The future will be different if we make the present different.
Peter Maurin
******************
There's a story that someone once asked Robert E. Lee what the secret of his long life was and he replied that he was always wanting something.
Tennessee Williams wrote "Desire is the opposite of death."
I don't suppose anyone's life is completely they way they want it. An oyster may be perfectly content being an oyster and not desire anything until that grain of sand creeps into his shell and annoys him so that he surrounds it with a pearl.
I have basically invented my life. I did more than my share of stuffing envelopes, mopping floors, stocking shelves and carrying heavy burdens. But I've done many things I wasn't qualified to do. I never took an acting lesson and yet I stepped on the stage at the Charles Playhouse in Boston and began a career as an entertainer that lasted over 45 years. I never learned to sing or dance but I've done musicals. With no prior experience as a radio announcer I went on the air at a 50,000 watt AM, FM radio station in a major market where I worked for several years. I never took a piano lesson yet I sat at a baby grand and accompanied dance classes and even wrote music for them. Without a college degree I've taught performing art on the college level. I could list other such impostures. And I did all of it just to make a buck, because poverty was always staring me in the face. Some people I know would be appalled at these confessions.
A friend recently asked me what I think about death. My answer was that I don't think about it. It's not on my schedule. The future is what I think about. and that mean the present. I am right now inventing my future.
Now I sit in an uncomfortable chair, at an uncertain and unpredictable computer system that shuts down without a warning once a day, and, because there are annoying grains of sand under my shell, I write. I'm a terrible typist. I never took a class in creative writing. And I don't make pearls, I make journal entries and stories.
Understanding and defining oneself is a complicated business, but it comes along with a life lived as a duty to oneself. Financial problems still stare at me but I've gotten hardened to them and now my desires are more ethereal than they have ever been. I look forward to the discovery of worlds of being I know are there.
No matter how many decades you've logged on your time card, the best way to live is to look forward to the future and to make the present your own pathway to it.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
****************************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
Come on. 11 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
******************
Showing posts with label Tennessee Williams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tennessee Williams. Show all posts
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Monday, September 20, 2010
Who Art Thou?
One of the reasons why it is so difficult to "know thyself" is because there are things about thyself you don't want to know.
Dana Bate - The Vagabond
********************
Like everyone else who has ever lived I come far short of being an expert at fact facing about myself. Why should that be? After all I know more about myself than anyone else does. I live with myself 24 hours a day. I know where my aches and pains are. I know what my dreams are. I have records, both material and mental, of my failures and successes. I can wave the banner of my good habits and hide the dirty linen of my bad ones.
Like many people I am not satisfied with how I planned my life. I take life as it comes and sometimes what comes is not that good. "As the twig in bent so grows the tree" so the old saying puts it. Two things my mother said to me I distinctly remember. One was "You'll probably always have trouble with your teeth>" I don't know why she said that but her prescience was accurate. The other was "You'll end up being a lonely old man" Well guess what? I'm a lonely old man. But there are antidotes for that and the most important is that I haven't "ended up" yet.
I"ve read a lot of self-help books and I always joke that those books all start with chapter two: You can achieve whatever you want in life, blah, blah. But chapter one, which is newer included, says: You can figure out what you want in life.
Contentment may or may not be happiness, and if it isn't it's the next best thing. But if we aren't careful contentment can be akin to tolerance, putting up with things the way they are even though you might want them to be better.
"I'm always wanting something" said Robert E Lee. "The opposite of desire is death" wrote Tennessee Williams. The sky gives me sunshine, clouds, rain and snow flakes. What more do I want from it? The earth gives me food to eat, tress and flowers to please me and the aroma of newly cut grass. What more do I want from it? I do not want my face on a coin or a place in the Guinness Book. I don't look forward to being remembered or memorialized. So what is the something I want, the desire that keeps me alive? Is there anything that once I've accomplished I can say "There. It's done." Or is my life just one long, continuous process of discovering myself? And if it is are there really things I don't want to discover?
One thing I know is that I am not content with contentment. If I were I wouldn't be writing every day. I've been bent and so I grow. I accept the sun shine, the rain and the aromas of life. And all along the root filled trails of my vagabond journeys the questions remain Who am I? and Do I really want to know?
DB
******************
SUMMER QUESTION
The curtain is coming down on Summer any minute. Have you made you entry yet? No? Well get cracking.
(This is not a contest.)
Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?
Only 8 responses so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
(I'm open to suggestions for an Autumn Question.)
Thank you.
DB
********************
Dana Bate - The Vagabond
********************
Like everyone else who has ever lived I come far short of being an expert at fact facing about myself. Why should that be? After all I know more about myself than anyone else does. I live with myself 24 hours a day. I know where my aches and pains are. I know what my dreams are. I have records, both material and mental, of my failures and successes. I can wave the banner of my good habits and hide the dirty linen of my bad ones.
