Minds Wide Open

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

Henry Miller
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Geology and drawing are two of the most important and most memorable courses of study of my experience, because they both taught me not only to observe but also to think.

Intuition is a valuable tool in those two disciplines as it is in any instruction of value. Intuition is one of the thruways to imagination. Observation is the starting place of all learning, doing and creating, the first step toward the silent world which is only symbolized by such things as rocks and drawings.
Immanuel Kant wrote "Sense is the faculty of intuition in the presence of an object. Imagination is intuition without the presence of the object."

Some rocks are very beautiful (lapidists deal in them) while others are very ordinary looking, just a rock. But all of them have stories to tell. It is interesting to examine a rock to determine it's age and chemical, cellular composition. But whenever I hold a rock in my hand I realize I am holding millions of years of history.

A mystic I used to know once gave me a rock she had pick up off the side of Mount Olympus in Greece, the mountain of the ancient gods. She put it in her purse and carried it all the way back specifically to give to me. I kept that rock for many years until someone found it and threw it out. It was just a rock, after all, it didn't belong in the house. So somewhere on the ground in Westchester County, New York is a bit of Mount Olympus.

One day I discovered an outcropping of stratified rock sticking up from the ground at an angle and pointing at the sky. I knew it was stratified, which meant it was made of layers of sediment, probably laid down by centuries of rain, baked in the hot sun, hardened into solid rock, then covered over by other layers, twisted into an arc by volcanic action of the earth and then eroded by rain and wind to it's current state. As I looked at it I tried to imagine what it must have looked like when it first covered the surrounding earth, and what it was like as a mammoth spectacle after the earth had buckled it. I also imagined the real possibility that somewhere, near or far, one could find the other end of that rainbow, a chunk of stratified rock jutting out of the ground and pointing in the opposite direction back to itself.

In upper Manhattan, around 200th Street, there's a boulder. It's surrounded very closely by houses and it's a prime piece of real estate. But ti's protected from developers because it's a natural wonder. It was set down there centuries ago during the ice age by a gigantic glacier that traveled through.

There is another boulder of comparable size along the Boulder Loop Trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. That one is surrounded by trees and is also protected because of the National Forest it's in. I wonder if the two boulders are related. They were both probably set down by the same glacier.

Michael Chekhov (1891 - 1955) was the nephew of Anton Chekhov, the great Russian playwright. He was an actor who also taught and wrote on acting. One of his theories was called the PG, which stands for Psychological Gesture. It's not the kind of gesture such as pointing a finger or shrugging of shoulders but a full body gesture. With it an actor can convey the inner life of a character even though presenting a false face to the other characters on the stage. The way a person stands or sits can tell a lot about how that person feels or thinks.

I studied life drawing at various locations around New York City. When I first began I struggled with getting the proportions right of the human figure, then learning how to articulate the bones and muscles in different poses. After a few years I began to observe something else. The models weren't actors, most of them, but whenever they would drape themselves into a pose for a period of time they would strike a psychological gesture. Each figure, each pose had a story to tell. Though unconscious, perhaps, on the part of the model it was a clear statement of some inner life. My imagination began to provide histories of these people, current events in their lives, their fears and dreams. My drawings took on a more interesting quality and were more enjoyable to do and to see.

On the stage when a character enters the scene he is coming from somewhere. The actor is coming from the wings, but the character is coming from a specific place not seen on the stage. The actor has to know where his character is coming from, and he does know because he decides, through observation and imagination.

Imagination is creative intuition. By careful observation of all the things we come across in the world, from boulders to blades of grass, and by intelligent thinking about them, the mysteries of life unfold themselves on every level, in every place.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
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I recommend that you read "Voracious Details" at http://shatteredprose.blogspot.com/
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LAST DAY OF SPRING !!!
Get in under the wire, before the door closes and you're left out in the heat.

SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

Come on. 12 diverse and interesting answers so far. Where's yours?

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

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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Basic Bravery

Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.

Henry Miller
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I know an actor who is moderately well trained though lacking in certain bits of essential instruction. But he has talent. I have performed with him a couple of times. He has a regular office job, working from midnight to the morning. He does shows, now and then, on a very temporary basis, but he would rather be sleep deprived than to give up his job and pursue a career as an actor. He is frankly frightened of the insecurity. One day I tried to encourage him by showing him that even with my vagabond life my yearly income was approximately the same as his and thanks to the union my health and retirement benefits were the same.

So what was the difference? He always knew he had a job and I usually didn't know where my next job was coming from. He made the same amount of money each week while my salary varied depending on the job. He was afraid of being out of work. I could and did take temp work if times were slow. He grew up in a secure middle class family. I grew up in a economically depressed situation where we had to move all the time. I ask myself if any of those issues were really the cause of his reticence at taking the plunge into a career he trained himself for. I don't think so.

He was once let go from a job when an entire department was cleaned out. He lived for a year on unemployment and dabbled in theatre and when the unemployment ran out he got another steady job. Circumstances gave him a chance to get going and he didn't take it.

