Tortoise and Hare Revisited

Aesop, a Greek storyteller, wove a fable about the race between a Tortoise and a Hare to reveal how to conquer an opponent's over-confidence.

The Hare bragged about his speed to all the animals. "I have never yet been beaten when I exercise my full speed," he said. "I challenge anyone here to race with me." 

     The Tortoise said, "I accept your challenge." 

     "What?" laughed the Hare. "I could dance around you all the way." 

     The Tortoise responded, "Let's race?" 

     The Hare zoomed ahead. Soon he flew out of sight of the Tortoise. Laughing, he stopped and, to show his contempt for the Tortoise, decided to take a nap under a tree. The Tortoise plodded on and plodded on. When the Hare awoke from his nap, he trotted on and soon saw the Tortoise approach the finishing line. 

The Hare and could not race up in time to beat the Tortoise. The Tortoise won the race.


Penny's version: 

Many centuries later, at dusk, a tiny turtle wandered the trail near his pond when a bunny  bounced by. As the evening darkened, stars exhibited their shapes in a clear sky. 

When bunny stopped to nibble on a root, the turtle caught up.

"Happy evening," said the turtle. "Nice to catch you. Our relatives did not have a good experience," the turtle told the bunny.

"Yep," said the bunny. "My relatives bragged way too much about never losing. Why do we have to beat one another?"

The turtle smiled and directed the bunny toward a stump with a view to the night's stars. "Back then slow but steady progress won the race. Let's find companionship and use imagination to discover our images up in the sky."


The bunny pointed upward and agreed, "Companionship and collaboration always win in the best way."

The new friends settled on the stump and reveled in nature's display.

"Tomorrow, I'll take you for a swim in my lake."

"What fun," the bunny wriggled and hopped onto the turtle's shell. "Let's go we have adventures ahead."

The Lunar Eclipse

During the early morning hours on January 31, watch the moon's total eclipse. The celestial event will begin at 3:48 am Pacific time.

The event begins with a penumbral eclipse as the moon crosses into the earth's lighter shadow. This will cause it to lose its brightness. An hour later, the moon enters the umbra and begins to turn orange or pink on its edge.

Forty minutes later the whole moon is within the umbra, called totality. Unlike a total solar eclipse, lunar totality lasts for about 40 minutes. At this time the moon is nearest the center of the earth's shadow.

Similar to a sunset, sunlight is bent through the earth's atmosphere before it hits the moon. The color depends on earth's atmosphere. If volcanic activity has occurred and ash is in the atmosphere a "blood" moon results.

If the sky is cloudy or you are not a night owl or insomniac, check listings to watch it live online.

Writing and Falling in Love - To Honor Ursula K. Le Guin

"I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the 
child . . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane of these faculties is the power of imagination."

 -Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin left this world on January 22 at 88. She lived most of her life in Portland, Oregon, writing speculative fiction and fantasy. She did not want to be pigeonholed as a science fiction writer, preferring novelist and poet as her genres. In her later years she began an online Blog.

Although Le Guin did not wish to write "confessional" pieces, she did believe writing involved falling in love. She felt her work, "contained elements of direct personal experience so it transformed as to be entirely fictional rather than confessional."  

"What it is I suppose is the creative condition as expressed in human emotion and mood. So it comes out curiously the same whether sexual or spiritual or aesthetic or intellectual, " Le Guin believed.

Le Guin explained, “Being in love — falling in love” — now I understand it — now I know what it means — what happens to me when I am writing: I am in love with the work, the subject, the characters, and while it goes on and a while after, the opus itself. I function only by falling in love: with French and France; with the 15th Century, with microbiology, cosmology, sleep search etc. at various times."

Ursula Le Guin has moved on to another dimension. Her writing will continue to amaze readers and reveal the many ways she explored the imagination.  

She will search for more dragons high in the sky.

In Tehanu, the last book of Earthsea, Ged and Tenar stand on a cliff above the sea, their enemies about to push them over the edge, Tenar, mute by a spell, points up at the sky and laughs, "in the fluffs of light, from the doorway of the sky, the dragon flew, fire trailing behind the coiling, mailed body." Tenar spoke then, "Kalessin," she cried and then turned, seizing Ged's arm, pulling him down to the rock, as the roar of fire went over them, the rattle of mail and the hiss of wind in upraised wings, the clash of the talons like scytheblades on the rock."

Write to Combine the Unlikely

"Behind the cotton wool of daily life is hidden a pattern; all human beings are connected with this.  The whole world is a work of art."  - Virginia Woolf

Try three unlikely combinations and see where they lead in your writing. 

