WEEKEND PUZZLE
Since you all pooped out on me last week I'll make it easy on you this weekend. But next weekend, watch out.
The laurel wreath for the winner of this weeks contest goes upon the head of
Just Plain Bill, from the Blogspot Tigers.
Second place goes to Salemslot9 (Tiger)
Third place to Preciousone77 (Tiger)
The Email (Cowardly) Lions never showed up at the starting line.
The answer:
INSOLENCE BREEDS THE TYRANT, INSOLENCE IF IT IS GLUTTED
SWFLXJWUJ NOJJBF EIJ EPOGWE, SWLFXJWUJ SR SE SF ZXHEEJB
WITH A SURFEIT, UNSEASONABLE, UNPROFITABLE, CLIMBS TO THE
VSEI G FHORJSE, HWFJGFLWGNXJ, HWAOLRSEGNXJ, UXSKNF EL EIJ
ROOF-TOP AND PLUNGES SHEER DOWN TO THE RUIN THAT MUST BE.
OLLR-ELA GWB AXHWZJF FIJJO BLVW EL EIJ OHSW EIGE KHFE NJ.
SOPHOCLES
FLAILUXJF
Thank you. D
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Hardy Habitation 7/26/09
Storms make oaks take deeper root.
George Herbert
*********************
I'm here. Come on in.
----------------------------
My old cat William always wanted to sleep on my feet when I went to bed. I'm an athletic sleeper. I know that because every morning, when I wake up, the sheets and blankets are in a twist and a tangle. I noticed that while I was tossing around trying to get to sleep William would just dig in, wait patiently for all my flipping and flopping to finish and then settle back down. He never got up and moved somewhere else because, for some inscrutable feline reason, my feet was where he wanted to be and that was that. When I awoke in the morning there he was stretching out his front paws and looking at me to be sure I was awake and ready to dish up some cat food.
Tumults aplenty are available in this world to us mere humans. We are rained on by inconveniences and bad luck, we are blown around by opinions and influences, we suffer the lightening flashes and rolling thunder of unexpected troubles and then we are hit by the ice, snow and freezing temperatures of pain and fear. What do we do?
Reason is a good answer, thinking things through for ourselves, weighing all the facts, challenging all the doubts and arriving at conclusions we can believe and have faith in. It is a great and healthy thing to have confidence in your own intelligence. I have had my thinking challenged on many occasions and when I saw that I was wrong about something, I willingly changed my mind. But when I know a thing to be true I, like William, dig in and refuse to be talked out of it. And another thing about challenges is that if you are right and stand firm for what you know is right your grasp on it becomes even stronger, like the mighty oak tree.
Provide yourself with a place for your roots, then dig in and wait for the storm to pass. When it does you will still be standing tall.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
___________________
Try something new this week.
*********************
George Herbert
*********************
I'm here. Come on in.
----------------------------
My old cat William always wanted to sleep on my feet when I went to bed. I'm an athletic sleeper. I know that because every morning, when I wake up, the sheets and blankets are in a twist and a tangle. I noticed that while I was tossing around trying to get to sleep William would just dig in, wait patiently for all my flipping and flopping to finish and then settle back down. He never got up and moved somewhere else because, for some inscrutable feline reason, my feet was where he wanted to be and that was that. When I awoke in the morning there he was stretching out his front paws and looking at me to be sure I was awake and ready to dish up some cat food.
Tumults aplenty are available in this world to us mere humans. We are rained on by inconveniences and bad luck, we are blown around by opinions and influences, we suffer the lightening flashes and rolling thunder of unexpected troubles and then we are hit by the ice, snow and freezing temperatures of pain and fear. What do we do?
Reason is a good answer, thinking things through for ourselves, weighing all the facts, challenging all the doubts and arriving at conclusions we can believe and have faith in. It is a great and healthy thing to have confidence in your own intelligence. I have had my thinking challenged on many occasions and when I saw that I was wrong about something, I willingly changed my mind. But when I know a thing to be true I, like William, dig in and refuse to be talked out of it. And another thing about challenges is that if you are right and stand firm for what you know is right your grasp on it becomes even stronger, like the mighty oak tree.
Provide yourself with a place for your roots, then dig in and wait for the storm to pass. When it does you will still be standing tall.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
___________________
Try something new this week.