He once said that every time he thought about leaving his job and trying to start a career it gave him a knot in his stomach. Of course. That's the knot of fear we all experience when we have to face something fearful and uncertain. I have faced things like that many times. I have compassion for anyone who feels that knot, but it is not an excuse to hide and deny oneself the rewards of facing it down and living a life doing what one loves.

A career in the arts is a very big and complicated thing. In the acting world there are many facets, opportunities and requirements. To make a life out of it means not limiting oneself. To go from having a tomato patch in the back yard to suddenly being responsible for a 40 acre farm would be an intimidating thing for sure. It takes courage.

If my friend the actor took assessment of himself and saw his strengths, he's young and strong, good looking, intelligent and talented, has no family to support, he would see what he had to offer and how to sell himself. The one thing he lacks is courage, and that will keep him from the life he could have and will deprive the world of the results of his artistry.

Someone I know recently criticized me for not having the courage to stop and give up. "Be brave" she said. I laughed. It takes courage not to give up. It doesn't take super intelligence to know that.

To live a full and successful life it seems to me one has to face the fear and the stresses and go for it. We need the daring of Hannibal to take our elephants across the Alps and attack Rome, the daring of Washington to move our army across the freezing Delaware in the middle of the night to liberate Trenton. the daring of Eisenhower to invade the beaches of France to cut off the German Army. Life is no part time business.

A few years ago I was asked to play Zorba in the musical. Everything said I shouldn't do it. I'm not a singer, I'm not a dancer and I don't do musicals. So naturally I said "yes." I used to sit backstage 5 minutes before the curtain and wonder how I was going to get through it, even though I had done it the night before. It was a huge role, like running up a mountain with a pack of elephants. I was frightened. I had a knot in my stomach. But the music would start, I would go out and throw myself into it. If I still had the knot in my stomach I wasn't conscious of it. 2 hours later I had done the job. If you do the thing you fear you destroy the fear.

To be brave, to have courage, to dare sometimes feels like we're shaking our fist at destiny, but if we take the risk and strive for the results nature itself can come forth with forces to assist us. "Whoever strove to show her merit that did miss her love" Shakespeare wrote.

DB - The Vagabond
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New Improved Weekend Puzzle

Straighten out these titles please.

AABIILRS

AAOTTW

ACEEGHNNOP

AEHNST

AEIJKKRVY

AGHINNOSTW

AIPRS

BDILNU

CHKLMOOST

DLNNOO

EHIIKLNS

EMOR

(dgoo cklu)
DB
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Real Light

Until we lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.

Henry Miller
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Even though I have lived completely by myself for the last 22 years, I dearly wish I had a family. But I can't imagine any family that would put up with me. I would make too many demands on people. But without the touchstone of human interaction it is very difficult to know how many of those demands are the normal results of senior citizenship and how many are just bad habits I've developed over the years.

Being a solitary individual gives one the freedom to define oneself, up to a point. True I'm not defined by my family or anyone else around me. I read a lot of journals and I see people defining themselves by their families, by their diseases, treatments and results, by where they live and the homes they live in, by their jobs and professions, by their religious beliefs. And I wonder about that. Can any of those things really define a person. Do those things have any real meaning or are they just labels.

To understand ourselves is a formidable task, made all the more difficult when labels and habitual behavior are pasted on us. I think there is more than likely a fear of removing any of those labels and peering underneath. What if there really is nothing under there? What if those labels and definitions are only like the skins of the famous onion which has no center?

Well, here's some good news. A human being is not an onion, and you can quote me. There probably isn't any center underneath all the labels and definitions. But that's not where we live. A human being is an infinitely greater and more complicated creature than the one that's covered by biographies, news stories, letters, papers, post its, wardrobes, hair dos, skin, organs and bones. The one is a paper mache caricature, the other is a fascinating complex of unlabelable qualities, forces, abilities and ideas. It is an invisible creature with thoughts no one else ever hears,
images no one else ever sees, experiences no one else ever feels and "hopes that have no name" (Nietzsche). And it is incapable of being defined.

Some people would say that's a "soul" but that term itself defies interpretation. "Real being" is another term I've heard. "Inner man" is another. But all of those terms are just so many other labels, in my opinion. The fact is who we are is not definable by any spoken or written language.

So how do I find myself Henry? I can't give up eating, sleeping, bathing myself and all the doodles of my life, important, semi important, unimportant, necessities or self indulgences. No. But I can relinquish the idea that all those things are who I am and do it on a continual basis. And I can then focus on trying to find myself behind, above and away from them. I can search for the true man, the true spirit, the true center, that which makes me distinct, original, individual and connected by an invisible and unbreakable cord to all other creatures and the universe around us.

Such a task takes discipline, constancy and effort. It means developing a completely different mental habit. It also involves the expectation of discovery. It is the most important commitment one can make to oneself.

Lose the false marionette in order to find the true actor.

DB
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Winter question
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)

Hold your breath, Spring is coming any minute

Given the resources and opportunity, what one thing do you want to do in 2010 that you've never done before.

You have the Winter to answer. Answers will be posted on the first day of Spring.
Only 23 responses so far.

DB - The Vagabond