A Knock At The Door

Individualism is the fountain that all can drink from, and for each and everyone, hopefully the taste is different.

Ken Riches
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Being an artist is many things, it is like being an indentured servant, it is a blessing, it is a process of discovery that seemingly never ends, it is being an alchemist, it is being an explorer, it is being astonished, it is providing wisdom and joy, it is knocking at doors which have never been opened, it is an overcoming of limits, it is humbling, it is sharing life with an unknown deity.

As an actor I spent as much time and mental energy trying to understand what I was actually doing as I did on preparing and performing a role. In the grandest sense my work was a journey into myself, into the dark cave and gentle grotto of my own being and reason for living.

As a pillow underneath and soft light surrounding the weary head of my life as an artist with all the difficulties and hardships inherent in that life, I consider myself fortunate to have lived long enough and to have worked enough to begin to understand the practical destiny of my life in terms of the actor's obligations and experience.

There is a place where words and actions stop. Beyond it is pure thought and experience. The words and actions are steps leading up to that mysterious place.

An actor begins with a story, usually a script, with a character defined by the author in terms of words and behavior. After penetrating deeply enough into the story the actor will know certain fundamental things about the character he is portraying. Those things are all threads of an overall fabric of the character's life. Within the given circumstances of the story he plays out the parts of his character's individuality. And all of those parts are tied together by an objective, a wish, a desire, a search.

As the actor reaches into his own well of experience to fashion the movement of his character through the story, he comes upon another objective, that of the play itself. Then questions arise. Why do this play? What is important about it? What does it say?

The answers to those questions have to do with the authors' own objectives, his search for answers to his own practical destiny. And if he is a prolific writer each play is another thread in the tapestry of his own life. Each is a search for an answer to life's fundamental questions. Is Shakespeare's "Hamlet" a search for the source and dimensions of being? Is "Othello" a search for the evil that causes doubt, suspicion and loss of faith? Is "Merry Wives of Windsor" about the loss of artificial and foolishly assumed dignity? Is "The Tempest" a search for the moaning of the loss and regaining of power and place? Most of his plays have to do with loss of some kind.

Even though I don't perform it any more I read Shakespeare all the time because there was a genius who proceeded bravely into the necessary objective of his own life. It was a super objective that ordered him, like an indentured servant, to write. I want to know what it was.

Which makes me approach the last door in my own journey, or at least the latest one. What is it that made me become and actor and do it in spite of the difficulties and hardships? Behind all the roles I've played, the wigs and make up, the costumes and scenery, the speeches and actions, the lifetime of being an entertainer there is a super objective of my life to which all the other parts are related like threads in the tapestry of my very being. It is only and specifically mine and I need to know what it is. It is the fountain I want to drink from and to taste my reason for being.

I perceive myself now as a novice, a neophyte at the temple, knocking at a door that has never been opened. Other philosophers who have reached a similar door write more deeply and more eloquently than I, but I believe that at the other side of that door words and action cease and pure thought and pure experience begin.

DB
Vagabond Journeys
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Weekend quiz, answer the following clues. It's easy

Comet's driver (5)
Headless egos are helpers (5)
Precipitation sound to gentle creatures prancing (8)
Sooty entrance for bag man (7)
Herb's digit up above (9)
Receptacle for feet hanging (8)
Charles' festival song (1, 9, 5)

DB
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Let It Be

If in the Fall the trees get to let go of a whole year of hard thinking, why can't we erase just as much.

Chris Bursk
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One thing I've noticed about trees is that once they let go of a leaf or a branch it is no longer of any interest to them what happens to it. If it falls to the ground and remains under the shade of the tree, fine, if it is blown away by the wind, so much the better.

One day I was standing by a fence when a large branch came crashing down in front of me from a nearby tree. It seem like such an apocalyptic event I wondered why there wasn't some follow up to it. But all I observed was that once the tree let go of the branch it was turned over to the law of gravity which brought it to the ground. The tree simply let go, it didn't throw the branch to the ground. The only result is that some groundskeeper would soon come and gather it up. or else it would slowly degrade into the earth.

I sometimes ponder what became of the artifacts, the branches of my life that I have had to let go of, for one reason or another. The places, dwellings, neighbors, books, scenes and sights, where are they now, who's lliving there, who has my old phone numbers, who has my books and do they love them as much as I did.

Perhaps the tree did not want to let go of the branch. It had been a part of the tree for perhaps a hundred years. But it was time to let go of it for the health of the tree. So was it healthy for me to need to lose the people and things I thought I cherished? I am a human being so, of course, I cared about them. I was unhappy about being forced to move and lose things, but like a friend who recently lost everything she had in a fire, I started over.

