Inanimate objects of no great beauty become art in a still-life painting. So why not turn myself into a painting! But, I say to myself while lying on my kitchen table posing as if I were a basket of fruit, I wonder what good will it do if there is no one around to paint me?
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Myths are for grown up, fairy tales are for children. But sometimes nostalgic grown- ups long for their childhood and often find solace in fairy tales.
Scottish folklorist, Andrew Lang (1844-1912), set about collecting fairy tales from all over the world. He relied much on his wife, Leonora Alleyne, and a team of female editors. Mrs. Lang, feeling that some of the fairy tales collected would not be appreciated by an Anglo-Saxon mentality, took the liberty of “restyling” the stories to make them culturally more accommodating. One such story is “Kisa the Cat”.
Kisa was the daughter of the Queen’s smoke colored cat with cerulean blue eyes. And when the Queen had a daughter of her own, Ingibjorg, Kisa became the best of friends with her. But one day Kisa disappeared and couldn’t be found.
The years past. One morning, while playing in the garden, Princess Ingibjorg saw Kisa and went towards her. But Kisa escaped back into the forest.
The next day Ingibjorg went to the forest looking for Kisa but, instead, encountered a giant who cut off her feet. Luckily Kisa came along and took the princess home to nurse her then snuck into the giant’s home to recover Ingibjorg’s severed feet. Now the princess could walk again. The Queen & King who were so grateful that they offered Kisa a reward. But all she wanted, she said, was the chance to sleep at the foot of Ingibjorg’s bed.
The next morning, the princess woke up to find not a cat lying next to her but another beautiful princess. It was Kisa who explained that she’d been placed under a spell by an evil fairy and couldn’t be freed from the spell until she’d done a kind deed.
I’m not really sure what the moral of the story is supposed to be—shouldn’t an act of kindness be spontaneous and not a kind of barter where you hope to get something in return?
Like the fairy tales, it looks like the meaning of kindness has been edited, too.
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The vagus nerve, part of the parasympathetic nervous system, is like a super highway that transports information from one organ to another. If the vagal tone is low, it will not function properly. Stress is the main cause of a lethargic vagus nerve.
Among the many things that can help stimulate the vagus: deep breathing, meditation, and singing. But there’s also the cold. Exposed to the cold, the body adjusts to the new temperature–sympathetic activity decreases whereas parasympathetic activity increases. With this in mind, I often go to the sink to splash myself with cold water.
Once upon a time, women were goddesses but, when the boys took over, all that changed. If I can’t be a goddess, at least I should feel like one. And, if my vagus nerve is in the dumps, that’s just not possible.
Today I read this article: Kindness Towards Oneself and Others Tones Your Vagus Nerve. Kindness seems to be a powerful medicine. But there is so much animosity going around these days that it’s no wonder so many of us are feeling down.
Maybe, from my balcony, I should start throwing buckets of cold water onto the people walking below. Do you think they would smile?
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I went to the woods to pick some flowers. While standing next to a tall cypress with a bouquet of daises in my hand, a big beam zapped me up into the sky. I felt my molecules swirl around as if they were in a blender ready to whip out margaritas.
When I got inside the spaceship, it was obvious that my abductors were not pleased. They kept pointing at me and shaking their heads. Then, without moving their lips, they put a voice in my head that said “you’re too old for our experimentation” and quickly zapped me back home.
So that’s just one more positive thing about getting older—aliens don’t want to make babies with you.
Too bad they kept my bouquet, though.
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An alligator’s brain wouldn’t even fill a tablespoon. But the little that’s there is very cunning.
To trick birds looking for materials to build their nest, alligators will balance sticks on their heads. And as the birds lower themselves to take the sticks, the alligator will open its jaws and eat them alive. Chomp!
But birds have their tricks, too. They build their nests in the trees overlooking the alligator hangout because it assures them that nest-raiding racoons and possums will stay away. But the big-jawed bodyguards expect to be paid. And this payment comes in the form of chicks that accidentally fall from their nest or because they’ve been pushed out by their parents as a form of birth control.
Yin yang.
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The Narrative Within 