The Dolphin

 

Your Monthly Magazine from Living Happy Center

November, 2013    

 

 

Carole Kane, Editor-in-Chief

 

Living Happy Center Writers Group:

 

Frank Clark, Maryann Hall, Glynis Hedley,  

Helene Herman, Bob Hogan

Dr. Brad Holway,  Dave Kane,

Rev. Victor Langhorne, Dr. Arthur Lewin, 

Debra Sanchez, Dimitra Savvidou

 

www.livinghappycenter.com  

 

 

 

in this issue
Thanksgiving Delights -by Joanna Fuchs
The Incident - By Dave Kane
"Cut and Run" - by John Pitsios
Smell the Coffee - by Dr. Arthur Lewin
The Hand of Fatima - by Dr. Brad Holway
 

Dear Friends,

 

Carole at FJ
Carole Kane 
M.A., N.C.C. 

 

Welcome to the November 2013 issue of The Dolphin where we present longer articles from the Living Happy Writers Group. This issue really highlights the variety and diversity of our writers. 

  

In our Poetry Corner we have "Thanksgiving Delights" by Joanna Fuchs, which reminds us of so many wonderful "Delights" for us to ponder as we sit down to our Thanksgiving feast.

 

Next, Dave Kane tells us of "The Incident" - but he doesn't tell whether it's fact or fiction.  Hmmm......

Then, if you've been wondering what you might cut out of your hectic schedule to make life a bit more fun, John Pitsios has some great suggestions, in "Cut and Run".

Next is a rather unusual piece, "Smell the Coffee",  from Arthur Lewin.  He's back at the "COFFEE AND CONVERSATION/No Laptops Allowed" Cafe, in the middle of the night, and he's talking to a writer named Noel.  Did you know that "Noel" is French for "Carole"?  Just sayin'...

And next, Brad Holway tells us about his trip to Mali to see the amazing Hand of Fatima, which he calls "an otherworldly sight". 

Happy reading!      
 

If you'd like to comment on any of our stories, just click here:  comments  

We'd Love to hear from you!    

 - - Carole - -

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Poetry Corner 

Thanksgiving Delights
By Joanna Fuchs
www.poemsource.com

On Thanksgiving Day we're thankful for
Our blessings all year through,
For family we dearly love,
For good friends, old and new.
For sun to light and warm our days,
For stars that glow at night,
For trees of green and skies of blue,
And puffy clouds of white.

We're grateful for our eyes that see
The beauty all around,
For arms to hug, and legs to walk,
And ears to hear each sound.
The list of all we're grateful for
Would fill a great big book;
Our thankful hearts find new delights
Everywhere we look! 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


The Incident  

 

 

By Dave Kane  

   

There was that strange sound again! It seemed to be coming from the fireplace but I could never figure out what it was.  It sounded like several pebbles being thrown into a plastic bucket.  

 

Every time I heard it, I would listen carefully for it again, to try to pinpoint it.  It would never happen while I was tracking it. This time I heard it while I was right next to the fireplace, listening.

I was ready for it and still couldn't find it.  I did notice something slightly different this time. There was a quiet hissing of air at the end.  It kind of freaked me out.  I started to stab the poker up into the chimney and shook it side to side.  I heard a louder hiss of air and then frantic scratching followed by an even louder handful of pebbles.  I gasped for air, dropped the poker, and found myself at the front door with my heart pounding.  I had no idea what it was, but I now knew it was alive!  I had never heard that sound from any living thing!

 

I walked back to the family room and looked toward the fireplace.  It was quiet.  I just stared, thinking about what I could do.  I realized that this thing was at least as afraid of me as I was of it;  otherwise it would have come out by now.  I turned and trotted down the basement stairs and came back with my large flashlight.  Then I ran upstairs and got my wife's hand mirror.   I was going to get the mirror under the chimney and then shine the light on it to illuminate the creature.  I wanted to see this thing.

 

Slowly, I started toward the fireplace.    I was a little scared.  I got the mirror on to the fireplace and then slid it in under the chimney.  I heard the pebble sound, which scared the hell out of me - and I was back at the front door, panting!  What the heck was it?  I had to find out.

 

I caught my breath and went back in.  The mirror had some soot on it but I would still be able to see.  I got closer and quietly positioned myself at a good angle.  I lifted the dark flashlight into position.  I thought this thing might freak out when I turned on the light, so I was ready to run.  I clicked on the light.  There was no sound, no movement.  I started looking into the mirror at all different angles so I could see better.

