The Daily Post Discover Challenge: Conventional Wisdom
green grass
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Cat Wisdom
This post is based upon a post I wrote for a prior blog I maintained in a previous lifetime.
Cats are amazing creatures. Not just the whole landing on their feet thing, although that is pretty impressive. But think about it: how can an animal that spends so much of its time sleeping actually manage to develop a personality? And speaking of personalities: how does a pet that really doesn’t give a rip about anything or anyone become so endearing to us?
There’s a lot we can learn from cats, and not just how to eat an entire shrew in one piece. Here are five takeaways from my feline observations:
1. Two naps are better than one. At times when we are trying to weigh out a difficult matter, we are advised that it might be best to “sleep on it” rather than making a rash decision. Cats are very deliberate. They sleep on everything. Eat now or later? No rush, let’s sleep on it awhile. Tease the dog or ignore the dog? No need to decide right now. Sleep on it. Someone has laid out their best clothing for a very important engagement? Oh, cool! Let’s sleep on it!
2. A little spit goes a long way. Cats make do. They are masters at grooming. And yet, compare what they have to work with to our arsenal of personal hygiene products. We have deodorant, shampoos, conditioner, body soap, body lotion, skin cleansers, skin softeners… just to name some bare essentials. Cats have rough tongues and spit. They are minimalists, but they get the job done quite efficiently.
3. Sometimes you just have to cough up a hairball. Cats are unceremonious about getting rid of what’s bugging them. They don’t worry about proper protocol; they just do what needs to be done. Sometimes we spend so much time hemming and hawing about how to do or say something that we forget what the issue was in the first place. You got something to say? Spit it out. Tactfully, of course. And not on the carpet.
4. Fetch is a four-letter word (and cats can’t spell). Cats don’t kowtow to anyone. You wanna throw a stick… you go fetch it. It’s not that they don’t care about anyone else. Well, maybe that’s it exactly. But for our purpose here, let’s just say that cats have high self-esteem and don’t feel the need to grovel. Groveling is bad, and it messes up the fur.
5. If it didn’t sit well the first time, don’t eat it again (are you dogs out there listening?!?). Cats are known for being finicky about what they eat. And not to pick on dogs, but dogs will eat things that cats won’t even look at sideways. In fact, dogs will eat things that cats have already eaten once. But I digress.
The lesson here is that we can be discriminating about what we will and will not accept or put up with in our lives. And just because someone else thinks something is a good idea for us, just remember it’s not their face in the food bowl.
As I watch my kitty sitting next to me and staring blankly into space, I’m sure he is contemplating more nuggets of wisdom to reveal to me some day.
We’ve only just clawed the furniture – er, I mean scratched the surface.
The Daily Post Discover Challenge: Conventional Wisdom
The Greatest Sound in the World
Unity ~~
harmonic voices
sing as one to the beat of
hearts aligned in love
The Daily Post Discover Challenge: The Greatest _______ in the World
Polaroid
“How do you open this darn thing? I can never remember.”
Someone finds the button, and the black box pops open into an odd wedged shape.
“There! Is there film in it?”
“Dunno. Take a picture and find out.”
“Oh, alright. You girls, stand over there! By the hearth.”
With a bit of jostling, the girls obediently shuffle into place and assume the pose: arms wrapped around one another in a display of sisterly love. They look toward the camera and smile.
“Now smile.”
They spread their grins even wider.
Snap. Flash. Hiss.
The camera spits out a white-bordered card with a milky greenish-brown square in the center. The photo hangs where it exited, just short of falling to the ground. The picture taker dislodges the print and sets in on the coffee table.
“There! Let’s see what we’ve got.”
We circle around the table and watch as ghostlike images begin to rise from the murky Polaroid. Soon we can make out the features of the girls, and as the photo continues to develop, we see that one of the girls’ eyes were closed when the picture was snapped. Oh, well.
The print is a bit blurry, too dark, and the subjects are not framed properly. Typical. Someone notes the date on the wide bottom border, and there it is: a posed moment in time that documents a birthday, holiday, new dresses, or maybe just the changes from year to year as the girls grow and mature.
The captured moment goes in a shoebox where many others have been collected, and it turns into another memory to be pulled out and sorted and enjoyed for years to come.
It is shared by passing it from hand to hand. It is cropped with scissors if one wishes, but that’s not likely to happen. The highlights are enhanced by tilting the photo toward the nearest window or lamp, and the image is sharpened by adjusting one’s bifocals into better focus.
