What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.
Emerson
*******************
Hello Margie
*******************
"Watchman, tell us of the night."
The night is a better night than iast night, and so is the day.
*************************
There's an old saying "Time is money." You've probably heard that. Well, with clenched fist shaking my rage at the heavens, I gave my self more time and hence more money. I found six days and $48. How did I do that? It's a secret. How can one add six days to his life and translate that into $48? I told you, it's a secret. and a mystery But it means that I will have enough food to get me to the first of August when mine next income cometh in. The secret is that one must evangelize oneself. Get it?
My nasty neighborhood hasn't changed. Yesterday about noon my two immediate neighbors got into a terrible fight out the door, down the steps and all around the parking lot. They were both yelling. He was grabbing her and she was pushing him away. Two police cars came. She got in her car in a fury and drove away. Then she came back. Then the two of them got in the car and drove away. Now both of them are back. It might make an interesting story if I knew what they were fighting about.
What is worth fighting about? Survival. Refusing to give up, refusing to be stagnant, refusing to be minimized, underestimated and disrespected. It is worth fighting for rights, for righteousness and goodness. It is worth fighting for health, happiness and self respect.
Now, you take my neighbor. Please. Take him away from here. He's strong enough to subdue his woman and order around the little girl who lives with them. But he can't control his temper or his mouth. He's a weakling.
The sternest, most difficult enemy we ever have to face is the one inside us. That subtle, conniving, devious creature knows more about us than any other enemy and it knows where our vulnerable points are, our "erroneous zones." But that enemy is also the dragon at the mouth of the cave that holds the great treasures of our lives. Bring the dragon to the mat and the treasures are ours. In the cave we find our knowledge, our genius, our enlightenment. We have won the fight with ourselves and the reward is the golden crown of freedom. That's a fight worth having.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
*************************
Showing posts with label survival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label survival. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Survival
I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education.
Tallulah Bankhead
********************
Hello Jen
********************
When I was a teenager I carried a violin and a switch blade.
I had the violin because I really wanted to be able to play it. After several years of lessons and many hours of practice I concluded that I had no talent for the violin. Many years later I learned I had talent for the clarinet. But I was immersed in my career as an actor and had neither the time nor the income to study the clarinet. If I, like Woody Allen, had started in my boyhood I might have been able to play in jazz clubs the way he does from time to time. Now, in my retirement, I might be able to pick it up. But again I can't afford it. But I would like to buy a tenor recorder some day.
The reason I carried the switch blade is because the other guy had one. It was like nuclear missiles sitting in their silos. We have them and the Russians have them and everyone knows it. As long as they stay in the silos there is peace between us.
There are definite disadvantages from growing up without enough money. (No kidding!) But there are some advantages to be had if one is willing to face the dark. Some street wisdom isn't a bad thing to have for anyone. I have no patience with those who are easily shocked and baffled by things that human beings do. I rarely get enraged but often laugh at the pomposity and self importance of upper middle and upper class people who wouldn't know how to handle an obscure night of the soul even if they had the sensitivity to know they were stumbling through one.
I tried to go to college by working at two jobs (ok, one and a half jobs) but I soon left. It was a good school, but the ivy covered mentality was not for me. Not having a college degree kept me back from teaching Russian people to speak English. But it never kept me back from being an actor, a radio announcer, a lecturer, a teacher of public speaking and an associate of the drama department at another ivy covered college.
I read Shakespeare, the Bible and a lot of other things. I never learned about throwing the dice but I did make a profit playing the horses, which, by the way, is easier and faster than playing the stock market. I don't invest in horse races any more because of the cruelty that is sometimes involved.
So here I am an uneducated, ex street kid, with no clarinet and no switch blade, a retired actor with a true liberal education. You can have your privileges. I'll take survival.
DB - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
*************************
Tallulah Bankhead
********************
Hello Jen
********************
When I was a teenager I carried a violin and a switch blade.
