Ten Thousand Hours

Don Hahn, producer of The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast says it takes 10,000 hours to perfect one’s craft.

Okay, here’s my story: I wrote The Frog’s Song, from the land of fire and water about our adventure in Hawaii. It is 40,000 words. An agent said, “Interesting…bring it up to the sweet zone of 85,000 to 95,000 words and I will review it.”

Holy Moly, that’s twice what I have written. I didn’t even know there was a “sweet zone.” I wrote back, “I don’t know if I can do it.” And here I have been espousing the way of the Disney Imagineers. They sometimes don’t know if they can do an assignment either, but they say “Yes,” bang their heads on their desks and do it.

The agent wrote back, “You CAN do it.”

I need to get over thinking I have to be brief so as not to bore people. I have to get over believing that writing is a self- indulgent endeavor. I once heard a psychiatrist complain about a writer—this was way before I considered being one—but his comment stuck in my craw. “Writing is self-aggrandizement.”

You know what?

That psychiatrist was full of shit.

Here was a supposed healer cutting people off from a source that could bring comfort in times of trouble, joy in times of triumph, and an opportunity to sparkle ordinary days.

Daughter Darling says that by adding more words the book will flow better, and so I begin thinking. I wonder when I began believing in the power of belief. I wonder when I became metaphysical. Life evolves slowly so that while once we were standing on the edge of a tar pit (or in it), we are now on the North Bank. Evolution dictates that when events happen you either change (evolve), move, or die. We chose moving, and, I believe, in the process changing.

And so I plant my butt in the chair, stare at the page or computer screen and begin, again.

After all, it is half-written.

 
"But listen to me. For one moment. Quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you." --Rumi

 

There's a mountain of sorting in our living room. It's Legos. DD's "Happy Bricks"

Do You Hear God Singing?

We lost Hope.

Remember Hope our stealth kitty?

She was a couple of months old when Daughter Darling, nine months pregnant with Baby Darling, clutched Hope to her chest and watched on television as Barack Obama, the first black man ever to win the Presidential nomination, was elected as President of the United States.

Hope had her shots like the other animals, and waited her 120 day quarantine before going to Hawaii with us. (That “quarantine” was no sweat; it’s just a waiting game, two rabies shots 90 days apart, a Vet’s clean bill of health, and 3 inches of paperwork.) She flew in the cargo hold of our Continental airplane, and after clearing animal control in Honolulu—all incoming animals have to do that—she was stuffed into a soft carrier, and graciously rode on the airplane with us under DD’s feet. She was always gracious and energetic. I didn’t think anything would catch her. She ran up the trees in Hawaii, onto the roof, skulked through the grass, her green eyes looking as though the grass’s color was shining through, and then when we left Hawaii she rode in her carrier to California where she was again our stealth kitty, tearing around outside, up on the rooftops, up the trees, down, catching rats and mice and rabbits and gophers. She slept on a box in our bedroom in the daytime, and perused the property at night. (Rats. It should have been the other way around. Coyotes and bobcats skulk in the night.)

My friend and fellow blog reader told me my blogs don’t tell her anything like they did in Hawaii. Have I been remiss? “Tell her about my life,” she said. Perhaps there isn’t as much angst going on here as in Hawaii—thank God, or it could be the exotic setting was more exciting. Now I’m just a Southern California gal—but God sings here as he does anywhere else on the planet—even when I’m sad over losing our wonderful kitty.

I wondered one day if Hope had some condition that a coyote was saving her from—she was thin, and her coat not as shiny as it had been, but how would I know, it was wishful thinking I guess—that there was some purposeful good in the event. I hated to think of random acts of violence hurting our kitty. (I know Coyotes have to eat, but not our cat. We would happily donate some gophers. How about that for a judgment.)

