Bertram's Blog

Proverbs From Around the World — N to Z

October 24, 2012 — Pat Bertram

This is part two of Proverbs From Around the World. You can find the A to M proverbs by clicking here.

William Penn wrote, “The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. Collect and learn them; they are notable measures of directions for human life; you have much in little; they save time in speaking; and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answers.”

Anonymous, that prolific pontificator, wrote, “Proverbs are the cream of a nation’s thought.”

These are by no means the only proverbs from around the world, Nor are they the best. They are simply those that I happened to read and like. Feel free to add your own.

Norwegian Proverb

Heroism consists in hanging on one minute longer.

Persian Proverb

Fate: When its time has arrived, the prey comes to the hunter.

Polish Proverbs

The greatest love is a mother’s, then a dog’s, then a sweetheart’s.

When I have money, everyone called me brother.

The woman cries before the wedding, the man afterward.

Portuguese Proverb

An old man in love is like a flower in winter.

Russian Proverbs

If God listened to every shepherd’s curse, our sheep would all be dead.

The eggs do not teach the hen.

Live with the wolves, howl like a wolf.

A sleeping fox counts hens in its dreams.

When money speaks, the truth is silent.

Sicilian Proverb

The less things change, the more they stay the same.

Scottish Proverbs

Better bend than break.

A man is a lion in his own cause

Spanish Proverbs

If you want to make someone laugh, tell them your troubles.

An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest.

There is no happiness; there are only moments of happiness.

It is better to be a mouse in a cat’s mouth than a man in a lawyer’s hands.

If I die, I forgive you. If I live, we’ll see.

Never advise anyone to go to war or to marry.

Habits are at first cobwebs then cables.

How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then to rest afterward

United States of America Proverbs

The most dangerous food is wedding cake.

Never swap horses crossing a stream

A louse in the cabbage is better than no meat at all. (Pennsylvanian Dutch.)

A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass. (Sioux)

In the beginning God gave to every people a cup of clay, and from this cup they drank their life. (Northern Paiute)

Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence. (Vermont)

Welsh Proverbs

Heaven defend me from a busy doctor.

He understands badly who listens badly.

Better one word before than two after.

Yiddish Proverb

Small children disturb your sleep, big children your life.

Yugoslavian Proverb

Tell the truth and run.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the conspiracy novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: American proverbs, Polish proverbs, proverbs, Russian proverbs, Spanish proverbs, Welsh proverbs, wisdom of nations. 3 Comments »

Proverbs From Around the World — A to M

October 23, 2012 — Pat Bertram

This is part one of Proverbs From Around the World. You can find the N to Z proverbs by clicking here.

Anonymous, that prolific pontificator, wrote, “Proverbs are the cream of a nation’s thought.”

These are by no means the only proverbs from around the world, Nor are they the best. They are simply those that I happened to read and like. Feel free to add your own.

Belgian Proverb

Experience is the comb that nature gives us when we are bald.

Chinese Proverbs

Two leaps per chasm is fatal.

One joy scatters a hundred griefs.

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend’s forehead.

Behind an able man there are always other able men.

Blessings never come in pairs; misfortunes never come alone

English Proverbs

What can be done at any time is never done at all.

As bad as marrying the devil’s daughter and living with the old folks.

Estonian Proverb

What you are afraid of overtakes you.

French Proverb

Everything passes, everything perishes, everything palls.

German Proverbs

Too clever is dumb.

An old error is always more popular than a new truth.

Indian Proverb

The cobra will bite you whether you call it Cobra or Mr. Cobra.

Irish Proverbs

It is better to be a coward for one minute than dead for the rest of your life.

Patience cures many an old complaint.

When the apple is ripe, it will fall.

Italian Proverbs

The best way to get praise is to die.

There is no thief like a bad book.

By asking for the impossible, we obtain the best possible.

Japanese Proverbs

The reverse side also has a reverse side.

To teach is to learn.

A man in love mistakes a pimple for a dimple.

The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

A good husand is healthy and absent.

At the first cup man drinks wine; at the second cup wine drinks wine; at the third cup wine drinks man.

