If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Frederick Douglass
*********************
Hello Stuart
*******************
Not forever by still waters
Would we idly quiet stay,
But would smite the living fountains
From the rocks along our way.
(L. Willas)
-------------------
Maybe you've heard the old formula for success, the three P's: Patience, Passion and Persistence. Well, I propose the following formula for survival, the four S's: SEEK, SEARCH, STRIVE and STRUGGLE.
One of life's greatest enigmas is the injustice of nature. Why does one person have it easy and another has it hard? Why is one person loaded with advantages and another has to scratch in the ground to get any thing? Why does one person prove his manhood by climbing Mount Everest while the guy in the next town proves his by keeping his kids fed and finding cast off garments that almost fit to dress them?
I'm not ashamed to say I grew up poor nor am I bragging to say that I survived it. I was born into an upper middle class family. Four years later my father died, at an early age. There was no income. My mother had a nervous breakdown and emerged from that with an iron will. She was a devout Christian woman whose prayers were rarely if ever answered. When my older brother and sister left home, she sold the house and I started my vagabond life.
Each place we found to live was worse than the one before, and some of them were very temporary. We eventually ended up in a shack with no central heating and sometimes no electricity. We were poor white trash, slum dwellers, in a wealthy suburb of New York City.
SEEK - Seek out the hidden, buried and discarded things with the faith that you'll find them. When something is uncovered make use of it. If it isn't, you do without.
SEARCH - When real need arises it must be found, whether it's an item or an idea. Be inquisitive and adventurous about it. There are more answers residing in the human mind than most humans are aware of. We must learn to trust our own thinking ability.
STRIVE - For those who have little or nothing striving is a way of life. My mother never had a trouble free day. She faced life with grim determination, stress, deep depression and arthritic fingers. And she survived. Strife is the activity, and progress is the possible result.
STRUGGLE - Don't think for one lazy moment that it isn't going to be a struggle, because it is. When you're poor no one shows up to help you carry the burden up the hill. The days are too long, the task is too hard, the reward is too small and the discouragement is too big. When the end comes, even though you know the struggle will continue the next day, you pull whatever cover you have over yourself and be glad you made it through another day.
When the morning comes, even though you don't want to, you rise, take your staff and smite the living fountains from the rocks in your way.
Living with my mother taught me about seek, search, strive and struggle. And it also taught me to...
Never give up.
DB - The Vagabond
*********************
Showing posts with label rocks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rocks. Show all posts
Monday, May 14, 2012
Thursday, May 10, 2012
The Hills Are Alive
There is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require.
Edward Elgar
*******************
Hello Bruce
********************
One year I took a college geology course. The professor was excellent and got me fascinated with rocks. I would walk down the street analyzing rocks where ever I saw them: stone walls, stone buildings, any stone structure, even pebbles on the beach. I would try to determine what they were, what they were made of and how they were formed. For a year I was a rock fanatic. It greatly improved my observation skills.
Another year I spent taking a music course called ear training, where you learned how to recognize intervals and chords by only listening to them and not reading the notes from a score. It was very difficult at first, but was an interesting exercise and improved my listening ability very much.
I began to listen to all kinds of sounds, the birds, running water, cars and trucks passing, people talking. I realized how many different sounds there were in a single sound. Some of those sounds were tones of a scale while others were toneless. I began to hear sounds where I didn't expect them. Buildings. Buildings have sounds. My building emits a quiet, high pitched trill.
There are sounds in the air. They're there if you listen for them. They are quite harmonious sounds as a matter of fact. This giant rock we stand on is filled with sounds. They say there are even sounds in outer space. Though no human ear has ever heard them , as far as we know, sensitive recording devices have picked up some of them.
As there is with rhythm, there is music everywhere. More than we could ever require.
DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
**********************
Edward Elgar
*******************
Hello Bruce
********************
One year I took a college geology course. The professor was excellent and got me fascinated with rocks. I would walk down the street analyzing rocks where ever I saw them: stone walls, stone buildings, any stone structure, even pebbles on the beach. I would try to determine what they were, what they were made of and how they were formed. For a year I was a rock fanatic. It greatly improved my observation skills.
Another year I spent taking a music course called ear training, where you learned how to recognize intervals and chords by only listening to them and not reading the notes from a score. It was very difficult at first, but was an interesting exercise and improved my listening ability very much.
I began to listen to all kinds of sounds, the birds, running water, cars and trucks passing, people talking. I realized how many different sounds there were in a single sound. Some of those sounds were tones of a scale while others were toneless. I began to hear sounds where I didn't expect them. Buildings. Buildings have sounds. My building emits a quiet, high pitched trill.