I ran across a phrase in the book, Breakfast with The Buddha by Roland Merullo. “God’s music is playing all the time, for everyone.” And now when I wake up I say I want to hear God’s music. I don’t mean the “music of the spheres” or any physical sound. I mean to be connected to that something we could call music. I think of Jerry Hicks who heard it when a voice spoke to him, “Drive on the sidewalk” and he did and thus avoided being involved in a multicar smash-up. “Why did I hear it and others did not?” he asked Abraham. “You were in tune,” she said. “It was there for all to hear.”

How many people would drive on the sidewalk on a whim? How many people hear the singing?

There is a ground squirrel outside my window running around in the grass—whoops, two squirrels—without Hope here they are becoming brazen.

One morning I went to my computer and found the following (see the picture). Daughter Darling borrowed my flash drive, and here she was returning it, held by a Lego Dinosaur, and with a motivational note propped on its side. DD has been selling Legos on EBay—sold a $300.00 unit yesterday.  She and Baby Darling do a ton of Lego sorting, categorizing—he will be the most Lego savvy kid in the world. Her site is called “Happy Bricks.” (click to see)

And from Daughter Darling who lives in Oregon:

July 17, 2011


Those of you who have been here a while know that I lost my beloved dog, Ashke in 2009. My family and I have been searching and waiting for the next great dog to come into our lives. On our way back from visiting family in California we picked up this little beauty. My 5-year-old, aspiring-Jedi-Knight-son, said he knew this was the one, because he dreamed about her.


Meet Natasha, a three-month old Silken Windhound puppy.
http://krautpounder.com/Newsletters/

(Scroll down, she's there, I couldn't copy the picture.)

This That and The Other Thing

A Jedi sleeping with his light saber.

We love living in Southern California, I am noticing, however, that since Temecula is a “planned” city, it is clean, sterile almost. It’s trying. The Old Town attempts to give some quaintness to the area. It has shops worth browsing, some restaurants that are reasonable. There is a hotel for sale in Old Town that is 150 years old.

Daughter Darling and I were quite attracted to that hotel and spent hours cleaning it up—in fantasy. We tore out everything but the external shell—I like the exterior—reminded me of a New Orleans hotel, the entrance right off the street, upper deck, back patio. It would make a great “Wedding Place” with its 100 year old Wisteria arbor in the back yard—brought over by covered wagon we were told. That’s a must keep, the antiques that abound in the house, in my opinion, have to go. It is on an acre of land, and has river frontage. I imagined keeping a Belgian draft horse there in a stable—it has to be magnificent, of course, along with a carriage for the Wedding couple if they are into that sort of thing. Wouldn’t visiting children love petting one of those big magnificent horses? We just need a financier.

I just read Honey, Rock, Dawn, a blog by Shreve Stockton, The Daily Coyote girl, that girl is a marvel, takes photos like an angel, writes like a dream. She is spending the summer in the mountains of Wyoming, off the grid, taking her animal family with her—Charlie, the coyote, and others. People resonate with her for claiming wilderness and freedom for herself—imagine being in awe every moment.

When I read of her boyfriend’s horse passing away I became sad again, hoping “my” horses are doing well and are being well taken care of. When she told of riding her horse Ranger in the snow, and the different gait he used, and the snowflakes hitting her flushed cheeks on the way home and closing her eyes and letting Ranger fly. I thought once again of Boots my childhood horse. One morning long ago—I wrote of it in It’s Hard to Stay on A Horse While You’re Unconscious, so if you read it forgive me—it was one of those times out of childhood emblazoned in memory. A foot or more of snow had fallen during the night. My dad couldn’t deliver the newspapers—he did that for his Mom on Sunday mornings—to the last couple of people on the hill above our house. He asked me to deliver them on Boots.

The morning brisk air, the horse excited and prancing beneath me, me sitting bareback and feeling his warmth, the footsteps giving that muffled scrunch scrunch as his hooves compacted in the snow, the air sparkling with frozen droplets—Boot’s dance, his breath in exhaled clouds, tiny ice crystals brushing my face, us being the only creatures out that morning, and our footsteps being the only ones marking the new fallen show.

Wow, that cooled me from the 100 degree heat we’ve been having.