Use an automobile, a force of nature, and a cookbook Let a telephone, turtle, and emerald collaborate.  

What will you do with a radio, a chess piece, and pumpkin pie?  

Combine a tuba, fish pond, and Snoopy.

Choose three other items that might trigger unlikely reactions.  

Let a story or poem emerge.

Write Explorations

"Words are the threads upon which we string our experiences."  - Aldous Huxley

Free your mind of distractions and explore without judgment today.

Relent to creative urges and stay flexible.

Imaginate:     Write a line of something that seems impossible.

Play:     Describe a playful activity.

Revitalize:      See an old problem in a unbelievable way.

Eye rolls:       Notice a familiar object with a new perspective.

No gravity:    What if gravity didn't hold you down?

Take the responses to your lines and re-arrange them.  Read them aloud.  Then put them aside and write for ten minutes.

How will you begin the day as a purple tummybird?

Chase Curiosity

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. 
- Albert Einstein. 

“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice.

Curiosity sparks awareness, nudges a nose for observation, and a desire to explore. Learning about yourself and the world results. Each individual has an unlimited capacity for curiosity. It bubbles inside and thrills the senses. Audacity spirits the soul.

Discoveries explode around each corner. In the silence, moments present wonder. 

Questions tumble upon mysteries and roar for more. 

Clouds in a puddle arouse the adventure of an upside down scene. 

Where will the palm trees lead with a scent of jasmine in the air? 







A seabird distracts to divert attention where the sea and sky provide their playground.

Follow a swirl of life calling for play. 

How do you define curiosity? 

Does it involve a need to solve a problem? Do you feel a devious desire, a compulsion?  

What colors drive your curiosity?  

Detail your search for a curious thing.  

Become curiouser and curiouser.

Chase curiosity.

Majesty of the Sea

"Waters work openly where people dwell, and so does the rain, and the sea, thundering on all the shores of the world, and the universal ocean of air through invisible, speaks aloud in a thousand voices, and explains its modes of working and its power." 

- John Muir

In India, darshan means getting a view. The clouds escape to reveal a panorama of the Himalayas from the foothills. The Himalayas give-up their darshan, letting you have their view. 

The Pacific ocean provides a darshan on its day of wonder. The tease encourages a search.

"I think I could stop here myself and do miracles." - Walt Whitman

"Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul alike." - John Muir

Writing with Musicality

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual — become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest vision. - Robert Henri

Henri called these levels the “song from within.”  We have a tune inside that catches our attention and fluffs us with wonder. Learning to listen takes moving into a space of marvel. Our rational mind often steps in and grabs us to return to the ordinary. 

Select three types of your favorite music. Choose one for lyrics, another for melody, and the third for a variety of rhythm and changes.

Begin writing to the first selection by adding color: magenta, lavendar, azure. Let words arrive where colors and sounds blend. 

For the second choice, write into flavors or scents: cinnamon and vanilla yogurt, apples, toast, leaves in autumn, grass, gardenias.

Shift again to writing out sounds to the music: bump, rattle, sizzle, clack.

Discover where listening to music and combining imagery leads. Let the words flow with the notes in an in experience writing with musicality.

Sea Gratitude

When you find yourself in a seascape, 

Breathe in the scents and look up at the collage of clouds.

Find the the mosaic of blue where it greets the sea's satin quilt. 

Steeple your hands to your heart.

Comforter of the sea spreads to nourish its friends in a snuggle of blue.

Find the flyers in the sky, refracted.

Nature's Realm

". . . these are the music and pictures of the most ancient religion" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"No feature of all the noble landscape as seen from here seems more wonderful than the cathedral itself, a temple displaying nature's best masonry and sermons in stone. How often I have gazed at it from the tops of hills and ridges, and through openings in the forests on my many short excursions, devoutly wondering, admiring, longing."  
         - John Muir

Nature shares its secrets and advice when we take the time to notice.
                 Stretch. Rise to the sky. Spread your limbs.

Find joy in how high the waves jump into the sky.

 Kenneth Grahame writes, "Nature’s particular gift to the walker, through the semi-mechanical act of walking — a gift no other form of exercise seems to transmit in the same high degree — is to set the mind jogging, to make it garrulous, exalted, a little mad maybe — certainly creative and suprasensitive, until at last it really seems to be outside of you and as if it were talking to you whilst you are talking back to it. Then everything gradually seems to join in, sun and the wind, the white road and the dusty hedges, the spirit of the season, whichever that may be, the friendly old earth that is pushing life firth of every sort under your feet or spell-bound in a death-like winter trance, till you walk in the midst of a blessed company, immersed in a dream-talk far transcending any possible human conversation."

