Is It Folly To Be Wise?

He who tells the truth must have one foot in the stirrup.

Armenian proverb
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Ignorance is doom. It is a danger to our future that so many people desire to grasp and possessively defend their own mental invariance about things. And it is even more frightening when whole groups of people become mesmerized by the nonsense they hear from their leaders. One gang calls people who disagree with them a gang. People would rather be on a race track which goes nowhere than on a highway which does.

In Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" the Spirit of Christmas Present displays two desperate children to Scrooge who wants to know who they are.
"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy,
for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased."
(Charles Dickens)

This is no idle warning. It is ignorance, which is the direct result of nonthinking and that which supports nonthinking. And why do so many people support this ignorance? Why is it even applauded in some quarters? Why is there so much suspicion of those who are trying to fray the enemies of progress? Because people don't want to know the truth. It upsets them.

I have said this before and I am saying it again. When the World Trade Center was destroyed the US Government went immediately to work forming a commission to determine how it happened. But there wasn't a single penny spent on a commission to determine WHY it happened. The government is still behind the screen on that one. Now people don't want American Muslims to build a mosque near where it happened because a group of Asian Muslims destroyed it.

One of our popular journalists, I won't name him, was interviewing an American Muslim who was just about to explain why he said that he understood the motives behind the terrorist attacks when the journalist called him a traitor and shut him off. He didn't want to know the truth.

We proudly proclaim that the United States is the best nation in the world and that our living standards are higher than other countries, and then we expect the people who live in those countries to stay there.

We can't decide who's an immigrant and who isn't. I recently read an article about a woman who was denied her Medicare benefits because she couldn't prove she was a citizen. She was born on a Choctaw reservation. She's a Native American. The tragedy of that far outweighs the irony. It just points the dial at the big I. Ignorance.

I know of a high school that closed down the theatre and arts programs in order to save power during the energy crises of years ago, and yet all the lights blazed for the basketball games.

Our government gives money, not programs but real money, to those who already have it, while it deprives the poor.

"Degrade first the Arts if you'd Mankind Degrade.
Hire Idiots to Paint with cold light & hot shade:
Give high Price for the worst, leave the best in disgrace,
And with Labours of Ignorance fill every place."
(William Blake)

That's the end of my rant for the day, but I've already got one foot in the stirrup. I'm outta here!

DB - The Vagabond
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?

dbdacoba@aol.com

1 response so far

I await your answer.
DB
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One Life

To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice.

Lord Acton
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I have sometimes heard seniors say if they could live their lives over again they wouldn't change a thing. I don't know if they really mean that or not but to me that's total nonsense. If I could live my life over again I would change almost everything, beginning with a home and a family.

I would wish to be born into a family with a mother and a father and some brothers and sisters to grow up with. I would want to be in a home, a house that was a permanent place in the world to which I could return when I wanted to. I would want intelligent guidance and influence. I would like to know who my relatives are and get acceptance from those around me for who I am and what I can do.

I never knew my father. There were two grandfathers and one grandmother I never knew, two aunts and a whole flock of cousins. I have relatives now that I will probably never meet.

There was no stable home. I moved 25 times during the time I was growing up. I have no school chums because I kept changing schools. Even as an adult I found no stability. The longest time I lived in one place was 20 years in a transient hotel room, but even then I was touring all over the country as an actor.

I've noticed that many great writers are focused on particular circumstances that preside in their writings in one form or another. Many of Shakespeare's characters live through loss and sometimes regaining of place, power or influence. Dickens spends much time on the plight of the young in a poverty society. Dostoyevsky was in a constant search for spirituality.

I suppose I have been on that long search for home and family in my own writings. I guess I've always been a wanderer in search of my life, a life that got left somewhere. I tried, pointlessly, to make a family out of whatever theatre company I was with, an attempt that was misinterpreted by everyone.

I became a walker. I walked for miles through the cities of New York, Boston and it's suburbs. Hartford, Connecticut, Springfield, Massachusetts, Westchester County in New York State. In Boston one night I walked from Back Bay across the Charles River through Harvard Square to Somerville. In New York one day I walked from 104th Street and West Enid Avenue down to 4th Street and !st Avenue. In Westchester I walked from
Rye to White Plains. What was I looking for? My home? In 1960 I hitchhiked across the country, from Boston to Los Angeles.

I spent a few years, off and on, walking through the White Mountain National Forest where I was searching for myself.

People wonder why I live where I do now. I have no roots here and know almost no one. Well, I've grown accustomed to that.