 

I noticed something a few feet up in there, but it didn't look like an animal.  It was dark grey, almost black.  I thought it might be a buildup of ash.  I got closer to the mirror.  I almost had the courage to reach up in there when there was some movement.  I watched closely as this thing actually turned its head to look down at me.  That's right... it had a head!  It was like nothing I have ever seen!  If I had to compare it, I would say the head of a praying mantis, but way bigger.

 

For some reason, I wasn't scared anymore.  I felt that I needed to help this thing.  I knew it was trapped.  It started making that pebble noise.  The hissing sound was from when it was breathing.  I heard the pebbles but somehow knew what it meant.  This thing was talking to me.  I sensed that it was not from our planet, but I still felt comfortable.  You would think I would be anything but calm.  There was some kind of mental connection.

 

I actually reached my hand up into the chimney.  I couldn't see, but I felt like I was being guided.  I was barely able to reach this thing.  It was soft and also bony.  The skin felt warm and familiar.  It reminded me of the first time I touched a girl under her shirt.  It was pleasurable.  The mental connection became stronger and I knew just how to get it out.

 

It had one of its limbs folded against its body and was wedged pretty good.  I was able to pull its limb downward gently.  Once I did that, I felt its full weight on my arm.  I lowered it down and out of the chimney.  We were looking right at each other.  It was only about a foot and a half tall.  Its head was fairly large for its body.  It had arms and short legs, larger feet and hands with lots of fingers.  It was obviously very delicate.  I felt its happiness to be free.

 

It glided toward me and I picked it up.  I say glided because its legs stayed still, but it still moved.  I took it to the front door because I felt like I should.  It was dark out.  I didn't want to put it down but I knew I had to.  I got onto one knee and gently put it on the ground.  It kind of hurt to take my hands off of it.  We studied each other for about a minute and then it glided away.

 

The further away it got, the more uncomfortable I felt.  When I could no longer see it or feel its presence, tears began to roll down as I realized what had happened.  I also had a great feeling of emptiness that I think I may feel forever.

 

I often think about it and wonder:  Why was it here?  How many are there?  Was it really from another planet?  Why the chimney?  And so on.  I think I was very lucky to have had this encounter.  It has changed me in many ways.

 

I have only told a few people about this.  I wanted to tell everybody but the reactions I've gotten from the few have taught me to be quiet.  I feel that the thing would want that, anyway.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

"Cut and Run"
Pitsios, John
 
By John Pitsios
                               

   

"If your right hand offends you, cut it off."  

It's just an analogy-- but it gets your attention. It's usually your thoughts, habits and sometimes predispositions that offend you.

 

As soon as I cut out the idea that people might judge me for being a stay-at-home dad, I adopted a shift in attitude. It didn't matter that I was one of two men dropping his kid off at school.  I noticed most guardians wear similar "I can't believe it's Monday again" expressions, be they woman or man. And maintaining the toddler household isn't a job for sissies, it's a respectable occupation.  With a little small talk I find myself blending right in. After school, other aspects of life can benefit from some cuts as well:

 

Dairy and wheat slowing you down? -- cut it out now. Try living without it for a few weeks and see if you are invigorated and delighted by how much more energy you have. A bag of Doritos every day after work? Make it baby carrots, celery or an apple. Picture 365 bags of Doritos next to 365 bags of baby carrots. And don't just finish that last slice of pie after scarfing the second-to-last one. Perfect a storage and rotation system for leftovers.

 

Cut parasitic dependence on electronics.  Eight hours of TV, Facebook or Angry Birds a day? Maybe remove two or three. Read a book, build a puzzle, build a bear, read a cookbook, plan a meal, come up with a random problem and itemize the steps to solve it. Go online or in a newspaper and do the first thing you see in today's events schedule. Sure your kid might not actually watch the soccer tournament -- but he won't be watching TV and will probably be less cranky with some fresh air.

 

Cut out some stress. Breathe in to relax your jangled nerves and envision a scenario or a place that puts you at ease.  Try to actually get yourself to that happy place. Or else go someplace that is totally chaotic and loud for a while. When you get home you might be inspired to move the furniture, pick up the flute, reupholster your study room chairs or start a home-based micro-brewery.

 

Then cut some clutter from your homestead. Go on the Craigslist free page and look at all the crazy stuff people are giving away.  I recently off-loaded 22 green vinyl shutters--which really beautified the side yard. One man's trash, as they say, is another man's treasure.

 

Cut out sedentary malaise. Can't get to or afford a gym? Unless you're on active duty at a nuclear facility, go out for a walk right now.  Not feeling your neighborhood scene? Get on a bus or train to a random stop and start off. Get lost and try to figure out where you are. A GPS may help, if you're directionally challenged.

Maybe just take the long way home.

