At an art exhibit many years ago, I saw a wooden sculpture of a cat sitting atop a metal climbing frame, entitled "Little Tiger in the House." How I would love to see that again, but I don't know where to find it or who the sculptor was. How could I have neglected to write that name down?
Two of my own Little Tigers in the House
Josef (left, in 1993) & Pine (right, in 2007)
Same Chairs: Refinished & Reupholstered
In observation of the Year of the Tiger, here a few of my favorite fortune cookie proverbs that I have saved over the years.
1. "Answer just what your heart prompts you."
As I was once advised in real life (not in a cookie) when I was mulling over a potentially very bad decision: "You can go ahead and toy with that idea all you want, but I don't think your psyche will ever let you do it." How reassuring to think that my psyche was on the job, looking out for me, prompting me.
That thought has never left me. Even now, it is very reassuring to think that my psyche should care so much about me and be so trustworthy, that at some level, I have my own best interests at heart -- not just selfishly, but protectively! I am not self - destructive. The capacity to choose correctly is already within me, quietly working away on my behalf, giving me the confidence to answer just what my heart prompts me!
As Steve Jobs advises, "Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become" (Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005).
2. "Stop searching forever, happiness is just next to you."
Not in Oz. In Kansas.
3. "Launch a regiment for a new healthier you!"
This is my all - time favorite. I like the idea, even if unintentional, that it might require more than a "regimen" -- it might require a "regiment"! You have to be aggressive in the quest for health and happiness!
I don't recall exactly when or where these fortunes came into my life, but I've had them magneted to three successive refrigerators for well over a decade and have transported them with me through two moves -- that's how much I value them!
I carefully removed them from my refrigerator in 2001, and packed them for our move across town, from one side of Philadelphia to the other; and again in 2004 when we returned to Indiana. Just little scraps of paper, but I'm hanging on to them. So many others have gone by the wayside -- all that take-out, all those buffets -- but these three are keepers.
Fortune cookies always remind me of that section in The Joy Luck Club, when the Joy Luck Aunties first come to America and find work at the cookie factory, inserting silly, pointless fortune-like dictums into the hot cookies as they come off the assembly line: axioms such as "Money is the root of all evil. Look around you and dig deep."
Auntie An-mei then translates back into Chinese for Auntie Lindo:
"What is this nonsense," I [Lindo] asked her, putting the strips of paper in my pocket, thinking I should study these classical American sayings.
"They are fortunes, she [An-mei] explained. "American people think Chinese people write these sayings."
"But we never say such things!" I said. "These things don't make sense. These are not fortunes, they are bad instructions"
from The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, 262
It's true. Break open your fortune cookie or your Christmas Cracker and more often than not you will find some ridiculous little proverb whose so-called meaning evaporates even as your read it aloud. Luckily, though, every once in awhile, Fate makes an exception and offers an idea you can run with, one that will speak to your heart and bring you Good Fortune.
Joy Luck: "It's not that we had no heart or eyes for pain. We were all afraid. We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. . . . What was worse . . . to sit and wait . . . Or to choose our own happiness? . . . So we decided to hold parties and pretend each week had become the new year. . . . And each week we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our only joy. And that's how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck" (from The Joy Luck Club, 24 -25).STAY TUNED FOR
Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, February 28th
Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
Looking for a good book? Take a look at
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com
A couple more good ones that appeared in a timely fashion just a few months before a family get - together (no kidding!):
ReplyDelete"A family reunion in the coming months will be a tremendous success!"
and
"Your family is one of nature's masterpieces!"
TWO MORE:
ReplyDelete"The world is a beautiful book for those who read it."
http://kittislist.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-world-is-beautiful-book.html
and
"The harder you work the luckier you get."
ReplyDeleteTWO MORE:
"The world is a beautiful book for those who read it."
http://kittislist.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-world-is-beautiful-book.html
and
"The harder you work the luckier you get."
http://dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com/2012/08/dyfj.html