They are but beggars that can count their worth.
Shakespeare
****************
Hello Frosty
****************
As I add more years of experience to my calendar I come to realize more and more how unimportant my past is. It is preverbal that gray headed ones, particularly those with no grand children, tend to dwell with memories, in an atmosphere of a life lived almost as uif that life was over. There are regrets, of course, but there is also pride of accomplishment and, maybe, satisfaction. Well and good, up to a point. But just because the hair is gray doesn't have to mean that the head is.
Sometimes, in this journal, I may bring up some event from the past to illustrate a point, and I might remember an event in conversation with someone who shared it. But otherwise I don't want to think about the past. It's gone. It doesn't exist. It is not an extant in the world.
The best part is to realize that my past, my childhood, the loss of my father, poverty, scorn, abuse, itinerancy, the education I got, the failures, the successes, the tragedies, the delights, the accidents, the injuries, the pain, the fights, the sex, the loves, the fears, do not define who I am. Put them sll together in a biography and they don't even begin to summerize me.
Woven in and out though all those threads on the loom of time are the invisible, intangible, inestimable virtues and values that have always been there and have always been who I am. Most of the events of my past were cover ups, things I did while I was waiting to discover myself or things that happened to me which beclouded the discovery.
Even if you are a young person your worth is not measured by the events of your life, including your hopes and plans. True human value is above all the tangibles and materials. I discovered this truth by going back and looking at some of the entries in my private paper journal. I was amused and annoyed to discover, in light of my recent slowly growing realization of my real value, how inconsequential many of those entries are.
Think about it. How much of your current life will you count as worth and how much will you eventually discard as worthless? I used to be amused at the answer sometimes given to interviewers of older peopled that if they had it to live over again they wouldn't chance a thing. What amused me was the bland acknowledgement that seemed to imply life was over and the belief that if they thought about it there were probably a great many things they would change. Now, today, I think about it and ask myself if there was anything I would change. My first impulse is to say that I would probably change all of it. But then I think again and say that maybe I would not, in fact, change any of it except to acknowledge to myself that none of it was true.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
**************************
Showing posts with label memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memories. Show all posts
Friday, June 29, 2012
Friday, April 27, 2012
The Fire Bird
There is a phoenix inside of you. Know what to do when the flame erupts.
Dana Bate
****************
Hello Ken
****************
The phoenix is a fabled bird with brightly colored feathers. Legend has it that the phoenix lives for a long time but then one day it builds a nest. Sitting in the nest it catches fire and nest and bird are both destroyed in the fire and reduced to ashes. But out of the ashes comes an egg. The egg is hatched and the phoenix emerges to live again.
There are times in life when things don't feel right. Our mood is dark and gloomy, perhaps we are having twinges of fear and don't know why. We are disturbed and confused.
Then we try to do things to compensate and erase the gloom. We may listen to some of our favorite music or go for a walk, do some shopping, or pick up a book or magazine and try to read ourselves out of our morose mood. But those things don't help.
Some people will go off to the doctor and get a prescription for pep pills of some kind, some mood altering substance, or some will drink liquor or take illegal drugs, or some similar extreme and excessive behavior all in the attempt to ignore the signs from within ourselves that something important is taking place.
THE NEST Transitions are never easy. They usually begin with an unsettling dissatisfaction with things and at first it is hard to determine what we are dissatisfied with. We may not know until a crises occurs if we keep pushing our uncomfortable feelings out of the way. But the omens are insistent enough that we finally have to pay attention to them.
THE FIRE "Put off the old man...put on the new." When it becomes clear what the transition is that is taking place we discover changes in our lives. Old things about ourselves that we are reluctant to discard suddenly become useless and are cast off and thrown into the fire. It's difficult. Memories will remind us of the fine, former feathers we used to display. Forget them.
THE EGG Then the period of adjustment comes. We have to get used to ourselves in a new light of understanding. We may feel a sense of loss. Uncomfortable memories wail come to remind usof who we used to be and will make us want to recapture some of that life.
