Watch Your Mouth

Let no one be willing to speak ill of the absent.

Sextus Propertius
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Hello Geo
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I was in rehearsal for a play and during a break I walked into the Green Room (the actor's lounge). Just as I did one of the actors was talking about someone and he instantly stopped in mid sentence. There were some blushing faces, one person became immediately involved in a magazine, the fellow who had been talking was staring at the floor sheepishly.

I sat down and said "So, I walked into a conversation about myself and now everyone here is embarrassed except for me." There was silence. Then I said "I'm flattered that you think I'm important enough to gossip about." More silence, so I changed the subject and got people talking again.

Over the years I worked with two radio announcers who delighted in making fun of other people. They would tell the most damaging and derogatory jokes about someone or other which they would never repeat to that person's face. Their comments were very funny and people laughed. I wondered if those people would laugh if the joke was about them.

I find that kind of humor despicable. It's degrading, cruel, malignant and ignorant. It's the sort of humor that's rampant on some TV talk shows these days, which is why I won't watch them.

I can laugh at myself, but I don't need to be told what's funny about me, unless it's from a good friend who does it with love and respect. And if someone makes jokes about me behind my back he's not a friend, no matter how friendly he may appear to my face.

One day in New Hampshire a fellow got invited into my home for a day, asked me all sorts of questions about me and my life, seemed to be very impressed and interested and we genuinely had a good time together, I thought. Then I heard from someone else that he went back to the city and was spreading all kinds of rumors about me by twisting around the things I told him. He thinks I have forgotten him and his name. I haven't.

It's a terrible thing to be the victim of a laughing gossiper. It's even worse if you find yourself being one, just to get the laughs.

Those two announcers both got fired because they made the wrong joke, about the wrong person, at the wrong time. But, alas, they took the mouths they couldn't watch with them.

DB - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
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AUTUMN QUESTION

What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?

Only 4 answers so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

I await your answers.
DB
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Amuse Me

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, be always in your own best company.

Dana Bate
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I was in rehearsal for an original play, a comedy, and one day on my way to work I came across the playwright and one of the actors. I told them I had just been on the phone with a friend in New York who asked me how it was going and I had replied "They make me go out on the stage in front of everybody and expose my comic timing."

I am one who fortunately developed an appreciation for the ironies and absurdities of life. Years ago I met an older woman who was so unconcerned about growing older that she would laugh when she couldn't remember a name. To her age was just an annoying inconvenience and was not about who she really was.

There is nothing in this world that is so deadly serious that it doesn't have its humorous side. I don't mean I would laugh at another creature's suffering, but I may ultimately laugh at my absurd struggles trying to alleviate that suffering. If the pig out wits the farmer and escapes being slaughtered I cheer for the pig, even though I know its freedom is probably temporary. But I hope the farmer gets a genuine laugh from it.

I also find humor in my own struggles to survive and live. Why get outraged and curse because there is an ice filled snow bank in your way. Get over it, get through it or get around it. In any case you're going to look funny doing it. So laugh at yourself.

Unfortunately my sense of humor has a negative side to it. I also can't remember names. And I have to go slowly and stagger as I walk, another result of age. And if I have to face an ice filled snowbank it's a major problem. But I confront all those problems and others with a smile on my face because I don't take any of it seriously. But sometimes other people do. If I say that I stagger to the market and stagger home again people think I'm complaining about my lot in life. "Woe is me, look how sick and decrepit I am. Alas and alack. How sad." Well it isn't. Life isn't perfect. Have you noticed that? "Much of grief shows still some want of wit" wrote Shakespeare.

Once a month I meet with a surly group who seem to think everything I have to say is of no value. But whether I'm with them, with others or by myself I'm accompanied by a sense of humor. It is my companion, the company I keep.

I suppose there are those who have no sense of humor and cannot develop one. But if you are reading this journal you are probably not one of them. So my advice is no matter what the situation, without losing sight of its serious nature, look for the humorous side. It's there.

We don't need stand up comics, who could be funnier than politicians? It's too bad they don't have my comic timing.

DB - The Vagabond
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WEEKEND CONTEST
Hitch up the teams.

What teams do the following letters represent?

1. A & C
2. B & B
3. G & S
4. GB & GA
5. L & H
6. LR & T
7. M & L
8. P & T
9. PP & M
10. RR & DE
11. R & M
12. W & F

good luck
DB

And There Was Light

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.

J R R Tolkien
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Oh, I know what you're thinking. "Life is serious bushiness. What's the point of having a sense of humor about it?" Stay tuned and I'll tell you.

