In The Morning

Live your life as though there is great joy to be experienced.

Meladee McCarty
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Hello Linda
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In the Sophocles play "Oedipus the King" Jocasta, Oedipus' wife and mother has a speech in which she states that she has come to that point in life where there can be no more joy, implying that it is a point we will all inevitably reach. The first time I heard that speech I had a strong negative reaction to it. A hopelessly joyless life may be what she looks forward to considering the tragedy that has unfolded before her. But that certainly doesn't need to mean the permanent loss of joy for all of us.

There is no joy in my life currently. It was taken from me in early February by an unfortunate set of discoveries and realizations just as Jocasta faced in her life. Though hers were much more tragic than mine the resultant disappearance of joy was the same. To find out as Jocasta did and as I did that we were living in a lie, living with a lie, for years and not knowing it is an agony of unspeakable depth.

Since that time I have been repositioning myself, mentally, emotionally and physically to rediscover the joy I had. Though I can sympathize with her I don't have the same attitude Jocasta had. I believe the joy is in me and I will experience it again.

There are many things that can deprive someone of their joy. Fear and pain are two big ones. In fact those two horros are major villains in everyone's life. And they must be fought against with vigor and persistence every day. The joy of standing on the summit of the mountain can only be attained by the dangerous struggle to climb it.

I go back to the metaphor of the radio that only plays two stations. One is blaring all the fearful thoughts that trouble me and cause me pain, and the other has the soothing voice of reason, harmony and truth. But the ornery dial keeps switching back to the negative station and if I'm not careful I find myself listening to it. One station speaks of loss, loss of joy, loss of everything, the fear of never again having the life you had. The other station speaks of life, future, freedom. joy. And that's the doctrine I accept.

The struggle against fear and loss is harder than I thought it would be but I've won enough battles to know I will win the fight, and that will be a joyous day.

Dana Bate - Vagabond
Never give up.
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Ask And Ye Shall Receive

What we think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the right question.

Jonas Salk
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Hello Bryant, Arkansas
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One of the greatest discoveries of human history was the scientific method. It is the system we use for trying to understand, cope with and utilize the laws of nature. But it is also a question. Every hypothesis in the course of practicing the scientific method is a question and when the right question is asked the answer reveals itself. There has never been a more useful human tool for peering into the mysteries of the world around us and finding answers to the fundamental questions. It is a rich companion for the human intellect.

Learning to ask the right questions is not only good for science but also for technology, mechanics, politics, art and philosophy. The amazing thing is that the laws we supposedly "discovered" were all there all the time. The laws of gravity, thermodynamics and aeronautics were right there waiting to be discovered, waiting for someone to ask the right questions.

I once had a housemate who was a very particularly religious fellow. He worked as a carpenter and one day he came home and said "Today the Lord showed me how to hang a ceiling." Whether you would agree with that analysis or not, if the ceiling stayed up the right questions were obviously asked.

Artists can use this method all the time. If you talk to your painting, and wait, the painting will talk back to you. It's the same with music. Constantine Stanislavski, the great Russian actor, director and teacher, has given actors a grand and almost mystical hypothesis to work with, called "The Magic IF, If I were in this situation what would I do? If I was this man, in this situation, and I wanted to find out this piece of information from this other man without letting him know I was doing it, what would I do. That puts the actor right in the middle of the action without any artificiality. He is then involved in a real event and the answer to his question will reveal itself. naturally.

There is no secret for finding the right question. Good luck may have something to do with it. But patience, desire, persistence and not giving up are guarantees.