 

Life isn't one big pile of repetitive dreck, it's a series of smaller, interconnected pieces that you should affect whenever you can. When it feels like your head is turning into a hat-rack, fight back.  

 

When we're doing, and not just thinking, we risk exposing ourselves to increased levels of creativity and fascination. Motion beats meditation. Try some today.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 


Smell the Coffee

By Dr. Arthur Lewin

 

The day was bright and gay, but early on the wind was cool and skies were gray. The sun came out and lit the trees in rainbow hues, as if Old Man Winter might skip us this time around, the perennial pipe dream that springs eternal at the height of fall.

 

That full-mooned night he could not sleep, and found himself wandering down deserted streets. He  ended up in front of a shop he'd never seen before, COFFEE AND CONVERSATION No Laptops Allowed. He entered and the man behind the counter struck up a lively conversation, or did he begin the palaver? At any rate he learned that the regular patrons were anyone under the sun, or rather the moon. They didn't open till sunset and religiously closed before dawn.  

 

The customers would read or talk or play chess or scrabble or scribble furiously in their notebooks (not IPADs in this electronics free zone) or just sit around and while away the time sipping black, acrid coffees or light sweet lilting brews from every corner of the globe.

 

It was just the two of them for quite awhile until suddenly a lady came in out of the night. She nodded at the proprietor and sat at the counter and arranged her papers. As she settled down, the proprietor poured her a pungent, hotly steaming cup.

 

"Noel," said the proprietor, "This is, this is..."

"Louis," said the night wanderer who'd just preceded her, "Louis Archer."

"Nice meeting you. I'm Noel, Noel Woods."

"Don't let me stop you," he said, "Looks like you have a lot of work to do."

"Work? It's not work, not work at all, in fact, it's the absolute joy of my life."

"Is that right?"

"Want to read some?"

"Some what?"

"Poems, short stories, essays, and the like. I put out a bi-weekly newsletter," said Noel.

"Hmmm. What's it called?"

"The Porpoise."

"The Porpoise?"

 

"Yes. Our writers roam free and wide across the ocean of imagination!"

"And what are they looking for? Wait. Don't tell me. . . They're looking for their porpoise in life?"  

"That's good. Very good! Why don't you write a piece for the next edition?'

"Naw. I'm not really a writer."

"Nonsense! Everyone is. Here take a look at this printout of our last edition."

 

He sat reading quietly for about a cup and half of the house medium blend. It was smooth and hot with a sweet brown taste. All the while she was rifling through her stack of submissions. Meanwhile, a few other insomniacs wandered in. Quite a motley crew. But that's another story, back to the one at hand.

 

He finally looked up and said, "I really like the one about the scruffy looking young couple with a baby on the way whose credit card didn't work at the supermarket checkout."

"Yes," said Noel. "And the cashier and the manager told the desperate looking youngsters to take the groceries home and come back with the money, knowing full well they might not, and they'd be stuck with the bill."

 "I love the way the story sort of wraps around itself" he said.

"Come again?"

"The author was so moved by that stunning act of generosity, she says to the cashier, 'That was so beautiful.' And the cashier goes, 'Yes, they were' thinking not one whit of herself, but only of those she helped. The cashier and the manager were incredibly kind. Thus, the reader's own spirit of generosity begins to stir."

 

"You see! You are a writer. You think and feel just like a writer," said Noel.  

"Anyone who read it would feel the same way," he countered.

 

"This edition of The Porpoise was about love, next month's is about -"  

"But was it love? Or was it generosity?" he asked.  

"Hmmm..."

   

"The supermarket story sort of segued smoothly into the tale about the elderly lady whose husband was in the Nursing Home," he said, "and how even though she was having a tough go of it herself, her whole life was built around helping him get through his pain and suffering."  

"Yes, that was touching, wasn't it?" said Noel.

 

"And that story flowed directly into the tale of the Sisters who had spent all their lives, devoted their entire lives, to helping others," said Louis.  

"They gave of themselves without thought of any recompense," she added.

 

"Yes. It started me thinking to myself, what happened to all those men and women who devoted their lives to giving me an education in my 12 years in parochial school? Where are they now? Have any of us come to see them in their closing years? Maybe I should. Yes, I should. . ." said Louis.

 

"Come to think of it," said Noel, "love and generosity are pretty similar, if not the same.  

"Now take the essay about returning to an African city many years later," said Louis.  

"Yes, she found that she still loved it nonetheless, despite its changes."  

"Yes, but remember that key line?"  

"Which one?" asked Noel.  