Life is never the same when you start over. You can never completely recreate the life you had. It's a new life and you are a different person. Watching the branch fall in front of me taught me that. I never wanted a vagabond life, but by the time I was a teenager I knew that is what I had and was going to have. Adjustments are continuous. All the physical force and will power in the world is not going to open a door to let you out that refuses to open. The exit is somewhere else.

Now that i have once again been deprived by the irresponsible Microsoft system of all of my Word files, the stories I was working on, the two years of Vagabond Journey archives, the Autumn Question and the answers, the copious notes I've made, the links to various important places, even if I can get the files to open I am inclined to delete the whole thing and let it fall to the ground for someone to come and gather up or else to slowly rot.

I would find some more reliable way of preserving what can be preserved and think not of the many hours I spent researching and finding the artifacts of my thoughts and studies.

DB - The Vagabond
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Weekend quiz, answer the following clues. It's easy

Comet's driver (5)
Headless egos are helpers (5)
Precipitation sound to gentle creatures prancing (8)
Sooty entrance for bag man (7)
Herb's digit up above (9)
Receptacle for feet hanging (8)
Charles' festival song (1, 9, 5)

DB
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Dig We Must

Don't blame yourself for missing the target. Blame yourself for not aiming at it.

Bate _ The Vagabond
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I really didn't care for summer camp when I was a lad. I found most of the activities boring. But one thing I was fairly good at was archery. Whenever I shot the arrow there was always either of two results. I would hit the bulls eye or miss the target completely. Eventually I learned that overconfidence from my perfect shot would keep me from aiming carefully the next time.

One day a young man, fresh out of college, who had worked crew on a productions I was in and had watched me prepare, rehearse and perform my role, asked me if I would teach him about acting. I agreed.

So we met. He had an audition speech that he did for me. When he finished I had one word for him. "No."

He was trying to tear up the stage and impress me with his passion and great dramatic flair. In the meantime nine tenths of the speech was lost. He missed the target.

So we sat down and calmly went over the speech to discover who he was talking to, why, what was his purpose, what did he hope to gain from it, why did he choose the particular words and images, what had happened to bring him to the point of speaking out in such a way? There was a myriad of questions that needed to be asked and answered and as we addressed them he was getting more deeply into the speech and the situation. Slowly his bellowing was being replaced by intensity, structure, intelligence, feeling: real drama.

If you want to build a house you first have to prepare the ground and that usually means digging a hole. I used to like watching them build skyscrapers in New York City. They put up a big wooden fence around the area. On the outside was an architects drawing of the finished building. But there were holes in the fence so people could watch them working on it. They started with a big pit and had to remove the solid, immovable Manhattan bedrock, which meant dynamite. A backhoe would spread a great meshed metal blanket over the area and then they set off the charges. When the blanket was removed the men went in with picks and sledge hammers to break up what was left into smaller pieces to put in a dump truck and have them hauled away. When one sees the giant building aiming it's arrow-top against outer space it's hard to imagine the original hole in the ground but without it there would be no building.

Any endeavor in life worth doing requires careful preparation. We must aim at the target.

DB - The Vagabond
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Now, since I can't get into my Word files, I can't post the Autumn Question or any of its answers.

So I'll start the Weekend Quiz early

Weekend quiz, answer the following clues. It's easy

Comet's driver (5)
Headless egos are helpers (5)
Precipitation sound to gentle creatures prancing (8)
Sooty entrance for bag man (7)
Herb's digit up above (9)
Receptacle for feet hanging (8)
Charles' festival song (1, 9, 5)

DB
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The Wild, Wild West

Whipping posts are on all sides, but there is a clear road between them.

John Newbrough
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This is a true story. It was told to me by one of the two men who lived through this experience. He is a friend and colleague and I know him to be an honest and trustworthy fellow. Both of the men involved in this frightening episode are black, which is important to the story as you will eventually learn.

One December day, many years ago, they started out from somewhere in the Midwest in an old Chevrolet to drive to California. After several days they made it across the plains and headed for the mountains. When they reached the mountains they began their ascent up the mountain highway. Soon it began to rain. As they kept going the rain turned into freezing rain and then into snow.

They thought of putting in somewhere, perhaps for the night, and waiting out the storm. But nothing was open. The truck stops, shops and motels were all closed and locked up. So they kept going.

The snow became very heavy. It blanketed everything. There was no other traffic on the road, no car tracks to follow, and it was difficult to see. They would occasionally slip and slide on the icy road.

Night came. The snow was now coming down in great globs, The headlights were showing nothing but snow falling. There was also a very strong wind which whipped up the snow in front of them. They couldn't see far enough ahead of them to know if they were even still on the road.

