Take The Plunge

Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out in the ocean.

Christopher Reeves
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Hello Jon
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1945, summer camp, Saugatuck, Connecticut. There was a medium sized lake and a swimming area marked off. There were raw boats and canoes. There was a diving board just off the surface of the lake. It was parents visiting day and a series of events were planned to entertain them.

When we got to the lake there were swimming races, kids in the canoes and row boats and others making fancy dives off the diving board. But for those events the councilors had ignored and overlooked me (the story of my life) so I had nothing to do. I sat next to my mother and explained that I wasn't given any part in those events.

But soon one of the councilors came up and balled me out for sitting there and told me to get up and do my part. I tried to tell him I was assigned nothing but he walked away. So I got up, stood around and watched.

Next to the diving board there was a tall wooden structure that was intended to have a diving board also. But the camp decided it was too dangerous, being so high. I climbed up the structure. There was noting at the top but a small platform.. From there I jumped feet first into the lake. I think I did it just to show that I had been left out. No one would have been assigned to do that .

But when I cam up out of the water people were applauding. Someone said that it took a lot of courage to jump in like that and not to dive. That made no sense to me. If I go into the deep, without knowing what's there, I want to go feet first and not discover it with my face. Nevertheless, everyone was so impressed that I did it a few more times and ended up the star of the day.

At another time I had won swimming medals (as Brian did), two bronze and one silver for speed, distance and distance underwater. Later, as a young teen I could swim in a club off Long Island Sound. There was a float a good distance from the shore which almost no one swam to. I would swim out to it and far enough away from the sun worshippers on the beach, solatics I called them, I would take off my bathing suit and fling it out into the water, watch it sink and jump in after it, groping around on the bottom until I found it and not coming to the surface until I did. Some times it was so difficult that I was gasping for breath when I finally surfaced. Once I surfaced under the float, which was a shock. This was a major challenge. I had to find that bathing suit. This was before the days of nude beaches and appearing out of the water among the solatics with nothing on would not please the owners.

I didn't realize it at the time but that staying underwater until my lungs were about to burst was actually strengthening them so that years later I could fill a large theatre with my voice and do six lines of Shakespeare in one breath.

I would still like to jump into the ocean. But unfortunately I'm not near the water these days. All I have is a bath tub, the shallow end of the pool.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
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Bathtime Bliss

I can't think of any sorrow in the world that a hot bath wouldn't help, just a little bit.

Susan Glasee
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I don't currently have a bath tub and I miss it very much. I'm always amused at those pragmatic sorts who say that a shower is better than a bath because it uses so much less water, as if somehow they were both to serve the same purpose. A shower automatically wastes water as it plummets to the drain. If you stayed in the shower as long as you stay in a bath just think of the water you'd waste.

To get clean take a shower. It's a good vigorous walk in the rain.

But to slide slowly into the warm and waiting arms of acceptance, to float weightless in the ocean of the universe, to bask in the womblike center where reason and fantasies meet, to be enwrapped in the magic carpet where the mundane matters of life become just drifting clouds, to travel on warm waves of solitary journeys into unknown lands where you are wanted and loved, to visit pastoral fields of calmness and stillness, to feel the knots slowly untie themselves and the doors slowly unlock, to be where the friendly sages of the world unite in harmonious song, to float through revelations of beauty, to visit secret places where dwell the water nymphs, to glide with ease along the winds and waves of flowered paths, to be lifted up to the mystical plateau where the invisible siren song caresses you, to fly through rainbows and ascend to where the worlds hum as they glide by, to know the serene state of your own being, to let your thoughts be washed of all doubt and worry, to be safe, where no trouble can touch you for an eternity and to rise renewed, regenerated, cleansed and reborn, take a bath.

DB
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PUZZLE - WEEKEND EDITION

Labor over this.
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KBH KF BOZOZSOB KQO NWCY FT GOIKOZSOB
EQOC UWTO EPG GUFE PCY FQ, GF ZOUUFE.
KBH KF BOZOZSOB KQO NWCY FT GOIKOZSOB
EQOC XBPGG EPG XBOOC PCY XBPWC EPG HOUUFE.
KBH KF BOZOZSOB KQO NWCY FT GOIKOZSOB
EQOC HFD EOBO P KOCYOB PCY VPUUFE TOUUFE.
KBH KF BOZOZSOB, PCY WT HFD BOZOZSOB
KQOC TFUUHE.

KEZ RFCOG

Good luck.
DB
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What Do You Want?

I hope that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

Michelangelo
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Yesterday I sat in a hard wooden chair and twisted myself around in order to take photographs for the first time on a digital camera of my art works so that I could put them on the computer. When I finished and stood up I couldn't walk. For the rest of the day I was painfully bent over. But no matter how I feel today, whether I can walk or not, I have to go to the market or I'll run out of toilet paper (pardon me,
"bathroom tissue"). Now if you don't think that's funny, you've got no sense of humor.

A good hot bath would probably help the back, but I don't have a bath tub. I have a stall shower. There are people who have bath tubs who never use them. They just stand in them and take showers. What a waste! Come take my stall shower and leave me your bath tub. What? Real men don't take baths? Bull.

When I began the day I didn't have a file on the computer of my paintings but, in spite of the sacrifice, now I do. I completed the most recent one a few days ago. Except for signing it I'm finished with it. Naturally I still worry over it as you might worry over a child, hoping they turn out all right. But the painting is not finished with me. Every time I do one I want it to be better than the last one. I'm learning how to paint by painting, the same way I learned acting and broadcasting. There seems to be no other way in my life.

One of the biggest questions of all time is how do we survive? Considering that we are born unable to take care of ourselves, dependant on people with varying degrees of wisdom to teach us how to live, once we make it through the roller coaster of growing up, then considering the limitations, the financial flops, crippling illnesses, emotional whip lashes and natural disasters, how do we keep going, and why?

The answer is: we stay alive because we want to . We desire to live. And that means we desire to experience, to learn, to accomplish things, to fulfill ourselves and to do better than we've done. The imaginations of an active mind, the heart's hopes, the lover's binding strengths transcend all those limitations beyond distances no one has ever measured.

I always hope that things will get better and that I will accomplish more. They don't and I don't. But so what? I will not stop wanting.

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

In your opinion what is the most amazing thing that could happen during this decade? Make it as outrageous as you want but keep it within the realm of what you consider a possibility.

14 responses so far.

Answers will be published the first day of Summer.

Thank you.

dbdacoba@aol.com

DB - The Vagabond
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