A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 12/02/16

THE STORY OF JOHNNY WHOOPER SWAN We go to school trusting our parents. We meet a teacher there who stands up front with a big desk, and a pointer. She or he trains us in an authoritative manner. We attach mentally to a life long need for authority in order to live lives successfully. Right so far? In my case, at the age of 25 I was ready to enter the practice of law where I hoped for success and a happy life finally. Very shortly, very shortly, I became anxious. There was a foreboding. I was made more uncomfortable with each experience. Law work is nothing like what I was told it would be. The system is corrupt. But I still cling to my expectation that career success is necessary to my happiness as a man. Each day my grasp of what the fuck success amounts to after all becomes more clouded, murkier. I hear songs on the airwaves and at concerts which describe my life as the life of a fool. What am I becoming? I want to rip off my business suit to run naked in the street with my hair on fire! But I am too afraid. In strange, weird (weird comes from a word meaning wise), fragmented steps I go about a journey of my own believing myself to be the first man to have failed in such a total way which journey works so as to break up my career, end a marriage, and start an entirely new way of relating with my two children whom I love deeply. Almost magically I meet a woman who is a career counselor who asserts a beautiful message that I am made to be joyful in my work everyday and at all levels. This understanding sets me on a completely new course. It is no longer a world of systems to me but an undivided one of unlimited beauty. It reminds me of a painting. A true masterpiece. I am drawn from within to learn the truth about my identity and nobody else can teach me that. From this point onward I will use thinking capacity for mastering mechanical processes and follow my heart, which includes my whole nature, which includes your whole nature and that of every human being for all the rest. I’ll go by the name Johnny Whooper Swan who does not explain itself to anyone. By my fruits shall I be known. Watch me soar!

Friday, December 2, 2016

The Heart of the

Matter

It was suggested recently that one should examine one's heart. Just what could that entail? Who would it be who could examine my heart if not my heart itself? And if that is so why would my heart want to examine itself? Does anyone think his heart does not know itself? In speaking of a living person what could it mean to suggest there is more to him than his heart knows? I mean is not the heart the center of all experience? And is there some real part of me that lies somehow separate from the full experience of life? And talks to me a lot?

Ahh, it's an abstraction is it not? It is a metaphor separating me from my source reducing me to some list of characteristics to make of me manageable They call it education. The Salt of the Earth is a puppet while the speaker, an abstraction, is speaking of more abstractions as real people to feed illusion. So, it's bullshit! We listen to it so we must be crazy and “all the world's a fucking stage” like Shakespeare wrote it and you an actor with an employer and a director, also actors. Someone is playing Doctor.

It has been suggested that following any tragic episode one should take time to repair one's heart. Who is the heart repair man? I mean is someone even talking to me who is referring to some function that is not me and calling it my heart and meaning it belongs to me like a wrist watch? Does that make any sense to anybody else? And if it does and my wrist watch does break to whom do I take it to be repaired?

Let us presume for a moment that anyone who thinks he is other than the essence of being to be a nut case. And furthermore, anyone who speaks as someone other than the heart of himself is wacko; or, is undergoing hypnosis. When someone says, “My heart is broken”, doesn't he mean, “I am broken”? If I break who can repair me? That is what I am getting at. That is what I need to get at. Once there remain. Be who actually I am. Leave the stage. I bet you think I have to die to exit the stage a man named Shakespeare built of words. How do you know William himself, feigning an illness, did not wish me to see through his ploy and walk off the stage a free man? That is how I read it. Who do you worship? How is something so rich with meaning as that to be decided? Who do I worship? For a long time it has been suggested by poets of the heart we do all worship something.

art by johnny smith