Jewish Proverb

If the rich could hire people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living

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Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: Chinese proverbs, Engish proberbs, Irish proverbs, Italian proverbs, Japanese proverbs, proverbs, wisdom of nations. 6 Comments »

Recycling Stories

October 22, 2012 — Pat Bertram

Please welcome JJ Dare, friend and fellow Second Wind author. JJ writes thrillers (False Positive and False World), and is one of the collaborators on the Rubicon Ranch serial. Her Rubicon Ranch characters amuse me because they are so unrepentently manipulative and unabashedly malevolent. (How can they not be with such a father as Morris Sinclair?)

JJ is here to talk about recycling stories and finding a new purpose for them:

I’m in the midst of going through junk in my house and either trashing it, giving it away, or keeping it. I’m classifying junk as those things I have no immediate use for, things I haven’t used in years or have no idea why I kept them to begin with. I gave the cats an escape clause because they’re just too darn cute to put in the junk category. They’re useless, like a number of stories I’ve written, but I can’t seem to toss either the cats or the stories.

I’ve had some very good advice given to me the last time I bemoaned my many unfinished writings. One that kept coming up was for me to toss everything and start fresh. It sounds so good but it’s so hard to trash the stories I’ve given birth to. It’s like getting rid of a half-finished painting or musical score. I don’t have it in me to do it. I keep telling myself, I’ll finish this . . . one day.

I’ve come up with a solution. I was wondering what I could do with some of my incompletes and I hit upon an idea: I’ll quickly finish the stories that are at least halfway completed and combine two or three of these novellas into a novel. Sounds good on paper. A little harder to do in practice.

I started with three unfinished romances. I’m not a romance writer. I wrote these romances because I wanted to try my hand at every genre. I reread what I’d written and it occurred to me that these stories would be better classified as science fiction or horror.

I’m not a comfortable romance writer. Not because I have been denied romance in my own life, but because I’ve always viewed romance as a very private interaction between two people. To put that on paper unnerves me. When things unnerve me, I get weird. Hence, my romances are all off-beat and quirky. For the most part, though, the violence is low level and not too many characters die.

My comfort zone is action and suspense. I like to be on the go in my writing. For me, romance is a lot of faint female hearts, strong rescuing men and pining on both sides. That’s well and fine because fictional romance should be high illusion and a way to escape into a pleasant dream world where the male and female characters end up happily-ever-after after a reasonable amount of conflict.

For my type of writing, though, I pull from the quirky side of life (sometimes, my life). I love weird. I adore off-beat. Bizarre is a close personal friend of mine. Happy endings annoy me because I want to believe what I’m reading and happiness is a fleeting occurrence for all of us. I want a real-life ending.

I identify with strong male characters and equally strong female characters. I like no-nonsense and have a hard time writing fluff. Lately, my short stories and contributions to online collaborations have been my saving grace. I’m able to write quickly and decisively as long as I don’t have to think too hard about it.

But, I always come back to those things I have hanging around on my laptop. Trash them, give them away or keep them – I need to decide something because it’s gotten to the point where seeing them just sitting there accusingly has become depressing. The best hope, I guess, is to salvage what is salvageable and compile them as a collection.

One day I might broaden these novellas into full-length novels. But today, they will have to be Frankensteined into a patchwork monster of a book.

When you get stuck in a story, what do you do? How many unfinished stories do you have taking up space?

***

J J Dare is the author of two published books, several short stories and triple digit works-in-progress.

Current enthusiasm is sharpening intangible knives and co-authoring at Rubicon Ranch

Facebook addiction

Posted in culture, writing. Tags: book, fiction, J J Dare, novellas, romance, Second Wind Publishing, short stories, trash. 1 Comment »

Grief: The Great Yearning

October 21, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I never set out to write a book about grief, but I was so lost, so lonely, so sick with grief and bewildered by all I was experiencing, that the only way I could try to make sense of it was to put my feelings into words. Whether I was writing letters to my deceased life mate/soul mate or simply pouring out my feelings in a blog or a journal, writing helped me feel close to him, as if, once again, I was talking things over with him. The only problem was, I only heard my side of the story. He never told me how he felt about his dying and our separation. Did he feel as broken as I did? Did he feel amputated? Or was he simply glad to be shucked of his body, and perhaps even of me?

