A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 04/17/20

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, April 17, 2020

The Art of Decency

First. Let us give a sample of Indecency-

“Rain at Night” by W.S. Merwin

after an age of leaves and feathers

someone dead

thought of this mountain as money

and cut the trees

that were here in the wind

in the rain at night

it is hard to say it

but they cut the sacred ‘ohias then

the sacred koas then

the sandalwood and the halas

holding aloft their green fires

and somebody dead turned cattle loose

among the stumps until killing time

So, now, what is Decency? We know it not. We are certain that if we had left the Garden as we found it there would be absolutely nothing to get excited about and no fun. But Merwin reminds us in the first lines of his poem-

This is what I have heard

at last the wind in December

lashing the old trees with rain

unseen rain racing along the tiles

under the moon

wind rising and falling

wind with many clouds

trees in the night wind3

Are we not those trees? Have you ever really seen a tree? Until the day you do you will not be ready to begin a life of decency. Once you see it as it is you will then and forever after know yourself to be decent naturally. Ignorance of that fact is the source of all our problems, past, present and future. We only need glimpse what in us is human.

It is like this-someone complains of a problem. SOMEONE WISE REPLIES YOUR REAL PROBLEM IS THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW WHO YOU ARE. FIND THAT OUT FIRST THEN SEE FROM EYES THAT ARE AWAKE TO REALITY. IT WILL BE ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT. YOU REPLY, BUT WHAT IF I DO NOT LIKE WHO I AM? THE WISE ONE TELLS YOU THAT TO DECIDE NOT TO DISCOVER WHO YOU REALLY ARE BEFORE YOU JUDGE YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES IS ABOUT THE DUMBEST THING ANYBODY EVER CONSIDERED DOING AND REFUSES TO WASTE ANY MORE TIME WITH SUCH A ONE AS YOU. THEN TELLS YOU TO GO AWAY AND THINK ABOUT IT. COME BACK IF YOU FIND YOU ARE READY TO SAY GOODBYE TO ALL THE NUMEROUS AND CONTRADICTORY CONCEPTS OF WHO YOU THINK YOURSELF TO BE TO MEET A STRANGER YOU ACTUALLY LIVE WITH.