DB - The Vagabond
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Mind Twister Of The Week

This puzzle is going to stay up for a week or until someone comes across with the answer. Dust off your brain.
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1. Here are three numbered statements.
2. Two of them are true.
3. One of them is false.
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How many of the statements are true? Why?
____________________
dbdacoba@aol.com

Good luck, DB
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SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

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

4 answers so far

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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Discoveries

Contents
Discoveries
Weekly Puzzle
Spring Question
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Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Carl Sagan
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Hello La Paz, Bolivia. May you grow wealthy on good crops.
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I find great pleasure in discovering things, new things, new things about old things and old things I'm rediscovering. That "there is nothing new under the sun" may be true as far as the sun is concerned, but in all the parcels and possibilities of our lives there is a multitude, probably a infinite number, of "new' things, things that have always been there patiently waiting for someone to uncover them.

When I was a lad I was a good swimmer and I liked to dive down to the bottom of Long Island Sound to see what was down there. There was no scuba diving around in those days in that area, so I stayed down for as long as I could hold my breath and brought things up to the surface with me.

I love music and will listen to it for hours appreciating and learning new things about the harmonies, counterpoints and orchestrations. I am learning more all the time about how to listen behind the tones and melodies to find the truth that only music can speak.

At 21 I hitchhiked across the country, from Boston to Los Angeles. I had seen pictures, but I wanted to see for myself what the pictures tried to tell me, to hear, smell and feel the country for myself and to see things that weren't in the pictures. That two week journey was one of the most profound experiences of my life.

In my career as an actor there were always discoveries to be made about the story, the character I was playing, the intricacies of the plot and even about the art of acting. I learned new and improved ways of performing and of communicating the ideas and the realities of human life.

At one time I thought a lot about the act of communication. I took three plays by Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, King Richard the Third and Romeo and Juliet and studied each play carefully to find some statement about human communication. I uncovered some real gems of wisdom in every scene that might be missed in the tumble and passion of performance by an audience and even by the actor himself. I wonder what happened to all those notes. Somehow they fell by the wayside in my vagabond life.

When I began to study at the Art Students League in New York, drawing and painting, I was soon learning amazing things about the human body, the bones, muscles and other organs and seeing them in their metaphorical contexts. I was learning how the body can communicate thoughts and states of mind by its positions and poses, why the muscles looked the way they did and worked the way they did and what the pencil and the paint brush were able to tell me if I listened to them.

Living for a while in New Hampshire I was an avid hiker in the White Mountain National Forest. That gave me the joy of discovering the vast and complex creations of nature and how they related to each other, the riches of rocks, trees, ferns, brooks, wild flowers and wild animals. I think walking softly among those mysteries and imbibing their character was some of the happiest moments of my life.

Now in my senior years my explorations and travels are through the great literature of the world, especially the philosophers. It is a surprising journey because it takes new/old ideas that touch every aspect of our lives from psychology to cosmology.

There are many modern philosophers who simply tread back and forth over the same field and point out the flaws in each other's foot prints. But in every age and nation true thinkers are born. I am looking forward to knowing the next one.

DB - The Vagabond
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No fooling around, here is this week's puzzle.
These are all legitimate movie titles in translation.
Your task, if you wish to survive, is to translate them back into their original titles by the end of next week.

Several Saints
Uprising Over The Thanksgiving Dinner
How One Murders An Imitator
Swept Away In A Breeze
The Lion Is Burning It's Feet
What The Flute Makes
The Insects' Messiah
She Married The Monster
Mr. Summerfall Winterspring
The Chimpanzees Live There
Confessing When Drenched
He Paid Very Close Attention, Unfortunately
Boiling When It's Dark
Misplaced Religious Artifact Stolen
Trees Around The Little House
Leo's Secret Message
Ultimate Spanish Dance in France
Country In A Maternity Ward
Instructions In Stone
Creepy Creatures Aloft
The Bitch Is Domesticated

1 entry so far.

Good luck
dbdacoba@aol.com

DB
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SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

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

4 answers so far

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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There Is Something More

I would put myself in the way of revelation.

