A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 08/14/20

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, August 14, 2020

GROKKING

Excerpted from Mr. Tambourine Man:

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind

Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves

The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach

Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free

Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands

With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves

Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

By Bob Dylan

This might be interpreted by interpreters as a drug song or it can be heard as a song of deep meditation which honors the listener by providing no method at all. In my own case I feel I finally invented my own world by the grace of a love that is beyond love. The word “grok” from the 60’s was helpful to me. It is a word that is to be used in the English language with care always remembering it is not “of” the English language. It’s an invader! An invader “from love beyond love”. You gotta grok It, (Wo)Man.

The informal verb grok was an invention of the science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, whose 1961 novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" placed great importance on the concept of grokking. In the book, to grok is to empathize so deeply with others that you merge or blend with them. The simplest way to think of grok is as truly, deeply understanding someone or something. With any luck, you now grok the word grok.

You can appreciate the deeper message in the single line from Mr. Dylan’s song:

Let me forget about today until tomorrow

It goes beyond all limits of ordinary English and points the way to the timeless. Let me discover the gap that leads into timelessness and grok the immensity of a still brain.