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
***********************
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
*************************
The Ball Game
a story in 7 parts
----------------------
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)
*****************************
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
******************
Showing posts with label Marcel Proust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marcel Proust. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Friday, December 24, 2010
Consider The Sax
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
*********************
The world is indeed a strange place.
Yesterday I went for a walk in order to purchase something I needed. The walk takes about 25 minutes. It is hard for me to walk even in the best weather but it was below freezing with a strong, bitter wind blowing almost constantly. About half way to my destination there is a pocket park which consists of a row of iron benches surrounding a stone structure. In the warm weather that structure is a circular pit with a fountain in the middle. It's a pleasant little place and in the summer the squirrels come and visit, looking for a handout, and the birds will perch on the edge and sometimes dip in to refresh themselves in the water. But now the fountain is covered over by a cloth which is tied down from the wind. It has the appearance of a ghostly object mysteriously sticking up from the empty pit around it.
I sat on one of the benches to rest and must have seemed to any passer as a spectral object myself, bundled up in my overcoat, sitting where no sane person would expect to be sitting in that weather.
I knew it was a fountain because I have sat there many a summer's day. But I wondered what someone would think of it who had never seen it uncovered and gently splashing with water. It resembled an unexplainable, mystical shrine of some pagan variety. One would have to imagine what it was and what it did.
Consider a saxophone. If you had never seen one before, never saw anyone playing it or knew what it was called, do you think you would identify it as a musical instrument. It's a twisty metal thing that comes to a point at one end, folds out into a well with a hole in it at the other end and in between are a bunch of holes, looking like an octopus's tentacle, with covers over them. Would your imagination tell you it was for making music or would it devise a different use, such as a planter for vines.
I had a friend who liked to visit me during my radio shift when I was a broadcaster. She would sit in front of the consol and just stare at the knobs, switches, buttons, meters and the strange inert but dangerous looking thing that stuck up into her face. She would ask me what this thing was for and what that thing did. She knew that the end result was a radio broadcast but that consol might just as well have been a wall in an ancient Egyptian tomb.
What about a foreign language? If you saw the characters of Hebrew or Arabic for the first time and didn't know it was a language would you imagine those funny looking squiggles and curves would render spoken sound, or letters, words, sentences, ideas?
I, like most people, have been fascinated with the strange objects of the world and, like my friend at the radio station, I want to know what this thing is, what it does and what it's for.
Once you know what a thing is and what it does you can start asking why. That's a delicious task for the imagination. What makes the water spout up, how does a saxophone work, why is a radio station consol built that way, why do those particular shapes make sounds and letters. I have an essay that attempts to describe a metaphysical meaning behind each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Are there similar meanings behind the fountain, the saxophone and the radio consol?
Einstein said that he wasn't particularly intelligent but that he was just very curious. Imagination and curiosity are the tools we all possess that can turn the ordinary, every day, hum drum things in the world into brand new landscapes.
DB - The Vagabond
**************************
Weekend Contest
Here we are a few days into Winter and I still don't have a Winter Question. I have some ideas but I open the meeting to anyone who would like to propose a good question to intrigue and inspire the readers to come up with interesting answers.
Thank you.
DB
***************************
Marcel Proust
*********************
The world is indeed a strange place.
Yesterday I went for a walk in order to purchase something I needed. The walk takes about 25 minutes. It is hard for me to walk even in the best weather but it was below freezing with a strong, bitter wind blowing almost constantly. About half way to my destination there is a pocket park which consists of a row of iron benches surrounding a stone structure. In the warm weather that structure is a circular pit with a fountain in the middle. It's a pleasant little place and in the summer the squirrels come and visit, looking for a handout, and the birds will perch on the edge and sometimes dip in to refresh themselves in the water. But now the fountain is covered over by a cloth which is tied down from the wind. It has the appearance of a ghostly object mysteriously sticking up from the empty pit around it.
I sat on one of the benches to rest and must have seemed to any passer as a spectral object myself, bundled up in my overcoat, sitting where no sane person would expect to be sitting in that weather.
I knew it was a fountain because I have sat there many a summer's day. But I wondered what someone would think of it who had never seen it uncovered and gently splashing with water. It resembled an unexplainable, mystical shrine of some pagan variety. One would have to imagine what it was and what it did.
