dumped

Today I spent several hours writing a piece about facing the future without regrets. When I went to post it the screen went blank. Back on again the entire piece was gone. The computer took all my work away with one click. It's too late to write it over. But I will live to write another day.

In the meantime here is a reprint from the summer of 2009.

Daring Do

Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.

Charles de Gaulle
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Star Trek

"The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see."
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Those who are given the opportunity and freedom to follow a line of study as far as it can take them are blessed with the possibility of discovering areas of unrevealed knowledge and understanding, what no one has ever encountered before, where no one has ever been. Mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, anthropologists, those practicing on the esoteric edges of science, architects, composers of music and, yes, also poets, when engaged to their utmost, may reach the end of the traveled path, step into an unknown territory of discovery, put down a marker for the future and try to describe what they find.

I don't know much about science, but I know something about art. The first and every time I see "The Piano Lesson" by Matisse I am taken gently by the hand and led into a world of painting I know little about yet.

I have heard Beethoven's "Grosse Fugue" for string quartet many times and it is still a mystery to me. What was it that Beethoven saw in his deafness and what was he trying to tell us about it?

On what obscure mountain top was Shakespeare when he wrote "The mightiest space in fortune nature brings to join like likes and kiss like native things."? And what was he saying when he wrote to lead us there "Impossible be strange attempts to those who weigh their pains in sense and do suppose what hath been cannot be."?

The challenge has been made, the door has been left open for others to follow, for you and I to approach the mystery, to go one step beyond, to find another treasure, another magic stone on which is written a new name no one knows.

The air is thin and hard to breathe, the way is treacherous and the terrain frustratingly difficult to describe, but, though we may be standing on the shoulders of the great ones who went before us, the experience of our own genius can only be won by moving off of the shoulders and placing a foot carefully but steadily down onto a step we cannot see.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
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SUMMER QUESTION

Summer is moving along, people.

It's a long, hot, sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you. Don't let the recent New York State decision rob you of your thunder.

Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

Only 14 answers so far.

You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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My Tree

Deliberation is the work of many men. Action of one alone.

Charles de Gaulle
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Even an old squirrel can climb a tree. Once in a great while a squirrel will come and visit my balcony, and often the birds, Loneliness is a small price to pay for the peace and opportunities of solitude.

I love to go walking in a forest, if there is one to walk in, In my town there is only a small forest, hardly noticeable, which is what was left after the parking lot was finished. But it's preserved by the Nature Conservancy.

Forests are great, but I am also impressed by the solitaries in nature. When I was in high school there was a field near my school that was all open meadow except for one large oak tree. It has clearly been there for centuries rewarding the friendship of birds, squirrels and who knows what other forms of life that live under it's benign, majestic presence.

My favorite trail to hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire was the Boulder Loop Trail, so called because shortly after the start of it there was a huge boulder, a single rock the size of a house. There were trees, shrubs and stones around it, but above all it stood in its silent, kingly aloneness.

The summit of that trail is a sheer and dangerous cliff, plummeting straight down to the bottom. Growing right out of the side of that cliff is a tree. From the edge of the cliff you can see only it's outer branches. But there is a safer place to stand to view the entire tree. It has made purchase in the ground beyond the crannies of the cliff, has turned itself up to catch the bright, unobstructed sun and rain and puts out fresh leaves every year to welcome the birds who come to visit.

Having spent my life in theatre where one is surrounded by other artists at all times, I now live alone and write. Do I speak my solitary words in the vast, teaming meadow to be read only by the few who pass by? Do I stand sentinel in the dark forest observing the passing of the seasons of young and old, ignorance and wisdom, kindness and cruelty, living and dying, hope and fear, right and wrong? Do I cling, aloof but full of life, to the dangerous side of imagination and experiment, defying the codes of ordinary being?

I do all of those because I am a vagabond and because I have words. Words are powerful things. They are engendered with force even if they are not read when written or heard when spoken. As my friend Stuart wrote today "I can use language I can survive." Language is equipped with magic fingers. It's branches touch every forsaken and unknown place in the unlimited universe. A single word can change the world, but if it is not heard or read who will be prepared? Alone in the forest a poet sang and raised the dead.

Wherever I go, whatever I do and whoever I am, I am what every other creature is: singular, alone, unique.

DB - The Vagabond
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db