Featured Story: An Unlikely Love Story

October 26, 2009

Want to feel your heart get warm as you witness true love right before your eyes? This is a most beautiful love story told in pictures.  Thanks to my friend Patti for this touching story.

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This is Suryia the orangutan and Roscoe the Blue Tick hound.

The orangutan was in a rescue mission, depressed and not doing well.

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The old hound wandered in and the orangutan snapped to  as if his buddy had arrived.

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He stayed with the hound night and day until he was well.

In the whole scenario, the orangutan found a reason to live.

pic-7pic-8They are now inseparable, live at the Tigers sanctuary in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

AWWWW!  It’s never too late to find true love.


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Story of the Week: Amara and the River of Ages

September 8, 2009

female-shadowI stood at the edge of the clearing, hesitant to go in further.  I could see her sitting hunched outside of her doorway in the shadows of the tall pines.  I didn’t want to get any closer, afraid that somehow she would rub off on me.  Her name was Amara and they had told me that she was very bitter.  I was very curious to find out why.

She seemed very old as she huddled there, wrapped in a blanket.  Was she sleeping?  I made a noise to attract her attention but either she ignored me or she didn’t care.  I thought about running away but found myself stepping closer instead.  I could see into her house through the doorway and something looked very intriguing inside.  I had the sense that this was a woman of substance.  What had happened to make her so bitter?

I stepped closer and said hello.  She looked up slowly and stared me straight in the eye, cold and direct.  “What do you want?”  I felt a shiver of fear but I also saw something else behind that cold stare and I had to know more.  This was clearly a woman of depth.  What had happened to her?

She looked like she’d fallen back to sleep, so I tiptoed inside of the house, hoping that she wouldn’t notice.  But just as soon as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I felt her presence behind me and I knew that I had made a grave mistake.  I had entered her home without permission.

“I’ll show you what you have come to see.”   She walked towards the back of her shadowy home.  I saw bodies lying curled up, fetal and motionless.  “These are my babies.  These are my husbands.  They are all dead.  What more do you want from me?”  I felt shocked and embarrassed.  I was in a place that I didn’t belong.

A young girl appeared and said, “I am too young and she is too old.  So we live here together to make up the difference.”   I wondered what she meant by that.treasures

I asked the girl, “How did she get to be so old and bitter?”  “I can’t tell you that story,” she said.  “Only she can tell the story.  Go outside and sit with her.  She’s out back, under the tree.”  But as I looked around that lightless space, I saw many beautiful objects from all over the world, from many different cultures.  I knew that this was a woman with great treasures to share.  What had happened to cut her off from all of that?

I went out and sat at her feet, quiet and silent.  She sighed and began to weep and mumble something ever so softly.  I wanted to reach out and hold her hand but I didn’t know if it was polite or even appropriate.  Somehow she felt like an elder to me.

So many days I’ve thought of giving up

So many days I’ve felt I can’t go on

So many losses, so much pain

The rivers have dried up

The flowers have died

Why did the rivers dry up?  Why did she have so much pain?  I had to know but I dared not ask.  Suddenly I felt very hot and incredibly angry.  Fear shot through my body like a lightening bolt and I thought, “What is this?”  I looked at her and she was laughing.  “Now you know what I feel every minute of the day.  Life runs through me - my life, others lives, the earth, the universe, the cosmos.  I can’t stop it.  So I live here alone.  No one could put up with a woman like this.”

I wanted to say something to make her feel better but instead I started to cry rivers of tears and couldn’t stop.  I felt incredibly sad.  She was so beautiful, so full of passion and here she was living all alone, cut off from everyone except that young girl.  Wasn’t there anyone to love her?

She read my thoughts again.  “NO!“, she screamed.  “This is my fate.  You cannot change my destiny.  Who do you think you are?”  and she got up and stormed away.

I felt so badly.  I knew that I had crossed the line.  Maybe it was time for me to leave?  But I felt compelled to go even further.  I stepped towards the edge of the woods.  I saw the dry creek bed.  I knew then what I had to do, what I had come to do.

dry-river-bedDespite the circumstances I went down to that dry riverbed.  I took off all my clothes and lay down.  I stayed like that for 3 whole days and 3 whole nights, no food, no water.  I cried and prayed and cried and prayed.  I prayed for life to return to this woman’s heart - to all women’s hearts.  And so by the dawn of the 4th morning, the riverbed was filled up again and the flowers were beginning to grow.  Was it my tears or had the river spirit herself heard my pleas and returned?

I may never know the whole story but when I went back to Amara’s house, all of the lights were on and she looked happy and alive.  She was jubilant.  “Thank you for coming,” she said.  ” I know what you need too.”  And she reached into her pocket and gave me a wooden heart.  “Take it home with you.  Plant it in the earth.  It will find some roots.” heart-root

That was the last time that I saw her.  But they told me later that she had changed her name and found a lover who stayed with her always.  The flowers returned.  The river flourished.

and this is my story

just a story to tell….

Annie Hart
March 5, 1999

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Story of the Week - The Dare To Be Different Spoon Man

July 21, 2009

mrspoonbuttonmoonHe lay quietly in the soft darkness of the cutlery drawer, planning his strategy.  “Subtle but assertive, that’s what I want to portray.  I must show those other spoons that I’m not like them, complacent and dull with nothing to look forward to except the everyday routine of going in and out of the spoon drawer.  No, I’m definitely not like them.  Why I plan to do different things, see the world from a different perspective, be bold.”

The other spoons slept quietly, unaware of the storm that was brewing within the Spoon Man’s metal heart.  “I’ll just quietly tell them I’m leaving and that will be that.  No big deal and I certainly won’t let them intimidate me.”

The next morning he awoke with a nervous know in his body.  Somehow he’d gotten all twisted up in his sleep.  But determination to be free spurred him on.  He took a deep breath, looked around for one last time at his surroundings and reminded himself to be calm and gentle.  With the strength of Hercules he rose out of the kitchen drawer and boldly declared, “That’s it you guys.  I’ve had it!  I dare to be unique and I don’t care what you think.  I’m going off to live with the forks!”

The other spoons having been woken from their peaceful slumber, shrieked in horror, “You’ll do what?”

“I said that I’m going off to live with the forks….if it’s ok with you that is.”

The boldest spoon of all stepped forward.  “What in the world will you do with the forks?  I think that I speak for all of us when I say that I think it is a totally ridiculous idea and I for one won’t allow it.”  The Spoon Man was taken aback.  He hadn’t anticipated this type of reaction at all.  What to do now?

“I believe in you.”  It was the tiny dessert spoon 

“You do?”

“Yes, why I think that you are bold and brave and I’m really glad that you have the courage to be different.   I’ve been dreaming about these things all of my life but I would never have been able to come forth with them as you have.” spoons-in-love

The Dare to Be Different Spoon Man sighed.  One of those soft and encouraging sighs that show the effects of having one’s dreams realized in the bat of an eye.

 “Beautiful Miss Dessert Spoon, would you marry me and come to live with me in the unknown wilds of the fork compartment?”

 “Oh Mr. Spoon Man, you’re the spoon of my dreams.”

The End

written by Annie Hart about 1989

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