*********************
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Good Guidance 7/25/09
You cannot prepare enough for anything.
James Galway
**********************
Batter up.
---------------------------
One of the most annoying and disruptive things for an actor is to go on stage and try to work with another actor who is not properly prepared. Some beginning and amateur actors think that if they are dramatic and try real hard the role will take over and play itself, that the inspiration will come. That is total nonsense. Without the necessary preparation an actor will forget lines, miss cues, mispronounce things and be in the wrong place. Inexperienced actors simply don't know how difficult it is to prepare for a role and how many hours of work it takes. It can't be done just in rehearsal. I think of rehearsal as a daily test to find out if my homework was done. The lines have to be known so well that you don't have yo think of them. The story has to be known just as well. Nothing happens automatically. Yes, sometimes the role takes over and plays itself, but that only happens to serious, professional actors who know the role so well they can get out of the way and let it happen, Everything has to be rehearsed, on the stage, at home, with the script, in your head, walking down the street. It's not unusual for an actor in a major role to go into that role a hundred times or more before going into performance.
In my whole career I only had two major fights with a director. One of them was about preparation. It was a 2 character play. I had the role of a bartender. A girl comes into the bar and orders a lemonade. In the course of the play she has two of them. He makes them from scratch, slicing the lemon, squeezing the juice into a container, filling the glass with ice, dumping the ice, filling the glass with water and sugar, mixing them, pouring in the lemon juice, stirring and placing it on the bar in front of her. This business had to be carefully done because the lemonade would be placed at a very specific moment in the play. Meanwhile the dialogue between the two of us was going on.
The director would never let me rehearse the lemonade making. She kept saying we would do it later. Finally we got to dress rehearsal and I said I couldn't do a dress rehearsal without knowing the lemonade business. She said "We don't have time for that." We don't have time to rehearse the play, in other words.
So I sat there for the half hour before the dress rehearsal going through the business in my head, deciding when to cut the lemons, at what point the ice went in the glass, on what line I had to put in the sugar, and so on. I ran it over and over in my head. And when the rehearsal came I did it just right. She came backstage after it and was in a rage. "What happened? You lost all the contact you had with her yesterday. What the hell were you thinking about?" "What do you think I was thinking about? I was learning the business. Business must be rehearsed." And the fight was on.
When you see a play, a film or a TV show and there is activity going on know that it has been carefully worked out and rehearsed. Nobody makes it happen by pushing a button. If there is a fight scene on stage, there is a fight rehearsal before every performance.
I was hired to coach some people who were readers in an episcopal church. Those are the people who read from scripture during the service. I began with a roomful of people who had decided that it wasn't right to prepare because thy didn't want to interfere with the holy spirit and it's inspiration. I showed them that if they didn't prepare their normal human propensities for making mistakes would get in the way of the holy spirit. To err is human.
It is said the President Kennedy used to prepare for his news conferences by having his staff ask him the most embarrassing and difficult questions they could think of. Like a batter on deck swinging three bats to warm up.
Things may go right the first time. But I have seen too many awful things happen to people who tried to do something for which they were not prepared.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
_________________________
A joyful weekend is here.
******************************
James Galway
**********************
Batter up.
---------------------------
One of the most annoying and disruptive things for an actor is to go on stage and try to work with another actor who is not properly prepared. Some beginning and amateur actors think that if they are dramatic and try real hard the role will take over and play itself, that the inspiration will come. That is total nonsense. Without the necessary preparation an actor will forget lines, miss cues, mispronounce things and be in the wrong place. Inexperienced actors simply don't know how difficult it is to prepare for a role and how many hours of work it takes. It can't be done just in rehearsal. I think of rehearsal as a daily test to find out if my homework was done. The lines have to be known so well that you don't have yo think of them. The story has to be known just as well. Nothing happens automatically. Yes, sometimes the role takes over and plays itself, but that only happens to serious, professional actors who know the role so well they can get out of the way and let it happen, Everything has to be rehearsed, on the stage, at home, with the script, in your head, walking down the street. It's not unusual for an actor in a major role to go into that role a hundred times or more before going into performance.
