A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 08/11/23

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 11, 2023

A MONOLOGUE

As it is sung to us in the language of Bob Dylan we all chase a shadow that really is who we are and wish to be it all the time. The song is called “Mr. Tambourine Man” It happens to be up to each of us to discover we can be that then live to dance beneath the diamond sky.

Nobody has ever even seen me here. When they consider me at all, which is seldom, they see some image they have concocted standing on my feet.

Nobody cares. Not really.

How could they? I’m invisible.

I do not matter.

I may as well eat worms and die. In fact,

When I hear myself say these words I am undressed, unburdened from carrying heavy thoughts not my own and I am free. And that makes no sense, but is true. Makes no sense it should come when I don’t matter but it is true. THAT IS WHAT WALT WHITMAN SINGS OF TO ME.

There it is. It is an understanding for all…there can be a knowing that makes no sense and it can be proven to be so. So, maybe what makes sense to someone looking for it is always nonsense. There goes another one of those rascals that escaped ordinary good sense and goes running off laughing at me. This is a strange, esoteric truth known to everybody and practiced by few.

If I tell you that although unpopular among the crowd I am in fact well known by them all would you believe me? I am the same reason all people at rare times experience moments of awe whereby all concepts of their identity are erased from consciousness and the reality is indivisible existence. Nameless, and without a single concern, are we at those times. And all know this but very few practice it. What if we did?

Wise people have always told others when you feel bad do not try to escape the feeling or deny it live inside it; it is who you are for the moment. Should you fail to examine into it you will always remain ignorant and be one whose picture will remain incomplete in your own mind. And that is a tragedy because we are always complete even though we may seldom know it. Should you crawl inside the bad feeling when it comes there is every likelihood it will be exposed as nonsense followed by freedom from them heavy thoughts not my own! Not freedom from stupid people but free of what they think having just been one. So, the reply to anyone telling me what they think I should do is “them ain’t your thoughts, Sir or Madam, they were acquired by you from someone else. They are old and dead thoughts.”

And that is being true to life. And that is followed by a pure action with great passion otherwise incomprehensible to the known universe. Then, later, you call it “art”.

For Jackson on his 18th birthday! From Papa