#17 Hare and Tortoise, QUALIFIED

quest vs quit --> quietly.
Q is for the emotional feeling, QUALIFIED!

Hare and TORTOISE

I like this story.  
First, one of my favorites fables because I think of myself as a turtle, slow and steady, and somehow, at the end of winning to steadily achieving my goal as a writer. The turtle in Eastern mythology holds up the four directions of this earth. P'ngue, the first dragon of China, stood on turtle's back and listened to all the stories turtle told. Unfortunately, we assume P'ngue was a male and he gave turtle's tales to us. What if turtle was female, and the narrator did in the male voice, as the tales were.
 
When I was a child in Colorado, turtles still walked on the prairies, and sometimes we would catch one, of course, the snapping turtle bit. The turtles were old and about a foot across. I hope the slow, careful reptiles still live on those vast plains of the Midwest and races with the long-legged hare. Hard to tell which is a male or female, so suits both sexes.

The coastal Indians of American have a story for the 13 sections on turtle's back for the 13 moons of the year.

Secondly, why Iike this fable. The storyteller also has for centuries, forever, told traditional stories that have a simple plot: a quest. We enhance and re-image a place, time, characters, events to solve and push the adventure forward to the solution, then a conclusion. These are standard guidelines that create our novels. “Once upon a time, there lived so-and-so in a land far away . . .

This ancient fable, which I call, Rabbit and the Turtle, is an uncomplicated plot: a quest:
set-up – the careful turtle slower that the over-confident rabbit; CLIMAX - slow, plodding turtle wins; rabbit can’t believe the turtle won, and neither can the turtle.

I have discovered because stories are traditional, the basic plots speak to our genetic bodies. The bones of our stories and our bodies' bones connect through hearing and telling. We re-image scenes, place, characters and events, everything but the plot. Look at all the Hare and Tortoise stories in the library. Writers and storytellers link the simple plot to us inbred into our spirits, souls, physic for centuries before there was writing or photos or films or DVDs. A simple scheme satisfies, verbal stories are remembered.

This fable is from Aesop, a Greek slave, who came from India.

A HARE one day ridiculed the short feet and slow pace of the Tortoise, who replied, laughing: "Though you be swift as the wind, I will beat you in a race." The Hare, believing her assertion to be simply impossible, assented to the proposal; and they agreed that the Fox should choose the course and fix the goal. On the day appointed for the race, the two started together. The Tortoise never for a moment stopped, she went on with a slow but steady pace straight to the end of the course. The Hare, lying down by the wayside, fell asleep. At last, waking up, and moving as fast as he could, he saw the Tortoise had reached the goal and was comfortably dozing after her fatigue.
Slow but steady wins the race.