Author: still a dreamer

Online Aquarium

/ still a dreamer / 3 Comments

Shark2Everybody knows how relaxing it is to watch fish in an aquarium, so here’s a little something to rest your weary mind. It’s an online aquarium called Shark Break.  The fish closely follow the moves of your mouse/cursor. You can choose different fish from the left and/or different ocean backgrounds at the right.

The providers of the site promote healthy oceans and kindness to sharks and other marine mammals, but I have not further explored their site to verify who they are, what they do, or what they’re about. I offer this link only as a pleasant little diversion to enjoy some well-thought-out ocean creatures swimming about at your command. Enjoy a little Shark Break.

SpiderMail

/ still a dreamer / 5 Comments

SpiderMail-SmallFor the last couple weeks, there has been a small guest in my mailbox. While she hasn’t cheerily announced “You’ve got mail,” her appearance has been as regular as my e-mail. Each morning when I open the door of my mailbox to put in outgoing letters or later, to retrieve the incoming, she is perched on more of less the same spot each time. At night, however, she ventures out and builds a beautiful, circular web on an unusual angle between my neighbor’s and my adjoining mailboxes.

She is an orb-weaving spider, (so named for the typical circular webs they weave), and known as a cross spider or garden spider. (I looked her up on two of my favorite bug sites – What’s That Bug? and BugGuide.) I speak to her softly each time I see her, and she rarely moves away. Sometimes if I pull out a magazine or something large, she’ll back up a wee bit, or if I move to the other side to get a closer look, she may face me a bit defensively. But what is most amazing was realizing that she seems to actually know me.

A neighbor that I see often was walking by with her young son recently and we got to talking. Of course, he’s interested in bugs! I showed them the spider. She was fine with me nearby, but when they came to look – and they were no closer than I’ve ever been – she got up and hid. I checked when they had left, she came back out. I feel honored.

SpiderMail-Big

Now she’s protecting a little cotton-y puff of spiders-to-be on the inside of the mailbox door. I still talk to her, but don’t stay long. She looks a little less filled out than I think is normal, and it doesn’t look like she built her web last night. Perhaps this is what motherhood is like for spiders and she’ll stay with her egg puff until they’re born. She’s really quite pretty with a lovely pattern on her back and shaded legs.

I don’t know how long she will be keeping an eye on my mail, but I do enjoy the opportunity of seeing this little spider each day.

Update: 5/29/09 – Today is the first day I have not seen the little guardian of my mail. Yesterday, she seemed tired, and it almost appeared as if a back leg were missing. I couldn’t tell. I did a visual search all about the mailbox a short while ago, no luck. Perhaps her job is done.

Hope Was Here – Joan Bauer

/ still a dreamer

 

YA novel - Hope Was Here

Hope certainly was here in this Newbery Award winning YA novel. Hope is 16 and raised by her single aunt, Addie. Hope’s mother, Deena, felt the best thing she could do for her baby was to have her raised by Addie, her sister. Named Tulip at birth, Hope decides to legally change her name at 12, often wondering if she can live up to her new name.
Addie and Hope have moved several times across the U.S., Addie following needed jobs as a short order cook in diners, and Hope, a young but experienced waitress, repeatedly having to leave the friends she’s made. Hope longs to one day know her father who she wants to believe is trying to find her, while Deena occasionally shows up in her life.
The story begins with Addie and Hope arriving in Mulhoney, a Wisconsin dairy town, to run the diner for the owner who has been stricken with leukemia. Hope Was Here is about hope for so many things, not just in Hope’s own life, but in the lives of those around her … in a man hoping to go into remission who runs for office to defeat a corrupt system; in the hope that good will prevail in this small town; that the undercurrent of love that streams through so many of the characters will prove, not only that love can prevail, but that hope is worth holding on to. Much of the story’s action takes place in and around the diner, where the customers and dishes Addie whips up serve as a colorful backdrop.
Life changing experiences abound for every character in Hope Was Here, in a can’t-put-down tale, that not only manages to beautifully explore relationships, but amazingly, also weaves in politics and the difference that teenagers can make in influencing their and others’ lives. The food served up by Addie in the diner may have you wanting to find something in your fridge, but Hope’s story will have you sitting, smiling, and definitely believing in the value of hope.

Writing from the Heart

/ still a dreamer / 2 Comments

HorsesHead2One of the best recommendations I hear concerning what to write about is to write from your heart. There is no doubt in my mind that that is absolutely the truth. It’s helpful to know what’s up and coming in the market. It’s helpful to know what particular agents and editors are looking for. But writing just FOR that market, agent or editor just to be published is the ultimate betrayal of self. Where else can I write from but the heart?