Always an evening kiss from a sun sliding into the sea.

Optimism

If some days feel like elephants coming at you, hold out those arms and take in the challenges.

O   Stay Open to Opportunities in all situations.

P    Note the Possibilities that exist around every corner.

T    Take breaks to let your mind discover connections.

I     Investigate with sights, sounds, scents and tastes.

M   Keep the Momentum going. One word, then another.  Bounce those words.

I     Imagination works wonders. Play with ideas.

S    Silliness stimulates the brain.  Giggle as you move through each day.

M   Call your Muse.  Give him or her a name and write a conversation.

Create your own suggestions for each letter.  Optimism !

Meanings of Change

"Observe always that everything is the result of change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and make new ones like them."

- Marcus Aurelius

During a day that feels empty or dry, we need to discover ways to freshen our thoughts.  

Soren Kierkegaard believed in the rotation method to keep the mind fresh. He indicated that farmers can't grow wheat year after year. They must replenish the soil by sowing beans one year. It also may need to remain fallow.

Albert Einstein used "combinatory play."  Imagining he traveled on a beam of light and glancing back at a clock created break-throughs for him. He visualized letting go of a coin in a free-falling elevator.

Any changes in thinking and perception jostle the mind. Distractions help to reset thoughts from focus on a single task and its implications, concerns and consequences. It helps us move into to a new venue where creativity blossoms.

Try, "See the Kite" approach.  If you want to divert someone in conversation, point to the sky and say, "What a Kite." An individual will look up and stop speaking, thinking, or doing. You can use the distraction to accomplish whatever you need.  

Divert an unpleasant situation, sneak a loss pr a bite of someone's desert .  

Adapt this idea for your writing. Use unexpected incongruity. Try writing to these examples: 

What do eagles, mountains, and pencils have in common?

Consider  baboons, sunshine, chocolate, and their differences.

Combine kittens, cranberries, and the Pacific ocean.

What skitters in and out of the hole above?

Intuition ticklers, absurd thoughts, and humor intrigue the mind and provide unexpected insights. 

Use the kite approach and search the sky for ideas.  Try three unrelated items, extend to more.   

Freshen and free your spirit.

The Question of You

Imagine the dimensions of life beyond our galaxy.  

With the immensity of this vision in mind, reflect on your human form and circumstance.


During your life, in what ways have you discovered the pulse of humanness and nature? Is it a scientific or spiritual search for you?  

Do you feel a combination of both?


Move from thinking of the immensity to daily life and choices you have made.  What do you need to do to complete your life's work?

Delve into the question of You. 

Follow the notions.

What is Human?

William Shakespeare wrote, "What a piece of work is a man."  With technology advancing by the day and defeating us at games and driving cars without our attention, what does it mean to be human?

Computers run much of our daily lives from the clock that provides a wake-up call to the variety of machines we use throughout the day. As we settle into sleep for the night, a computer even changes the feel of our mattress.

A computer can provide information on Mozart but can it write music that, "entices angels down to earth" as Mozart did?  Programs direct spaceships into the universe but do they dream of space travel?  

Can a computer dwell in the magic of sunrise and sunset? How about laughing at its own file of jokes? Could it appreciate a floral scent?

Read about the Turing Test, a battle between the most advanced artificial-intelligence programs and ordinary people. The test is designed to determine if a computer can act "more human" than a person.

Mind Versus Machine, an article in "The Atlantic":

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/03/mind-vs-machine/8386/ 

Have fun speculating and writing about what it means to be human.

Create Every Day

Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally.  The broke world waits in darkness for the light that is you.  - L. R. Knost

Today we face challenges that do not belong to us alone. We cannot control the media, government, or others' opinions.  

Personal intention matters. Once our eyes grow accustomed to the dark, details appear. Shapes and colors arise for consideration and choices. Breezes bring in scents not noticed before. Birdsong announces another view.

What we do next involves giving the best of love, respect, and devotion to making decisions beyond the darkness. 

Creativity moves us.

Gradually we gain ideas of what we can do to enhance life for ourselves to translate to others. 

Our enlightenment revels in thoughts put into actions.

Jump beyond any wallow in a wilderness of frustration. Make plans to greet the day with brightness and acknowledge others who walk with their heads down. Bring their eyes level with yours and turn their frowns upside down.  

It takes small steps. The flash of a bee at work will bring illumination into your world. 

When wandering in the dark, discover three ideas to arouse awe. Use your potential.

Manage from your inside out to bring in light necessary for renewal. Follow Rollo May's directive and develop the Courage to Create.