In my whole career I only had two major fights with a director. One of them was about preparation. It was a 2 character play. I had the role of a bartender. A girl comes into the bar and orders a lemonade. In the course of the play she has two of them. He makes them from scratch, slicing the lemon, squeezing the juice into a container, filling the glass with ice, dumping the ice, filling the glass with water and sugar, mixing them, pouring in the lemon juice, stirring and placing it on the bar in front of her. This business had to be carefully done because the lemonade would be placed at a very specific moment in the play. Meanwhile the dialogue between the two of us was going on.
The director would never let me rehearse the lemonade making. She kept saying we would do it later. Finally we got to dress rehearsal and I said I couldn't do a dress rehearsal without knowing the lemonade business. She said "We don't have time for that." We don't have time to rehearse the play, in other words.
So I sat there for the half hour before the dress rehearsal going through the business in my head, deciding when to cut the lemons, at what point the ice went in the glass, on what line I had to put in the sugar, and so on. I ran it over and over in my head. And when the rehearsal came I did it just right. She came backstage after it and was in a rage. "What happened? You lost all the contact you had with her yesterday. What the hell were you thinking about?" "What do you think I was thinking about? I was learning the business. Business must be rehearsed." And the fight was on.
When you see a play, a film or a TV show and there is activity going on know that it has been carefully worked out and rehearsed. Nobody makes it happen by pushing a button. If there is a fight scene on stage, there is a fight rehearsal before every performance.
I was hired to coach some people who were readers in an episcopal church. Those are the people who read from scripture during the service. I began with a roomful of people who had decided that it wasn't right to prepare because thy didn't want to interfere with the holy spirit and it's inspiration. I showed them that if they didn't prepare their normal human propensities for making mistakes would get in the way of the holy spirit. To err is human.
It is said the President Kennedy used to prepare for his news conferences by having his staff ask him the most embarrassing and difficult questions they could think of. Like a batter on deck swinging three bats to warm up.
Things may go right the first time. But I have seen too many awful things happen to people who tried to do something for which they were not prepared.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
_________________________
A joyful weekend is here.
******************************
Friday, July 24, 2009
Explanation
The following entry is an explanation of why I am a vagabond. It is not a complaint about my life.
I am not the sort of vagabond who steals apples from a fruit stand and ideas from other people's books. I am the sort who sleeps under the apple tree and discovers my own ideas.
DB
I am not the sort of vagabond who steals apples from a fruit stand and ideas from other people's books. I am the sort who sleeps under the apple tree and discovers my own ideas.
DB
Facing Facts 7/24/09
People forget who they really are and buy into their own myth.
Siobhan Fahey
*********************
Come along with me.
------------------------------
Why do I call myself a vagabond?
__________________________
vagabond, n. 1. A person, usually without a permanent home, who wanders from place to place; nomad. 2. Idle wanderer, without a permanent home or visible means of support; tramp; vagrant. 3. A carefree, worthless or irresponsible person; rogue.
(Random House/Webster)
It all began when I was 6 years old. We moved and we kept moving. A sense of home, of permanence never took place in my consciousness. We didn't move all over the country like Irish Travelers. We stayed in more or less the same community, in the Northeast, but the dwelling places kept getting smaller and more squalid. I moved 26 times between the age of 6 and 21. Finally there was a shack, with no central heating and sometimes no heat or hat water. I literally did my homework by the light of a kerosene lamp. We would be officially known these days as poor white trash. My mother, and eventually I, went from job to job, temporary, low paid and disrespected. We were nomads.
In my adult life I kept up the wandering and sometimes I had no visible means of support. As an actor I went from job to job all over the eastern part of the country, literally from Maine to Florida. Often I had nothing but my backpack with a few items of old clothing and my Shakespeare with which I would not part. I never bought myself a piece of furniture except for the chair and desk I'm sitting at now, which I bought from the local Salvation Army for $15.
There were times when I had nothing to eat and no where to sleep. I slept in garages, alleys, on roofs, in basements, abandoned cars, subway stations, backyards and once in Oklahoma in a jail cell thanks to a kindly cop who put me up for the night. God bless him.
When my legs gave out and I couldn't work I stood on crutches in Sheridan Square in NYC and begged.
"A carefree, worthless or irresponsible person." To face the desperate struggles of life with a smile and a sense of humor gives the vivid impression of being "carefree."
To have nothing is to be "worthless" except in the scale of knowledge and compassion for others in the same circumstances. One can be forced into irresponsibility as I was and still maintain a responsibility for one's talents and abilities to give to the world. I was an irresponsible member of society but a very responsible artist.