Question is … what if most people really don’t want to know what I will write from my heart? What if the more I pour my heart and soul into a story, the more frightened the reader becomes … the more they begin to feel somehow responsible, if not for the individual I write about, but for how things have become this way? I can tell you – they want to turn away and run … to not think about it.

What I’m referring to at the moment, because something I read today is so fresh in my mind, is the immense suffering we, as humans, perpetrate on animals. Whether it be horses slammed together in double-decker trailers, trekked for days on end with no food or water to a brutal slaughter in Mexico, or sows imprisoned in metal-barred gestation crates their entire lives … people don’t want to know. Far too many people don’t want to know.

What’s in my heart is a deep and abiding love of animals. It is knowing they are individuals that matters to me – how can anyone simply see millions of dollars in pork sales if you look into the eyes of one desperate, intelligent pig who can never physically move? How can anyone watch a rodeo cowboy lasso a 3 month old calf, pulling back so hard that he breaks the calf’s neck? And then know this mere baby lays in agony, out of sight, sometimes for days, not being released from its suffering. How can anyone attend a circus where highly intelligent animals are beaten with bullhooks until they bleed and scream for the sake of a few tricks, and then are chained in place for 23 hours of every day? How can anyone look into just one of those elephant’s eyes and not drown in her sadness?

You may be pulling back even now – wanting to move away from the painful reality of our own part in all of this. Don’t go yet – it’s not my intention at the moment to explore the horrific suffering animals know at our hands, but rather, how do I write about it in my chosen field? How do I write picture books and bring my heart into it, without watering it down, sugaring it up, and burying the truth?

Children cannot – should not – hear what’s truly in my heart. It’s far too frightening for them, but what can they hear? How can I tell them?

Each of you has something in your heart that you yearn to write about … your heart’s desire, whatever that may be.  How do we bring our heart’s desire to the table in children’s books, to help a child learn to listen closely to his or her own heart, to know the value of all life, before the window closes and they become lost in the routine of daily life, the numbing by TV, the  brainlessness of texting?

How do we bring what’s truly in our hearts to a young child’s reading? I’m yearning to know.

Juggling Books

/ still a dreamer

BooksStackedWhy such a while for Weil? No doubt there are just hordes of you out there suspecting I’m the slowest reader ever.

Just kidding – I don’t think there are hordes of you out there. But there are times when it seems that we are in one book forever. Or maybe we really are. In this case, from the time I started Spontaneous Healing, I was sick 2+ weeks. I believe that’s one of the reasons I plucked him from my “to read” stack. What better to read, when we feel like crap, than a book that gives us support to get up and feel better? 

I am a firm believer in the body’s innate drive towards self-healing, so this was a perfect choice to read. I went to a little bit of it every night during a time when I dragged myself out of bed, journaled a wee bit, put in a good day’s work, and crawled away from my computer to sit in front of the telly a bit, then dragged myself to bed. Hello, Dr. Weil! He’s been great and informative company, and renewed my faith in my body’s ability to heal, as well as how I need to better focus on doing the right things to stay well.

Then came … the Hunterdon County Library’s Annual Book Sale. Thank goodness I had a time limit there! Brought home a bunch of new books, but restrained myself and read only one – Indigo – as I had plenty of work and some writing to do. Then came the realization that Angels and Demons would be opening May 15 – OK, let’s pluck that off the shelf and give that another read before I see the movie. So I’m up past my bedtime – I’ll live.

And then … the book I knew I needed to read again – one of my favorites, The Artist’s Way. This is such a wonderful book and I’ll give author Julia Cameron the credit for my daily journaling/morning pages. This is a book that encourages and helps strengthen creativity in a unique, spiritual way. And that’s why I say I need to read this. I feel some deeper period of inspiration coming on, and who better than Julia to accompany me?

But what about children’s books? Ahhhhh – in this period, I have also read – many, many times already – one of the most wonderful children’s books I’ve ever read. The story, the illustrations, the subtle sub-text … I am deeply moved each time I open it. It is giving me the inspiration to return to an aspect of my artwork where I was struggling. I’ll get to that soon; it deserves so much more than a passing mention.

Andrew Weil, don’t give up on me; I shall return. I just have a couple more Illuminati murders to try and prevent, and then it will be all about the healing.