Ducks And Gulls

The world we live in is fortunate in something too simple to be over-described as cosmic law - as easy to grasp as, say, an act of tenderness.

Lawrence Durrell
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I hope you had a pleasant weekend with some joy and not much sorrow. I spent some of it feeding the birds.

I currently live on the banks of the Delaware River. I don't have any real friends here, people I've known and loved for a while. I'm always hoping one or more of my journal friends will come to visit. I tell them if they come we can go down to the river and throw stones at the sea gulls. Whenever I say that a few people actually think I'm being serious. "You don't do that do you? How awful." I laugh.

The only one who has been to visit is Just Plain Bill and when he comes it usually means a happy trip to the King George for manhattans, (Pictures to come one day when I can figure out how to do it.) I always enjoy it when Bill shows up.

No. The only things I throw at the gulls are treats, in the form of bread crumbs. There are gulls and there are ducks and I've made some observations about their behavior I find rather interesting. (Am I boring you?)

Sea gulls are elegant birds. They can take off just like that, fly around and land on a spot and they look beautiful in flight. But they speak with a raucus noise, like fingernails scraping on a blackboard. It seems like one of nature's big jokes but maybe it's a sound that can travel some distance over water so they can keep in touch with each other, sort of like a world wide web.

I used to admire the gulls in Provincetown, on Cape Cod. They would swoop down, grab an oyster or a clam which they could see under the water from a height, fly back up and drop it on a rock to crack it open so they could eat the meat. Their aim was amazing.

Here on the Delaware there are also ducks. Compared with the gulls the ducks are rather dumb. They paddle around in the water or waddle around on the shore and more or less take what comes.

But here's the most amazing thing. (Are you bored yet?) When it comes to feeding time the gulls defer to the ducks. The ducks will gather around and pick up the crumbs gleefully while the gulls hover around the edges. Even if I throw crumbs out to them they won't touch them. I think they observe the ducks and if one of them doesn't fall over in sudden death or stagger around with indigestion a gull will occasionally sneak in, grab a crumb and scram, as if he was a thief. He will soon be followed by the others. Once the ducks are done the gulls will go to it with a feeding frenzy

But if there are no ducks around the following scenario takes place. (Still not bored?)I sit on the bench with my bag of crumbs and fling a few out in front of me. The gulls are immediately alert. Most of them just circle around. A few of them, the older and more tired of them perhaps, land at a distance. But no one approaches the crumbs. Then one of them swoops down, right in front of me, flies over the lunch, then right over my head, evidently checking me out along with the cuisine. He must then squawk a "roger" because soon the gulls are all over the crumbs and looking for more.

You can't tell me there isn't some intelligence at work here, some cosmic law of diligence, deference, community and cooperation, a system for an ornithologically inclined scientist to pander.

(I hope I didn't bore you.)

May June bring you great robust blessings.

DB
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Question of the day: Does the condition in the Gulf of Mexico suggest that the country should increase conservation while it spends more time and efforts on developing alternative sources of energy or that it should concentrate its efforts on more ground based resources such as the Alaskan oil fields?

Thank you,
DB

Laugh It Up

We should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

Nietzsche
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In Eugene O'Neill's play "Long Days Journey Into Night" James Tyrone wants to know what his young son Edmund is laughing about and he says he's laughing at life because it's so funny.

Ancient Greek theatre was a very vibrant, powerful and important one. There would be a festival at which four plays were presented all by the same author. The plays were based on ancient Greek history or legend. It often took a year to prepare them. The acting and the writing needed to be spectacular to hold a Greek audience for that length of time, and they were. Many of those plays still exist and the few famous ones, Oedipus the King, Hecuba, Medea, sometimes show up in regional theatres and Off-Broadway.

Though the plays took their plots from stories everyone knew the themes were relevant to life and portrayed the tragedies and dramas of human existence. While the first three plays in the festival were tragedies and high dramas the fourth play was a comedy. It was a parody, a satire on the same topic as the first three plays. After the audience had been put through the thunder dramas of life they were allowed to laugh about it.