I had the violin because I really wanted to be able to play it. After several years of lessons and many hours of practice I concluded that I had no talent for the violin. Many years later I learned I had talent for the clarinet. But I was immersed in my career as an actor and had neither the time nor the income to study the clarinet. If I, like Woody Allen, had started in my boyhood I might have been able to play in jazz clubs the way he does from time to time. Now, in my retirement, I might be able to pick it up. But again I can't afford it. But I would like to buy a tenor recorder some day.
The reason I carried the switch blade is because the other guy had one. It was like nuclear missiles sitting in their silos. We have them and the Russians have them and everyone knows it. As long as they stay in the silos there is peace between us.
There are definite disadvantages from growing up without enough money. (No kidding!) But there are some advantages to be had if one is willing to face the dark. Some street wisdom isn't a bad thing to have for anyone. I have no patience with those who are easily shocked and baffled by things that human beings do. I rarely get enraged but often laugh at the pomposity and self importance of upper middle and upper class people who wouldn't know how to handle an obscure night of the soul even if they had the sensitivity to know they were stumbling through one.
I tried to go to college by working at two jobs (ok, one and a half jobs) but I soon left. It was a good school, but the ivy covered mentality was not for me. Not having a college degree kept me back from teaching Russian people to speak English. But it never kept me back from being an actor, a radio announcer, a lecturer, a teacher of public speaking and an associate of the drama department at another ivy covered college.
I read Shakespeare, the Bible and a lot of other things. I never learned about throwing the dice but I did make a profit playing the horses, which, by the way, is easier and faster than playing the stock market. I don't invest in horse races any more because of the cruelty that is sometimes involved.
So here I am an uneducated, ex street kid, with no clarinet and no switch blade, a retired actor with a true liberal education. You can have your privileges. I'll take survival.
DB - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
*************************
Friday, March 26, 2010
Get Up
The basest of all things is to be afraid.
William Faulkner
*******************
One of the biggest and fiercest demons to face in the struggle to survive is not wanting to.
I, like millions of other people in the world, have become adept at the fine art of surviving on nothing. It probably has to do with my boyhood. My father died when I was 4. He went believing that his army pension would take care of his family. He was a war hero and had been decorated by General Patton. But because he wasn't on active duty when he went the government declined to grant my mother his pension. She had a nervous breakdown. But she didn't die. In fact she went on to live another 40 to 50 years.
Within two years of my father's death she sold the house and we plunged into terrifying poverty. I can't even remember some of the places I've lived. My mother had been an actress, she had no other skills, She went off to a typing job everyday with arthritic fingers. She was tough.
I know an actor, talented and reasonably well trained, who refuses to give up his night time office job to engange in an acting career. He would rather lose sleep and take roles in small productions for no money than face the fear, that deep knot in the stomach, over financial insecurity. Unless you're a soap opera actor, financial insecurity is the game. We all face it. We learn to live with it.
During the depression of the 20's men who had lost everything leapt to their deaths out of skyscraper windows. Some men were seen sleeping, mid day, in their blue suits on the grass in Bryant Park. Other men found something else to do. There were a few who sold their wife's strawberry jam from door to door.
In this last depression CEO's found a faster way to go by stepping in front of fast moving trains. The fear of loss, of having nothing left, of not knowing how to survive on nothing has caused a lot of death and destruction. It is a terrifying state for anyone to be in. But FDR said it clearly "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Those men died because of a base fear they couldn't face and death seemed to be the best alternative.
I have faced that fear myself many times and came close to thinking that the best thing to do was to pull the plug on myself. But I kept in mind a quote from Shakespeare, "There's place and means for every man alive." But to find that place and means you have to be alive.
It is said that the Donner Party when stranded next to a frozen lake in the Winter while trying to reach California chewed on bark. In my story Brian And Christine, when lost in a frozen wilderness, they also chew on bark just to stay alive. Brian, Christine and the Donners eventually made it out to safety. Some would have given up and died.
