Flip The Dial

Fire can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men.

James Baldwin
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Hello Ernie
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I've spent much time and effort scraping through embers trying to find a spark to light up the spirits, other people's and my own. It's so easy to shut down the fire and settle for the hum drum. "Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear yo not?" (Mark 8) Why do we maintain the habit of looking at the world as if it was mainly uninteresting? Why do we not look for the invisible things, and listen to hear what may be inbetween the sounds around us? Have we forgotten or do we take for granted that we have a mind filled to abundance with thoughts, ideas, dreams?

Remember the radio with two stations? You don't? I bet you have the feeling right now that I am about to remind you. I wrote about it a couple of times. It's a Cabbalist idea. Imagine there is a radio and it plays only two stations. One of them broadcasts only good news, and the other one only bad news. Now image that you turn the radio on and set it at the good news station. But as soon as you turn your back and walk away it automatically flips over to the bad news station. When you realize it you have to go back and readjust the dial, until the next time.

Now imagine that this radio is your mind and the way it works. Right? How many hours a day do you listen to the bad news, the fear, worry, anger, resentment, doubt, depression, despair? Dial flipping is seriously needed there.

Believe me I know how difficult it is to get that dial pointed in the right direction, especially since the bad news station has given you something to worry about or to be afraid of. You don't want to let go of it. You would almost rather chew your head off than hear some cheerful news. You are enjoying the misery. And that's why you need an impulse, a reminder, a kick. And that's where the vagabond comes in.

I have just about typed my finders to the bone stirring up the embers, trying to get people to stay tuned to the good news station and to remind them that the human spirit when armed with the everything of good thoughts and not the nothing of bad thoughts is a powerful force, and when focused on the ins and outs, the ups and downs and the backs and forths of life it can perform miracles.

Remember, the opposite of good isn't evil.
The opposite of good is good-and-evil.

Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up

Wrong Be Gone

With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

Norman Mailer
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Hello Sandy
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I think I've reached a fearful and dangerous point in my life where I can no longer bear complacency and acquiescence when it comes to things that are wrong and that are just loft alone to be wrong. Excuses are made, powers that have the right to cleanse and revive turn away, shoulders are shrugged and hands are raised like dolphins fins in an expression which says "What can you do?"

The opposite of good is not evil. The opposite of good is good-and-evil, the original trouble causing tree. It is that mixture of good and evil that produces a toxic cocktail which poisons the human race as it tries to survive.

At the risk of being an absolutist or an extremist, both of which I do my best to avoid, I am believing that the struggle for good, for the right, is now the most important one for me and for humanity in general. Intelligence is wasted justifying, excusing, rationalizing and not challenging the basic morality of every action and belief. As someone recently said the lesser of two evil is still evil. If a thing is wrong it's wrong and there is nothing right about it. If a thing is right it has no opposite. You can tell a thing is wrong by what it's results are. It may be pleasurable but if it eventually leads to corruption, degradation, illness, moral idiocy it's wrong, there is nothing good about it. If a thing is good it only has one result, more good.

If charity begins at home then so does righteousness. In a recent experience I saw wrong being done and justified, blandly excused, even to the point where the people who were doing it did it in such a way they convinced themselves they were doing good.

As a result of thinking abut that episode I now look more closely into my own thinking to find any place where I have woven cob webs or sent up clouds over some ethical choice that I may have on an extended leash, venturing itself into areas of my life where it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

There's more good-and-evil in the world than I can ever stand up to and overturn. But I've grown out of gentleness putting up with the wrongs as they approach my waking steps. I worked at a camp that was unstructured. The children were all over the place and so were the counselors. The rule was a counselor was responsible for the safety of every child he could see.

Maybe I can't see, hear or feel every thought or intent of immorality as it occurs but I won't have the patience to let it pass. As an artist I owe that to myself.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.