I once started a list titled WHERE ARE YOU. On it were the names of all the people I once knew and liked, former friends and colleagues. It was astonishing to me how many people I used to know well. I stopped it before the list was finished and before I got too depressed. Today I am grateful for the few friends I have.

Music, literature and my career as an entertainer have been my life's companions and there have been very few people to share those things with.

Now I write. My two finished novels and a few of my short stories are about people who don't stay put, either because they can't or because they don't want to.

I'm a wanderer, a vagabond, I accept that. Now I wander through the pathways of what might have been and among the endlessly interesting imaginations of my mind. I do not look back on my past life with satisfaction. So instead I look forward.

DB - The Vagabond
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?

dbdacoba@aol.com

1 response so far

I await your answer.
DB
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Say The Thing

If anyone is glad that you are here, then you have not lived in vain.

Charles Hoffman
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The young woman who lives on the first floor and I seldom talk. She's a nine to fiver with an active social life. So she's not here a lot and when she is she tends to stick to herself. We have had a few conversations over the years and she is always very pleasant. One day she said something to me that was golden.

I spent the day today cleaning my apartment and rearranging things, moving this over there, putting that away and finding a better place for the other thing. It was very tiring and I joked to myself that I really need a maid and maybe a handy man or two.

It brought to mind an episode I had last summer when I was being urged to move into an assisted living facility and I was seriously considering it for a time. Eventually I decided not to do it and to stay put even though I live three flights up and am alone. I sincerely felt I had made the right decision, but I still had a few doubts, when my neighbor came home from her job and found me sitting on the front porch. She stopped to chat and I told her what had gone on and what my decision was. She said "Well, I'm glad you're not leaving us."

That remark was worth more than I could possibly repay. It also taught me a lesson about how important a simple statement of appreciation can be, it can mean life to someone.

Tell someone today that you are glad they are there.

DB
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?

dbdacoba@aol.com

1 response so far

I await your answer.
DB
******************************

SeeSaw Of The Mind

The realm of reality is as vast as cosmic space, it is the knowing mind of sentient beings that is small.

Pao-chih
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Sometimes I ponder with dismay the limits of my own small sentient mind and feel intimidated by the difference between what I know and the unknown but knowable. The task is made even more difficult by the nonsense, my own and others, that litters up the mental landscape.

One thing I did learn, finally, after years of foolishness, is to know and look for a reality that is not apparent to the sentient mind. Things are seldom, or never, what the seem to be. But there is a reality to what they are that can't be expressed in any other way. The great thinkers struggle over terms to make an inexpressible vision as clear as possible. The more extreme, the more spiritual the vision, the more esoteric the terms. When others struggle to understand those terms and make sense out of them a frustration often sets in that turns that struggle into nonsense and allows those strugglers to lapse back into a literal meaning of the terms, thus missing the true meaning, the reality that was in proximity but just out of reach.

Great works of art and literature are screens, not to hide the truth but to depict what is behind the screen in the best terms the artist or wirier can find to describe the vision and to invite exploration. Great stories are allegories to tell what is not known by the limited sentient mind. One can also say the same for creations of mechanics, technology, engineering and science. "Impossible be strange attempts to those who weigh their pains in sense" Shakespeare wrote.

Now we have a prophecy by some befuddled so-called Christians that have pin pointed this year as the year everything ends. Someone through careful Scriptural research he says, has picked May 21st as the "rapture" or Judgement Day, followed about 5 months later by the end of everything. If we are still here after the 21st of May then we weren't saved. Too bad.

Not only does the theory turn back the clock of history and honest exploration to the superstition of the Middle Ages where the earth was thought to be the center of the universe, but it also insists on interpreting Scriptural allegory in the most primitive literal terms. It has reduced the amazing and profound Biblical revelatory writings to nonsense.

Anyone who is really interested should carefully read all 22 chapters of the book of Revelation and explore what is behind the screen of the author's words, what is meant by the four horsemen, the angels with vials of plagues, the great red dragon and what the inspired writers vision is really trying to tell us. It isn't easy, but it also isn't simple minded.

While science continues to discoverer new planets and new laws, let them sit and wait for the great cloud in which Christ is going to descend with his book. But treat them kindly and with affection. They walk among us and they vote.

DB - The Vagabond
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?

dbdacoba@aol.com

1 response so far

I await your answer.
DB
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Seals And Monkeys

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.