THE BIRTH There is a definite gestation going on now and the new person is about to emerge with a fine new set of feathers and a new life. Most of the old life is still with us but now we have a different point of view about things that are important to it. When the new birth is accomplished flap your wings in joy. The gloomy days are over.
Check you Hands of the Vagabond http://vagabondhand.blogspot.com/
Dana Bate - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
Dana Bate
****************
Hello Ken
****************
The phoenix is a fabled bird with brightly colored feathers. Legend has it that the phoenix lives for a long time but then one day it builds a nest. Sitting in the nest it catches fire and nest and bird are both destroyed in the fire and reduced to ashes. But out of the ashes comes an egg. The egg is hatched and the phoenix emerges to live again.
There are times in life when things don't feel right. Our mood is dark and gloomy, perhaps we are having twinges of fear and don't know why. We are disturbed and confused.
Then we try to do things to compensate and erase the gloom. We may listen to some of our favorite music or go for a walk, do some shopping, or pick up a book or magazine and try to read ourselves out of our morose mood. But those things don't help.
Some people will go off to the doctor and get a prescription for pep pills of some kind, some mood altering substance, or some will drink liquor or take illegal drugs, or some similar extreme and excessive behavior all in the attempt to ignore the signs from within ourselves that something important is taking place.
THE NEST Transitions are never easy. They usually begin with an unsettling dissatisfaction with things and at first it is hard to determine what we are dissatisfied with. We may not know until a crises occurs if we keep pushing our uncomfortable feelings out of the way. But the omens are insistent enough that we finally have to pay attention to them.
THE FIRE "Put off the old man...put on the new." When it becomes clear what the transition is that is taking place we discover changes in our lives. Old things about ourselves that we are reluctant to discard suddenly become useless and are cast off and thrown into the fire. It's difficult. Memories will remind us of the fine, former feathers we used to display. Forget them.
THE EGG Then the period of adjustment comes. We have to get used to ourselves in a new light of understanding. We may feel a sense of loss. Uncomfortable memories wail come to remind usof who we used to be and will make us want to recapture some of that life.
THE BIRTH There is a definite gestation going on now and the new person is about to emerge with a fine new set of feathers and a new life. Most of the old life is still with us but now we have a different point of view about things that are important to it. When the new birth is accomplished flap your wings in joy. The gloomy days are over.
Check you Hands of the Vagabond http://vagabondhand.blogspot.com/
Dana Bate - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Don't Look Back
Contents:
1. Don't Look Back
2. Spring Question
3. Contest Contest
-------------------------------
Memories are slowly throbbing into forgetfulness.
Dana Bate
******************
Hello Arauca, Colombia
""""""""""""""""""""""
There's a famous Japanese film called "Rashomon" directed by Akira Kurosawa. The story is about a husband and wife traveling through a forest. They are attacked by a bandit who rapes the wife. The husband dies. The story is played out 4 times and each time it's different. All three of the characters claim to have killed the husband, including the husband himself through the voice of a medium. But a simple rag picker who was hiding in the bushes and saw the event happen claims the husband accidentally fell on his own sword. It is a mystery that is never solved because we are not told which story is true if in fact any of them are.
What the movie depicts is the unreliability of subjective realism. Many of my memories, and yours, are fictionalized recreations of events that seem to have taken place. In all likelihood no film was made at the time you did things or things happened to you that you now grasp with certainty in your memory. If someone was there who witnessed the events and recalled them to you they might seem to be totally different experiences from the ones you remember.
That I like my version of the events I cherish in my memory is a comfortable state of mind but why should I hold on to a fiction, if that is what it is. We struggle to let go of bad memories. And so we should, because they negatively affect our lives. Lessons learned? Get on with life. But holding on to good memories may be just as destructive, particularly if they mislead us.
"Live for today. Live for the now." People are always saying things like that. I agree, but I say "Live for the future also." I think one of the best treatments for the condition known as oldness is to have a future and be working toward it. In fact having more than one future is preferable. The repetition of ones daily chores and duties loses its hum drum, threadbare old rags if it is helping to define a future.
