Happy New Year, 2010! It's a bright, sunny day here on Martha's Vineyard. In Edgartown at the Katama Roadhouse the outside thermometer registers 40 degrees at 9:00 a.m. My new digital, bathroom, scale registered 110.2 pounds, bare naked.
Sitting here at the divider-dividing the kitchen from the Great New Room, I can't see the birds eating at their outdoor dining table, AKA the rotting picnic table patched with a large piece of plywood on which I've spread lots of bird seed.
Today I put up a suet feeder for the woodpeckers. Hope they come to it. I'm going to put out the goldfinch feeder which holds Niger seed and another Yankee Droll feeder, one with a seed-catching plate, to augment the lone feeder the chickadees love and share with the "English" sparrows and house finches.
It's just as well that I'm not at my dining room table with binoculars watching and identifying the birds. When I walked over to get something off the table a minute ago, the crows, always so jumpy, flew off. I spoiled their good time eating.
So maybe it's best that I feed them, watch them a bit, and leave them to feed without my watchful eyes. Who does want someone to watch them eat, anyhow?
When I woke up this morning I repeated the phase taught to me by Christopher Riley, otherwise known to me as Chris, years ago, who became Topher later on. Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit.
In my twenties Chris told me the legend. I don't know who told him or where it came from. You must say Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit as the first words you speak in the morning on the first day of the month. It will bring you Good Luck for the whole month.
It was very difficult for me to remember to do that in my twenties and thirties, forties and fifties and still harder to do. Sleeping alone made it easier. No one to talk to or answer to when I awoke, but still, trying to remember to say those words, before answering the phone or groaning awake, groggy with not enough sleep or a head full of dreams, was difficult.
Before I went to sleep on the last day of the month I would sometimes remember what I needed to do when I woke up the next day, but when I awoke I would have forgotten and I was destined to have Bad Luck, or at least that was the way I interpreted the legend, for a whole month until I had the opportunity to try again.
Months went by without me being able to simply wake up on the first of the month, say Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit as my first words and go about waiting for the Good Luck to come to me all through the upcoming month.
On occasion, very few occasions, I did wake up, say "Oh" or something like that, try to discount that I had said anything and loudly repeat "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit." I knew in my heart of hearts I was cheating, but I was desperate to have some Good Luck, especially in my twenties. Those years I remember as turbulent. Some happy times, but some not so happy times too. I needed Good Luck and I wanted Good Luck every month, all the time.
I don't remember when I finally got it right the first time. I do remember being so shy and embarrassed about my need to have Good Luck and my preposterous belief or was it a superstition? (I didn't want to think of myself as superstitious or have someone else think of me as superstitious). I do remember being so shy and embarrassed about my need to have Good Luck that if I were sleeping next to someone when I woke up and I remembered to say Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, I would mouth the words so my bed fellow couldn't hear or see me repeating Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, instead of speaking those words out loud.
This tact of mouthing the words, silently saying "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit" gave me fits. I asked Christopher to tell me what the rule was. Did I have to say Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit out loud? I knew those words had to be the first words out of my mouth, but did I have to say them out loud? " Yes," he told me. You have to say Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit out loud and they have to be the first words that you say when you wake up. Then you get Good Luck. There is No way around those rules.
So. I let the practice slide for a few years. Trying rather haphazardly, when I remembered, to say the words and wait for the Good Luck I was sure, well, not really sure, I was hoping, would come. Thinking myself "stupid" ( I always thought of myself as stupid, pretty much, anyway. It had been ingrained in me to believe that about myself someplace way back in my childhood, I suppose) and being "fearful" (I was afraid of almost everything too, but I didn't let that stop me from doing, some, things). Thinking myself "stupid" and fearful that I was becoming superstitious (no intelligent person is superstitious, I thought, and I wanted to be thought of as intelligent, even though I was pretty sure I wasn't) I kept this "secret" under wraps.
(I was very happy to read, while attending Art classes at UMB, about how superstitious Pablo Picasso was. He was hero of mine, an intelligent guy, certainly, and quite an artist. If he could be as great an artist as he was, and the whole world or, almost, the whole art world, considered him a great artist. If he could be as great an artist as he was and be superstitious there might be hope for me, an aspiring artist and perhaps someone who is, or was, superstitious.) But I digress.
As I said, I kept this secret under wraps. It wasn't a secret among some of my friends, for instance, Christopher, Ruth and a couple of other people I told along the way. Over the years, since my twenties, I am now in my sixties, I told more and more people. I always told people that a friend had told me about this and I didn't really believe it, etc., but it was a fun thing to try and do. A challenge.
I always liked a challenge, especially if there was some hope that I could perform. Do it. Performing spectacularly was what I always yearned to do, but for this particular challenge I simply wanted to be able to, Just Do it!
Many years have passed. I've learned to meditate, focus my thoughts, let a lot of the "chatter" in my mind take a hike while I'm concentrating on my breath and other good, positive thoughts. Listening to messages, really, from the interior. Every once in a while, and more frequently, the more I meditate, I hear my inner voice of wisdom that directs me today, rather than the outer voices of friends, family, advertisers and the general public that try to direct me away from my own true path.
So, this morning, January 1, 2010, I woke up, lay in bed remembering my dreams which I had intended to write down, but instead I'm writing this. Turned over. Looked at the clock, 9:02 a.m. Wow! I almost got 8 hours sleep.
And, I said Out Loud so no one could hear me, because No One was in the Katama Roadhouse but me. (I) "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit! Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit! Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit!"
I have a thing for threes and I wanted to be sure. Repeating something three times, I thought, would really reinforce the strength of my speech.
Hooray! I am going to, or I hope I am going to, have Good Luck for the whole month of January.
But, there is an added bonus here. If you/I say Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit on the first day of the month and it happens to be the first day of the New Year you/I will get, I hope, Good Luck for the whole year!
A fellow writer, (I love saying that, a fellow writer :-)) reminded me, when I read this to the Writer's Group at Howes House in West Tisbury in Janauary, that 1/1/10 is also the beginning of the next decade. WOW! Who knew? Ten more years of Good Luck. If I were religious, which I am definately not, I might think I'd been blessed.
Welcome 2010. I hope it's a year full of Good Luck.
Love and Best Wishes to All of you for Good Luck in 2010 and the coming years,
Frieda Artz Now (FAN)
Speaking of birds, for the entire winter as I walk along the sea wall, in the same place everyday I a see a single duck near the same pier. It has the shape of a mallard, but only half the size, and the really distinguishing feature is that it has a bill twice as long as a mallard's. It is a duck's bill. What is it?
ReplyDelete