I sift through my shoebox now and again — probably more often than the girls realize — and the photos always make me smile.
Truth be told, I wouldn’t trade my Polaroids for all the Photoshopping in the world.
The photos above were most likely taken by a variety of relatives. Unfortunately I cannot assign individual credits.
The Daily Post Discover Challenge: Transcript
Supercize Me
Today’s Daily Post Discover Challenge asks us to celebrate our Superpower.
I don’t generally contemplate superheroes and superpowers. I didn’t read comic books as a kid, and I didn’t play with superpeople action figures.
If there were superhero video games – actually if there were any video games – in those long ago days, I was oblivious to their existence. The only game I knew that employed a joystick was Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.
I do recall watching Batman and Robin on TV, but the only real superpower they seemed to have was the ability to slide down a fire pole and arrive at the bottom dressed in full crime-fighting regalia. I don’t recall ever seeing how they got back into their civvies after saving Gotham City and returning to the bat cave. Maybe they shinnied back up the pole, gathering back the bits and pieces of clothing from where they had been shucked on the way down.
It would appear that superheroes don’t generally get to choose their special powers. Spiderman was accidentally bitten by a radioactive spider. He may have wanted to grow up to be a human cannonball, but no – the errant arachnid consigned him to scaling walls and spewing dental floss from his palms.
Superman was born with his powers, which weren’t even “super” on his planet of birth; they just appeared so to the non-super types here on Earth. Wonder Woman’s powers were gifts from the Greek gods. I doubt she got to pick her gifts. You know how Greek gods are, always wanting things done their way.
As to my own superpower… well, I have the power to see things that aren’t there. No, I don’t hallucinate. Let me rephrase a bit. You know those intuitive types of people who can see past facades and insincerities? It is often said of them that they see situations and people for what they truly are. I, on the other hand, see things for what they’re not.
It usually starts innocently enough. I’ll be going about my own business when something random unexpectedly catches my eye. A thought bubble appears above my head that says, “Hmmm.” Which is shorthand (or short-brain?) for “That looks interesting. I wonder what I could not do with that.” And then I turn it something it’s not.
My superpower takes hold, and suddenly my paint pants become wall art:
or my yard debris turns into a wood carving:
or a sheet of carbon paper becomes a photo series:
One might think this superpower of mine is not very useful for fighting crime, evil and injustice everywhere. And one would be correct. But it does fight boredom, taking-oneself-too-seriousness and creative block.
I think I should get a costume. And a sidekick. And an alter ego moniker. Hmmm…
Just call me the Hmmm-inator. Or not.
On the Cusp
As one year ends and another queues up for its grand opening, we sometimes find ourselves pin-balling from remembrances of the year(s) gone by, to plans and hopes and dreams for the year(s) ahead. For now I’m indulging myself in parsing the 2016 posts I wrote for the What Rhymes with Stanza blog. Planning for next year’s posts will come soon enough.
Yesterday, I posted a retrospect of 2016 using photos I’d taken throughout the year. Today, I’m taking on a suggestion from The Daily Post’s Discover Challenge which also relates to looking back over the past years’ worth of blogging, only this time with words.
One of the ideas presented in the Challenge was to write a “found poem” using lines from past posts. I’ve only attempted a found poem once before, and determined that it would have perhaps best remained lost.
But, hey… I’ll try anything twice. Hence, a “remix” of some lines taken from poems I wrote in 2016:
On the Cusp
With each passing day the past grows ever longer
even though we already cannot fathom its span.
History will always be defined by the lens
through which each one of us perceives.
You can’t get to where you’re going
until you’ve come from where you came.
It takes but one misstep to reset trajectory.
With each dawning day the present forgives us and
offers a clean slate to create what we choose.
Actions speak louder than words.
Non-action can speak just as loudly.
Leap, simply because you can.
The Daily Post Discover Challenge: Retrospective
at the very least
One ring,
two Chinese characters,
how many meanings?
I didn’t know, and so I asked.
Second symbol first:
goodness,
kindness,
charity,
… I was told.
First one second:
it goes without saying…
absolutely…
at the very least…
It’s hard to explain,
I was told.
So many things in life are hard to explain, and so
we often devise our own explanations,
our own definitions.
What does it mean to say, “I’m fine?”
