Happy New Year
May you inherit a big hotel with a thousand rooms and be found laughing in every one of them.
And may this be the best year of your life so far.
DB
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Behind The Wall
I'd like to think of my work simply as a cradle in which philosophy could rock itself to sleep, thumb in mouth.
Lawrence Durrell
********************
Last Saturday night I went to check my mail box and found a letter from a law firm telling me I had defaulted in my negotiated agreement to pay so much a month on one of my credit card debts and that therefore they were going to begin steps to sue for the entire amount. I knew I wasn't in default but it was Saturday night, all day Sunday and half of Monday before I could make the inevitable three phone calls to clear up the mess. It was very stressful. It wasted a lot of time and gave me a headache.
One of my great pleasures in life is to read philosophy. I read as much as I can from before Plato to after Parsons. It thrills me to come upon a philosopher I haven't visited before and follow his or her thoughts into and out of life's dilemmas. And every idea I read I hammer on the anvil of my own experience to test its strength.
Distilled from all the books, essays, dialogues, critiques and monographs, and measured by my own wisdom, such as it is, my personal philosophy of life can be summed up in three words: "Never give up."
Carl Sandburg wrote about a group of wise people who were ordered to reduce all of human wisdom to a single word. They did, and the word was "Maybe."
It is that uncertainty that has made us create theories of art, science, religion, government, education, economics, medicine, and philosophy. The big question remains unanswered in any proven, practical way: Do we really ever know what we are doing? Every now and then we get something right, like the proverbial stopped clock. And with that encouragement we keep on repeating ourselves until the next happy accident comes along.
I've made two important observations in my studies. One is that brilliant original thinkers have come up with very practical answers to some of life's most perplexing problems with good sound suggestions as to how we should conduct our lives. And the other is that basically nobody ever pays any attention to them.
Through our ignorance of life's lessons we do things to mess ourselves up, as I did when I got into debt, or we will mess up someone else's life, as the law firm did over my debt payment to them. Then life becomes untangling the mess.
When I was in school I enjoyed learning how to parse a sentence. That's an exercise in grammar, sentence structure and so on. As an actor I had to learn scansion. That's an exercise in verse and how to speak it. Now I study semantics which delves into truth conditional statements and implicatures. It's a philosophical study of a more refined grammar, dealing with what is meant and what is not meant by what is said.
There is a meaning behind the words I write which is unknown to me. I keep on writing and never giving up until the meaning or meanings surface for me. Meanwhile I'm like a cat staring into a fish tank.
Once I understand what my words mean or don't mean in their true and beautiful music, I hope and believe philosophy will then be able to rest in my arms, thumb in mouth.
DB - The Vagabond
Lawrence Durrell
********************
Last Saturday night I went to check my mail box and found a letter from a law firm telling me I had defaulted in my negotiated agreement to pay so much a month on one of my credit card debts and that therefore they were going to begin steps to sue for the entire amount. I knew I wasn't in default but it was Saturday night, all day Sunday and half of Monday before I could make the inevitable three phone calls to clear up the mess. It was very stressful. It wasted a lot of time and gave me a headache.
One of my great pleasures in life is to read philosophy. I read as much as I can from before Plato to after Parsons. It thrills me to come upon a philosopher I haven't visited before and follow his or her thoughts into and out of life's dilemmas. And every idea I read I hammer on the anvil of my own experience to test its strength.
Distilled from all the books, essays, dialogues, critiques and monographs, and measured by my own wisdom, such as it is, my personal philosophy of life can be summed up in three words: "Never give up."
Carl Sandburg wrote about a group of wise people who were ordered to reduce all of human wisdom to a single word. They did, and the word was "Maybe."
It is that uncertainty that has made us create theories of art, science, religion, government, education, economics, medicine, and philosophy. The big question remains unanswered in any proven, practical way: Do we really ever know what we are doing? Every now and then we get something right, like the proverbial stopped clock. And with that encouragement we keep on repeating ourselves until the next happy accident comes along.
I've made two important observations in my studies. One is that brilliant original thinkers have come up with very practical answers to some of life's most perplexing problems with good sound suggestions as to how we should conduct our lives. And the other is that basically nobody ever pays any attention to them.
Through our ignorance of life's lessons we do things to mess ourselves up, as I did when I got into debt, or we will mess up someone else's life, as the law firm did over my debt payment to them. Then life becomes untangling the mess.
