My Animal Spirit Totem

Mother Otter and Baby

 

Otter
Otter holds power in the Below Realm, the world of water and emotions. Otter also draws some power from the Middle Realm, the world where humanity dwells. Otter is the guardian of the direction of North-Northeast. Otter manipulates the elemental powers of air within the element of Earth, this is where the interactive mind goes beyond the limitations of the rational world.
As an animal spirit totem, Otter teaches to be unpredictable, stepping out of the box of mundane conventionality. Otter possesses great skills at finishing tasks, letting nothing stand in its way as to distract or hinder progress. Otter teaches you to allow your curiosity, creativity, honesty and intuitiveness to be your guide through any project. Though people may not understand your methodology, your end results will speak for themselves. Otter has a memory like a steel trap for details, retaining everything ever taught or learned through experiences. Otter wants to know all the specifics, opinions, and perspectives of others, and awaits the opportunities to share all he knows with others, with great enthusiasm. So with this, Otter teaches to be mindful of being overbearing in conversations, and not to always share everything you know all at once.
Otter is extremely playful, marching to the beat of his own drum. Anytime is a good time to frolic about and dance in the moonlight. Otter teaches that this is a healthy attitude to take towards life, however, remember to keep your feet firmly planted as to bring yourself back down to Earth when there is work to be done and a steady focus is needed.

Definition #139 (Jeanne from Queens #11) emotions

Doesn’t everyone dress in gold in 1977?

Tom Wolfe:

In an essay published in 2007, Tom Wolfe argued that the newspaper industry would stand a much better chance of survival if newspaper editors encouraged reporters to “provide the emotional reality of the news, for it is the emotions, not the facts, that most engage and excite readers and in the end are the heart of most stories.”

He said there are exactly four technical devices needed to get to “the emotional core of the story.” They are the specific devices, he said, “that give fiction its absorbing or gripping quality, that make the reader feel present in the scene described and even inside the skin of a particular character.”

The four:

1) constructing scenes;

2) dialogue — lots of it;

3) carefully noting social status details — “everything from dress and furniture to the infinite status clues of speech, how one talks to superiors or inferiors … and with what sort of accent and vocabulary”; and

4) point of view, “in the Henry Jamesian sense of putting the reader inside the mind of someone other than the writer.”