Do What I Say

The daisies can't tell the roses to stop blooming.

Lindsay Nelson
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Hello Jon
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"Watchman. tell us of the night."
Am I the only one awake at night?
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"De gustibus non diputandum est." So goes the old worn out Latin statement. Basically translated it means "In matters of taste there is no argument." Some people incorrectly think it means you either have taste or you don't and if you don't there is no talking to you. But what it really means is that you like nuts in your ice cream and I do not like nuts in my ice cream and we are both right.

One of the sillies and most ignorant prejudices I've come across in my life is that everyone should be in bed asleep after midnight, anything else is unnatural and probably immoral.

I worked for several years at a 24 hour classical music station in New York. My program went from Midnight to 6 A. M. My boss, a man of lesser intelligence, I'm quite sure never went to bed after Midnight and never woke up before 6. Hence he never heard my program, never heard me and didn't know how good I was. All he knew was that nobody should be working all night and no one would be up listening. As a result he turned the program into a dumping ground for a lot of unnecessary news thus destroying it for me and for my listeners. So I quit and got on with my life. That station went off the air a few years later.

People who tell other people what to think, how to behave and how to live are barnacles on socidety. They are the ones who never dare to live, who can't or won't see beyond their own prejudices. My boss was right about going to bed before midnight. But he was not right in expecting the rest of the world to do the same.

Sometimes that sophomoric attempt to control another person's life is based on envy. I knew a woman who actually envied the people who were coming down with Aids because she believed they were living a kind of libertine life she thought was wrong and hence denied herself and then regretted it.

And what if some people are living a more exciting life than you are? You can't shoot them down justified by some draconian moral precept. You can't tell the roses not to bloom.

The worst cases of "disputandum" are found on the battle fields of religion. And there's a very good but sinister reason why that is so. If people wish to worship a Creator, an invisible, unknown, all powerful deity, which they certainly do the world over, why do they burn each other's books, tear down each other's idols, destroy each other's temples and kill each other? The answer is fear.

No one except the very few true saints that have existed in the history of the human race, from whatever religion they came, can be completely sure of the existence of God or if they are worshipping their God correctly. Hence the only way to make sure your dogma is correct is to destroy all the others., either through arguments or bombs That has been going on for centuries and is still a popular means of forcing your way of life on another.

You like nuts in your ice cream, I don't. We are both right. You worship with bread and wine, I don't. We are both right. You bow five times to Allah, I don't. We are both right. You celebrate a Day of Atonement, I don't. We are both right. You worship with incense, I don't. We are both right. You worship with incantations, I don't. We are both right. You believe in full submergence baptism, I don't. We are both right. If there is a God then divine intelligence must be able to accept any form of worship that is sincere and not exclusive.

I'm a daisy, you're a rose. So go ahead and bloom. I won't stop you. You have the right.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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Strange Names

I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.

Stephen Vincent Benet
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Hello Arlene
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The poem above is the opening stanza of a longer poem called "American Names." In it the author, though satisfied and grateful for the years he spent in Europe, yearns to be back in America. He goes on to say that he will not forget his homeland.

"I will remember Carquinez Straits,
Little French Lick and Lundy's Lane,
The Yankee ships and the Yankee dates
And the bullet-towns of Calamity Jane.
I will remember Skunktown Plain."

I also love American names and the strange way some of them are pronouned. Pronunciations are often the result of local dialects, so that the same name in Texas will sound different from the one in California. Some of the names came from foreign countries but end up sounding completely different coming from the tongue of a local citizen. You're never sure until you hear a native say it. There's a place in this country where Brazil is pronounced BRAZZle.

I have lived half my life in New England where I got used to names like Coos (COH ahs), Berlin (BURR lin), Peabody (PEE biddy), Teaticket (Tee AT ikit), Natick (NAY dick). Truro and Swampscott are, blessedly, pronounced just the way they look.

Being also a New Yorker I'm familiar with names like Sag Harbor, Chappaqua and Tribeca (try BECK uh). People think New Yorkers have lazy speech because of things like The Bronx being pronounced DUH Bronx. Don't be fooled. It's a dialect and one New Yorker will recognize another one when he speaks, even if they're in the Gobi desert.

I did a few plays in a town called Blowing Rock, North Carolina. That's in Appalachia, where the Hill Billy's live. The nearest city is Boone (buhOON). One of the characters I played was an Appalachian, so I had to get the dialect right. I hired a dialect coach then went around town listening to the local people. There were two authentic Blue Grass musicians in the show and one of them said I sounded like I was a local person. I guess if I fooled the musicians ear I must have got it right.

Other than that experience I'm not familar with strange names and their pronunciations in the South or other places in the country. If anyone reading this has similar items to add you are welcome to put them here.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
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Up The Mountain

The best use of philosophy is to open the door and invite a walk in the garden of thought.

