{"id":1142,"date":"2010-12-04T21:12:18","date_gmt":"2010-12-05T04:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/?p=1142"},"modified":"2010-12-04T21:12:18","modified_gmt":"2010-12-05T04:12:18","slug":"the-laughter-of-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/?p=1142","title":{"rendered":"The Laughter of Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a language it is, the laughter of women,
\nhigh-flying and subversive.
\nLong before law and scripture
\nwe heard the laughter, we understood freedom.<\/p>\n

~Lisel Mueller<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had dinner last night with friends at a new restaurant in Hattiesburg, Petra Cafe<\/a>. It was excellent. I felt like a stuffed grape leaf by the time we nibbled our way through every appetizer three women could reasonably order, and I basically gave up all pretense of being a person who has ever even met a diet plan, but I left feeling alive and well.<\/p>\n

My writing prompt for yesterday<\/a> was to think of a moment from this past year when I felt most alive.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to really consider that one.\u00c2\u00a0 I could think of a lot of moments when I didn’t feel alive at all.\u00c2\u00a0 I knew there were times when I had, though.<\/p>\n

It’s probably good other people are supplying the prompts right now.\u00c2\u00a0 Left to my own devises, the year’s end reflection prompts might be more like “think of your most aggravating moment from this year” or “describe the most annoying person you had to deal with this year.”\u00c2\u00a0 Reverb 10, if nothing else, is helping to prove that a more positive outlook can be dragged out of me on occasion.<\/p>\n

In that spirit, here are some other contenders for moments of life in 2010:<\/p>\n

Holding my newest grandniece for the first time<\/p>\n

Purchasing and experimenting with my first digital SLR camera<\/p>\n

Gardening<\/p>\n

Walking<\/p>\n

Playing with children<\/p>\n

Talking my friends into climbing over the “no trespassing” gate to trespass on my family’s land<\/p>\n

Picking blueberries with my dad<\/p>\n

Eating blueberries<\/p>\n

Watching my nephew get married with four generations of his family standing beside him<\/p>\n

Laughing with women<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Laughter ought to be a daily requirement in life.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Laughter is medicine, the old Reader’s Digests told us, and now doctors are starting to agree.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

You don’t have to be in a good mood to laugh.\u00c2\u00a0 You can put yourself in a good mood by laughing.<\/p>\n

It helps, though, if you try this exercise in the company of friends.\u00c2\u00a0 It helps if you go to a nice restaurant and order foods you haven’t tried before.\u00c2\u00a0 It helps if you swap stories.<\/p>\n

They say the best revenge is a life well lived.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe the saying should be “a life well laughed.”\u00c2\u00a0 Hearty mockery is fairly effective as revenge goes.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s best practiced in the company of a few good friends.\u00c2\u00a0 What a language it is, the laughter of women.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a language it is, the laughter of women, high-flying<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflecting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writerlyhaphazardry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}