I consider one of the great blessings of my life, as a result of going on the Internet in 2004, is the collection of friends I've made through the journals, originally in Jland and now in The Google Blogspot, and my list of email buddies. Most of you I haven't met and some of you I never will meet but I feel and know there is real love shared. I could name names but I might leave someone out by accident. And I note that because of facade book and tweeter some folks aren't blogging much any more. But I am still and am still trying to understand and write the truth.

I also think with affection about my lost and former friends, Some folks have left my life for various personal reasons. But others have turned away when they thought I was leading into dark areas. One person said my journal entries were whiney and self-indulgent. It's a gracious fact that others didn't find them so who were faced with similar problems and decisions. We all have the right and freedom to draw from our own life experiences to offer compassion, understanding and advice.

I've been told that I was going down a dark road. Well, damn, sometimes the road is dark but that doesn't mean there's no light on it. I've always tried to conduct my life with joy and a sense of humor. That means I bring my light with me. And your lights come gliding through your journals even when the news is grim. So when the darkness comes take my hand, we'll laugh and get through it.

I love my friends, even the faithless ones. When night falls and the fierce and terrifying storm is raging outside anyone who comes to my simple, sloppy home seeking chocolate, laughter, love, music or safety, in any order, will find them.

DB - The Vagabond
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
SUMMER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)

Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?

5 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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Tickle The Phantom

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Sartre
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October 17, 2009, a day of infamy in my life, was the day my computer abruptly stopped letting me on the Internet. During the 6 weeks I was marooned I spent a lot of money and logged many hours on the phone talking to tech support people from the computer company, the service provider and AOL. Some of them were nice people, some were not. Some were smart people, some were not. Some were knowledgeable about how to fix things, some were not.

One evening in the midst of my struggle and anguish I spoke to a fellow from Verizon who was obviously intelligent and who knew how computers work and how to be respectful and helpful. He did some tests and came up with a piece of information which eventually led to help solving a part of the problem. When he was finished he said "Is there anything else i can help you with?" I said "No. unless you can tell me the real meaning of life." He laughed and said he hadn't figured that one out yet. I told him that I was 70 and didn't have the answer either, so good luck. We both shared a laugh over that.

Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905 - 1980 was a French philosopher, playwright and novelist. I performed his play "No Exit" once years ago. Sartre was so important to the world that, even though there was no official count, it is estimated that over 50,000 mourners attended his funeral.

During the war he served in the French army, was captured by the Germans and spent many years as a prisoner. It was then that he started writing.

Sartre was an Existentialist, which means, among other things, that he had an understanding and appreciation for the absurd, an awareness of the idiosyncrasies of the human race, an ability to cheerfully face the mysteries and uncertainties of life, in short, a sense of humor.

I owe, in part, to Sartre my own sense of humor, which allowed me, even in the midst of terrible and seemingly unsolvable computer problems, to share a laugh with a stranger over this strange and impenetrable thing called life.

DB - The Vagabond
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Try on a laugh today and see if it fits.
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Weekend Puzzle.
Sing along.
It's fun and easy.

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FAKKU NCJWEHM

RZZN EARVH KJG. PWBWSWGV, XVMJMQMJ UZC WJM.
*************************
Good luck.
1 right ansawer so far
Have fun.
DB

What are you laughing at?

Life's perhaps the only riddle that we shrink from giving up.

W. S.. Gilbert
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I think there is nothing in life that doesn't deserve a good laugh. But there are good laughs and bad laughs. There's laughing with and laughing at. There are things we can laugh at that don't hurt, things we are supposed to laugh at: clowns, comics, the shenanigans of some animals in the zoo or our own household pets. But there is another form of laughing at, where someone is made the butt of a joke that may be funny but hurtful.

Three times in my life I had to work closely with someone who got great delight in poking malicious fun at someone else's expense. Two of those people were radio announcers which meant that their barbs went out over the air. I was speaking with a listener one day who was praising one of them for being so funny. I said that he was funny until you become the subject of his jokes.

It was inevitable that some day those jokesters would stick the wrong people with their sarcastic darts. They were both fired from their jobs.

There's a well known TV nighttime host whose opening monologue is almost entirely made up of making fun of people. Some people find it very amusing. I don't. It's cruel. Next time you watch one of those people aim his so-called wit at someone else, imagine if it was you he was talking about. You might stop laughing. If you find yourself telling jokes like that about other people, slap yourself, figuratively, across the mouth and stop it.

That kind of humor is beyond being disrespectful. It is disguised hatred, dressed up envy, a dish of bile with whipped cream on top.

The other kind of laughter is a loving laughter, an acknowledgment of the things that are really humorous, a poking of fun that is not malicious or hurtful, a sharing with others the ironies and absurdities of life.