I wrote this letter to him exactly two years ago. It shows some of the collateral effects of grief, such as the questioning, the yearning, the struggle to come to terms with death and dying. Although I am going through a time of relative peace, what I wrote back then still holds true today.

Excerpt from Grief: The Great Yearning:

Dear J,

For the first time since you died, I almost forgot to advance your permanent calendar. I’m surprised I’ve remembered to do it all these months. I thought it would be a remembrance, but I don’t need anything to remind me of you — everything I see, say, do reminds me of you.

I’ve decided the only way to fill the hole you left in my life, to make sense of your absence, is to fill it with activities I would not have done if you were alive. There are not enough events in the whole world to fill the void, but I need to try, otherwise I’ll never manage to get through the next decades. I hope I don’t become one of those people who hold on to their pain because it’s all they have to make them feel alive, but it is all I have to connect to you. Well, I have memories and some of your things, but that’s not enough.

Would your death be easier to accept if you’d been happy? Is your unhappiness a reason for me to accept your death? What makes this so confusing is that your long dying, the accumulating weakness and pain made you unhappy, so how can I use that as a rationale for being okay with your dying?

I’m like a child, wanting to scream, “It’s unfair!” And it is, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re dead.

Did I hold your hand when you died? I think I just stood there as you took your last breath, but I don’t remember. I don’t remember much of the last couple of years. It’s like I was in suspended animation, just waiting for you to die. What a terrible thing to say, but it was a terrible time to have lived through. But you didn’t live through it, did you? Well, you did live it, you just didn’t survive it.

I wonder if subconsciously I knew all this pain was waiting for me, and that’s why I closed myself off from the reality of your dying. I don’t like this, J. I don’t like it at all

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Click here to find out more about Grief: The Great Yearning

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: dealing with grief, death, effects of grief, Grief: The Great Yearning, letter to the dead, loss. Leave a Comment »

Character as Fate and Fate as Character

October 20, 2012 — Pat Bertram

Heraclitus believed that a person’s character is their fate. Character — the sum total of a person’s traits — influences the choices a person makes, and the consequences of those choices ultimately become that person’s destiny. Or not. Much of life is luck, happenstance, and totally out of our control, though we tend to believe we have much more control over our lives than we really do. But that’s not an issue here because this is a writing discussion, and in our story worlds everything is under our control, and what our characters do determine their own fate.

This is most obvious in a tragedy — a character comes to an unhappy end because of a flaw in his or her own character, though in today’s stories, because readers like a more optimistic ending, that fatal flaw is often balanced by a special strength. But character/fate works for other types of stories, such as a thriller where a character becomes obsessed with finding the truth, and that obsession leads to both the character’s fate and the end of the story.

For example, In Daughter Am I, a young woman is determined to find out the truth of who her grandparents were and why someone wanted them dead. That determination overrides her usual placidity and takes her on a journey that eventually leads her home again, changed forever. She really did find her destiny because of her character.

I wonder if the opposite is more true (if truth has degrees), that destiny is character. Does what happens to us, both the actions under our control and those beyond our control, determine who we are? Determine who our characters are? This was a theme I explored in More Deaths Than One. So much happened to my poor hero Bob that was not under his control, yet what was under his control — how he handled his fate — made him the man he became.

Any discussion about fate and writing would also have to include the question: does the writer’s fate affect the character’s fate? None of my books have totally happy endings. There is always a pinprick of unease in the background, but the book I am now contemplating — the story of a woman going through grief — is going to have even less of a happy ending. Perhaps because I know the ending of my own love story? Not my story, obviously, since I’m still here, but the story I shared with another. Except for my work in progress (the one that’s been stalled all these years) the stories I’m thinking about writing now all end up with the characters alone.

When I wrote the first draft of my novel More Deaths Than One (and the second draft and the third) I had the hero Bob meandering around his world trying to unravel his past all by himself, and it was boring. Did I say boring? It was moribund. The story went nowhere because there was no one for Bob to butt heads with.