Someone once said that success is getting up one more time than you fall. There's no question that falling is a precipice of fear and getting up again is a big struggle.
Does heaven give us any reward for getting up? Probably not. And does the falling and getting up go on in an endless chain of events? Maybe. But as angry, depressed and fearful as I get, I wish to shake my fist at failure, laugh and go looking for the strawberry jam.
DB - The Vagabond
********************
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.
3 responses so far.
Answers will be published the first day of Summer.
dbdacoba@aol.com
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
William Faulkner
*******************
One of the biggest and fiercest demons to face in the struggle to survive is not wanting to.
I, like millions of other people in the world, have become adept at the fine art of surviving on nothing. It probably has to do with my boyhood. My father died when I was 4. He went believing that his army pension would take care of his family. He was a war hero and had been decorated by General Patton. But because he wasn't on active duty when he went the government declined to grant my mother his pension. She had a nervous breakdown. But she didn't die. In fact she went on to live another 40 to 50 years.
Within two years of my father's death she sold the house and we plunged into terrifying poverty. I can't even remember some of the places I've lived. My mother had been an actress, she had no other skills, She went off to a typing job everyday with arthritic fingers. She was tough.
I know an actor, talented and reasonably well trained, who refuses to give up his night time office job to engange in an acting career. He would rather lose sleep and take roles in small productions for no money than face the fear, that deep knot in the stomach, over financial insecurity. Unless you're a soap opera actor, financial insecurity is the game. We all face it. We learn to live with it.
During the depression of the 20's men who had lost everything leapt to their deaths out of skyscraper windows. Some men were seen sleeping, mid day, in their blue suits on the grass in Bryant Park. Other men found something else to do. There were a few who sold their wife's strawberry jam from door to door.
In this last depression CEO's found a faster way to go by stepping in front of fast moving trains. The fear of loss, of having nothing left, of not knowing how to survive on nothing has caused a lot of death and destruction. It is a terrifying state for anyone to be in. But FDR said it clearly "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Those men died because of a base fear they couldn't face and death seemed to be the best alternative.
I have faced that fear myself many times and came close to thinking that the best thing to do was to pull the plug on myself. But I kept in mind a quote from Shakespeare, "There's place and means for every man alive." But to find that place and means you have to be alive.
It is said that the Donner Party when stranded next to a frozen lake in the Winter while trying to reach California chewed on bark. In my story Brian And Christine, when lost in a frozen wilderness, they also chew on bark just to stay alive. Brian, Christine and the Donners eventually made it out to safety. Some would have given up and died.
Someone once said that success is getting up one more time than you fall. There's no question that falling is a precipice of fear and getting up again is a big struggle.
Does heaven give us any reward for getting up? Probably not. And does the falling and getting up go on in an endless chain of events? Maybe. But as angry, depressed and fearful as I get, I wish to shake my fist at failure, laugh and go looking for the strawberry jam.
DB - The Vagabond
********************
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.
3 responses so far.
Answers will be published the first day of Summer.
dbdacoba@aol.com
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Hidden Heroics 6/04/09
The vision of a champion is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when nobody else is looking.
Mia Hamm
*******************
Hello again.
--------------------------
Life is hard enough as it is, but to face it with no one around who cares about you, especially if you have stacked up some decades on yourself, is difficult indeed. Aloneness is a preferable condition under some circumstances, but when the tasks are done, the challenges met and the fears overcome it's so good to have someone with you who can share your victory.
The real heroics are never seen on the ball field, the stage or the orchestra pit. We see only the results: a scoreless game, an inspiring performance, the reaching into the higher levels of feeling and human experience by the musicians. The real heroics are invisible things, mental things. We cannot see them going on.
The nurse closes the curtain and leaves the room. Now the patient is alone facing fear, dealing with pain, desperate and unsure of what will happen, but fighting to stay alive, to get healthy, to survive. And there is no one there to see it.