Why is life so funny? Why is it so confusing? Why do things not behave they way they are supposed to? Why does your garbage weigh more than your groceries? Why did you put your car keys in your bathrobe pocket? Why aren't your shoes where you left them when you took them off last night? Why does the weather report say snow when the bright sun is shining through my window? Why is there sometimes a crack in the solid wall of reason?

The subject of humor is something I could write about forever. Other people write about it and keep writing about it because it's an endless topic and because there isn't anything in life that doesn't deserve a laugh, including life itself.

In the midst of my six weeks of anguish at not being able to get back on line I was on the phone with one of the techies who was trying to fix the problem but wasn't doing it. There are certain things they are supposed to say to every customer, such as "Thank you for calling ...." etc. One of those prescribed comments is "Is there anything else I can help you with" even when they haven't done anything. When this particular techie asked me that I said "No. Unless you can tell me the true meaning of life." He laughed. Considering the people he had to talk to and the problems he had to deal with it was probably the only time he laughed all day.

DB
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How cold is it?
Weekend challenge.

You are to complete the following sentence:

How cold is it? It's so cold.........!

As in: "It's so cold the pine tree is shivering!"
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There are only 5 answers so far. Come on, I know there's a sense of humor out there somewhere. Be inventive, creative, original, outrageous. Exaggerate. Enter as often as you like. The decision of the judge is final and probably biased.
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Aw, grow up.

Everyone else my age is an adult. Whereas I am merely in disguise.

Margaret Atwood
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"The actors are come hither, my Lord." Shakespeare
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I was recently talking with a friend who is about my age and I said that these days I was masquerading as a senior citizen. He said "So am I." He's also an artist.

It's not so much that creative work keeps you young as that it is outside of age altogether. Mozart, in his music, was a wise old man even though he only lived into his 30's, Some writers don't start writing their novels until their 70's or 80's.

In my younger years I triad to be an adult. I wasn't good at it. Back then I thought I knew what an adult was, a serious minded professional, a responsible and contributive member of society with a solid goal and a well defined purpose in life, an authority figure in his chosen line of work. But I was none of those things.

I was a performing artist, an actor, a player. A player is one who plays. Just because I was able to convincingly depict grown ups on the stage didn't mean that I was one.

Furthermore, a serious adult doesn't find anything amusing about the serious issues of life. But I, thank heaven, and to the great scorn of some around me, had a sense of humor which I still have.

Now, if I can't remember someone's name it doesn't throw me into a vortex of grief over losing my memory. After all these years I have a large library of names stacked up in my mind. You can't expect me to remember all of them at the flick of a switch. I send the research assistant who resides in my brain down into the vaults to go through the files until he comes up with it.

I'm still the boy I was 60 years ago, discovering life and gratefully turning my discoveries into things that are beautiful, I hope. Now, in my current disguise, I enjoy playing the role of an adult and a senior citizen. Just don't ask me to grow up. .

DB - The Vagabond
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No smart aleck remarks about Peter Pan, please.
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Alternative Approach 10/10/09

Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

Joseph Addison
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Read on if you've a mind,
or even if you don't.
______________
Happy talk, keep talking happy talk,
Talk about things you'd like to do,
You gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?

(Oscar Hammerstein)

I have had continual trouble all my life in one form or another. I don't like to write about it in Vagabond Journeys, that's not what this journal is for. But sometimes it's necessary just to clear the air and let people know, if they care, where the person is coming from who writes these words. Unfortunately some people, who seem to enjoy what they call my eloquence and poetry when I write "happy talk," turn sour and call it histrionics and dramatics when I have to address something sad and troublesome. Well, I'm sorry, but if I can't make poetry out of my pain then of what use is pain? Or poetry, for that matter?

One of the things I fear, when the sky turns dark and life grows gloomy, is that I might lose my sense of humor. I don't remember when I first discovered that I had one. Maybe it was the first time I got a good solid laugh from an audience. My boyhood was certainly humorless. It was filled with ridicule and sarcasm, the shadow land of humor. But somewhere along the rocky road I began to see the funny side of things. I learned to laugh, not at people, but with people at life. That is not to say that some people aren't very funny. The more self important they are the funnier they are. And that was another big step around the rocks. I eventually learned to laugh at my own self righteous pomposity.

So why, you ask with an appropriate smirk on your face, aren't you laughing at yourself now? I don't know. Maybe I did lose my humor. If you see it laying around anywhere, send it to me, Express Mail, COD. Thank you.