Like many people I am not satisfied with how I planned my life. I take life as it comes and sometimes what comes is not that good. "As the twig in bent so grows the tree" so the old saying puts it. Two things my mother said to me I distinctly remember. One was "You'll probably always have trouble with your teeth>" I don't know why she said that but her prescience was accurate. The other was "You'll end up being a lonely old man" Well guess what? I'm a lonely old man. But there are antidotes for that and the most important is that I haven't "ended up" yet.
I"ve read a lot of self-help books and I always joke that those books all start with chapter two: You can achieve whatever you want in life, blah, blah. But chapter one, which is newer included, says: You can figure out what you want in life.
Contentment may or may not be happiness, and if it isn't it's the next best thing. But if we aren't careful contentment can be akin to tolerance, putting up with things the way they are even though you might want them to be better.
"I'm always wanting something" said Robert E Lee. "The opposite of desire is death" wrote Tennessee Williams. The sky gives me sunshine, clouds, rain and snow flakes. What more do I want from it? The earth gives me food to eat, tress and flowers to please me and the aroma of newly cut grass. What more do I want from it? I do not want my face on a coin or a place in the Guinness Book. I don't look forward to being remembered or memorialized. So what is the something I want, the desire that keeps me alive? Is there anything that once I've accomplished I can say "There. It's done." Or is my life just one long, continuous process of discovering myself? And if it is are there really things I don't want to discover?
One thing I know is that I am not content with contentment. If I were I wouldn't be writing every day. I've been bent and so I grow. I accept the sun shine, the rain and the aromas of life. And all along the root filled trails of my vagabond journeys the questions remain Who am I? and Do I really want to know?
DB
******************
SUMMER QUESTION
The curtain is coming down on Summer any minute. Have you made you entry yet? No? Well get cracking.
(This is not a contest.)
Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?
Only 8 responses so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
(I'm open to suggestions for an Autumn Question.)
Thank you.
DB
********************
Thursday, August 5, 2010
One's Own Truth
A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
Tennessee Williams
***********************
How far must we search or how deep must we dig to find those small but priceless pearls of innocence, righteousness and grace? Every word we type and every movement of the mouse across the page is recorded somewhere. Our movements down the street are seen by a camera and stored up in some electronic vault. Our medical records are available in many places. We have numbers, a Social Security number, credit card numbers and a phone number that connect us to encyclopedic records of our lives that can become public information. We have a DNA number that tells what we are like, what we are liable to do or suffer from. It would seem that no one owns himself. How, under the tyranny of past behavior carved in stone, could anyone possibly redeem himself from his past?
The subjective part of my life is my own business and no amount of statistics piled up to describe me can possibly define what that is. Can it? What is an appalling experience to one is a way of life to another. What to one is a shocking event is a party to another. We can reach out to help someone and sometimes regret that we did. We can walk past and ignore the one who needs help and then regret that we did. Whether the nightmarish situation is thrust on us, or we have made it for ourselves, we have choices to make. To strike out against difficult, often unbearable circumstances in fear and rage. To rationally and intelligently dismantle the outragous circumstance. To quietly and courageously bear it until it clears up on its own. To accept and condone the misery even to the dangerous extent of destroying our sense of decency.
Each person must find his own truth on the battlefield, the torture chamber, the court or the side walk. The important question is, when it is over and done with, what will I think of myself?
DB - The Vagabond
******************
SUMMER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?
Only 6 responses so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you.
DB
********************
Tennessee Williams
***********************
How far must we search or how deep must we dig to find those small but priceless pearls of innocence, righteousness and grace? Every word we type and every movement of the mouse across the page is recorded somewhere. Our movements down the street are seen by a camera and stored up in some electronic vault. Our medical records are available in many places. We have numbers, a Social Security number, credit card numbers and a phone number that connect us to encyclopedic records of our lives that can become public information. We have a DNA number that tells what we are like, what we are liable to do or suffer from. It would seem that no one owns himself. How, under the tyranny of past behavior carved in stone, could anyone possibly redeem himself from his past?
The subjective part of my life is my own business and no amount of statistics piled up to describe me can possibly define what that is. Can it? What is an appalling experience to one is a way of life to another. What to one is a shocking event is a party to another. We can reach out to help someone and sometimes regret that we did. We can walk past and ignore the one who needs help and then regret that we did. Whether the nightmarish situation is thrust on us, or we have made it for ourselves, we have choices to make. To strike out against difficult, often unbearable circumstances in fear and rage. To rationally and intelligently dismantle the outragous circumstance. To quietly and courageously bear it until it clears up on its own. To accept and condone the misery even to the dangerous extent of destroying our sense of decency.
Each person must find his own truth on the battlefield, the torture chamber, the court or the side walk. The important question is, when it is over and done with, what will I think of myself?
DB - The Vagabond
******************
SUMMER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?
Only 6 responses so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you.
DB
********************
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