I did a very difficult, vigorous and demanding solo dance in a musical. When it was over, panting for breath and sweating, I had to climb,a flight of stairs to my dressing room. I was so bowed over with exhaustion that it was all I could do to look at myself in the mirror to see if I was still all right. No one was there.
I spent one winter living in a farm house down a long dirt road in the north country. One freezing cold day while cutting some fire wood from downed branches the saw slipped and cut into my finger right down to the bone. I quickly shut down the saw and went inside. There were no bandages or anything of that sort in the house that I knew of, but there was a roll of paper towel. I wrapped my finger in it and held it as tightly as I could. The pain was horrible and the blood was flowing, I had no phone to call for help. I had no transportation to take me to a doctor. The nearest neighbor was 6 miles away and they usually were locked up and gone for the winter. I was alone and frightened.
Somehow I managed to feed myself and my cat and get a fire going in the wood stove, my only source of heat. I had to keep replacing the paper towel because of the blood. When I looked at the cleaned and open wound I could see the bone glistening in the light. I was afraid I was going to lose my finger, or worse. I was alone. There was no one there to whom I could explain my tears, show my panic or cry my pain.
The weeks went by. Slowly the wound healed, the bone strengthened, the flesh grew back, the skin grew over and now there's nothing left but a scar. And all that time, except for my friendly cat, I was alone.
If you have ever been bent over with fear and sorrow, drenched in sweat and tears, at the point of exhaustion, finality and surrender when no one was looking and you survived it, congratulate yourself, You're a champion.
DB Vagabond Journeys
_________________________
The glass is half empty? Well, fill it up.
*********************
Mia Hamm
*******************
Hello again.
--------------------------
Life is hard enough as it is, but to face it with no one around who cares about you, especially if you have stacked up some decades on yourself, is difficult indeed. Aloneness is a preferable condition under some circumstances, but when the tasks are done, the challenges met and the fears overcome it's so good to have someone with you who can share your victory.
The real heroics are never seen on the ball field, the stage or the orchestra pit. We see only the results: a scoreless game, an inspiring performance, the reaching into the higher levels of feeling and human experience by the musicians. The real heroics are invisible things, mental things. We cannot see them going on.
The nurse closes the curtain and leaves the room. Now the patient is alone facing fear, dealing with pain, desperate and unsure of what will happen, but fighting to stay alive, to get healthy, to survive. And there is no one there to see it.
I did a very difficult, vigorous and demanding solo dance in a musical. When it was over, panting for breath and sweating, I had to climb,a flight of stairs to my dressing room. I was so bowed over with exhaustion that it was all I could do to look at myself in the mirror to see if I was still all right. No one was there.
I spent one winter living in a farm house down a long dirt road in the north country. One freezing cold day while cutting some fire wood from downed branches the saw slipped and cut into my finger right down to the bone. I quickly shut down the saw and went inside. There were no bandages or anything of that sort in the house that I knew of, but there was a roll of paper towel. I wrapped my finger in it and held it as tightly as I could. The pain was horrible and the blood was flowing, I had no phone to call for help. I had no transportation to take me to a doctor. The nearest neighbor was 6 miles away and they usually were locked up and gone for the winter. I was alone and frightened.
Somehow I managed to feed myself and my cat and get a fire going in the wood stove, my only source of heat. I had to keep replacing the paper towel because of the blood. When I looked at the cleaned and open wound I could see the bone glistening in the light. I was afraid I was going to lose my finger, or worse. I was alone. There was no one there to whom I could explain my tears, show my panic or cry my pain.
The weeks went by. Slowly the wound healed, the bone strengthened, the flesh grew back, the skin grew over and now there's nothing left but a scar. And all that time, except for my friendly cat, I was alone.
If you have ever been bent over with fear and sorrow, drenched in sweat and tears, at the point of exhaustion, finality and surrender when no one was looking and you survived it, congratulate yourself, You're a champion.
DB Vagabond Journeys
_________________________
The glass is half empty? Well, fill it up.
*********************
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