Vids + The Pill: OTC + Zumba + Nina Schuyler Gives Nature a Voice – Happiness Between Tails by da-AL

Horrifically, as of 2022, Roe v Wade was overturned. U.S. women are denied constitutional protection to terminate unwanted pregnancies. That’s why (when I took a break from querying agents to represent my novels) last week I did a double-take at Costco, then broke into a jig, at the sight of Opill. The women’s daily contraceptive pill is affordable and finally sold OTC/over-the-counter prescription-free!…

 

 

Smiling the entire drive home, I stuffed the groceries into the fridge and zoomed over to a nearby Zumba class. Yup, Zumba, the all-out dance party workout, is stronger than ever. Only a few months ago, I started attending and now I wish I’d started earlier. Everything about it is a celebration of health and good cheer, from the music and the moves, to the super friendly students of all fitness levels, shapes, sizes, ages, and genders…

 

 

The writing of today’s guest also celebrates life at its best. Short story writer/novelist/author Nina Schuyler has penned an impressive list of award-winning fiction and non-fiction that I urge you to check out at her site. Today she explains how she pushed through self-doubt to include Nature’s voice in her short story collection, IN THIS RAVISHING WORLD

Black and white portrait of Author Nina Schuyler
Author Nina Schuyler

Anthropomorphizing Nature by Nina Schuyler

After one of the many California wildfires, Governor Gavin Newsom stood in a charred forest, the ground blackened, the trees blackened, a land stripped of life, and said, “Nature is talking.”

I’d already begun writing story after story, set in the Bay Area, a full cast of characters responding to the climate crisis. An older woman who devoted her entire life to saving the planet falls into debilitating despair. A young boy who lives in urban blight wants to bring nature to his neighborhood. A ballet dancer tries to inhabit the consciousness of a rat. Interconnected stories, one leading to the next, suggesting the intricate weaving that is the world. What if I added Nature?

I had no idea how to write the voice of nature. An imaginative leap, for sure. Is it even possible to embody nature, a word so loaded with interpretations and imagery? But why not try? Writing– all art–is equal parts play and rigor.

The unknown is familiar land for the fiction writer. Often, we find ourselves groping in the dark, hands outstretched, trying to sense a shape, a mood, an atmosphere. What’s that up ahead? Is it moving? Friend or foe? So it went with inventing the voice of nature. At first, Nature was enraged with humanity. How could Homo sapiens cause such destruction in such a blip of time?

When I mentioned to a friend I was anthropomorphizing nature, he asked, “Are you writing a children’s book?” His reaction didn’t surprise me since, for most adults in the West, the last encounter with anthropomorphism was in childhood. I remember reading as a girl and to my son many lushly illustrated books with talking frogs, dogs, cats, spiders, on and on. My friend’s comment did do something to me: it awoke doubt.

I reminded myself that when you write something that doesn’t adhere to the dominant paradigm, people will question it, criticize it, say it doesn’t work, and gently try to lead you back to the traditional form. On the other hand, when you take a risk and create something different, it’s not only thrilling, but it can give people a new way to see the world. Isn’t this the role of fiction?

I tried again, and this time, Nature’s voice veered too far into the poetic, speaking with such eloquence it seemed far removed from the human world. But there, a small paragraph–I’d written a small shimmery section in Nature’s voice that sounded right and true:

“We’re enmeshed, we always have been, tightly knitted together whether you like it or not. Our lots are cast together, and as things have become more urgent, we’ve become even more entangled, fine threads connecting us, billions of them. I’m not sure what to do because the alarm bell is ringing. Do you hear it? I know the sound waves are in your frequency.”

Here was a cadence, a rhythm, blending into a voice talking right to the reader—Nature’s voice like a hand reaching for the reader’s hand, or like a mouth near an ear. A voice full of compassion and grief, a voice pleading and searching for joy and beauty. Doubt crept back into its dark corners, and I kept writing. When I read in science journals that octopuses can use tools and bees are talking to each other, and bats, too, are talking, I got a surge of energy. What do we know, truly? Maybe I’m not anthropomorphizing at all; maybe I’m in the realm of realism that is only now being studied.

Nature’s comment about being “enmeshed” with humans led to a structural decision: Nature’s voice would weave in and out of the stories as an omniscient first-person voice. I kept going, revising and writing more. As the collection slowly took shape and I became more assured, maybe, I thought, Nature has something powerful to say, and maybe we’ll finally listen.

Do you experience nature as a tangible entity?

Source: Vids + The Pill: OTC + Zumba + Nina Schuyler Gives Nature a Voice – Happiness Between Tails by da-AL

Glaciar del Ródano: el cambio climático a toda velocidad – Stigmatis

El aumento de las temperaturas está derritiendo glaciares en todo el mundo. Dos fotos de vacaciones tomadas por una pareja británica en Suiza muestran la gravedad de la situación.

