People Sure Can Talk Funny

“And now it’s time to catch you up on Today’s News” …but then I thought, “That’s impossible; you can’t live long enough to ever catch up to date.”  Then I asked myself, “Well, how long would you like to live?”  And I said, “See, now that you’ve said that it’s even more impossible.”  (Apropos to little perhaps, but why does the phrase, “more impossible,” have such a satisfying – no, more than satisfying ring?)

I once heard of a doctor who claimed he could cure any human illness, and finding a loose Monday I tracked him to his lair, where I discovered that, indeed, he forthwith announced to every incoming patient he could cure all illness, but then informed of the person’s ailment, he quickly added, “Except that one.”  Eight years ago, I visited a planet that staged a curious event.  On a multi-dimensional track people would run off in three different directions.  And if you think that was peculiar, their newspaper had an athletic critic.

Part of the intricacy of speaking about This, is in making those assured of its complexity see its basic simplicity, and in making those who believe it is simple, see their own simplicity.  Human sentences do not display the same acceleration and braking speed as do their equations.

I once heard a voice from a near-by galaxy which cried, “No, don’t hit me again,” and the tone was serious enough to make me investigate.  But as I drew near a voice from another region declared, “Don’t be silly, you know suicide is impossible.”  (People sure can talk funny in other places.)

The Philosopher finished speaking; his words seemed to enlighten, his encouragements became self-fulfilling, and his mere presence appeared to heal and comfort.  His activities and reknown became such that many people flocked to him as students, and followers.  One particular person who was herein attracted, although duly impressed and inspired, was nonetheless sorely troubled over the possibility, as he put it, that the teacher could be a “fake.” 

One fine day he found himself alone, face to face with the great one, and after some hesitation and verbal fumbling laid out his fears that his chosen leader could possibly be a “fake.” At this, the ostensible teacher literally roared with laughter, and said, “Never-you-mind; it’s never-you-mind-time.  Don’t you know what an amazing Man it takes to truly fake things?”

J.

The Mirror Door

Would not the ultimate faux pas be in pronouncing the phrase as, “fox pass”?  (Or am I being terminally tacky to even mention this possibility to the red-eyed-literati?)

A man discovered a way to “open doors” into the supporting fabric of life itself, but he found he could make no sense of what he saw therein, and decided he needed to construct some kind of new viewing apparatus through which to study these areas, and which would translate the scenes into comprehensible data.  But one day, whilst working on said machine, he opened one of the doors to discover another person looking back at him, and before he could blink, the other figure looked over its shoulder, apparently speaking to someone else on its side of the door, and said, “Hey, I’ve found a door that opens onto a mirror.”

In the condo-forest just west of the Mimimost Valley, two rival mystical clans arose whose every turn seemed based on the desire to out-do the other.  One faction finally put their activities in the form of a systematic religion, and built a structure with a sign announcing, “The Church of The Matter-Of-Factness.”  Not playing dead, the other clan rose up and constructed their own edifice directly across the street with the name of, “Yeah, Tell Me All About It.”  (Those who say that “tolerance is its own reward” have a lot to learn about mechanical design.)

If you’ll always smile, before you criticize, someone’s life will pass before your eyes.  (Now that I’ve said it, I don’t know whether this is humorous verse or worse.)

When I first came to this planet I readily fell into the habit of reading Man’s daily newspapers; that is, until one day while perusing one of these periodicals, being carried along by the passion of its coverage, and marveling at its facility to so quickly report on important instant affairs, I noticed that the paper was two years old.  (Now, boys and girls, have any of you ever discovered this, even when it wasn’t so?)

J.

Weekend Parables

Who could enjoy a book with no title?  But who can see that a joy with no name is a joy times three.

A man once noted to himself that the intellectuals of the world are without a true spectator sport, and after some thought he arranged a kind of “thinking match” between appropriate participants with special EEG’s hooked to their heads that projected their cerebral activities into large, colorful holograms.  Well, it all seemed to be going pretty smoothly, until he encountered a certain snag in his “all intellectual activity” scenario.  He found that only certain physically oriented men with gangly oriented tongues could function as commentators.  Artists: 2; Philistines: 2, as we pause for this word from our sponsors. . . (Is this a parable or what.)

