Author: TravellinPenguin

This morning I have to take Molly to the doctor for her elbow. It pops out sometime. This is following another day when I book her into the hairdresser.  Grizzy has been the one that keeps me busy with the doctor but he seems to be doing okay now.  Grizzy is our black cat. He is only two years old.

No, Molly is not human.  She is our little silky terrier cross, madam of the house.  She is undergoing a series of anti inflammatory injections (once a week for a month, than once a month for—well, forever probably.) The hairdresser is really Woofer’s of Hobart and she will have a bath and a haircut. But she can’t get in until after mid February.  She will come home with a pink bow attached to her collar and she will think she is pretty special.

She will put our Odie into the corner after the vet appointment this morning.  Everything is always Odie’s fault. She is 13 and after several years of being second in command she is now the Queen Bee, in charge of one other dog and three cats.  There are few signs of slowing down.  She is a terrible manager. She is a bully, a disrespectful, narcissistic tomboy at times who blames everyone else in the household for anything she doesn’t like.  She will turn up at the vet’s office, be sweet as pie. Butter wouldn’t melt……  “What a sweet dog you have” the nurses will coo. What an act. She can really turn it on.  But once home, she will run in the house, find Odie, who is at least 4 time her size and

put him in the corner with lip raised. It is his fault she had to go to the vet’s. Everything in life is his fault.  Odie almost rolls his eyes and gets on with life. He knows how to ignore her. After a sideways glance at me, as though to say, “Do you believe her?”   Then she will jump into Mr. Penguin’s lap and give him kisses. She is a daddy’s girl. He lets her get away with murder. I make her behave. I tell her things she must do. She looks at me, walks over to him, and jumps in his lap….then looks at me. “What are you going to do about it?” she challenges.  What a laugh.

I started this post, ready to write a quick “what did I think about” the book Extinctions by Josephine Wilson. When I put my fingers to the keyboard, Molly popped into my head. By the way, we call her Monkey.  That is her nickname and she responds better to that than Molly.  For 13 years she has been our Monkey. I will write about Extinctions soon.  But the sun is shining, it looks to be a beautiful day. I have a meet up later in the morning for a coffee with a friend in the city.  It is too nice a day to write about a book about a grouchy old man and the regrets he has as he looks back on his life. He realised the truths of his life way too late. As much as I enjoyed this book, and I really did, today is too nice of a day to not pay attention to what is going on around me.  So this morning I am appreciating my little monkey and I am grateful she lives with us.

Brother Long Spring Day

This week’s short story came from the book Stories From Beyond the Clouds, An Anthology of Tibetan Folk Tales. It is a book of Tibetan folk tales and an easy and enjoyable read.

Sangay Khando was the lovely daughter of an old and cranky mother. The mother would never let Sangay ask questions so she didn’t know much.

They never had enough to eat although a lovely jar of rice was stored in the cupboard. She was told to never fix it. It was being saved for the “Brother Long Spring Day”.  One day while home alone a very old and tired monk came to the door telling her he had travelled far and was hungry.  He told her he was “Brother Long Spring Day”. She fed him the rice.

“Brother Long Spring Day” really meant the longest day of spring had arrived and was not a person at all. She fixed the rice for him, saved some for herself and her mother who she knew would be tired and hungry after work.  The monk seemed to know about her terrible mother and told her she could always find a home in the mountains with him. He knew a great deal about her.

You can figure the rest out.

Mother came home, was very angry and threw her daughter out of the house. She lived with the monk for several years, being taught Buddhist principles of kindness, mindfulness actions and the Buddhist scriptures. She was happy living with the monk and his pet rooster and cat.

One day, when she was fetching water she came upon the king’s men who spied her and followed her. They saw she left footprints in the snow shaped like lotus blossoms.  They knew she was special. She was a human Dhakini who was right up there with the faeries.

The monk knew these horsemen to be servants of the King and that they needed a Princess for his son to marry.  The monk explains she will one day marry the prince. She is covered in beautiful clothes and has more food than she has ever seen.

She sadly leaves the monk, marries the Prince and one day a poor beggar woman arrives at the castle. Yes, you guessed it, her mother.

She takes her in, she is dying and houses her for 7 days.  She cannot tell her history to the prince. It slips out though as she forgets to be mindful. The prince asks a lot of questions and she convinces him to leave her alone for 3 days. He agrees. With that, she secretly rides through the night to consult the monk. What should she do? She cannot tell him the history of her childhood and her mother. The monk organises for her to return home and come back with the prince. When they return there is a large castle, lots of servants and her mother has come back from the dead. It is really the monk in the form of the mother.  A good  deed done, they all go home happy. The monk is released from this life on earth to disappear into the ether, through the rainbow hued sky and join the Dakinis and faeries.  Every one is happy.

It finishes with: Sanghay Khando, the human Dakini, realised her mission in life. The wind was blowing through her hair, the birds were returning from their journey to foreign lands. She felt the sandalwood beads and was at peace with the world.

For a Sunday afternoon that is pleasantly warm, the windows are open and not much to do this was a pleasant read. I haven’t read fairy tales in many years and I think this little bit of escapism into the folklore of Tibet will be a bit of fun. There was even an illustration in this story.

Deal Me In Challenge- The Six of Clubs

This short story book of Chinese tales was published back in the 1930’s. The stories are quite short.  I have had a look at several and they are fairly obscure and the themes are sparse.  I am not finding them to be of a depth of thought I am currently craving.  I am thinking as it is the beginning of the year I am going to swap this book out for another book of short stories.  The Magnet is a simple tale of a teenage boy during the 1930’s named Yuan who wants to leave home, leave school in winter and join the rebellion against the Japanese.  Not much is said about the actual revolution. The title refers to him being attracted to the new adventure “like a magnet”.  The magnet is a very obscure theme related to his attraction to do something he feels is important rather than his uncles telling him he will become a teacher, which he doesn’t want to do.

His mother doesn’t want him to go, he has no money to do so and he won’t accept money from anyone who might want to give him some. He feels angst about the whole situation and in the end he leaves home.  The story is only about 4 or 5 pages long and the conflict was simply stated.

I realise Japanese literature at times can be quite obscure but this was so obscure it almost doesn’t exist.  After reading this tale I read some other tales from this book and decided the overall book is not what I am looking for in a book of short stories. I want something that is a bit more applicable to my sometimes obtuse mind.

The book has already been consigned to the bag headed for the Tip Shop Book sale, where it came from in the first place.  

I doubt Yuan will spend many years in my mind as I continue through life.  What do you do with books you begin to read when they just don’t stack up (no pun intended) ?  Now, to go back to my shelves and find another book of short stories to replace the Ace to the King of clubs.