In the fourth draft of More Deaths Than One, I gave Bob a love interest, a waitress he met at a coffee shop. (Hey, so it’s been done before. The poor guy spent eighteen years in Southeast Asia, and didn’t know anybody stateside. How else was he supposed to meet someone?) That’s when the story took off. He had someone to butt heads with, someone to ooh and aah over his achievements, someone to be horrified at what had been done to him.

From that, I learned the importance of writing scenes with more than one character. And yet here I am, once more falling into the black hole of writing characters alone because I can’t visualize them ending up with anyone.

Which leads me to my final question: could the fate of the character also influence the writer’s fate? If so, maybe I should decide where I want to go from here, and write my destiny. Or I could just wing it and see where destiny takes me and my characters.

***

Posted in books, writing. Tags: character, character flaw, Daughter Am I, destiny, fate, Heraclitus, More Deaths Than One, tragedy. 9 Comments »

You Finished Writing Your Book. Now What?

October 19, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I recieved an email yesterday from a friend telling me she finished writing her book, and then she asked for advice about how to proceed in getting her book published. She said she is open to all venues — self-publishing, independent presses, agents and major publishers.

If you are in the same situation, the first thing you do is make sure you’ve edited the book, copyedited it, found people to read it to see if there are any obvious lacks, and made it the best book you possibly can.

What you do next depends on your goal. If you want to try to do it on your own without going through agents or publishers, there are plenty of self-publishing platforms to choose from such as Create Space, Amazon/Kindle, Lulu, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble/Nook. Do a bit of research to find the platform(s) that suits your needs. You don’t need an ISBN number for Amazon/Kindle or Barnes & Noble/Nook, though you do need one for most other venues.

If you want to try for a major publisher, research agents. You can find them at places like Preditors and Editors and Association of Authors’ Representatives. Look for agents who are interested in your genre. Once you have names, check out their websites to find submission requirements, and follow those requirements. If they say query letter only, don’t send samples of the manuscript. If they ask for the first three chapters, don’t send the whole manuscript.

If you decide to go with a small publisher, you can find a listing at Preditors and Editors and similar sites. Generally, you don’t need an agent for such publishers. Follow the same instructions as for agents, checking out their submission requirements and following them.

The query letter is your most important tool. Try to fit your letter to the particular agent or publisher. Always send to a particular person. Never use “Dear Sir” or “To Whom it May Concern.” Send a few letters out at a time (start with agents and publishers who will accept email submissions to save time and money). By doing only a few at a time, you can rewrite your query letter and synopsis as you get rejections. (Keep in mind a rejection at this stage only means they rejected your letter, not your manuscript.) The better your letter is, the better chance you have of getting someone interested in looking at your manuscript.

Click here to find out How to Write a Query Letter.

This is the query letter I wrote for More Deaths Than One. It got me an agent, but the agent couldn’t find a publisher. I found a publisher on my own when the agent’s contract expired.

Dear (Name):

The painting is of a pond with no ripples, surrounded by forest. Very serene. As Bob studies the painting, however, disquiet begins to creep over him, and he can almost see the monstrous thing that lives in the slime deep down at the bottom of the pool.

“I was trying to paint what’s in here,” he says, tapping his chest with a fist. Then he gestures to the painting. “I don’t know how that happened.”

When Bob Stark returns to Denver after almost two decades in Southeast Asia, he finds that, like his painting, nothing is as it seems. Not only does the city of his birth seem alien; the mother he buried years before has died again. Even worse, two men who appear to be government agents are hunting him for no reason that he can fathom.

Set in 1988, this novel, More Deaths Than One, explores what it is that makes us who we are. Is it our memories? Our experiences? Our natures?

Enclosed please find a synopsis and the first three chapters of this suspense novel. The finished manuscript of 80,000 words is available upon request.

Sincerely,

Pat Bertram

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Posted in books, How to, writing. Tags: how to get published, How to Write a Query Letter, looking for a publisher, looking for an agent, Query letter, self-publishing, what to do when you finish writing a book. 5 Comments »

Does One Have to be a Coffee Drinker to be a Writer?

