There Is Life

I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.

Anne Frank
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Hello Stuart
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Miguel Figeroa parked his Ford as close as he could to Fairton, or what had been Fairton. Torn apart by a massive tornado followed by an earthquake there was nothing left of Fairton but rubble. smoke, ashes and blood.

Miguel was there to inspect the ruins for the state. Those who had survived had been evacuated to shelters and hospitals. Those who did not were still strewn about or lost under piles of destroyed and collapsed buildings. Looking up Miguel could see the horizon in the distance, thee was nothing left of Fairton to block his view. There was a sharp and suffocating smell, worse than any aroma rising from a dump. And Miguel walked.

He picked his way through the rubbish and broken dreams as best he could, noticing odd things. A children's playground swing lying sideways atop a crushed car, a string of laundry one end still attached to the side of a demolished porch, the other end buried under broken glass and dented cans, a twisted street light which had fallen across a dead dog, a smoldering pile of clothes. Still Miguel walked. He saw what had been a school, caved in and with books and papers filing the spaces around the broken bricks, on a large chunk of wood he saw a welcome sign gently waving in the breeze as if beckoning him, a farmer's supply store had it's roof blown off and revealed burst bags of seed and farm equipment smashed up against each other.

He walked. He came to an almost completely torn down concrete wall. Lying next to it was a Maxwell House coffee can. He picked it up. Inside was a small blue flower. Miguel didn't know what kind of a flower it was but it was holding its small head bravely up to the sun while it's roots were busy drawing their needs from the still damp soil in the can.

Miguel placed the can upright, in the sun, on a part of the wall that was still standing., and walked on.

There is survival. There is a town that will grow again. There is life.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
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Your Song

You find your soul and your destiny by responding to the world's call to you. That's how you find yourself.

Thomas Moore
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Hello Sue
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Did you ever have the chance to open the lid of a grand piano and look inside? You probably have at least once in your life. What you saw was a sturdy metal frame and stretched across it from just behind the keyboard to the back of the piano a row of strings tightly drawn into a state of tension. Each of those strings, when plucked or struck, has a different tone. 88 different tones in fact. A finite number but enough to allow for some of the greatest music in the universe. When a great pianist sits down at the key board those strings rest in calm tension waiting to sing.

Imagine a piano with an infinite number of strings each one ready to sing, play, dance, write, paint, teach, settle disputes, build bridges, design buildings or cars, find new words, explore new worlds, discover cures, and so on, all of them in calm tension waiting for the touch of the master, life, the world, to make the call.

My friend Ernie once said that work defines your life. He's a painter and he knows. A senior in high school complained that he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. I told him to wait, be patient, look around and wait in calm tension for the call to come. And it will come.

The call often comes in unexpected ways. It may be as simple as a finger striking a key and making your string vibrate. It may be a phone call or a letter. It may come as a strong intuition or equally strong desire. Sometimes it comes as the world grabbing us by the collar and throwing us into the middle of our lives. It came to me as the result of a dream.

Troubles some, questions arise, but as I am fond of saying "There's no use asking what you should do with your life. You're doing it." Sometimes what you are doing is a pathway leading you somewhere, or it's a walk in the dark forest with no path to guide you, or it's a trip down a super highway at breakneck speed. But the destination, your destiny, is inevitable if you keep going.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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Mending The Mess

Reversing the treatment of the man you have wronged is better than asking for his forgiveness.

Elbert Hubbard
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Hello Kate
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Oh, how I wish I could go and reverse the wrongs I've done to people and myself, and the wrongs I don't know I've done. My heart is also open to those who have wronged me for forgiveness and reversal. But those people don't appear.

Sometimes we can wrong people carelessly, accidentally or unconsciously. Those wrongs are hard to make right. The opportunity is usually past. But what if it isn't? Is it worth it to seek someone out that you hurt and find a way to soothe and heal that wrong? Definitely. Because if you know you did it you will have the regret and he will have the resentment to live with.

And there are times when you wrong people and you don't mean to. You might give someone an inappropriate gift or make light of a situation which effects them deeply, a callous or wry remark when sympathy is due can leave a wound.

There even are times when you set out purposely to do something good and right and it ends up being wrong and you've made a mess of things. Those unfortunate situations often require a painful and difficult reversal..

I remember hearing a concert pianist of some fame reviewing a performance of another pianist being played from a recording. This reviewer had nothing good to say about the performance. She tore it apart on the air and then found out that it was being played by one of her best friends. Aw Oh.

The worst case though is when you have wronged yourself. You can forgive yourself, but how do you get out of the mess you've made. I moved to this apartment to get away from a bad situation, to heal and find peace. Everything about it worked out so well there was no doubt it was the right move.

It was the wrong move. The bad situation has followed me and gotten much worse. With few advantages it has become almost impossible for me to reverse the wrong I've done myself.

Moral: Maybe you can't help offending people, but look for ways to make amends.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
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Will I ever be happy again?

Good Choices

In choosing a friend, go up a step.

The Talmud
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Hello Sandy
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Did you ever wonder what it would be like to put all of your friends in one room together? Would they get along with each other? Or would you be the only thing they have in common?

I have fantasized that if I ever struck it rich, I mean multimillion dollar rich, I would rent an island somewhere with a nice hotel and a beach and invite all my friends to a big month long party, I love them so much.

I have a very diverse group of friends. A few are actors (naturally, since I've spent so many years in show business) but the rest are not. A few are artists. The rest are not. Some are scientists. The rest are not. A few are musicians. The rest are not. One is a writer, one a nurse, one a broadcaster. The rest are not. And so on. Furthermore, some of them now live way out west. The others don't.