I sometimes cite people, places and events from my past to illustrate a point in this journal. Some stories are rich enough in lessons to mention more than once, but I don't dwell on them.
Out behind the theatre there is a park with benches, and every day a small gathering of old men sit around, like birds on a fence, and talk about things. One of them tells about when he used to go fishing. Another one who was in the Navy during the war in the Pacific tells about surviving the typhoon, as if he was teaching a history class. A third who still has a head of hair tells the same old lame jokes about his "hairdresser." When I worked at the theatre and had a break, I would sometimes sit out in the back, at a respectable distance, and listen to them. I soon realized they were telling the same stories to each other over and over again. One of the younger ones once said to me "You see these old guys here? They can tell you what happened 40, 50, 60 years ago, but they can't remember what they had for breakfast It's pitiful." I kept wondering if one day one of those old coots would get tired of the repetition, get up and go do something brand new. I hope so.
It doesn't concern me to remember what happened 40, 50, 60 years ago, and I'm not worried if I can't remember what I had for breakfast, although I probably do. I'm only concerned if I can't remember what I was about to do. But give me a moment and I'll think of it. I'm not senile, just slow. I'm 72, I have a right to be slow.
So I let the memories throb themselves into oblivion while I think about what I'm going to do this afternoon, tomorrow, next week, next year. Every day is a new day and a new life.
DB - The Vagabond
********************
Never give up.
*********************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 6 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Contest Contest
It's time to put the Ipod in its place.
I am stealing this one from Beth. Don't tell her.
Ipod = ________.
You are to come up with a song or other title in which you substitute the word "Ipod" for one or two of the other words. Example:
"Somewhere over the Ipod"
Answers will be published every day. Send them to:
dbdacoba@aol.com
Looking forward to your clever entries.
DB
************************
1. Don't Look Back
2. Spring Question
3. Contest Contest
-------------------------------
Memories are slowly throbbing into forgetfulness.
Dana Bate
******************
Hello Arauca, Colombia
""""""""""""""""""""""
There's a famous Japanese film called "Rashomon" directed by Akira Kurosawa. The story is about a husband and wife traveling through a forest. They are attacked by a bandit who rapes the wife. The husband dies. The story is played out 4 times and each time it's different. All three of the characters claim to have killed the husband, including the husband himself through the voice of a medium. But a simple rag picker who was hiding in the bushes and saw the event happen claims the husband accidentally fell on his own sword. It is a mystery that is never solved because we are not told which story is true if in fact any of them are.
What the movie depicts is the unreliability of subjective realism. Many of my memories, and yours, are fictionalized recreations of events that seem to have taken place. In all likelihood no film was made at the time you did things or things happened to you that you now grasp with certainty in your memory. If someone was there who witnessed the events and recalled them to you they might seem to be totally different experiences from the ones you remember.
That I like my version of the events I cherish in my memory is a comfortable state of mind but why should I hold on to a fiction, if that is what it is. We struggle to let go of bad memories. And so we should, because they negatively affect our lives. Lessons learned? Get on with life. But holding on to good memories may be just as destructive, particularly if they mislead us.
"Live for today. Live for the now." People are always saying things like that. I agree, but I say "Live for the future also." I think one of the best treatments for the condition known as oldness is to have a future and be working toward it. In fact having more than one future is preferable. The repetition of ones daily chores and duties loses its hum drum, threadbare old rags if it is helping to define a future.
I sometimes cite people, places and events from my past to illustrate a point in this journal. Some stories are rich enough in lessons to mention more than once, but I don't dwell on them.
Out behind the theatre there is a park with benches, and every day a small gathering of old men sit around, like birds on a fence, and talk about things. One of them tells about when he used to go fishing. Another one who was in the Navy during the war in the Pacific tells about surviving the typhoon, as if he was teaching a history class. A third who still has a head of hair tells the same old lame jokes about his "hairdresser." When I worked at the theatre and had a break, I would sometimes sit out in the back, at a respectable distance, and listen to them. I soon realized they were telling the same stories to each other over and over again. One of the younger ones once said to me "You see these old guys here? They can tell you what happened 40, 50, 60 years ago, but they can't remember what they had for breakfast It's pitiful." I kept wondering if one day one of those old coots would get tired of the repetition, get up and go do something brand new. I hope so.