One sentence,
two words,
how many meanings?
I often don’t know, but I seldom ask.
I want to change that, to show more charity,
kindness and goodness;
to listen to your explanations
and belay my own fabrications
at the very least.
As for the ring, perhaps it’s telling me
when life is hard to explain and hard to define,
there is one course of action
that is always right.
In those two characters, I choose to read,
“Above all else, be kind.”
The Daily Post discover challenge: Hope Gone Viral
Enquiring Minds
Way back in another lifetime, like about 25 years ago, I wrote a bi-weekly column for a tiny local newspaper. The focus was mostly about my family and the joys of raising two bright, beautiful daughters; daughters who had lots of questions, most of which I had no viable answer to.
Here is a column I wrote in 1992 that demonstrates the quandary of fielding questions about life, love, and the pursuit of wind-blown hats.
Twenty Questions
“Mommy, why is the sky blue? What makes grass?” We are barely ten miles out on a 60-some mile long trip. The truck’s radio is broken and there are four of us stuffed into the cab, with no room for the girls to lie down and sleep. I think Sarah saves up her best questions for just such occasions. I’m not sure why the sky is blue, but there are two things I know for certain: this will be a long, long trip and I will have a headache when it is over.
Sarah has entered the “how come” phase of life, where questions comprise roughly 75 percent of her conversation. Another 20 percent consists of demands for personal services such as feeding (immediately), dressing (in pink, if you please) and putting her hair into an assortment of Barbie-esque hairdos. The final five percent of her speech is a mishmash of statements ranging from “I’m not going to be your friend anymore and you can’t come to my birthday!” to “I love everyone in the whole world!”
Watching television with my preschool daughters has become a trying ordeal. As soon as the character appears on the screen I am barraged with questions. “Mommy, who is that? What is he doing?” And most importantly, “Is he a good guy or a bad guy?”
Every time lettering appears on the screen or a commercial comes on, Sarah seems to have a Pavlovian-programmed reflex to turn to me and inquire, “Is the show over now?”
It’s even more challenging if I tune in a program for the girls to watch and then leave the room. Absence is no excuse for not having all the answers. “Why was the little girl laughing? Was that her Mommy in the car?”
“I don’t know, Sarah. I didn’t watch the show and I have no idea who or what you are talking about.”
“Oh.” Sarah waits a few seconds. “Were they good guys or bad guys?”
Maybe I should feel honored that my daughters seem to regard me as omniscient, but that’s not really the case. Sometimes I flunk out on seemingly simple questions.
“Why is the sun shining on us so hot?” Sarah asked one day.
“Because it’s a hot, sunny day,” I said. Made sense to me.
“No! That’s not why!” Sarah glowered at me, as if I had told her she couldn’t wear pink anymore or something equally repugnant. I guess I could have gone into an explanation of the earth’s position relative to the sun, or theories of global warming, but I have a feeling none of that would have been the right answer either.
To compound the problem, Emily is into imitating, so if Sarah starts up playing Twenty Questions, Emily pipes in with 20 of her own. Only Emily adds a new twist to the game. She precedes each question with: “Mommy?” I wait for the question to follow. Instead she repeats herself: “Mommy??” I turn toward her to let her know that I am listening. Not good enough. “Mommy!?”
“What!” I finally respond. Only after my verbal response will she proceed with her question, if she still remembers it. If she doesn’t remember what she was going to ask, she starts over: “Mommy?”
Sometimes the questions are entertaining. They show a unique form of logic with which only young children are blessed. One windy day, the family was on an outing and my husband, who wears a hat to protect his balding scalp from the elements, was having a difficult time keeping the hat on his head. Emily was delighted to watch her daddy repeatedly chase his cap down the street.
That evening as I was brushing Emily’s hair, she asked, “Mommy?”
“What?” I responded quickly. I’m learning, you see.
“Why doesn’t Daddy have any hair?”
“Why don’t you ask Daddy?” I suggested wearily, having fielded my quota of questions for the day.
Apparently remembering the day’s earlier activities, Emily turned to her father and asked, “Daddy, did the wind blow your hair away, too?”
Even I couldn’t wait to hear the answer to that one.
The Daily Post Discover Challenge: Tough Questions
Never the Same Thrice
rigid glass window
changing moods of daylight dance
heedless of its pane
The Daily Post Discover Challenge: One, Two, Three!
What Rhymes with Stanza? 