When I was in school I enjoyed learning how to parse a sentence. That's an exercise in grammar, sentence structure and so on. As an actor I had to learn scansion. That's an exercise in verse and how to speak it. Now I study semantics which delves into truth conditional statements and implicatures. It's a philosophical study of a more refined grammar, dealing with what is meant and what is not meant by what is said.
There is a meaning behind the words I write which is unknown to me. I keep on writing and never giving up until the meaning or meanings surface for me. Meanwhile I'm like a cat staring into a fish tank.
Once I understand what my words mean or don't mean in their true and beautiful music, I hope and believe philosophy will then be able to rest in my arms, thumb in mouth.
DB - The Vagabond
Monday, January 4, 2010
Tempting Trash
Regrets are just leftovers. Eat them up or throw them out.
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
One cannot live a life, particularly a vital, active life without collecting a truckload of regrets. If I tallied up all the time I've spent regretting things I did or things I didn't do it would probably amount to about 15 years of my life. What a waste of time!
Sometimes my mind acts like a mule hitched up to my wagon. If I sit back and let my mind wander sooner or later it will lead me into a swamp of negativity. I will start to think about things I don't want to think about. I call it The Law of Diminishing Enthusiasm. If you don't tend your garden it will start producing weeds which will choke the flowers. If one doesn't discipline one's mind it will eventually find the dark places of the past, and they will drive out the good thoughts one should be thinking.
I think of it as being in a row boat on a river. To go upstream you have to row. If you want to be self destructive you can row downstream. But if you sit in the boat and do nothing you'll go downstream anyway.
I try to discipline myself to not think about the past. Even though I have a lot of wonderful memories of an active and interesting career, some of those memories are too close to others that I would avoid. So, even though I may be remembering something that was fun I will stop myself and say "Why are you thinking abut that?"
Today, tomorrow and what is next is what I want to think about.
Sometimes regrets pop into a mind that is not wandering. That's because we aren't sure we have sufficiently learned the lesson we need to know in order to prevent the mistake from happening again. That's the moment to be articulate, to identify clearly what happened and why it happened under the circumstances. In my case it was usually a matter of not being alert to what was going on around me and so I said an ignorant thing or did an ignorant thing, or else, I was being selfish.
Most lessons have to be repeated in order to be properly learned. It takes time, like learning to drive or cook or increase one's vocabulary. But that doesn't mean the dumb thing you did that brought on the regret needs to be repeated. Eventually, as the new self knowledge becomes certain, the regret will abate and become a source of humor or else it will be forgotten. It disappears from the plate. It's been eaten up.
A regret is not a thing. It's a reaction to a thing. Stop doing the thing.
DB - The Vagabond
---------------------------
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.
9 responses so far.
DB - The Vagabond
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
One cannot live a life, particularly a vital, active life without collecting a truckload of regrets. If I tallied up all the time I've spent regretting things I did or things I didn't do it would probably amount to about 15 years of my life. What a waste of time!
Sometimes my mind acts like a mule hitched up to my wagon. If I sit back and let my mind wander sooner or later it will lead me into a swamp of negativity. I will start to think about things I don't want to think about. I call it The Law of Diminishing Enthusiasm. If you don't tend your garden it will start producing weeds which will choke the flowers. If one doesn't discipline one's mind it will eventually find the dark places of the past, and they will drive out the good thoughts one should be thinking.
I think of it as being in a row boat on a river. To go upstream you have to row. If you want to be self destructive you can row downstream. But if you sit in the boat and do nothing you'll go downstream anyway.
I try to discipline myself to not think about the past. Even though I have a lot of wonderful memories of an active and interesting career, some of those memories are too close to others that I would avoid. So, even though I may be remembering something that was fun I will stop myself and say "Why are you thinking abut that?"
Today, tomorrow and what is next is what I want to think about.
Sometimes regrets pop into a mind that is not wandering. That's because we aren't sure we have sufficiently learned the lesson we need to know in order to prevent the mistake from happening again. That's the moment to be articulate, to identify clearly what happened and why it happened under the circumstances. In my case it was usually a matter of not being alert to what was going on around me and so I said an ignorant thing or did an ignorant thing, or else, I was being selfish.
Most lessons have to be repeated in order to be properly learned. It takes time, like learning to drive or cook or increase one's vocabulary. But that doesn't mean the dumb thing you did that brought on the regret needs to be repeated. Eventually, as the new self knowledge becomes certain, the regret will abate and become a source of humor or else it will be forgotten. It disappears from the plate. It's been eaten up.
A regret is not a thing. It's a reaction to a thing. Stop doing the thing.
DB - The Vagabond
---------------------------
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.