Dana Bate
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Hello Diane
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"Watchman, tell us of the night."
When you stop thinking, night falls.
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I enjoy reading philosophy (as I have said ad tedium). And I particularly like it when the philosophers don't agree with each other. There would be no point to philosophy or any form of original thought if they did.

Many philosophers through out the years of recorded history have started out on the journey as mathematicians, measuring the length, breadth and depth of human experience. And then a day comes when they reach the foot of the magic mountain of enlightenment or what they believe or hope is enlightenment and the climb begins. There may be only one summit but the choices of how to reach it are many. And that poses a problem for some people.

I know of a Museum of Philosophy that has a lot on interesting displays and biographical material about the world's philosophers But there is also a computer with a program that lets you answer a whole string of questions, and at the end will suggest a philosopher or two that best agree with your answers. It's a Find Your Own Philosopher game. The temptation is to then read that philosopher's works and none others. One thinks one has found his master and enlightenment is inevitable. But is it?

It's practically impossible to know at the beginning if that philosopher's trail up the magic mountain is a right one. Does it reach the summit or does it lead you into an intellectual gully? You won't know till you get there. The danger is to concentrate on your master's words and ideas to the exclusion of any conflicting thoughts. To follow in the footsteps of one only guru may lead to the green pastures of peace and knowledge. But by not challenging those footsteps as you go you may end up in the shadows.

Most of the inspired philosophers I have read, from Plato to recent times, all say, in one way or another, that the purpose of philosophy is not to tell you what to think or how to think but to get you to think for yourself. In other words there is a general acknowledgment that we are capable of exploring our own thinking, forming our own opinions and testing them out, making up our own minds. Original thought is the birthright of the human being,

That leads to another and even greater opportunity and obligation for the thinking person, the one who has accepted the responsibility of his own mentality. Somewhere along the pathway in that garden of thought are philosophers who know and warn that the issues of our lives are so much rooted in our thoughts that we ought to be careful about what we think. Hence the challenge to every aroma in the garden and every thought that passes through the air like a dandelion seed. And thus the discipline of looking ahead, deciding what you want and what you don't want and tracing them back to the thoughts which produce them.

The same watchman who guards the entrance to the garden is also the guide who can steer us to our right paths if we are awake, alert and thinking.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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The Blues

I've got no family nor no friends here. I'm living in a neighborhood which is very uncomfortable for me in a town where I don't know anyone. I have no car, and there is no public transportation near me.

If you hear me sing the blues it's because I have a damn right to.

DB - Vagabond
never give up
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A Question For The Human

Are you a representative or a representation?

DB

never give up
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Gone Fishing

I am getting very few readers, which either means people have finally discovered my true identity or else they are watching the Olympics So I'll step aside until the last marathon runner comes staggering in.

DB - never give up.

It's A Book

Reading as a whole is a way of recuperation: accordingly, it is one of the things that lets me detach from myself and walk among foreign disciplines and souls.

Friedrich Nietzsche
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Hello Barbara
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"Watchman, tell us of the night."
The night is for reading.
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I have right now in my hands a book. Yes, a book. It has covers front and back and in between them a stack of paper pages. It's a book. It happens to be "The Final Frontiersman" by James Campbell but that doesn't matter. It's a book. It's a book about Alaska. I'm fascinated by Alaska and all far northern places, that's why I own it. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that it's a book. It could be a TV show, or a web site, or a magazine or a DVD. But it isn't. It's a holy trinity. It's a book.

First there is the book itself, the physical fact of the book. The author wrote down ideas and concepts, did research, wrote some more, did more research and wrote some more. Then he rewrote, took things out, put them back, edited, proofread, made corrections, achieved a final copy he thought. Then an agent got involved and minor corrections or additions finally brought it to an editor. Discussions ensued about design and promotion until it finally reached the hands of a publisher. The mere fact of the physical creation of the book itself, which seems like a minor miracle, is the first leg on the holy trinity.

The book has had a lot of fathers and mothers peering over it but this is the child. I spread open the covers and begin the glorious, delicious act of reading. I quickly admire the writer for his skill, his narrative, his depictions of the frozen wasteland, of the tundra, of the primitive lives of the people who live there, his ideas. I am transported to a different world, a place which detaches me from myself and my surroundings which seem so dull by comparison. I am on a journey, an adventure.

Then comes the third leg of the holy trinity. Reading the book stirs in me that sense of adventure which has always been a part of my being. I start to make comparisons to myself, to identify myself with some of the characters. The scenes and events of the book affect me and open my thoughts and feelings to consider things that surround the story of my own life. The journey has become a spiritual one. When I finish the book and put it aside it will have entertained me, informed me, moved me and changed my life.

It's a book.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
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