Where Tigers Belch

"Where tigers belch and monkeys howl beyond that next turning of the canyon walls

.--Edward Arbery

Finding Your Passion--It will be where the tigers belch.

I saw that my little book, Where Tigers Belch, is available For Free on Kindle Direct. ("For how long? I don't know. They decide.)

That inspired me to offer an excerpt as you might read in a bookstore with a hard copy in your hands, while determining if you want to buy it.

Where Tigers Belch is that spot that lights our fire.

This road to the tiger will be an adventure. While adventures are often wrought with strife, and the possibility of all hell breaking loose is ever present, there is a gift at its end.

Joseph Campbell called it a "boom."

A boom is a gift the adventurer takes home to the tribe.

I read a story about a woman who wanted to watch soap operas all day. This was before smart TVs and Video recordings when we were forced to watch our favorite shows when the studios aired them. People often missed their favorite Soap Operas and thus missed out on some important plot twists. She decided to write a synopsis and print it in a little booklet that came to be known as The TV Guide. (Boom.)

Another successful entrepreneur loved her husband but was tired of his grunting and answering in monosyllables. She watched a show on training exotic animals and applied their training methods to her husband. It was, basically, "Reward what you like, ignore what you don't like." After collecting data, she wrote a book, What Shamu taught me about Life, Love, and Marriage. It was a rousing success and gave the tribe a new perspective.

To find what you want to do, Martha Beck suggested sitting in a room and allowing your eyes to glide over the objects found there. When a particular object attracts you, stop and ask yourself why you chose that. Next, write down its characteristics. Third, ask how those characteristics pertain to your business. And what business might that be?

Don't judge yourself. Be as stupid as you can. That frees your mind. Allow yourself to keep doing it over and over. In the process, you may hit on that one thing or more than one. You're allowed.

I tried the experiment. My eyes landed on a little plastic orange pill bottle on the bookshelf.

What attributes did it have? Well, it was a container that held something good and intended to be beneficial and healing. It was a small container, ordinary, apparently insignificant, but held mighty ingredients.

How could I use that as a business?

A webpage is that. Small, ordinary, apparently insignificant, but holds mighty ingredients.

You might have read Paulo Coelho's book, The Alchemist, where a shepherd boy begins a quest to find a treasure and something he calls his" Personal legend."

Here is another quest as a young college student sets off into the jungle to find her purpose and reason for being. And she declared it would be where the tiger's belch that she would find it.

Where Tigers Belch

Chapter One

You might think I spent the night quivering in my debris hut, listening for the footfalls of wild animals.

 I did.

 I'm joking. I slept like a relaxed dog with all four paws in the air.

 I was on a mission and wouldn't let a minor inconvenience stop me.

 Ahead was the goal of my life.

I spent yesterday walking, but when a washed-out area of the path dropped me in an avalanche of mud, I slid downhill screaming and grasping at the vegetation alongside my slippery slide. My careening stopped short of a stream, thank heavens, for my hands were scraped and my throat dry from the screaming, but I survived to the tune of the screeching and flapping of a great flotilla of birds filling the sky in a paint brush smear as though I had touched the brush to every color on my palette.

I washed my hands in the stream and ate one of the tuna fish sandwiches I had placed in a plastic container to keep them from getting mushed. I drank my bottled water and gathered sticks and debris for an enclosure where I spent the night.  

Now you might be waiting for me to fall on my nose, and I may—I slid down the muddy slope, didn't I? But what if we travel through life knowing it will turn out well for us?

 I crawled out of my enclosure, stripped off my clothes, and bathed in the stream.

 Figuring that the stream—which flowed at a pretty good clip—was pure, I filled my empty water bottles.

 And when I put the bottles into my backpack, I found a surprise. (Did I tell you I had lost my backpack on the way down that embankment and had to climb, holding onto vegetation for support, back up to get it? I slipped back down again--but I had saved my backpack.)  I had used this pack before and had left a pen and a paper pad in its zipped-up compartment—Good. I searched to see if I had anything else tucked away.

 I found three sticks of gum, old and dried up, a chocolate mint from a restaurant long ago, melted, flattened, and re-set, but still in its foil wrapper. A few crumbs of left-over peanuts left salt in the bottom of the pack. I dipped a wet finger in the salt and licked my finger. It gave me the taste of having potato chips –a good after-taste to my tuna fish sandwich.

 Okay, dry, dressed, fed, and invigorated after that cold bath I began skipping down the new path.

 After that fall from the path above, I felt that destiny thrown me onto this path. Besides, following a stream leads somewhere. Water goes downhill, not in circles, as I am apt to do.

What if I get lost, I think as I walk along—a moment of doubt. What if I run out of food or get eaten by a tiger?  Well, I'd be dead. I don't know where I am now anyway. I might as well proceed. I'm determined.

I take off my tee shirt, dip it in the stream, and put it back on to cool my steaming body. I sit beside the stream, gather some reeds, and weave them into a ratty-looking hat. It protects my head, and the wet grass helps keep me at a tolerable temperature.

 I keep walking; the sun beats down hot, and it is mucky under the forest's canopy.

 Occasionally a monkey screams at me, sometimes they sing in a full-on chorus of screeching, but I keep on.

 Another night in the jungle? What did I get myself into?

 Suddenly I hear someone humming.

 Am I coming upon an encampment?

 I stop and hold my breath as I peer through the jungle thicket. I see only one hut.

Standing there where I am, hidden in the trees, I see an old woman come out of a shelter. Her white hair frizzes out in a tangle flowing down her back. She is wearing a sarong tied above her bosom. Her shoulders are bare. She ambles, carrying a jug to the stream where she dips it into the water. She hefts the filled jug out of the water and settles it on her hip.

 As she is walking back to her hut, she calls out to me.

 "Why are you standing there, gawking? Come on in out of the heat. I've been expecting you.”

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