Am I a tramp? No. Am I a vagrant? Sometimes. Am I a rogue? Yes, but only in my thoughts and ideas.
In my youth I knew people who wanted to live they way they thought I did. They would leave home, grow a beard and hit the road, telling themselves they're living the bohemian life. But they all had a home to go to, a Mom and Pop who would take them in and money in the bank. I know a guy who calls himself an "actor." But he has a regular office job which he will never quit to pursue a career because he's afraid to, he can't bear the insecurity. I knew a man who proudly claimed that he only read great literature, but if you questioned him about Hawthorne, Shakespeare or the Brontes he didn't know anything. If you asked him what he read lately he couldn't come up with an answer. It is very difficult to respect those people.
My vagabondism is not a myth. It took me many years to finally understand and admit it to myself.
Call yourself what you are and get on with life. That's my advice.
DB
**********************
Sing a sweet Friday song.
_______________________________
Siobhan Fahey
*********************
Come along with me.
------------------------------
Why do I call myself a vagabond?
__________________________
vagabond, n. 1. A person, usually without a permanent home, who wanders from place to place; nomad. 2. Idle wanderer, without a permanent home or visible means of support; tramp; vagrant. 3. A carefree, worthless or irresponsible person; rogue.
(Random House/Webster)
It all began when I was 6 years old. We moved and we kept moving. A sense of home, of permanence never took place in my consciousness. We didn't move all over the country like Irish Travelers. We stayed in more or less the same community, in the Northeast, but the dwelling places kept getting smaller and more squalid. I moved 26 times between the age of 6 and 21. Finally there was a shack, with no central heating and sometimes no heat or hat water. I literally did my homework by the light of a kerosene lamp. We would be officially known these days as poor white trash. My mother, and eventually I, went from job to job, temporary, low paid and disrespected. We were nomads.
In my adult life I kept up the wandering and sometimes I had no visible means of support. As an actor I went from job to job all over the eastern part of the country, literally from Maine to Florida. Often I had nothing but my backpack with a few items of old clothing and my Shakespeare with which I would not part. I never bought myself a piece of furniture except for the chair and desk I'm sitting at now, which I bought from the local Salvation Army for $15.
There were times when I had nothing to eat and no where to sleep. I slept in garages, alleys, on roofs, in basements, abandoned cars, subway stations, backyards and once in Oklahoma in a jail cell thanks to a kindly cop who put me up for the night. God bless him.
When my legs gave out and I couldn't work I stood on crutches in Sheridan Square in NYC and begged.
"A carefree, worthless or irresponsible person." To face the desperate struggles of life with a smile and a sense of humor gives the vivid impression of being "carefree."
To have nothing is to be "worthless" except in the scale of knowledge and compassion for others in the same circumstances. One can be forced into irresponsibility as I was and still maintain a responsibility for one's talents and abilities to give to the world. I was an irresponsible member of society but a very responsible artist.
Am I a tramp? No. Am I a vagrant? Sometimes. Am I a rogue? Yes, but only in my thoughts and ideas.
In my youth I knew people who wanted to live they way they thought I did. They would leave home, grow a beard and hit the road, telling themselves they're living the bohemian life. But they all had a home to go to, a Mom and Pop who would take them in and money in the bank. I know a guy who calls himself an "actor." But he has a regular office job which he will never quit to pursue a career because he's afraid to, he can't bear the insecurity. I knew a man who proudly claimed that he only read great literature, but if you questioned him about Hawthorne, Shakespeare or the Brontes he didn't know anything. If you asked him what he read lately he couldn't come up with an answer. It is very difficult to respect those people.
My vagabondism is not a myth. It took me many years to finally understand and admit it to myself.
Call yourself what you are and get on with life. That's my advice.
DB
**********************
Sing a sweet Friday song.
_______________________________
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Energized Estimation 7/23/09
The average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
Evan Esar
******************
Come in, the lamp is lit.
---------------------------
We have to get our priorities straight Now what shall we do? Ah! I have it.
