When a thing is done, it's done. Don't look back. .Look forward to your next objective.
General George Marshall
*****************************
Hello Arlene
*****************************
I've been thinking about the subject of time. Time, one of the nastiest apples ever plucked from the tree of good and evil. I'm not sure if I have time to write about it this evening, It will take some time and even though I have time on my hands, it may be time to do something else. But since it's a timely subject I'll take the time to address it.
I'm beginning to believe as many forward thinking and prophetic philosophers and scientists have said, time doesn't really exist. There is no time. Time hasn't run out. It was never there in the first place.
"Stand still ,you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come."
(Christopher Marlowe)
We are tyrannized by our clocks and calendars. While time is really only a human measurement of how long it takes something to move. we shape our lives around it. And the worst part of it, the most toxic part, is that we put events into a time slot of future, present and past. But I've come to realize that there is no past. The past is gone, so it doesn't exist and therefore it doesn't require my attention nor do the memories that cloud around it.
"Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking."
(Gustav Mahler)
And so they should be though one could hardly call Mahler's life wasted and sterile. But what is cracking is gone and will do what all past does, fall back into it's essence and create the present, and the present will create the future. The future, like the past, doesn't exist and it never will because all there is is the present and the present doesn't exist in time.
"And the angel...lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware...that there should be time no longer."
(Revelation)
If Mahler's life was wasted and sterile than everyone's life was also. but only if we didn't take advantage of the now. We have always been and always will be in the present moment because there is no other. Now is the only time. "Now is the day of salvation."
(Corinthians II)
Well, I can see from the old clock on the wall that it's almost time to post this. Today is the only day. Do good things today and keep on doing them.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
*****************************
Showing posts with label the present. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the present. Show all posts
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Carpe Diem
Catch, then, O catch the transient hour, improve the moment as it flies.
Saint Jerome
****************
Hello Ally
****************
I was born in 1939. That was known as the Post Depression Era. There were wealthy people of course. There are always wealthy people, most of whom know nothing at all about wealth. But for the average guy, facing the horrible memories and echoes of the depression, the most important thing was to have a job. It really didn't matter, in many cases, what the job was as long as it provided a living wage. I grew up with that ethic drummed into me. I shouldn't think about having a career. Get a job.
In my recent move I've uncovered many things that have been packed away for want of space. Now that I have some room I'm unpacking boxes and discovering what is inside them. One of the things I found is my original Social Security card. I never had it replaced because I haven't had to show it to anyone for many years. You might say it's a collectors item.
It reminded me of my first job, a stand up job running a machine that wrapped up to mail issues of the Port Chester Daily Item of Port Chester, New York. For an entire summer I stood at a table with a stack of brown wrappers in front of me each with a number on it. The numbers repersented the number of papers I had to wrap. I would slide them across the wrappers into a small forked arm of metal and step on a switch. The machine did the rest. I put the wrapped papers in a pile and later someone came by to collect them. I took a bus back and forth to work and at lunch break I had a burger at Scotty's Diner. Four years later I had my first professional acting job.
The theatre became my career, my profession and my job. But I got side tracked into a radio announcing job that was very good. Although a cornucopia of difficulties and tensions, radio can be a lucrative and satisfying endeavor, I made money, I was satisfied, I was self-satisfied, life was good, the future was rosy, I thought. I didn't have to worry about anything. I had a job.
I was the afternoon announcer. In the evenings, after dinner and a few drinks I would put myself to sleep watching aimless, inane television. I did that for seven years. SEVEN YEARS.
Today that is one of the greatest regrets of my life. What did I do with all that time I had given myself? Nothing. At about the same time as that was beginning to worry me I was growing dissatisfied with just broadcasting. Although for some announcers going on the air everyday was a thrill, for me the thrill was gone. Then I heard the Paul Simon song "One man's ceiling is another man's floor." It hit me that what I was doing was bumping my head on the ceiling. I had to move on. (What? And give up your job?)
I did, and went back into the theatre which kept me active and busy, challenged and involved with life up to it's full cup and running over. No regrets, except that I didn't do it sooner.
Now I write every day and paint often. I am busy, productive and reasonably happy, in spite of personal problems. I don't want to waste another moment of life, and I pass along the same advice to everyone.
There is a useless, pointless life to be lived drinking yourself silly every night or getting high on drugs and playing stupid games on a screen or in a bed. Life is the most important thing you have. Why waste it?
The present is what we have and what we always have, in fact it's all we have. It should be grasped, seized and improved on in every way possible. It doesn't matter what you do with the present moment as long as you don't waste it.
Dana Bate - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
************************
Saint Jerome
****************
Hello Ally
****************
I was born in 1939. That was known as the Post Depression Era. There were wealthy people of course. There are always wealthy people, most of whom know nothing at all about wealth. But for the average guy, facing the horrible memories and echoes of the depression, the most important thing was to have a job. It really didn't matter, in many cases, what the job was as long as it provided a living wage. I grew up with that ethic drummed into me. I shouldn't think about having a career. Get a job.
In my recent move I've uncovered many things that have been packed away for want of space. Now that I have some room I'm unpacking boxes and discovering what is inside them. One of the things I found is my original Social Security card. I never had it replaced because I haven't had to show it to anyone for many years. You might say it's a collectors item.