It doesn't concern me to remember what happened 40, 50, 60 years ago, and I'm not worried if I can't remember what I had for breakfast, although I probably do. I'm only concerned if I can't remember what I was about to do. But give me a moment and I'll think of it. I'm not senile, just slow. I'm 72, I have a right to be slow.
So I let the memories throb themselves into oblivion while I think about what I'm going to do this afternoon, tomorrow, next week, next year. Every day is a new day and a new life.
DB - The Vagabond
********************
Never give up.
*********************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 6 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Contest Contest
It's time to put the Ipod in its place.
I am stealing this one from Beth. Don't tell her.
Ipod = ________.
You are to come up with a song or other title in which you substitute the word "Ipod" for one or two of the other words. Example:
"Somewhere over the Ipod"
Answers will be published every day. Send them to:
dbdacoba@aol.com
Looking forward to your clever entries.
DB
************************
Monday, December 21, 2009
Winter's Quest
Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed, but with what it is still possible for you to do.
Pope John XXIII
************************
If you really want to make yourself miserable at this joyful holiday season take a pen and a pad of paper and make a list of all the times you failed. It'll pass the time, and the older you are the more time it will take.
On the other hand you can acknowledge the fact that "to err is human" as the old worn out saying goes and that you are not the only person around who has racked up a good history of flops.
To sit around remembering past failures or even past successes is a good time waster. It has been said that while young men have dreams, old men have memories. To that I say: Feh! Sure I have memories and sometimes I draw on them to think and write about something. But that's the reason, and I don't want to dwell on the memories of my failures. Those memories are useless. Lessons have been learned and life goes on. I want my remembering to be like a sun dial which indicates only sunny hours. And when I draw on them I want them to be accompanied by the sweet sounds and gentle aromas that pertain to my present life. Life is a forward thing. It isn't what I've done it's what I'm capable of doing that matters. So why should I waste my time and mental energies on the past when I could be designing, devising, determining. Today is today. Tomorrow is different. I want the difference to be according to me.
In keeping with that impetus I have put together the suggestions for the famous world renowned WINTER QUESTION and come up with the following.
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
Given the resources and opportunity, what one thing do you want to do in 2010 that you've never done before.
You have all Winter to answer. Answers will be posted on the first day of Spring.
DB - The Vagabond
Pope John XXIII
************************
If you really want to make yourself miserable at this joyful holiday season take a pen and a pad of paper and make a list of all the times you failed. It'll pass the time, and the older you are the more time it will take.
On the other hand you can acknowledge the fact that "to err is human" as the old worn out saying goes and that you are not the only person around who has racked up a good history of flops.
To sit around remembering past failures or even past successes is a good time waster. It has been said that while young men have dreams, old men have memories. To that I say: Feh! Sure I have memories and sometimes I draw on them to think and write about something. But that's the reason, and I don't want to dwell on the memories of my failures. Those memories are useless. Lessons have been learned and life goes on. I want my remembering to be like a sun dial which indicates only sunny hours. And when I draw on them I want them to be accompanied by the sweet sounds and gentle aromas that pertain to my present life. Life is a forward thing. It isn't what I've done it's what I'm capable of doing that matters. So why should I waste my time and mental energies on the past when I could be designing, devising, determining. Today is today. Tomorrow is different. I want the difference to be according to me.
In keeping with that impetus I have put together the suggestions for the famous world renowned WINTER QUESTION and come up with the following.
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
Given the resources and opportunity, what one thing do you want to do in 2010 that you've never done before.
You have all Winter to answer. Answers will be posted on the first day of Spring.
DB - The Vagabond
Monday, May 4, 2009
Deliverance Duty 5/04/09
For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded and defeated us in daily life.