Many of those ancient plays have been lost. But, and here a classical scholar, if there is one reading this, can inform me further if I'm mistaken, as far as I know only one of those final satires still exists: The Cyclops by Euripides, based on the Ulysses story.

There is a great lesson here. There isn't anything in life, no matter how dramatic, tragic or terrifying it may be that doesn't deserve to be laughed at. My developed and cherished sense of humor allows me to poke fun at everything about life, except other people. People change, life doesn't. To make fun of people is a bad way to get a laugh. I don't listen to people like Limbaugh, Leno and Beck. They take delight in putting other people down by scorning them and trying to make me laugh at them. It's cheap. low level. decadent humor and a total waste of my time.

DB
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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.

14 responses so far.

Answers will be published the first day of Summer.

Thank you.

dbdacoba@aol.com

DB - The Vagabond
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Weekend Puzzle Answers

Easy Weekend Quiz
FOUNDING FATHERS
How many names do not fit on this list, who are they and why.

John Adams
Benjamin Franklin
Alexander Hamilton
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
George Washington
(Good luck)
DB
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I was expecting someone to say Franklin and Hamilton since all the others were Presidents. But instead I got two different answers and both of them are correct.

First from Paula of the Email Lions for: Only Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson signed the Declaration of Independence.

Shortly after that came Val for the Blogspot Tigers with: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson weren't present at the writing of the Constitution.

So now I have two grand winners and only one grand prize. I would hate to cut it in half. So I'll just offer my congratulations to both of you and keep the Bill Of Rights Beach Towel for another day.

DB

Inventing Art

Success is a journey, not a destination.

Arthur Ashe
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I used to say that I reinvented the art of acting with every new role I got. I was half joking but there was some truth to it. Naturally I would bring my skill and my accumulated experience into rehearsal. But there was always a new landscape, a new fabric to the event.

There was q totally different character to portray and give life to, with a different constellation of mental, emotional and psychological elements to him. Perhaps there was an unfamiliar playwright who presented a language to that character that I had to get used to and master in order to express him properly. Or there was a director new to me and hence getting accustomed to a different way of conducting rehearsals. And maybe there were other artists in the production I had never met before. That meant adjusting my way of working with other's ways to create a harmonious whole. And sometime it was an unfamiliar theatre building itself that I needed to learn how to work in. So there was a lot of starting from the beginning.

"A good reputation may get you to the pitchers mound, but it won't win the game."* A few times I witnessed famous actors, stars, come into rehearsal with the attitude that their fame would play the role for them. After all, they evidently thought. people would come to see them anyway so all they needed to do was show up. I vowed that if I ever became famous, which I didn't, I would never let that attitude control my earnest desire to knuckle down, conquer the role and really act it. I owed that to the audience, to the author, to my fellow artists and to myself.

Since I had set about reinventing the art, every time I finished a production I came away knowing a little bit more about acting than I did when I went into it. Almost every actor can say the same if they conscientiously do it. So can every tennis player and every ball player.

Success is not the end of the road. Success is doing it, doing it well and doing it better next time.

*Bate

DB - The Vagabond
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Bits And Pieces

Be open to your dreams, people. Embrace that distant shore.

David Assael
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When I woke this morning I looked around my apartment and said "What a mess!" The vacuum cleaner is still in the middle of the floor, there are papers on my desk I've forgotten about, checks have to be written, the kitchen range needs cleaning, there's laundry on the floor, an unfinished painting, an unfinished story. I managed to take the trash out yesterday (GOOD!) except for the small bag I forgot about. As I have often said and written "Life is unfinished business."

Pitifully, some people never roll up their mental sleeves and take on the task of understanding themselves. It's the most difficult of all obligations we have, and when shirked empties one's life of all inherent possibilities for happiness.

So why do I live in chaos? Because the accumulated bits and pieces of the unfinished business are all pointing in the same direction. But there doesn't seem to be a single path for getting there. The more complicated life becomes the more difficult it is to define the simple overall goal of it. I have said that the main purpose of life is to stay alive. But that poses a big question. Why?