El matrimonio Porter en el glaciar del Ródano (2009 y 2024). Imagen: Duncan Porter, @misterduncan/X.com

Source: Glaciar del Ródano: el cambio climático a toda velocidad – Stigmatis

The Cards We’re Dealt | From Behind the Pen

Life, Encouragemnt, Courge

Image Credit: Peter Griffin

Life is like a card game. The dealer distributes cards that you have no idea what they hold until you flip them over. From that point, depending on which game you’re playing, you will have to devise a strategy to play with the cards you are dealt, in an effort to win the game.

Should you hold them or fold them? Do you play or run away? If only life decisions were that easy, we wouldn’t have a thing to worry about. Sometimes life deals us a great hand, with a win-win situation. It’s like you have the Midas touch no matter what!

Some days you may feel like you’re playing a game of Solitaire, finding yourself alone, trying to figure out the next move, and having to start all over again until you get the sequence right. Other days it seems like you’re playing a game of Blackjack where there is a strong adversary whom you feel you have to defeat quickly and defiantly. Many times, you often feel like you’re playing a long game of Poker, where you are competing against some hardcore opponents for a long, hard fight just to get ahead.

While card games typically have guidelines to go by, life has no foolproof instructions that can guarantee you will avoid pain, heartache, and disappointment. Yep, life is a gamble in the game of chance. If you play your cards with divine instruction, you will develop divine wisdom to be in step with the life-changing, life-enhancing moves you make, and reap the rewards from the life lessons you learn.

Image Credit: Pixabay 

Source: The Cards We’re Dealt | From Behind the Pen

Una caja para tontos – Santiago Galicia Rojon Serrallonga

Derechos reservados conforme a la ley/ Copyright

Existen, en determinadas plazas comerciales y en algunos espacios públicos, vitrinas de cristal con una serie de muñecos de peluche acomodados con cierta intencionalidad, y un mecanismo que, a cambio de una moneda, el público manipula durante algunos segundos con el objetivo de tratar de sujetar uno de los juguetes y hacerlo suyo. La mayoría no lo logra porque se trata de un equipo diseñado para dificultar la captura de muñecos. Siempre que miro esos aparatos, pienso que se encuentran en espera de incautos, soñadores, tontos e ilusos dispuestos a gastar y derrochar su tiempo y su dinero en anhelos frustrados, en la ambición y en el intento de conseguir un muñeco que minutos antes no planeaban adquirir y que coincidieron, inesperadamente, en el camino. Ante la ausencia de historias enriquecedores e interesantes en la vida, los que logran atrapar un muñeco -el que sea- son considerados personas afortunadas, hábiles y exitosas. Asombran porque la mayoría pierde. Es una mofa, un juego, una comedia, una aventura. El sistema eléctrico y mecánico está manufacturado para complicar los intentos de sujetar y extraer alguno de los muñecos indiferentes a los deseos de la gente. Igual es la vida. Alguien, y otros más, imponen gustos, modas, sueños y tendencias. Enajenan, manipulan y controlan. Su plan tiene cierta intencionalidad. Son los que están desarticulando a las familias y las instituciones, confundiendo y rompiendo a las generaciones jóvenes y llevando a cabo acciones para destruir los modelos actuales e imponer un gobierno que a nivel mundial se apodere de la voluntad humana y de los recursos naturales y minerales del planeta. Solo hay que voltear a un lado y a otro, en el mundo, para comprobarlo.

Derechos reservados conforme a la ley/ Copyright

Source: Una caja para tontos – Santiago Galicia Rojon Serrallonga

79º aniversário do bombardeio de Nagasaki e texto lido por dos sobreviventes – Japão para Românticos

O representante dos sobreviventes da bomba atômica, Seiichiro Mise, lê o Juramento pela Paz em uma cerimônia de paz que marca os 79 anos do bombardeio atômico de Nagasaki, no Parque da Paz na cidade em 9 de agosto de 2024. (Mainichi/Kenji Ikai)

Inicia-se hoje no Japão o feriado nacional Obon Yasumi, feriado prolongado dedicado às vítimas do bombardeio de 1945 que atingiu Hiroshima e Nagasaki. A cerimônia de Paz marca 79 anos do bombardeio atômico com um discurso de Paz pelo representante dos sobreviventes, confira abaixo:

“Toda vez que vejo um relógio de parede parado em 11:02, lembro-me do pesadelo de 79 anos atrás.”

Source: 79º aniversário do bombardeio de Nagasaki e texto lido por dos sobreviventes – Japão para Românticos