So this Sunday's prompt is #206 - The book that changed every thing for you - is that even possible and if so what book was it?

well I'm an avid reader and a book that changed a lot for me was The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel.

I don't consider myself religious at all, I do consider myself spiritual and I do consider myself somewhat of a pantheist in my seeing of God as one with Nature. But up until this book, I had really struggled with justifying or explaining my deflecting and resistane to abide by any ONE way or religion.

As a passionate animal lover this book played an intensely powerful role in my spiritual awakening. I have found the best way to surmise my spiritual feelings is that I see the face of God in animals and in nature. Though that in no way surmises the book. In this book we follow a young Indian boy, named Pi Patel who is a zoo owners' son and his journey through survival.

We also faoolow him as he becomes emersed in different religions simply educating himself on each and when challenged on how he had to choose one and how could he have acted in such a deceitful and unfaithful manner he asnwers, "I was just trying to love God."

Well taht was an aha moment for me.>"He was too far. But the sight of the lifebuoy flying his way gave him hope. He revived and started beating the water with vigorous, desperate strokes."

I found this amazing interactive (you can play with your keyboard) computer animated promo for the book at Hoss Gifford, Life of Pi Interactive Promo, that I HIGHLY recommend to my readers!!!

In addition, there are tons (not so good) Youtube video dramatizations and animations based on the book, but I rather enjoyed this one, (though the music gets a bit loud...) that I embedded here:

"After the sinking of a cargo ship, a single solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the surface of the wild, blue Pacific. The crew of the surviving vessel consists of a hyena, and orangutan, a zebra with a broken leg, a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger, and Pi Patel, a young Indian boy. This is one of my favorite books, one which I just had to bring to life, I hope I have done it justice!"

Pendulums in Bombay NY by marisol diaz

"I have all the time in the world...just because this is problematic now doesn't mean it will be later," said the mouse in a most serious and unabashed manner.

"Maybe when that body that houses your spirit is mature enough to reciprocate, you will come around and see me for the first time as what I really am."

Young Lady Amberdine looked off into the distance, blithely ignoring the mouse. Mice seemed to be everywhere around the kitchen these days, especially around the hearth. Maybe its getting too cold outside. Her eyes only trailed back to the little mouse because she noticed his cryptic little hand gestures. Amberdine excused the distracting little mouse and his peculiar movements for some sort of self-cleaning ritual and deliberately returned to her daily preoccupations. In her reverie she thought, 'Maybe my animal is a whiptail lizard- a whole civilization of females that reproduce by cloning themselves and no males are necessary or existent?'

Early that morning, Amberdine came face to face with her toad-of-a-bully cousin, a boy for whom the words 'insolent' and 'crude' must have been invented for. He and his snake-eyed mother, Amberdine's aunt Evol, were visiting for the weekend. In what seemed like the only dose of energy this boy had all morning, he wickedly pulled at Amberdine's hair undoing the complex arrangement her ladies had just spent hours on. Whipping across the table he also stole her precious locket. The locket had been sitting on the table where Amberdine had toiled cutting small images to place inside.

However, the locket had been returned to her bedside. How was a mystery to Amberdine since she had purposefully locked her bedroom door after the fiend had attacked her. She tied the key around a ribbon that she hung under her dress, around her waist. The last time she checked it was still there.

Of Course, Amberdine would have no way of knowing it had been the little mouse who had rescued the locket. The little mouse saw the boy-toad running out to the field with the locket where he attempted to burn and bury it. Amberdine also had no way of knowing that her salacious cousin was deathly afraid of mice. As the boy-toad bent down to the ground to dig up a hole of dirt, the little mouse came storming towards the boy's reptilian nose with the sheer bravery of a nobleman and he bore his teeth down onto a wad of the boy's flesh.

All young Lady Amberdine knew was that someone had entered her locked room to return the locket. She deduced that her boy-toad cousin was simply too stupid to figure out how to enter her locked room. Instead, she was convinced it must have been her Aunt Evol. This aunt had such a malign ghastly look of sour death to her contorted features that it took Amberdine some courage to face her about the locket.
Sure enough Aunt Evol was shocked and aghast with the accusations about her innocently demure, weak and wounded son. In a flash, she threatened to banish Amberdine from the family inheritance, but not before she turned her into the ANIMAL she truly was. This of course is how we get to why Amberdine was day-dreaming about whiptail lizards and how of course the little mouse (who really wasn't a mouse at all) came to be a mouse with a collection of pendulums.

You see, not really being a mouse, the tiny critter was deeply in love with Amberdine. He knew that his 10th pendulum would break Aunt Evol's spell on his unfortunate life. And if you didn't already know, pendulum's became a symbol of the time he had to wait to profess his love to Amberdine, only four more to go.

untitled by marisol diaz

That callous reality sets in every day around 4pm.
She makes her living by constantly admonishing
my imagination.
Persistent in trying to rid you of my possibility.
I sit alone in the car, driving lost and entertaining my fabrications,
weaving one thread across the other.
Creating a whole world of fictitious opportunities when...I've come to a stop
and she comes striding in, slamming the passenger door with that
smug glower

Sometimes she looks like laughing children,
an unlocked chain on a door,
or a spinning wedding band,
other times she looks like my best friend.
Still she's there to cut the tether
The feelings are nothing but frustration and mockingly all self-imposed.
Ridiculous really for reality to interfere with what is not and
what will never be.
Still I'm hopeful that the world I create in my dreams one day,
somehow, have something,
a touch, a path, a response or a resonance to do with
my waking day.