Socrates
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During my career I have often been disgusted to learn what some young students have been taught by one dim acting teacher or another from their various drama departments. I heard one girl say her teacher told her the way to do comedy was to always keep her elbows up. I tried playing a scene with a boy who wouldn't look at me or listen to me because his teacher told him to always play to the audience.

One summer day I was with a few youngsters fresh out of college with degrees in Acting. It was a field trip of sorts to which I was invited as a resource. We went to the Central Park Zoo in New York City.

Just inside the entrance there is a large stone pit filled with water. There is a foot bridge over the water to a small island in the middle. Swimming around in the water are seals. Periodically a zoo keeper will walk out to the center and hold out fish. The seals will jump out of the water to grab the fish. They are trained to do that and it is quite amusing.

But as we entered the zoo I said to the group I was with "Remember. All the animals we see will be acting, except for the seals." They gave me very strange looks, probably doubting my sanity.

We saw the penguins, standing up flapping their wings, or swimming like bullets through the water. We saw the polar bears, one stretched out in an undignified posture sunning himself on the rocks, the other swimming back and forth. We saw the tree snakes oozing their way from one twig to another.

Then we came to large tree filled area with some very hairy black and white monkeys. The monkeys were chasing each other around from one tree to another, swinging on branches and chattering away. They were having a hell of a good time and it was very entertaining.

One of the girls turned to me and said "Now I see what you mean. These monkeys are doing what they naturally do. They're not playing for us, they're playing for each other."

"That's right" I said.

"I'll never look at animals the same way again."

"Or people."

"Or people?"

"Yes. Who are the natural monkeys and who are the trained seals."

I don't know if any of the other kids got it, but she sure did. And to know she could translate that knowledge into the performing art gave her a flame that would never go out. To know to rely on natural behavior and to play with the other actors and not to the audience was the beginning of her training as an actor. And it had nothing to do with elbows.

DB - The Vagabond
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?

dbdacoba@aol.com

I await your answer.
DB
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Entertaining Angels

When faced with a challenge, look for a way, not a way out.

David Weatherford
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There are 365 days in a year for making resolutions and at least 365 chances to carry them out. Why do we settle for so much less? Why do we forget, make a list and lose it, ignore, delay, justify and finally give up until next year?

The answer is very dimple. We are not entertaining angels.

Angel #1. Stairway to Self Esteem
The reason you made the resolution in the first place was to make an improvement in your life. You want to weigh less because it will make you look better and feel better about yourself. You want to save money and not spend it on foolish things. You want to eliminate wasteful, negative habits and replace them with positive, healthy ones. All of those things and others are very good and will no doubt improve you life. But don't forget that remark about good intentions paving the road to hell. So hold on to them.

Angel #2 Gentlemen Start Your Engines
Whatever it is that will make you a better, happier person is not going to be accomplished overnight. So take your list of resolutions, pick one and start making plans, set small practical goals and think about them. Look for simple ways to cut down on fattening food, and make a practical decision about how much money you can put aside for savings. Hold those thoughts as concrete visions in you head as you go about living. The more firmly they live in your thoughts the more often your mind will give you ways and means for carrying them out.

Angel #3 Bearding the Lion In Its Den
The Bible talks about there being lions in the street. I have come to understand that metaphor as meaning discouragement. Nothing can dump cold molasses on your plans better than momentary failure, set backs and feelings of hopelessness. The trick is to not believe in those claims. They can be removed: a speck in your eye, a pebble in your shoe, seaweed on your beach.

Angel #4 The Sun Dial
What difference does it make if you take two steps backward, as long as you make three steps forward. Some people like to keep a journal of their progress toward their goals. That's not a bad idea if you're one of those record keeping types, or even if you're not. Rose Kennedy once wrote "Life isn't a matter of milestones, but moments." We don't have much control over milestones but we do over the moments. Remember the sun dial, it records only the sunny hours.

Angel #5 Cutting The Cake
It's okay to step on the scale or look at your bank account. But do it with a positive point of view. If you wanted to lose 10 pounds but you only lost 8, so what. That's 8 pounds of baggage you no longer have to carry around on you. Keep at it. If it's another 8 pounds next time, or even 6 pounds, you're winning. If the deposit in you savings account is too much to handle make it less, it's still earning interest. I knew of a woman who worked all her life and retired at 70 with $150,000. When someone asked her how she did it she said two words: "compound interest." Every moment of life when we don't do the destructive thing we have habitually done, it's a deposit in the account of the happier person, the better life.

