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, March 2, 2018

A Look


I have begun a book. It is entitled Look Homeward, Angel written by someone named Thomas Wolfe who died quite young, leaving some books behind for us. It has taken me a week to read the first 60 pages of the novel. I am no expert, just a human being alive enjoying this moment I write. I am a poor writer, I know that. The only thing I can say is that the subject I write about is great. In that sense and that sense only am I a great writer like someone who writes about horses might be called a horse writer.

I found Mr. Wolfe's amazing contribution to us in the library of a tiny school in a mountain village in the cloud forest of Costa Rica where I am a visitor. Having read so little of it you may wonder why I am already writing its praises. I just had to. I have a feeling I have little chance of finishing it but am eager to attempt that.

This unusual, to say the least, book is opening me to a more genuine understanding of what it means to be human, as we call it. It moved me already to speak out what I have felt. Should it be there is no time to waste is there no time to use? Moments are not subject to the drama of waste, having no consequences. Time, it is said, can be used or wasted. But, as yet, I have not found anyone who is living or has lived who can answer what it can be used for. Has it any legitimate purpose? Anyone who could, would certainly have an advantage over me.

The Wolfe book is telling me indirectly, as novels are written to do, that at the same time a family of people are experiencing all manner of trials and tribulations just as the consequences of birth, something else is happening to them that is of another nature entirely. It is apparent to all that life is worth living whenever the second thing I alluded to is apparent, and only then. The other experience, the one with consequences, seems to dominate us, even the ones of us believed to be more holy than the bulk of the population. This fact makes everyone wonder why they are even alive.

It is about time we are so concerned. A false clock is attempting to control us. It knows not of the moment. Now is a synonym for contentment, absolute, with no worry- for there are no consequences to it. Rivers flow, flowers bloom, trees give shade to all regardless of age or gender or name or credentials or criminal record. There is nothing to do but savor. This now thing happens to the family in the novel who are just riddled with flaws and unable to understand life at all. It seems to happen once in awhile but when it is happening there is no concept of time so it can raise the question,”Was that reality or is this reality? They all experience admiration for each other although they clearly should not whenever consequences are considered to be relevant. The very moment the world of consequences occurs to any of them they harm one of the others, every time, as if they have no choice. In short, these monsters are capable of greatness.

As I read the novel I find myself going along with the author's unstated (so far) belief these people are to be admired for their courage if nothing else. Much as one might have to admire, if only a little bit, someone who actually plays Russian Roulette with a pistol and a single bullet. It is heavy for me to write this down but somehow feels necessary. Am I admirable in such a way?

My own father are these people and I became him. (This I feel is a paragraph.)







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