9 responses so far.
DB - The Vagabond
Sunday, January 3, 2010
What are you laughing at?
Life's perhaps the only riddle that we shrink from giving up.
W. S.. Gilbert
*******************
I think there is nothing in life that doesn't deserve a good laugh. But there are good laughs and bad laughs. There's laughing with and laughing at. There are things we can laugh at that don't hurt, things we are supposed to laugh at: clowns, comics, the shenanigans of some animals in the zoo or our own household pets. But there is another form of laughing at, where someone is made the butt of a joke that may be funny but hurtful.
Three times in my life I had to work closely with someone who got great delight in poking malicious fun at someone else's expense. Two of those people were radio announcers which meant that their barbs went out over the air. I was speaking with a listener one day who was praising one of them for being so funny. I said that he was funny until you become the subject of his jokes.
It was inevitable that some day those jokesters would stick the wrong people with their sarcastic darts. They were both fired from their jobs.
There's a well known TV nighttime host whose opening monologue is almost entirely made up of making fun of people. Some people find it very amusing. I don't. It's cruel. Next time you watch one of those people aim his so-called wit at someone else, imagine if it was you he was talking about. You might stop laughing. If you find yourself telling jokes like that about other people, slap yourself, figuratively, across the mouth and stop it.
That kind of humor is beyond being disrespectful. It is disguised hatred, dressed up envy, a dish of bile with whipped cream on top.
The other kind of laughter is a loving laughter, an acknowledgment of the things that are really humorous, a poking of fun that is not malicious or hurtful, a sharing with others the ironies and absurdities of life.
Why is life so funny? Why is it so confusing? Why do things not behave they way they are supposed to? Why does your garbage weigh more than your groceries? Why did you put your car keys in your bathrobe pocket? Why aren't your shoes where you left them when you took them off last night? Why does the weather report say snow when the bright sun is shining through my window? Why is there sometimes a crack in the solid wall of reason?
The subject of humor is something I could write about forever. Other people write about it and keep writing about it because it's an endless topic and because there isn't anything in life that doesn't deserve a laugh, including life itself.
In the midst of my six weeks of anguish at not being able to get back on line I was on the phone with one of the techies who was trying to fix the problem but wasn't doing it. There are certain things they are supposed to say to every customer, such as "Thank you for calling ...." etc. One of those prescribed comments is "Is there anything else I can help you with" even when they haven't done anything. When this particular techie asked me that I said "No. Unless you can tell me the true meaning of life." He laughed. Considering the people he had to talk to and the problems he had to deal with it was probably the only time he laughed all day.
DB
*******************
How cold is it?
Weekend challenge.
You are to complete the following sentence:
How cold is it? It's so cold.........!
As in: "It's so cold the pine tree is shivering!"
----------------------------------------
There are only 5 answers so far. Come on, I know there's a sense of humor out there somewhere. Be inventive, creative, original, outrageous. Exaggerate. Enter as often as you like. The decision of the judge is final and probably biased.
****************************
W. S.. Gilbert
*******************
I think there is nothing in life that doesn't deserve a good laugh. But there are good laughs and bad laughs. There's laughing with and laughing at. There are things we can laugh at that don't hurt, things we are supposed to laugh at: clowns, comics, the shenanigans of some animals in the zoo or our own household pets. But there is another form of laughing at, where someone is made the butt of a joke that may be funny but hurtful.
Three times in my life I had to work closely with someone who got great delight in poking malicious fun at someone else's expense. Two of those people were radio announcers which meant that their barbs went out over the air. I was speaking with a listener one day who was praising one of them for being so funny. I said that he was funny until you become the subject of his jokes.
It was inevitable that some day those jokesters would stick the wrong people with their sarcastic darts. They were both fired from their jobs.
There's a well known TV nighttime host whose opening monologue is almost entirely made up of making fun of people. Some people find it very amusing. I don't. It's cruel. Next time you watch one of those people aim his so-called wit at someone else, imagine if it was you he was talking about. You might stop laughing. If you find yourself telling jokes like that about other people, slap yourself, figuratively, across the mouth and stop it.
That kind of humor is beyond being disrespectful. It is disguised hatred, dressed up envy, a dish of bile with whipped cream on top.
The other kind of laughter is a loving laughter, an acknowledgment of the things that are really humorous, a poking of fun that is not malicious or hurtful, a sharing with others the ironies and absurdities of life.