Come on professor, get up. No more sitting around smoking a pipe in you Harris tweed jacket with the leather patches on the elbows. No more dull boring lectures on borderline vagueness, Etruscan pottery or non-Euclidian geometry. No more propositioning good looking freshman. No more being tied and tethered to your pathetic tenure. Close that book, get down to the locker room, suit up, get out on the field and start passing that football, if you expect to pay the rent.
We want to see you sweat and get tackled so we can cheer. Sign that contract with the Marbletown Jets, get in line, work with your teammates, do what your coach tells you to and hope that your team wins enough games to keep your name in the papers.
And when they hand you that big, fat check don't spend it on drugs, mansions, fancy cars, expensive bars and loose women. Put it under your mattress. Or better yet put it in the bank. Save it, so you can send your kids to college. Where they can learn basketball.
The Vagabond
______________________
May the spirit be with you.
*************************
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.
12 responses so far.
DB
Evan Esar
******************
Come in, the lamp is lit.
---------------------------
We have to get our priorities straight Now what shall we do? Ah! I have it.
Come on professor, get up. No more sitting around smoking a pipe in you Harris tweed jacket with the leather patches on the elbows. No more dull boring lectures on borderline vagueness, Etruscan pottery or non-Euclidian geometry. No more propositioning good looking freshman. No more being tied and tethered to your pathetic tenure. Close that book, get down to the locker room, suit up, get out on the field and start passing that football, if you expect to pay the rent.
We want to see you sweat and get tackled so we can cheer. Sign that contract with the Marbletown Jets, get in line, work with your teammates, do what your coach tells you to and hope that your team wins enough games to keep your name in the papers.
And when they hand you that big, fat check don't spend it on drugs, mansions, fancy cars, expensive bars and loose women. Put it under your mattress. Or better yet put it in the bank. Save it, so you can send your kids to college. Where they can learn basketball.
The Vagabond
______________________
May the spirit be with you.
*************************
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.
12 responses so far.
DB
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Demonstrated Daring 7/22/09
The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly.
Cecil B. DeMille
*******************
Join the wagon train.
---------------------------
I often write in this journal about limitations and the overcoming of them. That's because I have a lot of them and overcoming them seems to be the major issue of my life these days. My life is primarily taken up with negative pursuits, cleaning up messes, straightening out clumps, ironing our wrinkles, untying knots, dispelling daemons, chasing wolves, negotiating with monsters, staying alive. People whose names I don't even know are trying to nail down the lid on my future, my hopes and my happiness.
One may say all of my problems are in my own head. Maybe. But if so how did they get there. Ever since I was a little child I remember deprivation. lack and loss as the qualities that characterized my being. I DID NOT decide to be a poor person at the age of 6. When I had some money I was very generous with it and supported people and organizations I felt were valuable, helping people, children, animals and the planet. I did that until the money was gone. There has been no payback. That which went around has not come around. At the few times when someone came forth with a helping hand, though it was gratefully received, it was often inappropriate and useless. There were exceptions to that, such as my new monitor, which is the gift of a couple of solid gold blog spotters, and a very nice afternoon with another one who gave me some books. I love books.
The trouble is that one can become so involved in trying to get above the level of poverty that one forgets there may be something more to life. I try to think back to my youth to discover what it was I wanted to do, what my goal in life was, before I had to give up everything for the sake of getting by. I believe that if I latched on to that and went after it at high speed, most of the troubles I face would become less important. But so far my introspective fishing has not brought up anything. I know I had a goal, a dream, a desire once. What happened to it? Where did it go? It must be around here some place.
I was ridiculed out of being an astronaut in the 5th grade. I was called a liar in front of the class in 6th grade for my interest in politics. I listened to opera and classical music and read great literature because it had the ideas and ideals that were well above those that accompanied me in my squalid life. People said I listened to that music only because I was pretending, trying to show off a false erudition. Two brothers I knew came to visit me one Saturday afternoon and were baffled to learn that I actually listened to the opera when no one else was around. One day as a teenager I was publicly laughed at when it was discovered I had a book of poetry in my pocket. I was with the wrong people. But the right people were not around. My love of music didn't translate into talent so I became an actor, since that's where my talent was. To the day they died neither of my siblings could believe that that's how I made a living. The few times my mother saw me perform she had nothing but criticism for me.
But the stage was the only place I felt safe and secure because acting was something I could do and do well, and while I was on stage the deniers and suppressors couldn't get to me.
