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, December 4, 2022

 FOREVER YOUNG


Just life on a walk or a run in the woods without the participation of a continuity keeping time by a clock or listening to background noise that does not belong to such a moment so the continuity can pretend to be elsewhere.  Ahhh, or is there some deeper wish, a nowness, trying to trick the continuity who is responsible for everything into thinking it is elsewhere so it will cease to interfere with nothing? Now we are getting nowhere naked of participation just now. Deeper still, finds only a swim without any swimmer. Where is the swimmer? Hiding? Do you imagine the swimmer is back at home reading a book? Who are you? Dancing but no dancers? Sex without performers? These have happened so what about them apples? Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who was not there. He was not there again today. How I wish he’d stay away. Is it up to me? Who am I? The man and his shadow? Jekyll and Hyde? The fullness of  attention, maybe? Is it a matter of remaining with the apples I like?


I have often recalled a great and wonderful naked intercourse with a woman I adored and when it ended she was dressing to go about what she called the business of life while I was left complaining with greatest passion- 


“Why in the name of God would anyone in their right mind ever consider leaving this we have to go someplace else for even two seconds!” And I meant it. I was left believing “I am alone for sure”. 


One night walking out of a meeting with some close friends to dialog about the truth I asked whatever might be listening to my silent voice that same question and the answer was as clear as a sunny day and it was “It is up to you whether to leave this state you are in now or remain with it wherever you may go or whatever you do.”  Suddenly, life took on a very special meaning that has never left. Life is not a mechanical process…no process of cause and effect is it…not in the least…and I knew my only and full responsibility at last. Forever Young is the name.

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