Jump Tall Buildings, Chase Cowboys

What’s the Right Thing to Say? The Joys of Self Sabotage

Jump Tall Buildings, Chase Cowboys

Jump Tall Buildings, Chase Cowboys — You Gotta Go With What You Got

In This Moment
Just to repeat last week’s news!

You likely know that I have a separate site for my books–The Phoenix Centre Press. I mention this because Darbella and I have been editing a work of fiction from a new author, W. Asher Charles.

The Kindle Version is available for pre order here. I’ve linked to Amazon.com; if you shop at other Amazon locations, just search for W Asher Charles.

The book is quite fun, and we’re glad to have helped out, getting it ready for a June 1, 2015 release date.

The book is called Walking Through, and it’s a sci fi adventure complete with a Zen flavour, ninjas, sex, and the multiverse. (Please note! Adult content!)

From the back cover:

Roberta Thatcher is fresh out of grad school, dating her roommate’s father, and starting a new job at a company known for its secrecy and weirdness.

And that’s the good news.

Roberta soon finds herself fighting for her life, trying to decipher the mysterious Newman Corporation, and to keep her hands off her hunky boss.

Then her younger sister cracks up, her much older ex becomes a threat, Ninjas start popping up everywhere, and Roberta is confronted with the reality of the dangerous Multiverse.

And the world goes on, oblivious to the dangers — wars, uprisings, provocateurs in our midst. Clueless right-wing politicians dither and distract with “anything goes” legislation, and the troubles only grow.

It’s up to Newman & Co. & Roberta to join the fray. To turn back the curse of the Red.

Sci fi. Sex. Ninjas. The Multiverse.

What more could you ask for?

We’ll be releasing it on Amazon by the end of the month. The paperback might be out just ahead of the release date.

If you’d like to read a sample (Amazon limits us to releasing 10% of the book as a preview, and it’s just over 110,000 words) we’ve set up a pdf of the first few chapters. You don’t even have to jump through hoops, just right click here, and then save the file to your computer. Then, if you like it, keep your eye out for a release e-mail.

Ride a Cowboy???

Darbella and I were having a leisurely soak at The Radium Hot Springs, and ambled over to the hot tub to raise the temp a couple. Not long after, a woman about our age joined us, and a great conversation ensued.

We asked her where she was from, and we eventually learned she was from Alberta, had spent years on cruise ships, and now was (like us) homeless.

We had to know how she was playing that one out, when she grinned a toothless grin, and said, simply,

“What do I need a home for? I have a camper van and a Master Card!”

We kept on gabbing, and she said, “I gotta stop talking, my mouth hurts.” She then went on to explain that she’d just had all of her teeth pulled, something I’d have to admit we’d immediately noticed. Seems that her dentist had discovered a class A infection.

She then announced that she was a week or so away from having her knee “done,” as in replaced, and they pulled her teeth a couple of weeks before, because… infection.

OK, so you’d think that that was a lot to deal with, right? No teeth, just gums, mouth pain, having to keep an eye out for infection, and on top of all of that, knee replacement looming, including the attendant hospitalization for healing and physiotherapy. (Thank Buddha she lives in Canada, eh?)

Anyway, if I was expecting a sob story (my mom had both knees done, and I know how weird it all is, and mom certainly let us know just how bad she thought it all would be…) I was not to get one.

She wrapped up the medical info with, and I’m paraphrasing, but only slightly,

“Shiny new teeth, great new knee! I’ll be leaping tall buildings and chasing cowboys… and now I’ll be able to catch them!”

How Zen.

The trick here is to leave off the spin, which might just be a way one could define Zen. By spin, I mean the interpretation one puts on what is right in front of us. The three types of spin are:

Positive — Pollyanna meets a flock of cartoon bluebirds
Neutral — It is as it is — Zen, the Tao
Negative — Archie Bunker at his finest

You’d think a positive attitude would be a good thing, so to speak, but consider: putting a positive spin on a situation often leads to acceptance of things, behaviours, etc. one would be better walking away from. This is different from having a positive attitude, which is a self-directed activity, as in “I fully expect to have an uneventful recovery.”

A negative attitude is just… tiresome. Assuming the worst of situations and others, typically in the guise of self-preservation, simply leads to dealing with life while miserable.

It is as it is, on the third hand, is actually so. No matter how hard you argue for another spin, what you see in front of has no “essential essence.”

This is why, when two people confront the same situation (say, our new friend, and my mom) and find two different views and approaches. One is not right, and one wrong. The only question is utility: “Is this approach helping or hindering me?”

I hear a lot of “Getting older is not for sissies,” and to some extent, at 64, I’m beginning to understand how that plays out. But it’s clear that the sissy part has a lot to do with how the experiences of the latter years are different from that of the younger years.

Well, duh.

The Zen is this: things and experiences are as they are, and we are as we are. Sure, we can diet and exercise, and work our brains hard, but at the end of the day, how life actually is, is occasionally toothless and with a wonky knee. It’s not meaningless that the three things that set The Buddha on his quest for enlightenment were sickness, old age, and death. There three markers invite us to explore more deeply, past the fear and suffering.

In other words, the issue is: “This is my life right now — what am I going to do with it?”

And remember, life is then something else. We make great strides when we work from where we are, with acceptance and a sense of humour. From this place, grace and laughter have a better chance of thriving.