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!

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

A Simple Story

Once I could not stand myself. 

I mean I could not stand being me. Do not get me wrong.  I was not in a situation that anyone else would think to be a horrible one insofar as the outside circumstances of my life were concerned.  Many would have envied me.  But I could not stand to be me. Nobody could persuade me otherwise. Many tried. No good came of it. 

What was wrong with me? Everything. 

I was not even close to understanding who I am…who you are…what is life for…nor how to live it well.

I was educated. It was not a question of reading the right books. It was a question of how to read a book from a situation of peace inside of me so I might bring wisdom to bear on the words of a book. It was actually a question of whether peace could ever be felt inside of someone like me. It had nothing to do with a book. 

It was, for me,  like I lived in a tunnel. I operated by habit I called self will. Such a joke! It was not remotely true and somebody inside me knew it. And that one loved me enough to spoil my  every attempt at doing my life as someone else’s  robot or puppet.

That one turned out to be the artist inside me that is inside you. I dedicated then whatever  remained of my life to making art every day with a glad heart. Want you try? Imagine a world filled with artists. Stretch as far as your mind will take you. Do it again. Repeat such wild, chaotic silliness every single day for all the tomorrows given you. 

I cannot take you to be here with me but I can invite you. I do so from love, not the four-letter word, love itself, which is a part of no language of man. It is wild.  It is free. It is bold. It serves nobody. 


To love’s ear, all nations are called by one name. By nation is meant any attempt, whatever, to organize people. Trust one another as I trust in you who has within at this moment a living artist, one who knows what you came here to do.
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