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 15, 2022

 A RELIGION OF SONG-LINES


Bob Dylan once quoted a lyric to Sam Shepard that went “You must learn to leave the table when love is no longer being served! Just show them all that you are able! Just get up and leave without saying a word.” 


Bob said he did not know who wrote it but it was a good lyric. Sam agreed. Bob added, “you gravitate toward people who’ve got something to give you and maybe you’ve got somethin’ they need.Then one day you wake up and see that they’re not giving it to you anymore. Maybe that’s the way it is…Maybe the rhythm’s off.”


So, what if the whole of life is that. The life you have is a rhythm for now…and it is always now…a song-line to walk or dance to; that’s the Australian aboriginal’s idea. And it is so simple anybody who wants to can do it to a tune he knows well. I mean to say, life is a sure bet! Never was any need to gamble. Oh-oh! I am getting it that the Tree of Knowledge in the Bible was the big gamble...I wanna do it my way relying on knowledge which is always quite limited. All God wants us to do is dance our own song-line that’s playin’ inside us.


I was jolted to read of the conversation between Sam and Bob because all my life I had thought of myself as extremely out of step with everybody because when it comes time to leave a party…any kind of party one can attend…I just leave without a word. It always is that way. I cannot do otherwise. Often the idea would strike me that what I am doing is rude just leaving without thanking the host or hostess for the party but I do it. I want to add that never once have I had a hint from anybody that that is a fault of mine. I mean it never has been a problem to be so out of step with good manners. So, my point in raising this is to propose that when one does a thing solely because he or she cannot do it another way no matter what then in that case one cannot fail ‘cause the singer of your song-line is that powerful and love is no longer being served. That is my religion. The whole darn thing! It’s fair. It’s lovely. It’s possible. Makes the impossible possible all right. That is a good religion based on a good lyric. 


Bob and Sam went on to agree that women and men have different rhythms and the two are actually one rhythm…and like God and the Devil they are a part of each other. One cannot do without the other. That feels in complete harmony with the religion of song-lines.


 

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