — The first time a computer was used to calculate pi: the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was able to determine pi to 2,000 places. The calculation took 70 hours to complete.