Another reason for the sadness everybody (okay, many people) suffer is the realization that the dream of one's life is not going to happen. One of the changes that took place in me the other day was the despair of accepting that the life I was holding in my mind as what I wanted for myself was never going to be. That is a deep sense of loss that plummets right down to the bottom of my invisible being. They can take away my family, my home, my money, my health, my work, my career, my books and my journal. But surely they can't take away my dream. Can they?

I stare at the table top like a nut and await an answer even though I know it won't come because I already know what it is.

And another great loss that shakes the ground one depends on is the loss of faith. Why does one's expectancy of good have to be a cheat? We come to have faith in so many things: the law of averages, casting bread on the waters of life, recognition of efforts done well, proper acknowledgement of ownership and rights, the rule of law, adequate compensation for work, friendships. But when the evidence of any of those is lacking in one's experience, and particularly of more than one, faith in the rest is shaken. I had to come to face how much faith I have lost over the years. It's frightening. Then, when all else fails, there faith in some form of deity. I tried that. I guess it works for some people. But when honest, earnest prayers produce the opposite result of what one is praying for, that faith has failed.

If you have followed me this far in today's journal entry and aren't looking for something to criticize me for, I will think of you as a friend and tell you that my sleeves are rolled up, my boots are beside me and I still have a sense of adventure around here someplace. I may have an old man's puny strength and not much else to help me except my wits, but I can't implode and won't. I shook my fist at heaven more than once and I will do it again. I feel I have been tragically let down by promises, people and events of my life and I resent that very much. But my life isn't over yet.

I will post a cheerful entry one of these days. I promise you.

DB
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Yielding Yucks 9/12/09

No matter how bad life gets, you may weep and rage and feel sorry for yourself, but above all, gain and grasp with all your might an abiding sense of humor.

DB - The Vagabond
*******************
Land your space ship over here.
______________________
There's an old saying in the entertainment world: "Comedy is serious business." And one of the definitions of "farce" in its theatrical sense is "A passion carried to a ridiculous extreme."

This is not a discussion of the synergy between pleasure and pain. That's a different subject and one I'd rather not get into. But if you listen to an audience enjoying a good comedy without knowing what they are laughing at, it frequently sounds like they are all screaming in pain. In the same sense it often appears that someone who is caught up in a net of fear and sorrow can seem funny to someone who doesn't know or feel their pain. But what's so funny? Nothing, to the person who's grieving. And yet, maybe it can be.

Many years ago, partly through my own odd sense of things, engendered, no doubt, by my acting experiences, and partly because of the influence of other people, I developed an appreciation of the ironies and absurdities of life. From someone who was so defensive and protective of my, so called, dignity, I became someone who could discard my false armor and laugh at myself.

"This helmet, I suppose
Is meant to ward off blows.
It's very hot
And weighs a lot
As many a guardsman knows.
So off this helmet goes."
(W. S. Gilbert)

So how do we learn to cast off the fake helmet of pride and laugh at ourselves? The first step is to realize that sometimes we are funny. Have you ever boiled the water for a cup of tea, poured the water into your cup, carried it over to your desk and realized you forgot to put the tea bag in the cup?

My grandmother was a great one to laugh at herself. We were outside one day when her hat blew off. My brother went chasing after it and every time he leaned over to pick it up the wind blew it again. After a couple of times my grandmother got the giggles. It was her cherished hat but somehow the silliness of the attempted retrieval was enough to strike her as very funny. And when my grandmother laughed the whole word around her laughed along,

But the most amazing story about her sense of humor was just before she died. We had to pick her up from her hotel room in New York. It was in the early 50s, I was 14 years old and I had to dress up in a tie and jacket to enter the hotel. When we got her home she had to go up a flight of stairs. She knew she couldn't make it so we got a chair, sat her in it and with my mother in front and me behind we lifted her step by step up the stairs. Every time I leaned over to grab the back of the chair, my tie would fall in her face. She began to laugh, and soon we were all laughing. She knew her days were done and she was coming home to die, But she could still laugh, and I will never forget that.

It may not be great guffaws. It may be silent. But there is humor in every situation in life, no matter how tragic, if we learn to look for it and enjoy the joke. Laughter will clean the slate, clear the air, relax the tension and cast light into our dark and somber view of things. I'm very grateful that I finally developed a sense of humor.

DB
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May the big bubble of joy surround you.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
WEEK END 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 September 30, so get cracking.

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

Smiling Sagacity 6/15/09

At first, I only laughed at myself. The I noticed that life itself is amusing. I've been in a generally good mood ever since.

