Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The Big Dive

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.

Iris Murdoch
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A good Spring Wednesday to you.

After we have worn ourselves out shaking our fists, kicking and screaming at the disappointments, frustrations, callousness, cruelty, ignorance, ugliness, errors, stupidity and injustices of the world, we have to rest. And in that rest is when we can allow ourselves, at last, to bathe in the ocean of thought. The clamor has ceased, the silence is beautiful music, our closed eyes can view the splendors. We become deep sea divers finding the pearls of remembrance.

In my younger years, when I considered myself an intellectual, before I began to become one, I wore a button pinned to my denim jacket which read "Real Life Isn't :Like This." I got a lot of comments about that button, from the very intelligent to the very stupid. I wore it because I was noticing how easy it was for me and others to accept the facades of existence as being substantial. It doesn't matter what something really is as long as it looks nice. It doesn't matter what someone is really like inside as long as he is well groomed and wears the right clothes. I was usually complemented on my hair cut and not on my ideas. People who loved the sound of my voice paid no attention to what the voice was saying.

I still have that button somewhere. But now with my scraggly beard and shaggy clothes I must be an ignorant bum, if it is true that clothes make the man, as the old saying goes. And if it is true then there are a lot of blue suit characters around.

My much older sister once said that she thought I was one of the original Beatniks, and I suppose that's true. But being a Beatnik teaches you that there is hardly an original anything in the world. It also teaches you that beyond the world's flimsy philosophies and arrogant artifices there is true poetry, beauty and joy. But you have to dive for it. It is much easier on the heart, the mind and the creature comforts to settle for and believe in the appearance of things.

To find reality is risky business.

DB - The Vagabond
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This living without a properly functioning phone is bad news.
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SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)

In your opinion what is the most amazing thing that could happen during this decade? Make it as outrageous as you want but keep it within the realm of what you consider a possibility.

3 responses so far.

Answers will be published the first day of Summer.

dbdacoba@aol.com

DB - The Vagabond
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3 comments:

Gerry said...

Ah reading this particularly well written entry for me brought back a few memories of those buttons everybody was wearing for a while. We nieces got great guffaws out of the thought of buttons we would like to pin on relatives, like for my aunt with the biggest lawn in town, 'lawn grass' and 'weed killer.' She used to take garbage sacks out to pluck weeds from in front of other people's yards. I think we all had our buttons, too. I was just dreaming the other night about an alcoholic I know who used to come out of his apartment dressed like a guy going downtown to his job in a corporation, always so neat, so proper, and then I understood why when he got drunk he came out of his apartment with vomit across his shirt, his hair completely disheveled, stinking and people did not recognize him, did not! The clothes made the man. And he had been in the military too, so I thought he had to get drunk out of his mind before he could break the mold and be somebody else, broken down to somebody to whom clothes no longer mattered. I thought what a profound statement he is making if he could figure out how to relax and keep from being so uptight without drinking to the point of insanity and death!

Ken Riches said...

In my more rebel days, I had a button in my Jeep that said 'F*$ them if they can't take a joke'

If we could only learn to listen and not judge based on appearance, we would live in better place.

Lori said...

"In my younger years, when I considered myself an intellectual, before I began to become one."
That is about the best thing I've read lately!