Consider a saxophone. If you had never seen one before, never saw anyone playing it or knew what it was called, do you think you would identify it as a musical instrument. It's a twisty metal thing that comes to a point at one end, folds out into a well with a hole in it at the other end and in between are a bunch of holes, looking like an octopus's tentacle, with covers over them. Would your imagination tell you it was for making music or would it devise a different use, such as a planter for vines.
I had a friend who liked to visit me during my radio shift when I was a broadcaster. She would sit in front of the consol and just stare at the knobs, switches, buttons, meters and the strange inert but dangerous looking thing that stuck up into her face. She would ask me what this thing was for and what that thing did. She knew that the end result was a radio broadcast but that consol might just as well have been a wall in an ancient Egyptian tomb.
What about a foreign language? If you saw the characters of Hebrew or Arabic for the first time and didn't know it was a language would you imagine those funny looking squiggles and curves would render spoken sound, or letters, words, sentences, ideas?
I, like most people, have been fascinated with the strange objects of the world and, like my friend at the radio station, I want to know what this thing is, what it does and what it's for.
Once you know what a thing is and what it does you can start asking why. That's a delicious task for the imagination. What makes the water spout up, how does a saxophone work, why is a radio station consol built that way, why do those particular shapes make sounds and letters. I have an essay that attempts to describe a metaphysical meaning behind each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Are there similar meanings behind the fountain, the saxophone and the radio consol?
Einstein said that he wasn't particularly intelligent but that he was just very curious. Imagination and curiosity are the tools we all possess that can turn the ordinary, every day, hum drum things in the world into brand new landscapes.
DB - The Vagabond
**************************
Weekend Contest
Here we are a few days into Winter and I still don't have a Winter Question. I have some ideas but I open the meeting to anyone who would like to propose a good question to intrigue and inspire the readers to come up with interesting answers.
Thank you.
DB
***************************
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Extra! Extra!
The good news is that the truth is never far away. It's right here, in fact, posing as backdrop.
Erik Hansen
*****************
When I was growing up in New York during the 40's and 50's there were seven daily newspapers: The New York Times, The Daily News, The Daily Mirror. The New York Post, the World Telegram and Sun and The Journal American. They were all important papers with serious journalists and committed to their readers.
These days only the giants are left, the Times, the News and the Post. I worked off and on for The New York Times as a radio announcer. I was once interviewed by the News and my acting has been reviewed by critics from all of the papers.
One Christmas season I worked for a book store, a very large book store, one of the biggest in the country. The owner and manager knew a lot about books, publishers, authors, designers and so forth. When there was a book sellers convention and he stood up to speak everyone listened to him because of what he knew. He knew everything about books, except what was in them.
Today in New York there are also many newspapers printed in foreign languages. There's El Diario, the Spanish language paper, Il Progresso, the Italian paper. La Monde for French speakers and papers I don't know the titles of in Russian, German, Greek, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai and other languages.
To ride the subway in New York is to often see people reading one of these different newspapers, a sign of the rich and varied sophistication and cultural diversity of the city.
I sometimes receive offers in the mail to subscribe to a club which will send me the world's great literature in tasteful, leather bound tomes that will look very nice on my bookshelf if I had one. Those books aren't meant to be read. Reading them might spoil the look. They are for decoration and some of them are collectors items. Besides, if you are going to read "Moby Dick," which few people ever do, you will probably get the Penguin paperback.
Marcel Proust once made the suggestion that all the frivolous passing news of the day should be published in expensive leather bound books along with the weather reports, sports scores and other simple stuff you find in newspapers while all the great writing of the centuries should be published in the daily papers. It would certainly have an impact on the accumulation of wisdom among the general population. What do you think?
DB - The Vagabond
Erik Hansen
*****************
When I was growing up in New York during the 40's and 50's there were seven daily newspapers: The New York Times, The Daily News, The Daily Mirror. The New York Post, the World Telegram and Sun and The Journal American. They were all important papers with serious journalists and committed to their readers.
These days only the giants are left, the Times, the News and the Post. I worked off and on for The New York Times as a radio announcer. I was once interviewed by the News and my acting has been reviewed by critics from all of the papers.
