What a Difference a Week Makes

"I think I could turn and live with animals*, 

they are so placid, and self-contain'd, 

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, 

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, 

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, 

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, 

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago…"

–Walt Whitman

 

I stopped the quote there, for I believe animals can be unhappy, which Whitman says they are not.

We have a new animal, a happy animal, a dog my grandson named Zeke.

I just learned that the word animal comes from the Latin word "soul."

Zeke is a German Shepherd mix. Small for a German Shepard. He's a lover, sweet and gentle. My daughter chose him from The Greenhill Animal Shelter. 

He has three legs.

He had a genetic deformity in his right leg. The RV Outlet in Eugene, Oregon, paid for his surgery, a generosity for which I am incredibly grateful. They gave that dog an opportunity for a happy life and gave us a happy dog.

When my daughter first told me about him, I was reluctant to have another dog enter our two dogs and one-cat household, but within a day of having him here, I was in love.

One serendipitous part of this sudden experience was that a couple of days before my daughter learned that her dog Laffe has cancer, she felt called to look at dogs at the shelter, and while there she fell in love with this three-legged dog.

I was drawn to Whitman's poem, for this dog does not whine about his condition. He hops about, dropping joy on his three paw prints and us.

Regarding whether animals have souls, a subject I ran into this week, how in the heck would we know? People used to argue about how many angels could stand on the head of a pin, and arguments regarding philosophical thought still rage.

I vote that if humans have a soul, and I believe they do—then so do the animals. To me, the spark of life indicates a soul. (Hey, plants are alive too.)

Gary Kowalski took up the daring question of the soul in his book, The Souls of Animals) — an inquiry into the "spiritual lives" of whooping cranes, elephants, jackdaws, gorillas, songbirds, horses, dogs, and cats. At its center is the idea that spirituality — which he defines as "the development of a moral sense, the appreciation of beauty, the capacity for creativity, and the awareness of one's self within a larger universe as well as a sense of mystery and wonder about it all" — is a natural byproduct of "the biological order and in the ecology shared by all life."

Do fleas go to heaven? If they do, they are fed a replicated formula and keep their mitts off the other critters.

 

Tuesday's Note

Dear Folks,

I began The Muse Newsletter about a year ago but didn’t think anyone was interested and thus stopped. However, last month someone sent $12 for 12 issues. I am happy she somehow found me, and for her and anyone else who agrees to join us, I will write the next 12 issues.

I wrote two FREE samples (on in February, one in March) so readers could have a taste. 

Steven Pressfield motivated me when he wrote about sweeping the house, so the Muse doesn’t soil her gown when she enters. That was such a beautiful picture that I began the Newsletter about The Muse. And I was impressed when after rattling around for years in his VW bus, ruining his marriage, and resisting the very thing he knew he must do, Pressfield finally set down to the typewriter and pecked out a few pages. After that, he whistled as he washed a sink full of dishes. The writing was terrible, he said. But he had found his calling.

Wasn’t that the Muse who visited Pressfield? She visited even though he said his writing was terrible.

She visits when you feel creative and enter a no-time zone, where thoughts are popping and you feel inspired. You are in a happy place.

But my work stinks, you might say. No, remember how you felt when making it? That’s yours whether anyone likes it or not, and she visited whether your skill was up to par or not.

Skill is learned.

And art is subjective.

Think about being in the 1800’s and seeing an ear deformed painter selling his wares on the street. Would you have liked Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings? Would you have appreciated his Irises, Sunflowers, or a strange starry night? They are valuable now because of their perceived value. Would you want them on your wall if they only cost a few dollars? Myth says that Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime, The Red Vineyard. Some think there was another one sold but not recorded. Still, that first painting sold for only a couple of dollars. On the last sale, Sunflowers sold for over 39 million.

Van Gogh’s life paints a picture of the tragic starving artist and another that encourages parental advice “to get a real job.”

You might wonder why we felt so good while producing yet are rejected. Hey, people like different things. Don’t expect to reach everybody. Plus, we are limited by our skills.

We work to improve our skills, so we have something of value to offer when the Muse visits.

I liken it to those people who call themselves "channels.” Channels say they get a download of information. Yet, for audiences to listen to them, they must articulate that information artfully or dramatically. Our data is filtered through our own skill and belief system.

I follow Steven Pressfield’s Writing Wednesdays, (he doesn't post every Wednesday) and was saddened when I first saw a picture of him in his backyard. Such a pretty well-kept backyard. Then I learned that he had lost his home in the LA fires and was on GoFundMe.

He plans to rebuild.

Live well. Find a happy place.

Jo

P.S. Please keep scrolling to read the March issue. The first February issue was posted on January 30, 2025.

 

 

Taming the Dragon

Dear fellow writers,

Steven Pressfield* says an artist’s resistance is like a dragon we must tame every morning.

A reader commented that Steven King writes joyfully every day, perhaps because he puts his dragons into his stories.

Is that the answer?

 

Since this is called a Writer’s Blog, perhaps I have been remiss for not talking about writing.

I have written almost daily for years and joyfully. Only recently have I experienced any resistance. I have felt that writing is my expression, my art, a way to be creative. (I believe everyone is creative—just find it and do it.) In creativity we find that No-Time-Zone where angels sing, birds chirp, and you are driven away from the computer (or canvas, or keyboard) only when starved or needing a water closet break. (Isn’t that a fantastic term?)