There are sounds in the air. They're there if you listen for them. They are quite harmonious sounds as a matter of fact. This giant rock we stand on is filled with sounds. They say there are even sounds in outer space. Though no human ear has ever heard them , as far as we know, sensitive recording devices have picked up some of them.
As there is with rhythm, there is music everywhere. More than we could ever require.
DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
**********************
Monday, June 20, 2011
Minds Wide Open
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
Henry Miller
*********************
Geology and drawing are two of the most important and most memorable courses of study of my experience, because they both taught me not only to observe but also to think.
Intuition is a valuable tool in those two disciplines as it is in any instruction of value. Intuition is one of the thruways to imagination. Observation is the starting place of all learning, doing and creating, the first step toward the silent world which is only symbolized by such things as rocks and drawings.
Immanuel Kant wrote "Sense is the faculty of intuition in the presence of an object. Imagination is intuition without the presence of the object."
Some rocks are very beautiful (lapidists deal in them) while others are very ordinary looking, just a rock. But all of them have stories to tell. It is interesting to examine a rock to determine it's age and chemical, cellular composition. But whenever I hold a rock in my hand I realize I am holding millions of years of history.
A mystic I used to know once gave me a rock she had pick up off the side of Mount Olympus in Greece, the mountain of the ancient gods. She put it in her purse and carried it all the way back specifically to give to me. I kept that rock for many years until someone found it and threw it out. It was just a rock, after all, it didn't belong in the house. So somewhere on the ground in Westchester County, New York is a bit of Mount Olympus.
One day I discovered an outcropping of stratified rock sticking up from the ground at an angle and pointing at the sky. I knew it was stratified, which meant it was made of layers of sediment, probably laid down by centuries of rain, baked in the hot sun, hardened into solid rock, then covered over by other layers, twisted into an arc by volcanic action of the earth and then eroded by rain and wind to it's current state. As I looked at it I tried to imagine what it must have looked like when it first covered the surrounding earth, and what it was like as a mammoth spectacle after the earth had buckled it. I also imagined the real possibility that somewhere, near or far, one could find the other end of that rainbow, a chunk of stratified rock jutting out of the ground and pointing in the opposite direction back to itself.
In upper Manhattan, around 200th Street, there's a boulder. It's surrounded very closely by houses and it's a prime piece of real estate. But ti's protected from developers because it's a natural wonder. It was set down there centuries ago during the ice age by a gigantic glacier that traveled through.
There is another boulder of comparable size along the Boulder Loop Trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. That one is surrounded by trees and is also protected because of the National Forest it's in. I wonder if the two boulders are related. They were both probably set down by the same glacier.
Michael Chekhov (1891 - 1955) was the nephew of Anton Chekhov, the great Russian playwright. He was an actor who also taught and wrote on acting. One of his theories was called the PG, which stands for Psychological Gesture. It's not the kind of gesture such as pointing a finger or shrugging of shoulders but a full body gesture. With it an actor can convey the inner life of a character even though presenting a false face to the other characters on the stage. The way a person stands or sits can tell a lot about how that person feels or thinks.
I studied life drawing at various locations around New York City. When I first began I struggled with getting the proportions right of the human figure, then learning how to articulate the bones and muscles in different poses. After a few years I began to observe something else. The models weren't actors, most of them, but whenever they would drape themselves into a pose for a period of time they would strike a psychological gesture. Each figure, each pose had a story to tell. Though unconscious, perhaps, on the part of the model it was a clear statement of some inner life. My imagination began to provide histories of these people, current events in their lives, their fears and dreams. My drawings took on a more interesting quality and were more enjoyable to do and to see.
On the stage when a character enters the scene he is coming from somewhere. The actor is coming from the wings, but the character is coming from a specific place not seen on the stage. The actor has to know where his character is coming from, and he does know because he decides, through observation and imagination.
Imagination is creative intuition. By careful observation of all the things we come across in the world, from boulders to blades of grass, and by intelligent thinking about them, the mysteries of life unfold themselves on every level, in every place.
DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
*************************
I recommend that you read "Voracious Details" at http://shatteredprose.blogspot.com/
****************************************
****************************************
LAST DAY OF SPRING !!!
Get in under the wire, before the door closes and you're left out in the heat.
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
Come on. 12 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
******************
Henry Miller
*********************
Geology and drawing are two of the most important and most memorable courses of study of my experience, because they both taught me not only to observe but also to think.
Intuition is a valuable tool in those two disciplines as it is in any instruction of value. Intuition is one of the thruways to imagination. Observation is the starting place of all learning, doing and creating, the first step toward the silent world which is only symbolized by such things as rocks and drawings.