One Christmas season I worked for a book store, a very large book store, one of the biggest in the country. The owner and manager knew a lot about books, publishers, authors, designers and so forth. When there was a book sellers convention and he stood up to speak everyone listened to him because of what he knew. He knew everything about books, except what was in them.
Today in New York there are also many newspapers printed in foreign languages. There's El Diario, the Spanish language paper, Il Progresso, the Italian paper. La Monde for French speakers and papers I don't know the titles of in Russian, German, Greek, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai and other languages.
To ride the subway in New York is to often see people reading one of these different newspapers, a sign of the rich and varied sophistication and cultural diversity of the city.
I sometimes receive offers in the mail to subscribe to a club which will send me the world's great literature in tasteful, leather bound tomes that will look very nice on my bookshelf if I had one. Those books aren't meant to be read. Reading them might spoil the look. They are for decoration and some of them are collectors items. Besides, if you are going to read "Moby Dick," which few people ever do, you will probably get the Penguin paperback.
Marcel Proust once made the suggestion that all the frivolous passing news of the day should be published in expensive leather bound books along with the weather reports, sports scores and other simple stuff you find in newspapers while all the great writing of the centuries should be published in the daily papers. It would certainly have an impact on the accumulation of wisdom among the general population. What do you think?
DB - The Vagabond
Friday, April 9, 2010
Watch Your Tongue
Fill not your mind with empty thoughts nor your mouth with empty words.
Unknown
****************
TIME vs. IMPORTANCE
------------------------------
Most of us are unaware of just how much our thinking is effected and shaped by empty words. I don't watch much television any more, because when I do I literally shake my head at the nonsense I'm seeing and hearing.
A TV station advertises the 10:00 News, let's say. It's an hour program. The producers are responsible for delivering exactly 60 minutes of program. Of course a lot of that time will be taken up by commercial advertising which often consists of well made and attractive nonsense. They put an actor in a lab coat holding up a deliciously designed container of the latest snake oil and convincing you that you need it. And if it's patented you can even "ask your doctor" to prescribe it. There's a commercial for the latest electronic gizmo that's certain to help you find romance. And you can't travel quickly and comfortably without owning the latest classy looking jalopy. They show you the icing. They don't show you the cake underneath.
In between the commercials and other promotions there may be 35 minutes left for news. A lot of that time will be taken up with sports, weather and, possibly, stock market news. That may leave 20 minutes for other news. If there is more than 20 minutes of important events to talk about you won't get it all. If there is less than 20 minutes you will get ballast. In either case someone else is deciding what is important. Not you.
Maybe having been a broadcaster and commercial actor myself has given me a clearer perspective about these things. No maybe about it. But there's no reason not to pass my perspective along.
I was working at a large TV station during the Viet Nam war. There were a lot of protests against that war. This station sent a news team to Viet Nam to interview local Americans who were over there. After asking them who they were, where they were from and what they did there, they asked what the person thought of the protests back home. If that person thought the protests were detrimental to the efforts it was included in the news program. If the person agreed with the protests that portion of the interview was cut from the news. The station was purposely giving the impression that no one in Viet Nam was in favor of our leaving there. I was quite young at the time but it was when I first began shaking my head.
I was the morning news announcer for a large radio station. It was the custom at that station to repeat the top story at the end of the newscast, and so I did, because it was the custom, I had exactly 5 minutes, and one day I realized that the practice was cutting into time that could be used for another important item. Then, sometimes the top story was merely what one politician said about some other politician and it didn't bear repeating. It was just empty words. So I stopped the practice altogether unless the top story was of world wide importance. It wasn't long before the more conservative listeners raised their objections. They wanted the repeat reinstated for no other reason than that's the way it was always done. So I complied.
A few years later I happened to be listening to that station and heard that the practice of repeating the top story had been dropped completely. "Oh, my prophetic soul."
One day last winter I watched the TV journalists at Fox News throwing snow balls at each other during the newscast. I enjoyed that very much, not because of the snow ball fight but because it illustrated how unimportant to them it was what they were there to do.
By all means watch your TV News. But as you do remember three things.
First, it's show business. Most of those people are members of AFTRA, The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. They are entertainers.
Second, everything you see has to be carefully designed to fit into a specific and limited time slot. There is no spilling over even if there is more news than can fit into that time period and you will be given unimportant news to fill out that time slot if there isn't.