October 18, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I do author interviews on my Pat Bertram Introduces . . . blog, I have a constant feed of authors’ status updates in my Facebook feed, and I participate in several online discussion groups for writers. And always, one word seems to come to the fore: coffee. Coffee seems to be part of the writing ritual, and many authors claim to find inspiration in a cup of coffee. Hmmm. I don’t drink coffee. Am I missing a vital part of the writing process?

Here are some responses to the question of what writers drink while writing. The comments are taken from interviews posted at Pat Bertram Introduces . . .

From an interview with: J. Conrad Guest, author of Backstop and One Hot January

My morning sessions start with a pot of coffee and a trip to my humidor to select a cigar.

From an interview with: Coco Ihle, author of She Had to Know

I have a wonderful 16 oz. thermos mug that keeps my coffee hot, so I don’t have to get up so often for a refill. My right hand seems to be permanently crooked into the mug holding position.

From an interview with: P.I. Barrington, Author of Isadora DayStar

Coffee and Diet Coke are my working poisons. If I could get them both via an IV drip I would, lol!

From an interview with: John Paul Allen, Author of “Monkey Love”

Lots of coffee — two or three pots are a must.

From an interview with: Millicent Borges Accardi, Author of Injuring Eternity

I typically drink Peet’s coffee when I am writing or at my computer.

From an interview with: T. C. Isbell, Author of “Southern Cross”

Coffee, I drink vast mounts of coffee while I work.

From an interview with: Dr. Dorothy McCoy, Author of “The Manipulative Man”

I fix a cup of superb, fresh ground coffee (one should not skimp on coffee).

From an interview with: Jetta Stone, Author of “Silver Moon”

Chocolate and a cup of steaming strong brewed coffee.

From an interview with: Tom Rizzo, Author of “Last Stand At Bitter Creek”

Coffee. Is there any other?

From an interview with: Steven Hart, Author of “We All Fall Down”

Coffee. Oh yes — coffee.

See what I mean? Coffee. What about you? Do you have a favorite beverage that you drink while writing?

(If you’d like me to interview you, please check out my author questionnaire http://patbertram.wordpress.com/author-questionnaire/ and follow the instruction.)

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Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: author interviews, coffee, cofffee drinker, Pat Bertram Introduces, writing and coffee. 9 Comments »

Is it Your Business What Others Think of You?

October 17, 2012 — Pat Bertram

Occasionally I see a saying that seems to bring a moment of enlightenment, but the more I see it, the murkier its truth becomes. And so it is with this little gem: What others think of you is none of your business.

To a certain extent, the saying is true. You can’t live your live trying to figure out what others think of you and then work your life around their opinions. You have to consider what you think of you and live your life accordingly. This also works in reverse — what you think of someone is none of their business. So often, we feel the need to tell others what we think of them — simply to help them, of course — but if what we think of them is none of their business, we might as well keep our opinions to ourselves. (And perhaps save a friendship in the process.)

But . . . (by now, I’m sure you’ve read enough of my blog to know there is always a but somewhere in my posts.)

What a child thinks of his parents is often a key to his emotional health, so what the child thinks of his parents is definitely the parents’ business. If the child is overly attached to his parents or is angry at them for no apparent reason, the child could be having emotional problems. On the other hand, if the child is embarrassed by his parents (beyond normal bounds) or if the child finds it hard to be around them for some reason, maybe the parents are the ones with the problem.

If you are in a romantic relationship, a marriage, or some other long-term coupling, what your loved one thinks of you is definitely your business. If you think yours is a love match and the other thinks it’s a lust match, you need to know that so you can make informed decisions about your future. If your husband no longer loves you and has developed a roving eye, you certainly need to know how he feels about you so you take appropriate actions, such as getting couple’s therapy. (Unless, of course, you prefer not knowing.) If you’re in a relationship and are ready “for the next level” (whatever that is), and your partner in the relationship wants only your money, you need to know the truth before things go to far.

And of course, if your neighbor hates you enough to want to kill you, that most certainly is your business.

There must be many other examples where this particular saying doesn’t pertain, but you get the point: sometimes a clever message is simply clever and not a great truth.