My friend said he was so frightened he curled up on the back seat and closed his eyes, certain that at any moment they were going to plunge over the side of a cliff and die. But his buddy, the driver, just kept going.

My friend said the wind was so strong it would push the car from the side and make it slip on the ice, the wheels would spin before they grabbed the surface. They didn't know where they were. They could see nothing.

After a long time they began a descent. As the snow let up they could see that they were still on the road. And then the snow became freezing rain. The road was very slippery and treacherous. The danger of lunging over the side was great. But they kept going.

Torrents of warmer rain came and made the driving difficult but no longer dangerous. Eventually that rain let up and it was morning. They made it down to level ground, the day was breaking and they were almost out of gas, the meter was reading empty.

Up ahead they spied a truck stop, with gas pumps and a diner, so the parked the car with great relief and went inside.

Inside was a counter and some tables. There were stuffed animal heads hanging from the walls, a snake skin tacked up over the rest room door, a rifle hanging in a rack and other items to tell them they were in red neck territory.

The owner poured two cups of coffee and brought them over with some menus tucked under his arm. He asked them where they came from and if they had come over the mountain pass during the night. Then he put the menus down in front of them and went to the pay phone. He made a couple of calls and spoke in a low voice about two guys who just came in. My friend said he couldn't hear the conversation but he did hear the owner say to call some of the boys.

My friend said they were beginning to get scared. They were certqin they were the only black men around those parts and they didn't know what was going to happen. They thought maybe they should get out of there and run, but with no gas in the car they weren't going to get very far.

The owner didn't ask them what they wanted to eat, he just scrambled up some eggs and threw some sort of meat on the griddle. They jumped with fright when they heard the toast pop up.

Soon they were served a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. While they were eating a pickup truck arrived. They could see the American flag decals, a rifle in the back and other signs of a local cowboy. The driver got out, took a paper bag out of the back of the truck and came into the diner. He sat down next to my friend and asked if they were the boys who came over the mountain that night.

My friend said the cowboy spoke very slowly and quietly and said that it was the worst storm in a hundred and fifty years, that they closed down the roads and evacuated all the people. Then he reached into the paper bag, took out a six pack, pulled off two cans for each of them and one for himself. After a moment another pick up came with another cowboy and another six pack. He came in and shook the hands of the two men and pulled out some more beer. Pretty soon more trucks and cars arrived with more beer. My friend said they told the story of their trip across the mountains at least ten times. By mid morning the diner was full of cowboys getting drunk, congratulating the two adventurers and whooping it up.

They were heroes. Their breakfast was paid for, their gas was paid for and they were put up in a motel for the rest of the day and night. The next morning they were on their way west.

DB - The Vagabond
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AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

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

Only 9 responses so far. Autumn is almost over. I await your answer.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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The Touch Of Silence

Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?

Lawrence Durrell
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I awoke at 7 o'clock in the morning. It was 19 degrees. That's -7.22222 Celsius for my Canadian, English and Australian friends. An hour later it had dropped to 18 degrees. I don't much mind the cold. Having spent half my life covered in a blanket of ice and pummeled by the freezing rain of New England winters, my steel has been properly tempered.

With the Winter Solstice knocking at the door it's a signal for the end of the year festivities. Since I am in a better place mentally and emotionally than I was last year when I had the wolves circling around my life, growling and snarling, I've been wondering if I should do something to celebrate Christmas, like decorate.

The first winter I spent here I bought a small fibre optic tree and set it up on the front porch. The next day it was gone. Someone stole it. Since then I haven't thought much about any tokens of celebration. This apartment is too small for a real tree and since no one is coming to visit me, to share Christmas dinner or anything else, there will be no prettily wrapped packages to put under it anyway. I could hang some colored lights, I suppose, but way up here in my third floor aerie no one would see them from the street. So maybe I'll just make some cranberry cookies for my housemates and let it go at that.

In the apartment below me lives Dan. He's a nice fellow, intelligent and friendly, but he has a temper. He works as an odd job carpenter and hearing him tell stories of some of the people and circumstances he has to work with I'm not surprised. Sometimes he slams his door. I always jump when he does that because it's unexpected. I don't mind it because I know what it is, and in fact I'm glad he does it because it tells me there is life going on in the building. It is also, sometimes, the only sound I hear.

I've never before lived in a place that was so quiet. The other half of my life I spent in New York, which is not only the city that never sleeps, it's the city that never shuts up. There's 24 hour noise. If I wasn't there I was living with someone, so there was human conversation and activity around me. But here there is such delicious quiet that it sometimes seems I am alone in the universe.

I have come to enjoy and cherish the quiet and also to respect it. It is a blessing to trade the cacophony of the world for silence. Abiding graciously the loneliness from the lack of human contact affords me the gift of sharing with myself my own best company.