"Here let me show you," he said searching through the newsletter.                                           

 

"Ah, one of the most amazing and strange things in this multi-nation and multi-taste place are the flowers, the huge gardens, the swimming pools and luxury of the middle class - a luxury that in my country of origin applies only to the truly rich citizens. But not here! The middle class live in a happy, heavenly place environed and segregated by poor people. However, poverty is a status of relevancy. A poor person might be very rich within his community and even missing nothing, while a middle class man might be poor within his own, or feel so."

 

 

"Yes, she really touched a nerve there," said Noel.

 

"It reminds me of years, years ago," he reminisced, "I was way up in the mountains of Jamaica. I had been staying with family for a week, on vacation from college. And all of a sudden I looked around and noticed my surroundings, and what we were doing. We were all standing around, a group of men and boys, talking about something involving a tree, or was it a shack, by the side of the road. The road was not paved, just graveled, and some of the others wore tattered clothes. And it suddenly hit me! I am in the third world in the midst of poverty. But they didn't know that, and I didn't care. We were having so much fun. In fact, I almost did not come back. . ."

 

"Write about that!" Noel shouted.

"What?"

"Why don't you write about that moment in the hills of Jamaica?"

"But that's not a story."

"Anything is!"

"Anything?"

"Anything," said Noel, "any memory that resonates that hangs together in the mental cabinet of your recollections."

" 'Mental cabinet of my recollections', you are the writer, not me," protested Louis.

 

"Anything is grist for our mill," she insisted, "All you have to do is pick out some memory, some fancy, some desire, some pain, some joy, some -"

"But where do I start?"

"Start anywhere. Just sit back and look at life, 'Savor the moment,' like the gentleman in the story who could not get his ever-rushing young neighbor to just, just -"

"Smell the coffee!"

 

"Right," said Noel, "just pause in the rat race, and observe, and think."

 

"About what?"

"Whatever, for example, what happened to you today, tonight?"

"That's right," he mused. "You have a pen? Can I borrow a piece of paper?"

"Here's a pad."

  

"Thanks," he said taking a deep breath, pen poised in mid air. He turned to her and said, "The coffee in here smells great, doesn't it?"

 

(CREDITS: Unconditional Love in the Supermarket by Carole Kane, The Oddest Couple by Dave Kane, Sisters of St. Dominic: 30 Years at Our Lady of Fatima by Bob Hogan, and Savor the Flavor by Frank Clark.  First paragraph inspired by October's Party by George Cooper.)

 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Hand of Fatima
 

By Dr. Brad Holway  

 

If it were in the United States, it would get hundreds of thousands of camera-toting visitors a year.  Instead, it sits in splendid isolation, a monument to its own solitude.  It rises suddenly, like a feverish dream from the arid scrublands and red dirt at the southern edge of the Sahara.  

 

A set of stone fingers, it is a quintet of sheer pinnacles thrusting some two thousand feet into the cobalt sky from the desert plain at its feet. It is called "The Hand of Fatima" after the daughter of the Prophet, her hand being a potent mystical symbol throughout the Islamic World.

 

A true wonder of nature, The Hand of Fatima is located in the fascinating nation of Mali, recently devastated by a bloody and confused civil war.  Tourists, even the most intrepid ones, fear chaos, so I'm sure it get even less visitors now than when I went there in 2005.

 

Hand of Fatima  photo brian mcmorrow We approach it by road from the west, through a landscape of red dirt and thorny bushes; occasionally we see an encampment of Fulani goat-herders.  The giant rock fingers soon dominate our sight as we near the place.  The sun glints off the rugged surfaces, creating a light-and-shadow effect that is mystical.  "It really looks like a hand", I murmur half to myself, half to my traveling companions.

 

We reach the place and park.  The Hand of Fatima looms over us, an otherworldly sight.  There are only two vehicles in the dirt-and-gravel parking lot.  One is empty.  The other, a French-made flatbed truck, has three Touareg men leaning against it.  We get out of our car and greet them with a "salaam".  They return our greeting.  

 

They are drinking bottled water, smoking cigarettes and laughing.  They point up to the nearest finger.  Some two thirds of the way up are three European rock-climbers.  "Some of you westerners are crazy; they tempt the Mercy of God," says one of the Touaregs in French, now wearing a serious mien.  "Better them than me", I answer and the reply triggers off a bit of that tentative laughter often shared by strangers.

 

We walk around for a while admiring the huge stone pinnacles and marveling at the silence of the desert.  We bid adieu to the three men and drive off.  I will never forget the sight of the Hand of Fatima in its grandiosity, its raw power and its magnificent isolation.

    

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

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 Stay happy,  Walk in the sunshine!  

Love your pets, and talk to your plants 

Revel in your family!  Treasure your friends!

  Help your neighbors!  Share your bounty!

Splash in puddles!!

And always, always give thanks !

 

 

 

The Living Happy Writers Group