Bate - The Vagabond
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Years ago I knew a lay preacher at a large Baptist church in Harlem. She wasn't clergy but she was a good woman, very devout and dedicated. She would often preach to the congregation of that church which she said had some members who had come through terrible times of poverty and drug addiction. Even though I was not a member of her church or even a church goer myself, and she knew it, she seemed to think I had positive advice to offer her and so she would discuss her sermons with me

One day she went through a list of Bible references and concluded that if you are a believing Christian then the answer to all of life's problems is faith. Well, that answer wasn't good enough for me, so I asked her if that was all there was to it. What else could there be? She went back into her references and said that she guessed love for God and man was part of it. "What else?" I asked. Then she came across things like honesty, compassion, obedience and so forth, and she finally said "You know what? You're right. There is always something more."

I had a conversation with a friend's 14 year old daughter who said her favorite thing to study in school was science. I asked her if she preferred lab science or field science and she said she wanted to do them both. It must be a very interesting and rewarding life to be a research scientist, not someone who mixes the same old formulas over and over again, but someone who is always in the process of discovery.

One of the great pleasures in my retirement is reading. I read all the time, books, magazines, newspapers. It's slow going because I have to use a magnifying glass, but I don't care. If I get my eyesight back I think I would read just as methodically as I do now because I don't want any ideas to pass me by. There are old forgotten ideas to rediscover, new discoveries, discoveries hidden in familiar material that I missed before, there are even discoveries within discoveries. Some discoveries are surprising and some are awesome.

My black lady preacher friend also said that even if we don't know they are there they remain to be revealed. One of the greet discoveries of all is that behind each new idea, even behind the process of discovery itself is something which has to be experienced to be understood. Even the most sublime idea is merely a sign post, a trail marker pointing us toward revelation, toward the awakened land of enlightenment. That I will find that road and stay on it is where my faith is.

Bate - The Vagabond
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WEEKEND CONTEST

You are to give me a song title or a lyric substitution for one of the words the word "pumpkin" as in "Somewhere over the pumpkin" of "My pumpkin 'tis of thee"

Enter as often as you want. The winner will be whoever can get the sour, angry, nihilistic judge to laugh so hard he pees in his knickers.,

Good luck
DB
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Loose Ends

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete.

Henry James
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Life is unfinished business. I used to be one who liked to have things tidy up into nice neat bundles. Experiences I wanted curled up into simple rules for living. I wished to draw the line at what was useful to me and easily understood. I wanted life in a box, gift wrapped with a pretty ribbon around it. Then one day I saw the light.

It is curiously comforting to me to know that there is always something to do, something more to learn and something more to be made out of all the experiences I've had. People I've known for a long time intrigue me by occasionally revealing new facets of themselves. It takes me a long time to read a book because I keep going back over it to find the things that have a new meaning for me. It's the same with the music I find the most interesting and the poetry.

The corner one must be careful of is categorizing. While categories are useful for science and other things, when it comes to people it's a useless endeavor. I don't categorize myself and I don't want anyone else to do it. I call myself a vagabond which implies that I don't fit into any particular mold. Neither does my life. People, things and experiences can be identified without drawing lines around them.

People are sometimes surprised, shocked, appalled when they meet me. I am surprised on the rare occasions when I meet myself. Will I ever understand myself? I doubt it.

"Discover" is a better use of one's mind than "categorize" in my opinion. There are always new ways of doing things, new roads to find, new purposes to investigate, new experiences to enjoy, new facets of ourselves to uncover. As it says in my profile, no rituals, no rules, no summations. I prefer it that way.

DB
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Lesson Levels 9/25/09

Nothing is ever completely what it is in our understanding. The more familiar it becomes, the more we discover about it.

DB - The Vagabond
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There's the fridge. Help yourself.
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I was interviewing a violinist who played with a world famous string quartet. We were discussing a piece the group had just recorded, a late Beethoven quartet. I noted that they had recorded the same work some years previously and asked why they wanted to do it again. He said it was because of the discoveries. He said they could play the piece 200 times and still find something new in it.

I thought about my own career and remembered that on 4 occasions I returned to a role I had played before, in some cases many years before, and each time it was like a new experience. Certain things seemed to have been hidden from me that were uncovered as a result of revisiting the part.