I will play music which helps to define the silence like a frame around a work of art. But silence is the best music. Silence invites me to listen, it unfolds things that can't be heard in any other way, it opens a dialogue of ideas, impressions and realities which only it knows. And silence listens, without judgement or argument, to my thoughts, and forms them to fit it's own accumulated wisdom. It gives back more to me than I give to it.

Sometimes I talk out loud to myself just to put the sound of my voice into my space. The silence waits patiently for me to finish and then fills up the empty space with it's own oratory, richer and more majestic than the mere plodding of human thought.

How do I interpret the silence around me? In bright daylight or dark of night as a friend, a companion, a teacher, a traveler who has been everywhere and knows everything, an unlocked chest of treasures, a benign and mysterious ghost frightening only in its grand and persistent presence.

DB - The Vagabond
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AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

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

Only 9 responses so far. Autumn is almost over. I await your answer.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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The Ship Of Life

We'll catch up some other time.

Frank Sinatra
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The longer we live the more anchors life attaches to us. Life then becomes loosing ourselves from the encumbrances that prevent clear sailing.

It all begins the day we're born. We've pushed our way out of the limiting confinement of the womb into a world where bright lights and activity are going on all around and yet we can't do anything except flail our arms, kick our legs and bawl. We are helpless creatures totally dependant on others for food and warmth, creatures we can't understand and who don't understand us.

After a while we develop some simple but workable forms of communication. Then we learn to move around and investigate things. But we notice the big creatures around us walking and we wonder why we are crawling and they aren't. There's an anchor holding us down. We have to get rid of that limitation. So one day we get up and take a step or two. After the frustration and rage of falling down a few times we finally manage to stay up. Now we have a great sense of mobility. The anchor is gone and we can go anywhere and do anything. We're free. The world is ahead of us. They shy's the limit. We set out to embrace the world and everyone in it. Then life ties another anchor to us. School.

Now our days and hours are determined by other people and we have to be in certain places at certain times and do what we're told. What happened to the great adventure of life?

"Oh, well, We'll catch up some other time."

So we're learning to make adjustments, one of life's primary lessons. We have to learn stuff we hate in order to learn stuff we like. But it's not so bad. We have some friends and are proving ourselves on some basic levels of society. Things aren't so bad. Until one day life ties another totally unexpected anchor on us. Hormones.

Suddenly the carefree days of childhood are gone. We notice the opposite sex. Now there are challenges we are not prepared for. Now our embraces are more selective and more passionate. Life was much simpler and made much more sense before this happened.

"Where has the time all gone to?
Haven't done half the things we want to.
Oh, well, We'll catch up some other time"

Romance, pursuit and capture, success, failure, a broken heart, sex. Life has become very complicated and so has its anchors. This one is not so easy to shake off. But somehow we make it through school, or we don't, but we find an answer to the romance anchor. We just allow life to attach another anchor to us. Marriage. And shortly after that comes a family, from one direction or another. Our ship of life is now surrounded and there are anchors all over it. People are expecting things and needing things from us. We are anchored to a job, a career, a home, financial responsibility. Where are the dreams of yesterday?

"This day was just a token.
Too many words are still unspoken.
Oh, well. We'll catch up some other time."

The family grows up and leaves or maybe it brings some new children for us to see and remember those times when we were free and had no anchors on us. But the responsibilities are still holding us, it's fun but we don't have time for childish things. We lose some friends, maybe some family, there is sadness, grief, depression. We still have some anchors to lose. We're not getting any younger, someone reminds us. Grab a hold of what's left of life, embrace it and get things done.

"Just when the fun is starting
Comes the time for parting
But let's be glad for what we had
And what's to come."

Now we're "advanced in age," "a senior citizen," "old." We may have some physical anchors picked up along the way that hold us back, but there's one big anchor, stronger and sturdier than all the rest. It was the one we allowed life to tie to us from the beginning. But in the meantime it has gathered barnacles and seaweed and made its home securely in the bottom of our lives.

"There's so much more embracing
Still to be done, but time is racing.
Oh, well, We'll catch up some other time."
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(Lyrics by Frank Sinatra)
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DB - The Vagabond
******************************
AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

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

Only 9 responses so far. I await your answer.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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Seven Steps To The Entrance

Learning never exhausts the mind.

Leonardo da Vinci
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Seven Principles of da Vinci

Curiosity
Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

Demonstration
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.


Sensation
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.

Sfumato
Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.

Art/Science
Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

Corporeality
I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

Connection
Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

(:Leonardo da Vinci)
===========================

DB
*******************
AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

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

Only 9 responses so far. I await your answer.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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