Third, there is no news outlet that doesn't have an editorial policy. Someone is deciding what is important for you to see and hear and what you should think about it.
Challenge the empty words and the empty thoughts they give you.
Marcel Proust once suggested that all the great poetry and philosophy of the world should be printed in the daily paper, whereas the news of the day, crime reports, ball scores, recipes, crosswords and police blotters should be published in expensive leather bound volumes, thus expressing his scorn for the relative importance we give to what we read.
DB - The Vagabond
-------------------------
It's Spring. Plant a smile today.
****************************
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.
Only 5 responses so far.
Answers will be published the first day of Summer.
dbdacoba@aol.com
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
Unknown
****************
TIME vs. IMPORTANCE
------------------------------
Most of us are unaware of just how much our thinking is effected and shaped by empty words. I don't watch much television any more, because when I do I literally shake my head at the nonsense I'm seeing and hearing.
A TV station advertises the 10:00 News, let's say. It's an hour program. The producers are responsible for delivering exactly 60 minutes of program. Of course a lot of that time will be taken up by commercial advertising which often consists of well made and attractive nonsense. They put an actor in a lab coat holding up a deliciously designed container of the latest snake oil and convincing you that you need it. And if it's patented you can even "ask your doctor" to prescribe it. There's a commercial for the latest electronic gizmo that's certain to help you find romance. And you can't travel quickly and comfortably without owning the latest classy looking jalopy. They show you the icing. They don't show you the cake underneath.
In between the commercials and other promotions there may be 35 minutes left for news. A lot of that time will be taken up with sports, weather and, possibly, stock market news. That may leave 20 minutes for other news. If there is more than 20 minutes of important events to talk about you won't get it all. If there is less than 20 minutes you will get ballast. In either case someone else is deciding what is important. Not you.
Maybe having been a broadcaster and commercial actor myself has given me a clearer perspective about these things. No maybe about it. But there's no reason not to pass my perspective along.
I was working at a large TV station during the Viet Nam war. There were a lot of protests against that war. This station sent a news team to Viet Nam to interview local Americans who were over there. After asking them who they were, where they were from and what they did there, they asked what the person thought of the protests back home. If that person thought the protests were detrimental to the efforts it was included in the news program. If the person agreed with the protests that portion of the interview was cut from the news. The station was purposely giving the impression that no one in Viet Nam was in favor of our leaving there. I was quite young at the time but it was when I first began shaking my head.
I was the morning news announcer for a large radio station. It was the custom at that station to repeat the top story at the end of the newscast, and so I did, because it was the custom, I had exactly 5 minutes, and one day I realized that the practice was cutting into time that could be used for another important item. Then, sometimes the top story was merely what one politician said about some other politician and it didn't bear repeating. It was just empty words. So I stopped the practice altogether unless the top story was of world wide importance. It wasn't long before the more conservative listeners raised their objections. They wanted the repeat reinstated for no other reason than that's the way it was always done. So I complied.
A few years later I happened to be listening to that station and heard that the practice of repeating the top story had been dropped completely. "Oh, my prophetic soul."
One day last winter I watched the TV journalists at Fox News throwing snow balls at each other during the newscast. I enjoyed that very much, not because of the snow ball fight but because it illustrated how unimportant to them it was what they were there to do.
By all means watch your TV News. But as you do remember three things.
First, it's show business. Most of those people are members of AFTRA, The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. They are entertainers.
Second, everything you see has to be carefully designed to fit into a specific and limited time slot. There is no spilling over even if there is more news than can fit into that time period and you will be given unimportant news to fill out that time slot if there isn't.
Third, there is no news outlet that doesn't have an editorial policy. Someone is deciding what is important for you to see and hear and what you should think about it.
Challenge the empty words and the empty thoughts they give you.
Marcel Proust once suggested that all the great poetry and philosophy of the world should be printed in the daily paper, whereas the news of the day, crime reports, ball scores, recipes, crosswords and police blotters should be published in expensive leather bound volumes, thus expressing his scorn for the relative importance we give to what we read.
DB - The Vagabond
-------------------------
It's Spring. Plant a smile today.
****************************
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.
Only 5 responses so far.
Answers will be published the first day of Summer.
dbdacoba@aol.com
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
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