So I wonder, if the great golden ring were to drop onto my plate and I held such a party, if they would all get along with each other? Would the writer and one of the actors have a disagreement about the theory of art? Would the scientists feel out of place? Would the broadcaster and the nurse get into a spat about politics? Would there be affairs, misunderstandings, jealousies, broken hearts? I would hope not but I can foresee it happening. My friends are sensitive, interesting, vital, thinking people and the one sure thing I can say about them is that in choosing them I went up a step. And the one sure thing I can say about my former friends is that I didn't and neither did they. So be careful where you step.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
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Amazing Things

Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel.

Katherine Mansfield
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Hello Val
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"Watchman, tell us of the night."
Last night they took away the fair.
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I think it was Yogi Berra who said "You can see a lot of things by looking." I have seen many amazing things by being alert and watching. I am particularly fascinated to see people do things I don't know how to do or wouldn't do. I watched a crew of fire fighters in New York City jump blindly down into a blazing fire because it was the only access to it.

I watched a Hudson River tug boat captain tuck nine barges in three rows of three neatly in between two piers at the first try against the currents.

One winter morning in New Hampshire I discovered a flat tire on my car, which was a big Ford Station Wagon. I called my friends at Bob and Bill's Chevron station. Bob came over with his jack. Bob was a big, silent bear of a man. There was snow all over and underneath the car, so much snow that he couldn't fit the jack under it. So he reached down with one hand to the side of the car and lifted it up to put the jack under it.

For the past week the Saint Ann's annual carnival has been going on just outside my apartment. The largest attraction was a giant slide 2 stories high and a city block long. It was very popular and the kids were sliding down it all evening.

It was a dark night last night. The carnival closed and all the rides and games were taken down, packed up and moved away. It took four men to dismantle that slide, put all the parts where they were stored and get it ready to move. A specially designed truck came up and attached itself to the end of the slide. The driver then pulled forward about 50 feet. Then he backed up, slowly, with the four men as guides, and maneuvered it between a fence and a fire hydrant, on to a street where cars were parked on both sides. He took it out backwards and then drove off. The whole thing, from beginning the dismantling to the driving away, took 3 hours. It was amazing. I was so impressed I was speechless. I was in awe of that truck driver.

I hope I never stop seeing marvels happen..

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.

Carnivaless

A person's maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child in play.

Friedrich Nietzsche
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Hello Val
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"Watchman, tell us of the night."
The night may be quiet again someday.
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Well, the carnival has shut down and left. No one showed up to accompany me, to be my better eyes (and my better self, no doubt). So I didn't get to eat the pizza, the sausage, the funnel cake, snow cone or cotton candy. I didn't get to ride on the Ferris wheel, the swinging gondola or the merry go round. But I got to hear the Bingo numbers on a loud speaker, the loud scraping metal of the rides and the loud screaming children. I vow to myself that when I return to New York I will go to Coney Island and some of the other amusement parks around there for certainly a ride on a roller coaster, because I am just a loud screaming kid at heart.

Soon it will be September 9th and that will mark the anniversary of my moving to Bristol. I moved here 11 years ago, and I still have no friends here. I did have one friend for a few years who I trusted, but she turned out to be dishonest, devious, deceiving and linked to her own narcotic needs. So now there is no one in Bristol.

There are two good reasons to return to New York. I have old friends there I know can trust and I'm a performing artist who for the past 11 years hasn't been able to do any of it. I yearn to go back on stage. I can also return to the Art Students League and learn more about painting. I can be with the other artists I have known and admired and reach a higher level in my own art and my writing. And, best of all, in New York City the carnival never shuts down.

Dana Bate - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
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A Certain Goal

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

Dale Carnegie
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Hello Ernie
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"Watchman, tell us of the night."
The night is ablaze with secret places.
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There are many writers like Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale who have been issuing advice to the world wrapped in the technique of Positive Thinking. There's nothing wrong with that. It is certainly preferable to the opposite. But Positive Thinking is really a finger pointing to a certain goal.

Many people use the elements of Positive Thinking to achieve success in life. That implies some degree of self awareness. As Christopher Morley wrote, "There is only one success, to be able to spend your life in your own way." And which way would that be? Implicit in that remark is knowing yourself well enough to at least avoid the ways that are not your way, but does it mean you know where you want to be going? To know something does not necessarily mean to understand it. Does knowing yourself automatically make you comprehensible, intelligible to yourself? How well you know yourself is also just a finger pointing to a certain goal.

As I stated in a previous journal entry, self discovery often brings out things, attitudes, traits, beliefs and behavior that are less than what you imagine or wish yourself to be. Then a struggle ensues and it's a hard one. Gandhi wrote "It is far easier to conquer others than to conquer oneself." It's a mighty and valorous fight and also a finger pointing to a certain goal.

But what of the person who doesn't want that struggle, who would prefer to stay the way they are and not grow? Those are the ones who spend their time and money to try to preserve what they think is youth and beauty, to regain some artificial sense of themselves, to identify themselves in some superficial way, usually with the help of chemistry, instead of letting themselves grow and evolve into true manhood and womanhood. To let go of fantasies about oneself and grow to achieve what one believes one is capable of is another finger pointing to a certain goal.

Mind is the master of life and the thoughts and images carried in the mental satchel determine the kind of life we live, which is why the positive thinker has the advantage at the task of living well and if allied with self awareness and self knowledge the thinker is enabled to observe the finger and point himself toward the certain goal.

Along that road to discovery to which the finger is pointing we come across a gate and at the gate is where we must leave behind the human mind, as improved and useful as it is, for the enlightened mind, where ideas become thrones and thoughts are candle flames. Who knows but one who has been there, who has achieved that consciousness, who has won the right to pierce the cloud and dwell in the secret place, what the blazing symbols mean and what power is available. Purity and inevitability are there, and the simple answer to the simple question "What is Truth?"

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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