Marilyn vos Savant
****************
Hello friend.
----------------------
The tragedies of life are generally the result of mistakes. The bigger the tragedy, the bigger the mistake. And the bigger the mistake the more people want to know about it. War is a tragedy, a big one, and when it's finally over it's time to count up the mistakes.

All the tragedies of the world can be traced back to things we didn't know about, things we didn't prepare for or things we did wrong. And they all make the news.

I like to approach things from a different standpoint. I prefer to look at things from the point of view of solving, healing and correcting. I never wanted to, and rarely did, plays about diseases, about sick people. I don;t want to watch someone suffering or dying from some ailment, and I don't want to portray such a person. I think it's cheap theatrics. Send it to the hospital.

The ancient Greeks wrote tragedies. People suffered and died but it wasn't because of an invasion of disease, it was because a major mistake was made. Hence there is something to be learned. A lesson. Shakespeare has only one character who is ailing unto death, but he gets healed by the second act. Shaw wrote a play about doctors, but not about diseases. And so on.

What I'm saying is that too much modern drama is taken up with the tragedy of something that no one can help and hence there is no message to humanity being delivered. People claim that the violence on TV and in the movies creates a violent society. I don't know. But much of it is without reason or justification, that's true.

Sometime around 1960 to 65 I began to observe and appreciate the ironies and absurdities of life. Certain circumstances that enrage some people simply make me laugh. I don't laugh scornfully, malignantly or sarcastically but with a heart full of compassion for those who suffer.

If you're not wearing your glasses, you can't find them. If you can't find your hat,it's probably on your head. A neighbor's dog used to wrap her leash around a tree. She would stand there and whine until he or one of his neighbors unleashed the dog, disentangled the leash and attached it to her again until next time. There was no coaxing her back around the tree the other way. She wouldn't do it. The poor dog suffered simply because she didn't know she could go the other way and free herself.

A physician neighbor of mine once told me that a patient at his hospital had undergone surgery three times on the wrong lung because a technician had mislabeled the X-ray.

A man drives to his home and finds his house has been destroyed. The wrecking crew had the wrong coordinates. It was the house across the street that should have been leveled.

Speaking of coordinates, the bomber crew gets the wrong ones and destroys an Iraqi family instead of the terrorist cell down the street.

The phone company erects a telephone pole equidistant from the others but it's right in the middle of the entrance to someone's driveway.

Geologists have been warning for decades what would happen if a major earthquake were to strike New Orleans. Were they prepared?

None of us are immune from life's absurdities. Last Thanksgiving I had a stove and oven that didn't work, nothing but canned foods to enjoy for my Thanksgiving dinner and my can opener broke. I dined on peanut butter.

I laughed.

Life is full of tragedies and most of them could have been avoided. That's what makes life so absurd. But we can't do anything about them if we sit around grinding our teeth in rage or punching walls. The only way to deal with the ironies and mistakes of life is with a clear, compassionate, abiding sense of humor.

DB - The Vagabond
_________________
Find some serenity this week.
********************

Necessary Navigation 12/24/08

I would not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a serving sense of humor.

Horatio Nelson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It took me many years before I learned to laugh at myself and at the absurdities of the world around me. I was a sensitive, serious and somber kid. Not appreciating what others found funny, I was easily offended when people would laugh at me. In spite of the loving attempt by friends to point out the big red clownish bulb on my mental nose, I maintained my right to my own self-importance.
I don't remember exactly what it was or when it was that I finally learned to laugh at life and at myself. But I know that one day, when I was in some serious difficulty and had problems that I thought were too much for me to handle, I suddenly saw the funny side.
Humor is more than telling jokes It is the positive against the negative, the ability to see light where the darkness is gnawing, to spot the subtle thing that's alive in the wasteland, to see the end of the tunnel before you enter it, to breathe fresh air and life into an oppressed and suffocating spirit.
It must seem strange to one who hasn't developed a proper sense of humor to see someone laughing at their own troubles, but humor will minimize the troubles and the sufferer's reaction to them, piling up defenses against the fear and pain and freeing the soul to face up to them and solve them, That is a law of life.
One day in June, several years ago, my phone service went out. It knocked out my phone and my computer. I went to a pay phone and called the company. They said they would send someone around to fix it. That night there was a severe summer storm that caused flash flooding and knocked down phone lines all over the county. I was frustrated and almost in a frenzy. People were trying to reach me, friends, who were used to getting email from me everyday were getting very concerned about me.
It took a whole week for the repairman to finally get to me. When he got my service back up and running, there were two messages from the phone company telling me why they couldn't come to fix my phone.
I could grind my teeth in rage over the stupidity and silliness of that, or I could laugh.
What would you do?

DB The Vagabond Elf