Immanuel Kant wrote "Sense is the faculty of intuition in the presence of an object. Imagination is intuition without the presence of the object."
Some rocks are very beautiful (lapidists deal in them) while others are very ordinary looking, just a rock. But all of them have stories to tell. It is interesting to examine a rock to determine it's age and chemical, cellular composition. But whenever I hold a rock in my hand I realize I am holding millions of years of history.
A mystic I used to know once gave me a rock she had pick up off the side of Mount Olympus in Greece, the mountain of the ancient gods. She put it in her purse and carried it all the way back specifically to give to me. I kept that rock for many years until someone found it and threw it out. It was just a rock, after all, it didn't belong in the house. So somewhere on the ground in Westchester County, New York is a bit of Mount Olympus.
One day I discovered an outcropping of stratified rock sticking up from the ground at an angle and pointing at the sky. I knew it was stratified, which meant it was made of layers of sediment, probably laid down by centuries of rain, baked in the hot sun, hardened into solid rock, then covered over by other layers, twisted into an arc by volcanic action of the earth and then eroded by rain and wind to it's current state. As I looked at it I tried to imagine what it must have looked like when it first covered the surrounding earth, and what it was like as a mammoth spectacle after the earth had buckled it. I also imagined the real possibility that somewhere, near or far, one could find the other end of that rainbow, a chunk of stratified rock jutting out of the ground and pointing in the opposite direction back to itself.
In upper Manhattan, around 200th Street, there's a boulder. It's surrounded very closely by houses and it's a prime piece of real estate. But ti's protected from developers because it's a natural wonder. It was set down there centuries ago during the ice age by a gigantic glacier that traveled through.
There is another boulder of comparable size along the Boulder Loop Trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. That one is surrounded by trees and is also protected because of the National Forest it's in. I wonder if the two boulders are related. They were both probably set down by the same glacier.
Michael Chekhov (1891 - 1955) was the nephew of Anton Chekhov, the great Russian playwright. He was an actor who also taught and wrote on acting. One of his theories was called the PG, which stands for Psychological Gesture. It's not the kind of gesture such as pointing a finger or shrugging of shoulders but a full body gesture. With it an actor can convey the inner life of a character even though presenting a false face to the other characters on the stage. The way a person stands or sits can tell a lot about how that person feels or thinks.
I studied life drawing at various locations around New York City. When I first began I struggled with getting the proportions right of the human figure, then learning how to articulate the bones and muscles in different poses. After a few years I began to observe something else. The models weren't actors, most of them, but whenever they would drape themselves into a pose for a period of time they would strike a psychological gesture. Each figure, each pose had a story to tell. Though unconscious, perhaps, on the part of the model it was a clear statement of some inner life. My imagination began to provide histories of these people, current events in their lives, their fears and dreams. My drawings took on a more interesting quality and were more enjoyable to do and to see.
On the stage when a character enters the scene he is coming from somewhere. The actor is coming from the wings, but the character is coming from a specific place not seen on the stage. The actor has to know where his character is coming from, and he does know because he decides, through observation and imagination.
Imagination is creative intuition. By careful observation of all the things we come across in the world, from boulders to blades of grass, and by intelligent thinking about them, the mysteries of life unfold themselves on every level, in every place.
DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
*************************
I recommend that you read "Voracious Details" at http://shatteredprose.blogspot.com/
****************************************
****************************************
LAST DAY OF SPRING !!!
Get in under the wire, before the door closes and you're left out in the heat.
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
Come on. 12 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
******************
Monday, August 31, 2009
Nether Nexus 9/01/09
In order to know what's what you have to read not only between the lines but behind them.
DB
****************
Welcome to my vagabond world.
__________________________
I know what I said. I think I know what I meant by what I said. But I'm not sure if I know why I said it.
I college I took a geology course. We took field trips, and one day we went into someone's backyard to look at a big rock sticking out of the ground. The teacher explained that it was stratified rock, which meant that at some ancient time it was lying flat on the surface of the earth. But this rock was jutting out at an angle.
Then we went miles away to another place and came upon an outcropping of the same rock which was jutting out in the opposite direction. The teacher explained how the earth had buckled and caused the rock to realign itself into a wave and that weather had eroded the higher parts of that wave. He said that there was probably some place where the rock could be found jutting back down into the earth again.
I was impressed by the fact that a geologist could see the shape and movement of that rock even though most of it had eroded away. But I was also fascinated by realizing that the uneroded part of the rock was under the ground. The movement of the earth had caused it to bend into a huge concave arc and that if we dug down deep enough we would find where the rock was at the turn of that arc.
