Fear of Death: C'mon, I'll Put on a Pot of Rum!

By Fabio Osaben

1. In recounting these escapades, both as a young boy in my native Trieste and later in the United States and while traveling over half this world, I became aware of the place love has in the ever present cycle of life and death, that one never looks at, and, how religion, control, fear, pleasure and joy contribute to this understanding.

2. Do you remember being here before? Have you been here all along but you don't remember. How to remember, or better, what is the quality of the mind that asks this question?

3. I live in New York, studied aerospace technology and voice, was a member of the Met Studio, sang opera and concerts, off-Broadway and later concentrated on night clubs. I traveled extensively throughout the world, was a director on the largest cruise companies in the world, hotels and various resorts. I enjoy life, value my relationships and my three sons all involved in the arts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781490715186

Fabio Osaben

1. In recounting these escapades, both as a young boy in my native Trieste and later in the United States and while traveling over half this world, I became aware of the place love has in the ever present cycle of life and death, that one never looks at, and, how religion, control, fear, pleasure and joy contribute to this understanding. 2. Do you remember being here before? Have you been here all along but you don't remember. How to remember, or better, what is the quality of the mind that asks this question? 3. I live in New York, studied aerospace technology and voice, was a member of the Met Studio, sang opera and concerts, off-Broadway and later concentrated on night clubs. I traveled extensively throughout the world, was a director on the largest cruise companies in the world, hotels and various resorts. I enjoy life, value my relationships and my three sons all involved in the arts.

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© Copyright 2013 Fabio Osaben.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

isbn: 978-1-4907-1517-9 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4907-1516-2 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4907-1518-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013917445

Trafford rev. 10/25/2013

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Contents

PART 1—Will I Ever Be Anybody’s Hero?

The first gibberish

A Moment of Levity

On Love!

A Rose by Any Other Name…

And Now a Bit of the Blarney

Who Is to Be Blamed?

More Crap!

The Moment We Pay Our Dues

What’s It All about, Alfie?

A Few Words on Politics

How about Some Nonsense?

And so on and so Forth!

The Beginning of My Journey—Education!

Liquor—Part of the Recipe

Memories! Or Is It Mammaries?

It’s Closing Time. We Have to Lock Up, so—

PART 2—Even Tarzan Has to Take a Bath Sometimes

Previously published Searching For Cassiopeia,

a romp through life.

PART 1

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Will I Ever Be Anybody’s Hero?

On Love

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To JK—you helped me out of the stream.

To put you in the mood

There is a moment at the end of Vissi d’arte in Tosca where the soul bares itself.

In that moment, love is revealed.

Listen to the soprano Magda Olivero.

You may not know what love is, but you will feel it.

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The first gibberish

Once I go, where will I be? I will still be here because we don’t go anywhere. You’ll see me if you know how to look. We are part of the seasons, the cycle of life and death. Like the leaves on the trees, they go, and they come back. Look at them; see them in their journey, their cycle. We are, like the leaves, the leaves on our tree of life.

But we don’t know how to look. We have not gone into what death is. We would rather sweep it under the rug, so when it comes, we are not prepared. In order to find out what death is, you have to find out what living is. Out of that simple yet complicated inquiry, you will know what love is. We have not gone into any of the different facets of life. Rather, we are totally involved with the things the mind has created in its search for security—myth, tradition, and belief—which have prevented us from seeing clearly.

We don’t know how to look! We do come back, provided we understand myth, tradition, and belief. If not, you will be stuck in limbo, never to reappear.

Everything is related, so no matter what we talk about, it will always lead us back to this point—now! Life happens now, not tomorrow or yesterday, not the future or the past—illusions of the mind that have prevented us from seeing what actually is.

Love is knowing who you are, what you are, where you are, and how to act at that moment in time. Love is knowing whom your actions are affecting and realizing that at some point, your actions will come back to haunt you. You will get bitten in the butt! You can only take that leap of faith and wait it out. And then, well, go make some fried chicken! If someone is looking, they will see it.

We are going to talk about love, but it will involve everything. Everything is related to the whole. You cannot separate the different facets of a diamond; you cannot separate the onion from the sauce or the bay leaf from the soup. The beauty of gumbo is all the ingredients that make up the finished product. You cannot separate the individual from the whole. The root of that word, individual, is indivisible. The individual is part of the whole, an idea or reality widely misunderstood. Love is not only part of the whole; it is arguably the glue that holds everything together. So where do we begin?

Before we embark on this venture, you have to understand where you came from and what went into making who you are. When I started out, I was perfect, like a fresh loaf of bread out of the oven. Then everybody proceeded to hide that wonderful fresh, hot loaf just out of the oven with butter, jam, jelly, and what have you. (Should have just used Wonder Bread!)

I started out perfect and became what I am in the well-intentioned meanings of my parents, peers, friends, and conventions. In short, they all dumped on me! They dumped their experiences, failures, and fears until I was no longer that perfect loaf of bread out of the oven. I was carrying all that extra baggage. Someone once said that truth is understanding what is from moment to moment without the burden, the baggage, of the past moment.

In order to go on a journey, we must know and understand who we are so that we know why we act as we do. If you are presented with a dangerous situation, you act out of instinct to prevent harm. But in other situations, instead of seeing the problem clearly, we start spinning on it according to our conditioning, our prejudice, thereby never seeing the problem. So in making this inquiry into what love is, we must understand where we are coming from. Fair enough? If we go to it wearing shades, we are not going to see clearly. A journey has to start in freedom, not end in freedom, for it to be worthy to pursue.

Most people, when asked a question, start talking right off the tops of their heads without even looking to see if the question is properly placed. How do you know someone’s intentions when asking a question?

How do you know that someone is sincere in asking or if someone is trying to rope you into or trap you into a wrong answer? You must first look at the question to see that it is correct in order to continue. Forget Time is money. Look at the question. Invariably, in the question, you will find the simple answer. Look! Just look!

Understanding who I was and how I got here was a tremendous source of enlightenment. Yes, I had lots of book learning, but I had never been truly educated. I was swimming in the stream, being carried along with everyone else, until one day, I got out of the stream, sat on the bank, and realized that I had never been truly educated in the ways of the mind—how the mind works in its sharp, almost-conniving way to be secure. You see, for the mind to be sane, it must be secure. If it is not secure, it will become neurotic, and it will search for ways to attain security. It will invent things and work toward those things in its search, not realizing that it is playing a game of its own making.

Breathe. Breathe deeply! Let the mind breathe. Let it wander where it will. Don’t try to control it. Just let it go in freedom and just observe.

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A Moment of Levity

(Before I Lose Everyone!)

All this is heavy! I need a drink! A little levity of sorts! I must keep this light, or I’ll risk losing all of you!

(I wrote this book once. I wasn’t satisfied. I started to rewrite it, and because I’m computer illiterate, I accidentally erased eight chapters that I had written. It’s like losing a baby! What bothered me was that I had forgotten something hilarious that I had written. After racking my brains [assuming I have one], I finally remembered the