There at my desk, I happily put words on a page, thought up stories, read for fun and research, and all the while tried to get better.

(Pressfield wrote a book titled, Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t.)  We will write it occasionally, forgive ourselves, and move on. Hey Pressfield, that was not our intention.)

Maybe that’s my dilemma—I’m reading too much good stuff—stuff better than mine, or I feel I “should” be doing something that helps pay the bills. I feel guilty that I’m not calling Real Estate Leads. (I have a real estate license) One rejection after another gets tedious after a while.

(I did get hold of a fellow horse lover, a cowboy, and we had a good time, but he was not buying or selling, just fishing for information.)

Why don’t we do the thing that will make us feel better? I’m guilty of it—maybe that’s the dragon. That’s the resistance. I know that writing “Morning pages,”(Julia Cameron’s term) works like magic. So why don’t we do it? I know that meditation helps the mood and the blood pressure, so why don’t I do more of it? Time? Right, like we’d rather wallow in misery and let the cycling mind run amuck rather than spend 15 minutes writing out the junk we’ve accumulated.

We, you, me, I’m throwing us all in the soup. Morning pages are for your eyes only. It’s a mind dump. It is clearing out the debris so the real stuff can come through. It’s putting a period at the end of a sentence, something the mind tends to forget. Pressfield says we need to clean our house so the Muse doesn’t soil her gown on the way in.

Morning pages are for your eyes only, it’s writing out the sh*t, it’s taming the dragon, it’s cleaning the house.

*https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/Steven+Pressfield/FMfcgzQXJGnzBbKjnHxWPjHpRFxGlhhR

 

 

 "The curiosity and connection that create the Eureka effect rely on parts of the brain that don't feel fear."—Martha Beck.

 

Really?

 

I thought fear was all-pervasive. Yet, as I think about it, fear comes from our primitive brain stem, the part that's into survival.

 

Martha is right; it doesn't come from the creative side. 

 

That must be why we feel happy when we are into some creative endeavor or when faced with a problem whose solution has stumped us, if we let it sit a while, Eureka, "Out of the blue," comes the answer.

 

I know, however, that while the right side of our brains is creative, and it's so much fun to be in that space, I did not know it was fearless. The other side must creep in.

 

I've been hearing more and more that scientists are trying to pinpoint where consciousness lies and, so far, haven't been able to do it. They are pretty sure it doesn't reside in the brain as we have been led to believe. 

 

Don't we think with our brains? Doesn't it feel like it is coming from our heads? Yes, but what about those moments of transcendence where something comes to us from out of that blue space?

 

The first time l experienced an out-of-the-blue thought where I got the message that we can KNOW as a teenager.

 

This is silly, a trivial little thing, but it impacted me.

 

I had taken a knit dress to the cleaners, and when I picked it up, it was wrapped in brown paper like a package. I absolutely knew the belt wasn't in that package. But I didn't want to tell them, thus committing to such boldness, so I went to the car, opened the package, verified that the belt wasn't there, returned to the shop, and told them the belt was missing. They found it and gave it to me.

 

I have mentioned I am writing a memoir. This memoir could also fit into the Memoir/autobiography/travel/adventure/special interest categories. Every time I say I'm writing a memoir, I sound arrogant. Then I remind myself I do not know anyone better than I know myself.

 

Perhaps people will want to read it; perhaps they won't. Perhaps it will inspire others to write their memoir; maybe it won't. Either way, come hell or high water, I'm doing it. I mentioned I wrote 50,000 words in 30 days, but that doesn't mean it is complete; it just means I got words on the page, and now I am faced with a mess. 

 

Natalie Goldberg (Old Friend from Far Away), my inspiration, says you can write many memoirs in your life; every time you write one, you will be at a different place. And don't write about dreary stuff; you can write about pain, for that's a part of life, but generally, write about what takes your breath away.

 

Yesterday I was writing about Spankings, and I made this statement: 

 

"I don't know why it is embarrassing to be spanked like it is embarrassing to be bullied, molested, or unloved."

 

The moment I wrote the above sentence, I got the answer. 

 

When Joseph McClendon III talked about sleeping in a box in Lancaster, California, after somebody tried to kill him because of the color of his skin, he thought, "If someone would do that to me, there must be something wrong with me."

 

That's it. 

 

As McClendon erroneously thought there was something wrong with him, kids probably think there is something wrong with them and that they deserve punishment.

 

There was nothing wrong with McClendon, as there is nothing wrong with kids who get hit for some infraction. They are kids, remember?

 

I wonder how much punishment contributes to our culture's prevailing "I'm not good enough" syndrome. I'm not good enough to be loved. I'm not good enough to find a mate. I'm not good enough to write a good book, a play, a symphony, paint a picture or start a business. 

 

"I've been bad and deserve to be hit. I am a girl, a less desirable weaker sex, and I must keep my mouth shut. Boys will be boys, you know." 

 

Auugh.

 

That's the biggest Bullshit I have ever heard. 

 

I told you I was a Badass in training.

 

I will ask for pre-sales for the book PAINTING A LIFE from a Badass in Training by Jewell D. That way, I can hit the ground running when the book is launched. Getting sales right away is the best way to get a higher rating on Google.

 

"Obi-Wan, I need your help."

 

You can tell me you're willing to join my pre-sales campaign if you want to. Pre-sales are only charged once a book is launched.

 

So, nobody will be charged if it never gets off the launching pad.

 

Over and out, have fun, be creative, do a little dance.