But now illness has struck down my acting career and without the money to get anything cured I'm left with little to do. One of the motives of my life has been to share what I have with people, even though sometimes it's resented. So now I write everyday in hopes that something I know and have experienced will be of benefit to someone. Even so, some people I know are saying "He's trying to be a writer." as if "being a writer" is naturally beyond my capabilities.
Now I struggle. I struggle with pain and illness, I struggle to get out of debt, to read from my books until my poor eyes get too tired and won't focus, to find food I can chew, to find my way out of this jungle of trouble, to have something to live for. I hope, at least, that my sense of humor doesn't abandoned me.
My vagabond journey is now a search for worth, value, purpose, the hopes and dreams for myself I had as a boy and that were knocked down and trampled on by circumstances. But I believe there is still a brightness somewhere I can't see, a light, a phoenix nest, a hidden naphtha waiting to burst into flame again. And I am searching for it. It's a search for the goal I left behind.
DB
_____________________________
Cecil B. DeMille
*******************
Join the wagon train.
---------------------------
I often write in this journal about limitations and the overcoming of them. That's because I have a lot of them and overcoming them seems to be the major issue of my life these days. My life is primarily taken up with negative pursuits, cleaning up messes, straightening out clumps, ironing our wrinkles, untying knots, dispelling daemons, chasing wolves, negotiating with monsters, staying alive. People whose names I don't even know are trying to nail down the lid on my future, my hopes and my happiness.
One may say all of my problems are in my own head. Maybe. But if so how did they get there. Ever since I was a little child I remember deprivation. lack and loss as the qualities that characterized my being. I DID NOT decide to be a poor person at the age of 6. When I had some money I was very generous with it and supported people and organizations I felt were valuable, helping people, children, animals and the planet. I did that until the money was gone. There has been no payback. That which went around has not come around. At the few times when someone came forth with a helping hand, though it was gratefully received, it was often inappropriate and useless. There were exceptions to that, such as my new monitor, which is the gift of a couple of solid gold blog spotters, and a very nice afternoon with another one who gave me some books. I love books.
The trouble is that one can become so involved in trying to get above the level of poverty that one forgets there may be something more to life. I try to think back to my youth to discover what it was I wanted to do, what my goal in life was, before I had to give up everything for the sake of getting by. I believe that if I latched on to that and went after it at high speed, most of the troubles I face would become less important. But so far my introspective fishing has not brought up anything. I know I had a goal, a dream, a desire once. What happened to it? Where did it go? It must be around here some place.
I was ridiculed out of being an astronaut in the 5th grade. I was called a liar in front of the class in 6th grade for my interest in politics. I listened to opera and classical music and read great literature because it had the ideas and ideals that were well above those that accompanied me in my squalid life. People said I listened to that music only because I was pretending, trying to show off a false erudition. Two brothers I knew came to visit me one Saturday afternoon and were baffled to learn that I actually listened to the opera when no one else was around. One day as a teenager I was publicly laughed at when it was discovered I had a book of poetry in my pocket. I was with the wrong people. But the right people were not around. My love of music didn't translate into talent so I became an actor, since that's where my talent was. To the day they died neither of my siblings could believe that that's how I made a living. The few times my mother saw me perform she had nothing but criticism for me.
But the stage was the only place I felt safe and secure because acting was something I could do and do well, and while I was on stage the deniers and suppressors couldn't get to me.
But now illness has struck down my acting career and without the money to get anything cured I'm left with little to do. One of the motives of my life has been to share what I have with people, even though sometimes it's resented. So now I write everyday in hopes that something I know and have experienced will be of benefit to someone. Even so, some people I know are saying "He's trying to be a writer." as if "being a writer" is naturally beyond my capabilities.
Now I struggle. I struggle with pain and illness, I struggle to get out of debt, to read from my books until my poor eyes get too tired and won't focus, to find food I can chew, to find my way out of this jungle of trouble, to have something to live for. I hope, at least, that my sense of humor doesn't abandoned me.
My vagabond journey is now a search for worth, value, purpose, the hopes and dreams for myself I had as a boy and that were knocked down and trampled on by circumstances. But I believe there is still a brightness somewhere I can't see, a light, a phoenix nest, a hidden naphtha waiting to burst into flame again. And I am searching for it. It's a search for the goal I left behind.
DB
_____________________________
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