The Hammock Papers: Love.

17 April 2012

Love.

One of my fishing and philosophical heroes, Jose Wejebe, passed away last week ...

Every fisherman has a story, and Jose wanted to hear them all. There was never a kid, a fan, a fisherman who he didn’t have time for. He would talk fishing, share tips and techniques and laugh right along with them at their bonehead moves. And then he’d tell you his. Like when he was eating a chicken wing while talking on the phone during a break in filming and put the bones in his pocket and threw the phone overboard.

So what is the measure of a man? Is it his success in the business world? The amount of money he makes or the toys he acquires? Is it worldliness, knowledge, education, recognition, fame? I say the measure of a man is based on the lives he touches, the people he influences and guides and the people he befriends along the way. I’ll take that even further to say that in the end there are two basic desires we all search for in life: we want someone to love and someone to love us. Based on the public response to Jose’s passing, he had them both…in spades. We should all be so fortunate.

Read the rest at Watery Rave.

1 comment:

DK said...: Great post Rob...; April 17, 2012 at 8:07 AM

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL