From The Deep

(check out the summer question at the end)
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Sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows.

Jean Anouilh
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Hello Bruce
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Because the community of the world's marine biologists has displayed such amazing curiosty we are learning more about the vast number of creatures that live below the surface of the oceans. Fishers with their hooks and nets don't generally come up with any deep water ocean dwellers. But due to the sophisticated equipment now in use by scientists, almost every day some new sea faring animal or plant is found and, if not brought to the surface, at least photographed or video taped.

We know about the squid that keeps folding and unfolding on itself like some confused, maniac, streaking fish that seem to go almost as fast as the speed of light, worms that live in a tube and never come out like hermits and the xenophobic and drones that just crawl along the bottom of the ocean floor.

At about the same time as the marine biologists were beginning to seriously explore the ocean depths, other scientists were beginning to dig into the watery depths of the subconscious mind. Amazing discoveries were made about the fears, visions, splits, cracks and folds in the mortal human mind.

In both cases it took courage to even consider looking beneath the surface of things and even more courage to jump in. But one doesn't have to be a scientist to go searching around for treasures in dark places. There is so much more to life than any of us know. We may spend years groping around on the bottom, feeding on crumbs, we may live inside our own minds and not consider new ideas and new contacts, we may dash through life like a workaholic and never pause to investigate where and how we live, or we may live in a state of confusion about life, not knowing which way to turn and what to do next.

Those things are all mental sea creatures keeping us submerged. The answer is to do some work, to let go of the habitual way of thinking and behaving, to rethink yourself and your identity, to reach out beyond your grasp to a life you can imagine and start putting yourself there, piece by piece. Your life may be just fine right now, and I hope it is, but think about where you might rather be, who you might rather be or what you might rather be doing. Those investigations can sometimes yield treasures and one of them may be very useful to you. You don't have to bring them all to the surface, but the deeper you dive the more interesting it gets.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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SUMMER QUESTION

I recently received a peck on the cheek from two members of the female persuasion. Besides those I haven't experienced a real kiss in many, many years. I have no flowers. There is nothing growing outside, no trees, no bushes, no flowers, just a few pathetic weeds here and there. That, thankfully, does a lot to discourage the mosquito population, but it doesn't give me much in the way of flora. So I pose this question for those of you who have more experience in these matters.
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Which is more important, a flower or a kiss? Why?

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.