The Great Search

We don't receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Marcel Proust
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How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
(Bob Dylan)

40 - At the peak of my virility and creative powers, I thought I knew things. Younger people looked up to me, trusted me and took my words as words of wisdom. I didn't know yet what I didn't know.

50 - Now I began to realize how much I didn't know. I had lived half a century and where was the wisdom I thought I should have accumulated. I had technical and creative ability and knowledge, but was any of that really wisdom?

60 - I was just beginning to realize what a gulf there was between knowledge and wisdom, and that wisdom was akin to enlightenment. Proust is correct, enlightenment is not given to us, it is pursued. A few years later I retired and set upon a journey to pursue it. I knew it would be a vagabond journey, wandering from place to place without any settled home.
From the age of 6 I never had a settled home, and my actor's career was one of wandering from place to place. Now it was a mental wandering and a journey of search and discovery, an explorer's life.

70 - I remained solidly on moving ground, the search continues through mists of feeling, the poetry of exasperation and thrill. Wisdom is only found by understanding myself. Wisdom is the knowledge of how things work, why they work and why they exist. Wisdom is the knowledge that shows us the invisible, the true existence of the seemingly palpable. I am at the cusp of separating the man from the figure, from the figuring.

Every journey is a journey back home, to the home I always had but never knew about and never lived in. The only garment we ever need to wear is freedom.

DB - The Vagabond
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The Ball Game
a story in 7 parts
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Part 3

For the next three years Jimmy played for the Thompson High Tigers. He was very conscientious. He went out for practice every day. The coach started the team off with a run around the track. Jimmy increased his speed. He practiced catching, both grounders and fly balls, his throwing, fast and accurate, and of course his batting. By his senior year he was a good player. Not the best on the team, but very good.

The Tigers reached the finals and were in line to win the championship if they could beat Mechanics High from the Bronx. Mechanics was a tough team but they were evenly matched when they reached the final series.

When they were in the final game, played on The Tigers home stadium, it was the bottom of the ninth inning, the score was tied 4 all, there was one out and one man on third. Jimmy didn't know there were scouts in the stands looking for some baseball talent when he stepped up to the plate.

H e was worried. He hadn't hit off the other team's fierce pitcher all day. He could strike out as usual and there was still another Tiger batter up next, a good one, one of the best. But the situation was very tense.

The pitcher sent two balls flying at great speed, both in the strike zone. Jimmy swung hard at both of them but missed them. Two strikes. Jimmy stepped out of the batters box for a moment.

"Jimmy." He heard that familiar voice calling him and looked up to see his father's face just to the right of the pitcher. Jimmy stepped back to the plate and signaled that he was ready.

The pitcher wound up and threw. Jimmy saw the ball coming slowly toward him, gently and gracefully like a bubble on the breeze. It came to him about shoulder high. When it was right in front of him he grabbed both ends of the bat and gave it a push. The ball bounced quickly along the infield between the pitcher and first base. The pitcher made a lunge for it but missed it. Meanwhile Jimmy tossed the bat aside and headed for first base. He never made it there and he wasn't tagged out. The runner on third crossed home plate with the winning run and the ball game was over.

(Part 4 tomorrow)
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SPRING QUESTION

NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.

Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

1 answer so far

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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