MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

***MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT***
(Not to be confused with a Major Award)

So far, every word I've written unless it was marked as fiction has been gospel truth as far as I can remember it, but tiny fractures are about to appear for comedy's sake in the story I am currently writing, and this practice will continue going forward. 

I feel sure Jean Shepherd did the same thing in "A Christmas Story."

All these years until today, I have accurately recorded my family's history, planning to reveal the admittedly 

hard-to-believe horrors in hopes of helping someone else.

Now my paradigm has shifted and I think perhaps I can help an entire generation by painting the events with the humor that has largely saved me and my siblings in the same way Jean Shepherd's stories have touched so many people. 

Folks will be able to recognize the dysfunction but not be horrified by it. I mean, think about what poor Ralphie and his brother endure during "A Christmas Story"! 

Truth is fragile. Trust is even more so. This shift in my story telling method was not casually made. I have purposefully turned the crate "HIS END UP" (you might not have noticed that detail before, but the crate says "HIS" and not "THIS") before prying out the nails and throwing away the Excelsior, leaving only the Major Award: A grand tale. 

I realize I am besmirching a page that cannot be reclaimed -- the Page of Truth Telling -- and by going down this road, there is no going back; no one will ever again be able to believe what I tell them is true. 

This is a huge thing for me as a writer.

It is a scary step but as Joseph Campbell said, "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek." 

I've got my knee-high waterproof boots on and new batteries in my flashlight. I'm going spelunking.~~Ginger

Bonus Post: Paradigm Shift in the Henhouse

I've lived in The Truman Show the past nineteen years. It required an adjustment to process that fact, reconstruct my reality, to be able to move onward. 

Channel changed. Time for The Ginger Show now. :)

Only the Beginning

Such a wonderful, integral, fluid thing our Lives are. Whether we think it's a good or bad thing, each completion is merely the beginning of the next leg of the Journey. It's like water, really. There is no ending, no beginning, only Is.

Anglo English is so inadequate a language. I guess I need to become like Ambrose Bierce and create my own dictionary, providing words for the many, many concepts we lack words for.

Here is one: Mudita. Something I spend a great deal of time experiencing.

Mudita (Pāli and Sanskrit: मुदित) in Buddhism is joy. It is especially sympathetic or vicarious joy, the pleasure that comes from delighting in

 other people's well-being rather than begrudging it.[1] The traditional paradigmatic example of this mind-state is the attitude of a parent observing a growing child's accomplishments and successes, but it is not to be confounded with proudness as the person feeling mudita must not have any interest or direct income from the accomplishments of the other. [Wikipedia]

So, Dear Reader, let us experience mudita for one another, knowing it is never finished. Until tomorrow. ~~GHC