The Road

Face the winds and walk the good road to the day of quiet.

Black Elk
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Hello Ernie
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I know an actress named Emily who says that her daily prayer is "God, give me peace." I can relate to that. Oh, how I yearn for the quiet day. My heart, my mind and my whole being hopes of the day when the vultures spread their wings and fly off, when the vipers slip silently back into their holes, and when the catalogue of my mistakes is flung into the fire to help warm the cold night of winter. I yearn for the end of sorrow. I long for the repair of my broken heart and the gathering up of broken dreams.

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone
I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
When the city sleepsAnd
I'm the only one and I walk alone

(Al Dubin/Harry Warren)

I walk alone but try to stay on the good road at last. I hope for the biting winds of winter to become the gentle breeze that clears my spirit. To have a sweet person bring me Christmas dinner on a freezing cold December night and then to learn that the sweetness was a lie and the person a deceiver is a breaking of the heart. The love I still have for that person keeps me on the good road.

Walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous. (Proverbs 2:20)

To be unable to do the work I love because of where I live is a breaking of the dream, but my heart still holds the hope that I will step upon a stage again one day. I walk alone with that hope clutched in my heart.

The good road is a lonely one and I have to keep checking the signs to see that I stay on it. But through all the sorrow, fear, noise, pain, scorn, disappointment, discouragement, loss and failure, I still walk the road believing that there will be at last a day of quiet.

Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up************************

SUMMER QUESTION

I recently received a peck on the cheek from two members of the female persuasion. Besides those I haven't experienced a real kiss in many, many years. I have no flowers. There is nothing growing outside, no trees, no bushes, no flowers, just a few pathetic weeds here and there. That, thankfully, does a lot to discourage the mosquito population, but it doesn't give me much in the way of flora. So I pose this question for those of you who have more experience in these matters.
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Which is more important, a flower or a kiss? Why?

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.

Love Again

To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again - this the brave and happy life.

J. E. Buchrose
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Hello Bruce
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As one who was recently wearing a broken heart I can speak with some authority about this topic. A broken heart is a terrible thing to have. It resembles the end of life as you know it. It takes a moment to break it and takes a long time to heal. And one of the wrest parts about it is that it puts you into a state of denial. You don't want to accept that it happened because the relationship that ended was too important and you try to regain what you had even though you know in your reasoning mind it's impossible.

As Pearl Buck said "What really broke a heart was taking away its dream - whatever that dream may be."

But this time around I uncovered another even more horrifying effect. I woke up one morning having had a dream in which I was talking to some actors I used to work with about a theatre that no longer existed. One of the older actresses said "It's over. No more. Never again."

I bolted awake and sat up in a panic. I interpreted the dream as saying that in my advanced age I had just had my last chance of loving anyone. That the love that lives in my heart would never again have a chance to express itself to anyone. "No more. Never again."

I can't describe the terrifying sense of loss I went through that day, and it took a full day of stern reasoning with myself to come to understand it was a fear, not a truth. Now I can say as I put it in one of my Jottings "I loved and lost, but I will live to love again."

It takes courage to be a lover. Love is risky business. There is always the chance for a broken heart. But I like to recall a song Mabel Mercer used to sing "It's true your not the first, but maybe you'll be the first to last."

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
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Broken Up

The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that they are not mended again.

Alan Paton
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Broken hearts are tragedies and broken relationships are also tragedies if they were once good. How do you fix a broken heart? You can't. The heart can only fix itself through time and through the stitch by stitch mending process in which the sufferer goes over and over, revisiting all the bits and pieces, some true, some false, of the person or event that caused the break. Eventually the heart is healed and life goes on.

How do you fix a broken relationship? I think that's a more complicated job and even more important than mending a heart. Some broken relationships never get mended and that's the tragedy.

I had an actor friend who is now in the West. We did two plays together and then I saw his work, he saw mine. One day he introduced me to the woman who was to become his wife. I went to the wedding. He went off to do a major TV series. About a decade later he invited me to come out and spend Christmas with his family. He had three children, the oldest was 10. His wife told me they were concerned about how they were going to entertain me while I was there. They needn't have. I wasn't there a half day before I fell in love with those kids. Every spare moment I had they were urging me to join them in some sort of game. I was sad to leave.