Why is life so funny? Why is it so confusing? Why do things not behave they way they are supposed to? Why does your garbage weigh more than your groceries? Why did you put your car keys in your bathrobe pocket? Why aren't your shoes where you left them when you took them off last night? Why does the weather report say snow when the bright sun is shining through my window? Why is there sometimes a crack in the solid wall of reason?
The subject of humor is something I could write about forever. Other people write about it and keep writing about it because it's an endless topic and because there isn't anything in life that doesn't deserve a laugh, including life itself.
In the midst of my six weeks of anguish at not being able to get back on line I was on the phone with one of the techies who was trying to fix the problem but wasn't doing it. There are certain things they are supposed to say to every customer, such as "Thank you for calling ...." etc. One of those prescribed comments is "Is there anything else I can help you with" even when they haven't done anything. When this particular techie asked me that I said "No. Unless you can tell me the true meaning of life." He laughed. Considering the people he had to talk to and the problems he had to deal with it was probably the only time he laughed all day.
DB
*******************
How cold is it?
Weekend challenge.
You are to complete the following sentence:
How cold is it? It's so cold.........!
As in: "It's so cold the pine tree is shivering!"
----------------------------------------
There are only 5 answers so far. Come on, I know there's a sense of humor out there somewhere. Be inventive, creative, original, outrageous. Exaggerate. Enter as often as you like. The decision of the judge is final and probably biased.
****************************
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Aw, grow up.
Everyone else my age is an adult. Whereas I am merely in disguise.
Margaret Atwood
*********************
"The actors are come hither, my Lord." Shakespeare
----------------------------
I was recently talking with a friend who is about my age and I said that these days I was masquerading as a senior citizen. He said "So am I." He's also an artist.
It's not so much that creative work keeps you young as that it is outside of age altogether. Mozart, in his music, was a wise old man even though he only lived into his 30's, Some writers don't start writing their novels until their 70's or 80's.
In my younger years I triad to be an adult. I wasn't good at it. Back then I thought I knew what an adult was, a serious minded professional, a responsible and contributive member of society with a solid goal and a well defined purpose in life, an authority figure in his chosen line of work. But I was none of those things.
I was a performing artist, an actor, a player. A player is one who plays. Just because I was able to convincingly depict grown ups on the stage didn't mean that I was one.
Furthermore, a serious adult doesn't find anything amusing about the serious issues of life. But I, thank heaven, and to the great scorn of some around me, had a sense of humor which I still have.
Now, if I can't remember someone's name it doesn't throw me into a vortex of grief over losing my memory. After all these years I have a large library of names stacked up in my mind. You can't expect me to remember all of them at the flick of a switch. I send the research assistant who resides in my brain down into the vaults to go through the files until he comes up with it.
I'm still the boy I was 60 years ago, discovering life and gratefully turning my discoveries into things that are beautiful, I hope. Now, in my current disguise, I enjoy playing the role of an adult and a senior citizen. Just don't ask me to grow up. .
DB - The Vagabond
-----------------------------
No smart aleck remarks about Peter Pan, please.
************************
Margaret Atwood
*********************
"The actors are come hither, my Lord." Shakespeare
----------------------------
I was recently talking with a friend who is about my age and I said that these days I was masquerading as a senior citizen. He said "So am I." He's also an artist.
It's not so much that creative work keeps you young as that it is outside of age altogether. Mozart, in his music, was a wise old man even though he only lived into his 30's, Some writers don't start writing their novels until their 70's or 80's.
In my younger years I triad to be an adult. I wasn't good at it. Back then I thought I knew what an adult was, a serious minded professional, a responsible and contributive member of society with a solid goal and a well defined purpose in life, an authority figure in his chosen line of work. But I was none of those things.
I was a performing artist, an actor, a player. A player is one who plays. Just because I was able to convincingly depict grown ups on the stage didn't mean that I was one.
Furthermore, a serious adult doesn't find anything amusing about the serious issues of life. But I, thank heaven, and to the great scorn of some around me, had a sense of humor which I still have.
Now, if I can't remember someone's name it doesn't throw me into a vortex of grief over losing my memory. After all these years I have a large library of names stacked up in my mind. You can't expect me to remember all of them at the flick of a switch. I send the research assistant who resides in my brain down into the vaults to go through the files until he comes up with it.
I'm still the boy I was 60 years ago, discovering life and gratefully turning my discoveries into things that are beautiful, I hope. Now, in my current disguise, I enjoy playing the role of an adult and a senior citizen. Just don't ask me to grow up. .
DB - The Vagabond
-----------------------------
No smart aleck remarks about Peter Pan, please.