I once attended a lecture on forestry for the general public. It was a talk about trees. A large part of the lecture was about roots. I knew that trees had roots, but I didn't realize to what extent the roots were important to the tree and that depending on the tree, in terms of bulk, some roots are as big as the tree. While the upper part of the tree is sending out shoots and buds, forming leaves and branches and gradually growing taller, the roots are groping their way through the earth, like a bunch of worms looking for sustenance.
Both of those experiences got me thinking about the hidden meaning of things. I began to wonder what was behind, underneath and responsible for things. I also began to apply it to my job as an actor. A piece of dialogue in a script usually has two levels to it. One is what you say and the other is what you really mean, You say "What time will dinner be served?" What you mean is "I'm very hungry."
But then I began to look deeper into the script. I was doing a two character comedy in New York. At one point the other character drops to the floor and has a tantrum, pounding his fists on the stage. I stood watching him. We were in rehearsal and the director wanted to know what I was doing. I said that I was trying to understand his tactic. The actor said "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" quoting Freud. I said a cigar is always a cigar but on the stage it means something. I repeated that I was trying to understand the character's tactic at having its fit, but that it did not mean the character knew what it was, It was an eye opener. Can people do something which seems to have no reason, but which in fact does have a reason hidden from the person who's doing it? Of course. It happens all the time. Furthermore, can a person do something for an apparent reason while the real reason is hidden from him? How aware are we of the real reasons we do things?
The birds and squirrels that sit on the branches of the tree are totally unaware of what is going on in the ground underneath that tree. And so are we, in our lives, most of the time.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
__________________
Happy September.
************************
SUMMER QUIZ
This is not a contest.
A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.
Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars, or the equivalent of whatever your currency is, what are the first three things you would do with it?
You have all summer to answer if you wish.
20 responses so far.
DB
DB
****************
Welcome to my vagabond world.
__________________________
I know what I said. I think I know what I meant by what I said. But I'm not sure if I know why I said it.
I college I took a geology course. We took field trips, and one day we went into someone's backyard to look at a big rock sticking out of the ground. The teacher explained that it was stratified rock, which meant that at some ancient time it was lying flat on the surface of the earth. But this rock was jutting out at an angle.
Then we went miles away to another place and came upon an outcropping of the same rock which was jutting out in the opposite direction. The teacher explained how the earth had buckled and caused the rock to realign itself into a wave and that weather had eroded the higher parts of that wave. He said that there was probably some place where the rock could be found jutting back down into the earth again.
I was impressed by the fact that a geologist could see the shape and movement of that rock even though most of it had eroded away. But I was also fascinated by realizing that the uneroded part of the rock was under the ground. The movement of the earth had caused it to bend into a huge concave arc and that if we dug down deep enough we would find where the rock was at the turn of that arc.
I once attended a lecture on forestry for the general public. It was a talk about trees. A large part of the lecture was about roots. I knew that trees had roots, but I didn't realize to what extent the roots were important to the tree and that depending on the tree, in terms of bulk, some roots are as big as the tree. While the upper part of the tree is sending out shoots and buds, forming leaves and branches and gradually growing taller, the roots are groping their way through the earth, like a bunch of worms looking for sustenance.
Both of those experiences got me thinking about the hidden meaning of things. I began to wonder what was behind, underneath and responsible for things. I also began to apply it to my job as an actor. A piece of dialogue in a script usually has two levels to it. One is what you say and the other is what you really mean, You say "What time will dinner be served?" What you mean is "I'm very hungry."
But then I began to look deeper into the script. I was doing a two character comedy in New York. At one point the other character drops to the floor and has a tantrum, pounding his fists on the stage. I stood watching him. We were in rehearsal and the director wanted to know what I was doing. I said that I was trying to understand his tactic. The actor said "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" quoting Freud. I said a cigar is always a cigar but on the stage it means something. I repeated that I was trying to understand the character's tactic at having its fit, but that it did not mean the character knew what it was, It was an eye opener. Can people do something which seems to have no reason, but which in fact does have a reason hidden from the person who's doing it? Of course. It happens all the time. Furthermore, can a person do something for an apparent reason while the real reason is hidden from him? How aware are we of the real reasons we do things?
The birds and squirrels that sit on the branches of the tree are totally unaware of what is going on in the ground underneath that tree. And so are we, in our lives, most of the time.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
__________________
Happy September.
************************
SUMMER QUIZ
This is not a contest.
A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.
Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars, or the equivalent of whatever your currency is, what are the first three things you would do with it?
You have all summer to answer if you wish.
20 responses so far.
DB
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