***

Posted in culture, life, relationships, writing. Tags: enlightenment, none of your business, what others think of you, what you think of others, what you think of you. 11 Comments »

Grief Rant

October 16, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I still have some anger in me, apparently. I occasionally “flame out” as one friend said when I disagreed with an email that friend sent. I am regaining my equilibrium, though, able to get through my days mostly even tempered, but one thing continues to raise my ire: when people assume all grief is the same, and especially when they assume they understand the grief of someone who lost a soul mate because they lost a beloved pet. Such a comment set me off tonight, and when my reply ended up being longer than some of my blog posts, I decided to publish the comment here rather than get in a grief match (“my grief is worse than your grief”) because, honestly, all loss is devastating, especially when it happens to you.

And yet . . . the death of a pet, no matter how beloved, is not the same as losing a soul mate. Nor is the trauma of losing a brother or a mother the same as losing a long-time spouse. The only thing that comes close is losing a child. (My younger brother’s death hastened my mother’s death. She died a year after he did.)

I understand there are all kinds of grief, and I know they all have to be honored. Grief of any kind that is not processed can cause additional problems. (Or not. Some people seem to do quite well walling off their grief.)

My concern has always been for those who have to deal with the death of a spouse, whether a life mate or a soul mate because that sort of all-encompassing grief is more than most people can comprehend. I thought I understood grief — after all, I grieved the deaths of my brother and my mother — but until the death of my life mate/soul mate, I never even knew such profound grief existed. During the past two and a half years, I have met dozens, maybe hundreds of women who have lost their mates, and they all mentioned the same thing — they had to hide their grief because no one understood. That is unconscionable. (I didn’t have this problem. I’m a quasi hermit, so no one was around to see me mourning.)

The truth is, it’s the very prevalence of grief that makes people uncomfortable with the profound grief of someone who lost a soul mate. People figure they got over their grief, whatever or whoever it was for, so you should, too. The trouble with losing your mate is that your grief is not just emotional, but also physical. In addition to the unimaginable agony of loss, you have to deal with shock, a blizzard of hormonal reactions, changes in brain chemistry, an incredible level of stress (losing a mate is considered the most stressful thing a person ever has to deal with; many people end up being treated for PTSD). Your death rate climbs 25% for all causes.

Added to that are all the horrendous “death” chores you have to deal with such as planning a funeral and filling out all the official and financial paperwork involved in “removing” someone from the world. As your emotions begin to stabilize, you have other griefs to deal with since a soul mate is more than a spouse — he’s also a best friend, companion, sometimes even a business partner, and all those losses have to be processed. You also grieve for the loss of yourself, at least your coupled self. And then you have to deal with the restructuring of your life. Your dreams are gone as are your plans for the future so you need to find new reasons to live. Sometimes you have to leave your home. It takes years to sort out all the losses so you can process them and begin again.

I don’t mean to belittle anyone’s grief. But, as I explained in my post, Why I Write About My Grief, people who have lost a mate deserve a lot more consideration and understanding from their family and friends than the assumption that their loss is comparable to the loss of a beloved pet.

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Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: all grief is not the same, dealing with grief, death of a spouse, grief and loss, grief and stress, loss of a pet, whose grief is worst. 28 Comments »

Opening Myself to the Power of the Universe

October 15, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I’ve never had an interest in yoga, though as it turns out, several of my morning stretching exercises are yoga poses. But now I’m hooked and mostly because of a single pose called Warrior. (I can’t even pronounce the Sanskrit name: Virabhadrasana.)

The pose seems to open me up to the universe and myself, makes me feel strong and potentially invincible, as if I’m tapping into hidden sources of power. I have no idea why the pose has this effect on me since the others in the class don’t have the same affinity for the pose that I do. All I know is the effect it has on me. I feel the power even more when I am out in the desert, alone with the sun, facing the mountains.

“Warrior 1” is shown here, with the arms extended over head. In “Warrior 2”, the right leg is foremost, the right arm is extended straight out in front and the left arm is stretched out behind in line with the legs, and the head pointing toward the right thumbs (You can find images of the pose by Googling “Warrior 2.”) You also do the pose in reverse, with the left leg foremost.

It will be interesting to find out what happens over the course of the months by doing this exercise. If the effect isn’t an illusion, and I’m really gathering power, then watch out! Who knows what I will become.