Angel #6 When the Swallows Return to Capistrano
Built solidly into anyone's list of resolutions should be the system which enables one to cavort, brag, twirl and collapse. In other words, it's reward time. But the danger there is taking the reward before you earn it, or making the reward illfit the triumph. Just because you've reached your temporary goal of getting thinner don't fall for the gimmick of rewarding yourself by gorging on a big chunk of cherry cheesecake. And if you've saved enough money to reach a desired temporary level it's not the time to splurge on am expensive vacation to the Caribbean, but maybe you can have the cheesecake. In other words plan to do something nice for yourself that doesn't turn you around and send you back into the vortex of shame and regret you struggled valiantly, with strength and courage, to get out of.

Angel #7 Warning: Slippery Road Ahead
There is a danger to beware of and that is that once you have achieved a simple goal you have proved to yourself that you can do it so maybe it's time to relax and not try so hard. Oooooo! Nasty, nasty. That's a trick which can even fool the angels. Then is the time to knuckle down, look yourself squarely in the eye and say "No Sir (or Miss, or Madam, or Ms., whichever you like) I am not going to fall for that scam. I am not giving up. I'll take a nap. And when I wake up I'll start right in on the next step of my progress. So there!"

Angel #8 Your Favorite Charity
Small, simple goals intending toward larger goals carried out with discipline and satisfaction, moments of triumph leading to milestones of success, resolutions met and mastered, now put you in position to be an authority on doing good things, and right things. Now comes the time to hang out your shingle and be ready to help the next person who wants to know how you did it. Now is the chance to introduce them to compound interest in their lives. And doing that has another benefit to you. If you can advertise yourself to yourself and the world at large as a successful master of your own resolutions it will keep you on the right highway with no detours into the jungle you got out of. Now you feel good about yourself. And that's the best way to live.

DB - The Vagabond
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?

dbdacoba@aol.com

I await your answer.
DB
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A New Year

'"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

John Keats
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Early last summer an acquaintance prophesied without a doubt that I would be bed ridden in six months. That was six months ago. Well, don't invite me to go disco dancing or to run a marathon, but I stand, I walk, I climb three flights of stairs every day and I carry my own grocery bags. I'm not bragging. I'm just notifying.
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Any sure seeker of Truth must carry a two edged sword with which to decapitate all the evils that would prevent finding Truth. Why must we approach the darkness as warriors? Why must we prove ourselves worthy of the light? Why were we born just human in this box of ignorance from which we have to claw, punch and kick our way out? That is the Gordian Knot, the existential maze I still find myself in after 7 decades of planetary life.

I have a lot of books sitting around, I haven't counted them but there are a lot. They all have paper clips marking pages because they have all been opened and partially read. There are amazing beings tucked in the pages of a book. But something tells me that all the wisdom, all the literature one needs in order to know Truth can be found on a single page. But who can find that page? And having found it, who can read it? And having read it, who can understand it? And having understood it, who can explain it?

Is Keats right? Some think so, others don't. Perhaps it's not a great idea to settle for a simple statement, "Truth is beauty, beauty truth" with out analyzing what is meant by those titles. But that brings one back to seeking the meaning of Truth and hence Truth itself.

It has been said that darkness is the absence of light, Is, therefore, ignorance the absence of wisdom?

There is something very perplexing to me about this idea. I observed the recent
eclipse of the moon. While the light of the moon seemed to come and go, it was merely shadow. Darkness is therefore just shadow. The stronger the light the greater the shadow. Light comes and goes but not darkness. Take away the light and the darkeners remains. Does that mean darkness is the natural state, only temporarily erased by the coming of light. The sun's rays temporarily blocked by the earth cast a shadow on the face of the moon. But the moon has no light of its own, it is only reflected light. So the earth was only blocking off from the surface of the moon the sun's own reflected light. If there was no light of the sun, the moon would be dark all the time.

The theory is that light dispels darkness, but darkness does not dispel light.
Nature knows nothing of Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas, New Year's Day or any of the other celebrations of us just humans. Nature knows nothing of our calendars. It has no relationship to the number 2011. All that nature was involved in were the equinox and the eclipse of the moon. But the eclipse signified that the suns reflected light from the moon was eclipsed by the shadow of the earth. Is that a case in which light was dispelled by darkness?

When you see a newborn baby screw up it's face into a terrible grimace and cry in desperate rage, is it because it has been taken out of the soft darkness of the womb into the blinding light of so called reality? And does it then need to claw, punch and kick it's way into acceptance?

Is it true that darkness is the natural state of the universe? And if so, is ignorance the natural state of us just humans?

DB - The Vagabond
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HAPPY NEW YEAR