It wasn't that the previous performances weren't good, as good as I could make them. It was that as time went my, and I grew some, and that the experiences and ideas of the play had their gestation period in my own consciousness I awoke to a different mental scene when I picked up the script again.

I had also learned more about the art of acting in the mean time and thus could apply that skill to a better, clearer articulation of the play.

There is probably nothing more complex in the universe than a human being (in spite of how simple minded some people may seem) and therefore human relationships are among the most complicated of activities. How often have you discovered some important fact or disposition about a friend that you never knew about? Imagine 4 musicians sitting there rediscovering a Beethoven quartet and discovering themselves and each other in the process.


An astrophysicist at NASA was asked recently if it's depressing that they don't know much about the universe. He answered "No. It's exciting."

DB - Vagabond
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Try on a big smile. See if it fits.
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AUTUMN QUIZ

If you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be and why?

You have all Fall to answer if you wish,

Reply here or at dbdacoba@aol.com


Thank you

DB

Fecund Findings 9/19/09

Sometimes the pathless life is best. A stroll through the garden is pleasant, but it's man made nature. A walk in the forest is wild and dangerous, but it's the real thing.

DB - The Vagabond
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Welcome to my world.
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One of the things I find so frustratingly hard to comprehend is why I and everyone else cannot gain release from the grasp of the senses. Even though the wisdom of the ages has urged us to look beyond the obvious, to the reality that can't be seen and heard and to except the possibilities, therefore, of discovering real truth.

The quote at the top of this entry, posted a few days ago on Vagabond Jottings,
http://vagabondjottings.blogspot.com./ brought some comments that let me know how truly important the words are.



Years ago there was a TV commercial about a company that was trying to sell a subscription to classical music records. It was aimed at first time classical music listeners. One of the comments in the ad, no doubt thinking it would help sell the records, was "We've taken out all the unfamiliar music." It was a horrifying idea. First, what gives the company the right to take a scalpel to some great composers life work and compositions. And second, why would anyone not want to listen to "unfamiliar" music? Because it's dangerous? A walk in the forest?



We can go through life along the same old mental road, viewing the same old landmarks and feel very comfortable about it, without knowing the road is more than just a road, a familiar path which never approaches the forest of discovery. It's convenient. It's safe. It seems right and doesn't require many questions.



We have been shown or have shown ourselves that it's the right way to go. And if we choose not to follow it one day we will simply find another road, just as safe and convenient. I do not speak of roads, streets or highways.



I do not speak just of gardens or forests, Why should I? Because to speak otherwise is unfamiliar music. It's wild and dangerous. It's much safer to stay on the well constructed path through the carefully designed garden of mythological sensations than to venture into the chaos of unknown truth.



Every garden is a library, a collection of the known world, gathered, simplified, clear to the eyes and carefully planted in an organized manner and tended by human love and effort. Every forest is a tangle of known and unknown ideas, of unfamiliar music, of discoveries, of a reality beyond what we have seen and heard and thought.



I am not talking about gardens. I am not talking about forests. I'm talking of realities, discoveries, a journey of the mind through the unusual and unexpected. Sometimes the pathless life is best.



DB - The Vagabond

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Let the weekend ring.

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WEEKEND QUESTION



Summer is almost over, Autumn is on the way (check your calendar if you don't believe me). Answers to the SUMMER QUIZ will be posted on the first day of Autumn. But then the AUTUMN QUIZ will start. And that's where you come in.



Your mission is to provide me with a question, or two or three, for the AUTUMN QUIZ. You may enter as many times as you wish (no proof of purchase necessary) but you have only till Monday, so get cracking.



Only 4 responses so far.



The decision of the biased, curmudgeonly judge is final.



The winner not only gets his/her question posted for the season, but also gets to sit on my front porch and listen to me ramble on for hours about nothing in particular.



Good luck.



DB