Lawrence Durrell
*****************
Welcome back.
----------------------
I can think of a lot of things about my past that please me, fun memories and good friends. But why is it so much easier to remember the hurts, the pains, the failures. I am glad to have learned the lessons from all of them. Now why can't I bind up the whole mess in a big plastic baggie, throw it out in the trash can and forget about it?
There used to be a popular question asked of older people when they were interviewed on radio or TV. If you had it to do all over again what would you change? The answer was "I wouldn't change a thing." I have never understood that remark. I sit here and fervently wish I could start all over again, change almost everything and do it right.
I would say, when asked, that most of the roles I played as an actor were either autobiographical or wish fulfillment, sometimes a combination of both. It was very helpful to call upon events of my past, both positive and negative, to supply me with images and emotions that synergized with the life of the character I was playing. But since I'm not an actor any more why do I need them? And, thus, why do they keep popping up to hurt me like mosquito bites or bee stings?
I don't appear to have any choice about it so I might as well take those memories, cut them apart, twist the pieces around, repaint them, hammer them out of shape on the anvil of my mind, make something else of them and run them through my keyboard.
The time and effort it takes me to invest my poor memories into the whirlpool of my creative mind is paid off by the repose I would never award myself otherwise. And as I pull apart the veils and uncover the grotesqueries of my vagabond past I tremble. But I also retool and redesign remorse and regret into something that may even resemble the beautiful.
To consider my sins of commission and especially my sins of omission I may feel as if I'm tending a garden of vipers with no exit for them to crawl away. But if so, I collected them. I earned them as my destiny. And now my duty is to translate each of them into something beneficial to me and anyone who wants to listen.
When Eugene O'Neill wrote "Ah, Wilderness!" he said it was the story of his youth the way it should have been. I can write about my youth the way it should have been (wish fulfillment) but only if I face the way it actually was (autobiographical). In short, I can turn that big plastic baggie of trash into art. And that's what we do.
DB - The Vagabond
__________________
May you have a bright and happy day.
*******************************
Lawrence Durrell
*****************
Welcome back.
----------------------
I can think of a lot of things about my past that please me, fun memories and good friends. But why is it so much easier to remember the hurts, the pains, the failures. I am glad to have learned the lessons from all of them. Now why can't I bind up the whole mess in a big plastic baggie, throw it out in the trash can and forget about it?
There used to be a popular question asked of older people when they were interviewed on radio or TV. If you had it to do all over again what would you change? The answer was "I wouldn't change a thing." I have never understood that remark. I sit here and fervently wish I could start all over again, change almost everything and do it right.
I would say, when asked, that most of the roles I played as an actor were either autobiographical or wish fulfillment, sometimes a combination of both. It was very helpful to call upon events of my past, both positive and negative, to supply me with images and emotions that synergized with the life of the character I was playing. But since I'm not an actor any more why do I need them? And, thus, why do they keep popping up to hurt me like mosquito bites or bee stings?
I don't appear to have any choice about it so I might as well take those memories, cut them apart, twist the pieces around, repaint them, hammer them out of shape on the anvil of my mind, make something else of them and run them through my keyboard.
The time and effort it takes me to invest my poor memories into the whirlpool of my creative mind is paid off by the repose I would never award myself otherwise. And as I pull apart the veils and uncover the grotesqueries of my vagabond past I tremble. But I also retool and redesign remorse and regret into something that may even resemble the beautiful.
To consider my sins of commission and especially my sins of omission I may feel as if I'm tending a garden of vipers with no exit for them to crawl away. But if so, I collected them. I earned them as my destiny. And now my duty is to translate each of them into something beneficial to me and anyone who wants to listen.
When Eugene O'Neill wrote "Ah, Wilderness!" he said it was the story of his youth the way it should have been. I can write about my youth the way it should have been (wish fulfillment) but only if I face the way it actually was (autobiographical). In short, I can turn that big plastic baggie of trash into art. And that's what we do.
DB - The Vagabond
__________________
May you have a bright and happy day.
*******************************
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