It reminded me of my first job, a stand up job running a machine that wrapped up to mail issues of the Port Chester Daily Item of Port Chester, New York. For an entire summer I stood at a table with a stack of brown wrappers in front of me each with a number on it. The numbers repersented the number of papers I had to wrap. I would slide them across the wrappers into a small forked arm of metal and step on a switch. The machine did the rest. I put the wrapped papers in a pile and later someone came by to collect them. I took a bus back and forth to work and at lunch break I had a burger at Scotty's Diner. Four years later I had my first professional acting job.
The theatre became my career, my profession and my job. But I got side tracked into a radio announcing job that was very good. Although a cornucopia of difficulties and tensions, radio can be a lucrative and satisfying endeavor, I made money, I was satisfied, I was self-satisfied, life was good, the future was rosy, I thought. I didn't have to worry about anything. I had a job.
I was the afternoon announcer. In the evenings, after dinner and a few drinks I would put myself to sleep watching aimless, inane television. I did that for seven years. SEVEN YEARS.
Today that is one of the greatest regrets of my life. What did I do with all that time I had given myself? Nothing. At about the same time as that was beginning to worry me I was growing dissatisfied with just broadcasting. Although for some announcers going on the air everyday was a thrill, for me the thrill was gone. Then I heard the Paul Simon song "One man's ceiling is another man's floor." It hit me that what I was doing was bumping my head on the ceiling. I had to move on. (What? And give up your job?)
I did, and went back into the theatre which kept me active and busy, challenged and involved with life up to it's full cup and running over. No regrets, except that I didn't do it sooner.
Now I write every day and paint often. I am busy, productive and reasonably happy, in spite of personal problems. I don't want to waste another moment of life, and I pass along the same advice to everyone.
There is a useless, pointless life to be lived drinking yourself silly every night or getting high on drugs and playing stupid games on a screen or in a bed. Life is the most important thing you have. Why waste it?
The present is what we have and what we always have, in fact it's all we have. It should be grasped, seized and improved on in every way possible. It doesn't matter what you do with the present moment as long as you don't waste it.
Dana Bate - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
************************
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Front Facing 3/15/09
It is ungrateful to be wishing you were doing something else at the moment you are living.
Suzanne Farrell
******************
Hello again.
____________________
As I am fond of saying: "What's the next step in life? It's the one right in front of you." Life is unfinished business. There is always something to worry about or something to regret. We spend too much time trying to make things go the way we want them to or fruitlessly trying to fix things that weren't right when we did them. And while we're doing that we are missing out on the real life that's going on. The past is stuff for historians who hardly ever agree with each other, and the future is for prophets who are hardly ever right. So where does that leave us? With both feet planted firmly in the "now,"
It's good to make amends if you can and it's good to plan for the future. We all do that. But floating along on a cloud of "maybes" deprives us of the joy of living in the energy beams of the palpitating present.
"Where did it all go?" older people ask. It went right in front of your eyes and you didn't notice it. When I was learning to be an actor, I learned about observation, about seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching as much as I could. Then I asked myself why I was so busy doing that. Soon I learned that it wasn't just to gather information and images but to make a form of personal sense out of them. Like a giant puzzle I was storing up bits and pieces of the world around me to eventually help me put together a meaningful life as a man and an artist. Not a complete picture, certainly, but fragments that could lead me to understand more and to share what I knew with those around me and to learn what their observations had given them. That pleases me, because if we knew everything there is no know there would be no point in living or being with other people, would there?
The great doorway of the mind should always be open for the big and small things to flutter in. Yearning to be somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else is a betrayal of where I am, whom I'm with and the life I am actually living.
DB - The Vagabond
__________________
Smile at someone who looks sad, even if it's yourself.
Suzanne Farrell
******************
Hello again.
____________________
As I am fond of saying: "What's the next step in life? It's the one right in front of you." Life is unfinished business. There is always something to worry about or something to regret. We spend too much time trying to make things go the way we want them to or fruitlessly trying to fix things that weren't right when we did them. And while we're doing that we are missing out on the real life that's going on. The past is stuff for historians who hardly ever agree with each other, and the future is for prophets who are hardly ever right. So where does that leave us? With both feet planted firmly in the "now,"
It's good to make amends if you can and it's good to plan for the future. We all do that. But floating along on a cloud of "maybes" deprives us of the joy of living in the energy beams of the palpitating present.
"Where did it all go?" older people ask. It went right in front of your eyes and you didn't notice it. When I was learning to be an actor, I learned about observation, about seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching as much as I could. Then I asked myself why I was so busy doing that. Soon I learned that it wasn't just to gather information and images but to make a form of personal sense out of them. Like a giant puzzle I was storing up bits and pieces of the world around me to eventually help me put together a meaningful life as a man and an artist. Not a complete picture, certainly, but fragments that could lead me to understand more and to share what I knew with those around me and to learn what their observations had given them. That pleases me, because if we knew everything there is no know there would be no point in living or being with other people, would there?
The great doorway of the mind should always be open for the big and small things to flutter in. Yearning to be somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else is a betrayal of where I am, whom I'm with and the life I am actually living.
DB - The Vagabond
__________________
Smile at someone who looks sad, even if it's yourself.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)