************************
Friday, January 1, 2010
Dreams and Details
What is your next step forward in life?
It's the one right in front of you.
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
I've written once or twice about my teacher and mentor, Edward. He was a difficult man sometimes but he was a theatre person who really knew his stuff. I learned half of what I know from him. In fact I learned too much. I was innocent enough to think that all the directors and teachers out there were as knowledgeable as he was.
I had signed up to work at a summer theatre under his direction and the very first thing he said to me, my first lessen one might say was "Can't you find something to do?" That comment set a top spinning inside me which has never stopped.
I awoke at 6:30 this morning full of enthusiasm for the days possibilities. But after a few sips of coffee I was at my desk paying bills. What a banal, hum drum and depressing thing for an exciting and inspired artist and charismatic philosopher such as myself to be doing. (Just kidding.) I had to do that because I was going out briefly and would pass a mail box. There won't be much in the way of postal delivering going on tomorrow. One of the items I mailed was a check to the post office, to buy more stamps so I can pay more bills.
Is this what life is about, I wondered? The answer, of course, is yes. Life is details, "dumb things you gotta do." But those dumb things are also freeing things. In among all of them is a grid of hopes, dreams and plans.
As a result of Edward's comment and how it set me spinning I'm busy all the time. I want to write, paint, read and think. Now I'm writing and there are dirty dishes in the sink. They'll get done. The writing has to wait while I do the dishes, why can't the dishes wait while I do the writing. Do everything with care and precision. Don't rush through anything to get back to something else. I almost never take a break. While I'm writing the cigarette is burning away in the ash tray, the coffee is getting cold in the cup. I'm like the family dog, if I take a break I take a nap. Moment by moment I feel as if I'm not getting much done, but at the end of the day I often amaze myself by how much I accomplished.
The point is this, the detail may be inventing the perfect phrase to express a profound idea, finishing a painting that may someday be very important in someone's life, putting the right facts together in the right order to solve a complicated scientific or technological problem, discovering another planet, doing the laundry or walking the family dog. If you hold on to the big dream, the master plan, the wide and colorful objective of your life, it will hold on to you no matter what you're doing. And everything you gotta do is another thread woven into the tapestry of your interesting life. And the most important thread is the one right in front of you.
May you have a joyful and fulfilling year. Tell me about it.
DB - The Vagabond
It's the one right in front of you.
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
I've written once or twice about my teacher and mentor, Edward. He was a difficult man sometimes but he was a theatre person who really knew his stuff. I learned half of what I know from him. In fact I learned too much. I was innocent enough to think that all the directors and teachers out there were as knowledgeable as he was.
I had signed up to work at a summer theatre under his direction and the very first thing he said to me, my first lessen one might say was "Can't you find something to do?" That comment set a top spinning inside me which has never stopped.
I awoke at 6:30 this morning full of enthusiasm for the days possibilities. But after a few sips of coffee I was at my desk paying bills. What a banal, hum drum and depressing thing for an exciting and inspired artist and charismatic philosopher such as myself to be doing. (Just kidding.) I had to do that because I was going out briefly and would pass a mail box. There won't be much in the way of postal delivering going on tomorrow. One of the items I mailed was a check to the post office, to buy more stamps so I can pay more bills.
Is this what life is about, I wondered? The answer, of course, is yes. Life is details, "dumb things you gotta do." But those dumb things are also freeing things. In among all of them is a grid of hopes, dreams and plans.
As a result of Edward's comment and how it set me spinning I'm busy all the time. I want to write, paint, read and think. Now I'm writing and there are dirty dishes in the sink. They'll get done. The writing has to wait while I do the dishes, why can't the dishes wait while I do the writing. Do everything with care and precision. Don't rush through anything to get back to something else. I almost never take a break. While I'm writing the cigarette is burning away in the ash tray, the coffee is getting cold in the cup. I'm like the family dog, if I take a break I take a nap. Moment by moment I feel as if I'm not getting much done, but at the end of the day I often amaze myself by how much I accomplished.
The point is this, the detail may be inventing the perfect phrase to express a profound idea, finishing a painting that may someday be very important in someone's life, putting the right facts together in the right order to solve a complicated scientific or technological problem, discovering another planet, doing the laundry or walking the family dog. If you hold on to the big dream, the master plan, the wide and colorful objective of your life, it will hold on to you no matter what you're doing. And everything you gotta do is another thread woven into the tapestry of your interesting life. And the most important thread is the one right in front of you.
May you have a joyful and fulfilling year. Tell me about it.
DB - The Vagabond
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