I would admire to be so free of life's duties that I had nothing else to do but to figure myself out, if that's possible to do. But I have to focus my admiration on a man like Johann Sebastian Bach. He was the most prolific composer who ever lived. And yet he had a regular job, he lived in a home with no electricity, no central heating, no indoor plumbing, a quill pen and a house full of kids. How did he do it?

I suppose it would be great if we all had some sort of exuberant genius like that. Maybe we do in our own simple ways but just haven't found it. Bach evidently walked, ate, breathed, slept and dreamt music. Music came out of him like an exhalation. He came from a musical background and left behind some sons who were also excellent composers. It seems there was no doubt or chaos about it.

But why does it seem to take a lifetime for some of us to figure ourselves out? One could say that in spite of his primitive early 18th Century life style, he had lots of advantages and that's probably true. But it's also true that he made the most of them. He must have enjoyed composing music so much that he did it non-stop in spite of the obvious difficulties and interruptions. He probably never asked himself why.

There is a "why" attached to every bit of unfinished business in my life. I often wish I had come upon some early understanding of myself that would have led me into my life's destiny and my life's work which I would have pursued without looking back. To some extent I did that in the entertainment business. But now, retired, I am looking back. But more than that I'm looking forward, to what the possibilities are, to what my future is, to what I can become, to who I really am. I am trying to embrace that distant shore. I ask myself over again "What was it I really wanted way back then?" Every now and then I think I know. But then I'm not sure, and so there is unfinished business.

I didn't start out today to write an essay about Bach or an essay about me. It just turned out that way. I sometimes hold up my own experience as a metaphor for other people's lives and to help me grasp my own.. That makes me read self-centered and self-important. I don't mean it that way.

There is a dream. It's still alive. I am grateful for the time and opportunity to lead myself to the open door of that dream.

May you find your own dream and pursue it, non-stop, to that distant shore.

DB
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Weekend Quiz

Easy Weekend Quiz
FOUNDING FATHERS
How many names do not fit on this list, who are they and why.

John Adams
Benjamin Franklin
Alexander Hamilton
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
George Washington
(Good luck)
DB
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Act Your Age

I think you should be a child for as long as you can. Don't rush into adulthood, it isn't all that much fun.

Bob Newhart
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I'm not suggesting that anyone should go through what Shakespeare calls "second childishness" but I believe it is a healthy thing to hold on to one's childhood, and hold it up on a silver platter in one's heart. Not the past errors, wrongs, sorrows and pains of early life, but the spirit of what one was and, in fact, still is.

I am for finding inside the boy or girl you were and are. Recover the unlost sense of curiosity, wonder, adventure and surprise. You are still a kid, even if it doesn't show on the outside. There are a lot of things about you that don't show on the outside. If you saw me walking down the street you would think "There goes a doddering old relic, What a wretched wreck. He's probably a drunk." You would never know that the doddering old wreck was the writer of peppery posts and baffling blogs.

I often say to youngsters "Don't grow up too fast." They never like to hear that. I usually get a poker faced silent response. They want to be grown ups, immediately. That youth is wasted on the young is an old saying and a true one. But it isn't wasted on those for whom their youth is still a present quality in their lives. With age comes experience, knowledge and, hopefully, some wisdom. It doesn't have the innocence and preciousness of youth. Too many tears, too many disappointments, too much pain make old age hard on folks. But even if the physical vigor abates why does the mental vigor have to go?

I don't look in the mirror often, but when I do, yes, I see the wrinkles and the gray hair and I wonder who or what I'm looking at. I'd rather look at the future, to look at possibilities, adventures and discoveries. I'd rather see the boy I've always been. Who knows, someday I might grow up. But I don't think so.

DB, Vagabond
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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.

14 responses so far.

Answers will be published the first day of Summer.

Thank you.

dbdacoba@aol.com

DB - The Vagabond
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