Back home I sent an email with a remark about what a pleasure it was to meet the family and wished them and the kids a happy new year.

For some reason I will never understand my email offended them and it was answered by a series of very unpleasant remarks back to me about my attitude and incorrect thinking. It went on for a month, back and forth, me defending and explaining, they criticizing and maligning me. Finally, in sorrow and frustration, I wrote a long letter breaking off the friendship and explaining why. There has been no contact between us since.

Ironically this happened at the same time his wife was publishing a book about friendships between women that break up and where NO explanations are given.

Another friend, living in New York, went to Europe for two weeks and asked if I would watch his apartment. I agreed. He returned and I came back home. A month later I went to visit him and he presented me with a telephone bill; there was a call that lasted for an hour and a large charge on it. I never made the call. In fact I didn't even use his phone while I was there. I had my own cell phone at the time. But he is convinced I made the call, nothing can change his mind, he would not even answer my calls or my mail and we don't speak to each other any more.

Sometimes we return, in our imagination, or in reality, to the place where the break up occurred or to the place where the circumstances which caused the break up occur. It's like going back to a certain place to search for something you dropped.

I am still sifting through the pieces of my current broken relationship wondering if, like those before, it is impossible to be mended or if it will remain tragic. In my case it was a mistake, an delusion I had about the other person's character and behavior. It was a beautiful friendship in many ways and would have lasted and grown. But it was marred by an activity that was carried out in a manner that made me unimportant and unwanted. Things were happening in ways that I could not accept nor adjust to. So the relationship ended. The other person continues to go to the same place, do the same things in the same manner, thus continuing to downgrade and devalue me. Maybe that person is looking for an answer, something lost. I sit on the porch where the friendship first began looking for answers, looking for what was lost. We do not see or speak to each other, though I sometimes think we want to, if we dared.

The sweetness, kindness and gentleness of that beautiful friendship based on pure affection is what was lost. The rest is illusion.

Will it ever be mended? Time goes by, people grow and change, things are forgotten, new things and new people fill our lives and the opportunity for mending is lost.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
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'Tis True, 'Tis True

It is best to love wisely, no doubt, but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

William Thackeray
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So you have a broken heart do you? Well now isn't that a shame? Welcome back to life and sanity.

If you go chomping on unknown bait you may find a hook. If you put your hand in the fire you will get burned. If you put your hand in the fire again you will get burned again. That's natural law.

I am one who has had his heart broken many times, because I refused to settle down. It takes some people a long time to learn their lessons. But the gratifying thing is that with each broken heart comes another lesson about love. One cannot lead an adventuresome life without getting stuck in the fire now and then. I advocate loving wisely, of course. But there is always a price tag an any human relationship, especially an intimate one. And some of those costs are dangerous. As Norman Mailer said "There is no such thing as safe sex."

When the costs become cost plus perhaps it's time to count them. It is truly foolish not to count them but perhaps your partner did the counting and found it too high. Broken heart coming up.

Love is diving off the pier before you know how deep the water is. It's collecting sometimes useless things. It's forgiving things you can't forget. It's tying a knot that should last forever but won't. Love is a fancy, a vision, a fondness, a dream. It's standing in the rain to catch a glimpse.

To give one's heart to anyone or anything is a risky venture but if the result is love returned than it's worth it. If the result is love lost it is also worth it because one has grown in many ways. It takes time but a broken heart is curable after all.

I once knew a young fellow who thought he was an actor. He was talentless and undisciplined. One day he said he never had to pay for love. I thought, Boy, you have got a lot to learn.

So what's the danger of falling in love again, even foolishly? The danger is you might grow wiser and more tender.

A. E. Housman put it very well.

"When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies 5
But keep your fancy free.’
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again, 10
‘The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.’
And I am two-and-twenty, 15
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true."
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And now I am one and seventy and am still not sure what love is. Or loving wisely either.

DB - The Vagabond
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AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?

Only 7 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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