A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 05/06/18

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!

Sunday, May 6, 2018

So, I am reading Hemingway. Never thought I'd want to. After Old Man and The Sea. I am reading For Whom The Bell Tolls. Immediately after I bought it for a buck I watched a preview of a new film with Donald Sutherland wherein he plays a professor of Literature and he states "Hemingway is a much misunderstood genius in America. James Joyce in Ireland was amazed by him and declared he was the first to write prose that is poetry." So, I began reading the book with that in mind and am coming to believe it is so.

Yesterday I read this-(he is in a war and speaking of a man who stayed at his post throughout a severe snow storm until relieved even though he was not required to do so and everybody would have understood had he come back to warm up)

"To stay in a storm, in a way, corresponds to a lot of things. It is not for nothing the Germans call an attack a storm. I could certainly use a couple more who would stay." page 209

In those few words, carefully selected I imagine, he says a whole lot to me. I want to stay with it and feel it a long time. Just the use of the term "corresponds" covers so much ground of understanding. I plan to use it. Just wanted to pass this on to you. Recommend the book.

For Ran