Whilst working on the power line, the electrician turned to his apprentice asking:

“What would, say he, if he found a current that was its own source, and a power to its own amp be true?”  (I have not the heart to comment upon the shocking implications herein.)

A man was once brought before the bar of justice on two charges, and after his trial was completed, the court sentenced him to “death plus 40 years.”  As they were leading him away his attorney slapped him on the back and commended him on his luck, in that he could have received 60 years on the lesser charge.  (Is this a parable or what.)

The park poet left the stage, and as the crowd was leaving, I overheard a man say, “How utterly boring.”  (I learned later that this was the same person who, after reading a book entitled, “The Unrecognized Impact of Theory, Belief, and Assumption,” dismissed the author’s efforts by declaring, “Well, that’s his opinion.”)

J.

Song for a Friday

Now then children, let us sing today’s little song:

Let us learn, learn, learn;
Let us forget, forget, forget.

Now let us remember all of this,
all at once, all the time.

In the midst of a mortal crowd I once heard a voice cry: “I’ve entered this damned contest so many times that I’ve forgotten what the prize is.”

Near the city of Farfadia, I once discovered a man whose business consisted of listening to your problem, then telling you to forget about it, that he would take it over, and then send you a monthly bill forever.  After his initial meeting with his clients I could never see he did anything more than send them his monthly bill, but many spoke of the benefit of his services, and seemed to get better.

There was once a man who was convinced that a number was missing from the accepted numerical system, and after many hot years of search and sweat he discovered the “missing number,” but he couldn’t prove it for none of the know numbers can add up to it.

With “I’s” in the back of one’s head would not the future be then clear.

 J.

The Missing Piece

The longer I associate with Man, the more I wonder, is it his natural condition to always, “almost have it”?

A man was once told that, “Happiness is just a state of mind.”  He cut his eyes to the right for a moment, then went into an absolute rage, screaming.  “Damn, don’t tell me that!”

A Man once heard a tale regarding a “magic tapestry,” which, if one could make and possess, would “reveal all.”  The Man spent the better part of the next twenty-two years roaming the earth, collecting the many various pieces to construct his magic cloth, but after all of his efforts, a small corner piece remained missing.  After much brooding over this final incompletion someone pointed out that he was the same shape as the missing piece.

A scientist involved with exotic experimentation concluded that particles hurling away from one another at unbelievably fast speeds were still somehow engaged in instant communication.  He was hailed and accepted.  Then a color blind CPA in Peoria discovered a similar situation regarding what the human mind accepts and rejects, but no one could accept his findings.

I once heard a place where the powers-that-be had secretly placed a man in charge of periodically confronting the leaders, asking them to respond to questions and charges he said had been made, but which the powers themselves had given him.  This may strike you as odd, but that area grew and flourished.

J.

Nouns or Verbs

An earthling once heard my question of whether one’s “I” is a noun, or a verb.  And after some thought he told me, “”I’ must be a noun; but not the beginning of every important sentence.”

I once heard a head-doctor dismiss certain patients with the disdainful comment that “Hypochondriacs are sick people.”  After pondering exactly what he said, I thought it might prove interesting to question him on it…then I thought better of it.

If words were truly foreplay to real understanding, most Men would reside in a state of terminal horniness.

And at the northern edge of the forest they found a discarded, aluminized travel brochure that spoke of a place as, “The land with no name, and phones without numbers.”  (Those with the greater weariness eventually tried to smoke the metal pamphlet.)

If so-called “facts” are that which is repeatable, are “facts” nouns, or verbs?  Be they static or variable?  Do you take comments as “facts”?  (Speed is surely is a prime number.  A true scientist and examiner-of-facts would be he who could think the hundred yard dash in 6.3.)

J.

Beware the Flamingos of the Mind

The ordinary could make partial sense of my Equation “I + Not-I = Everything”; they could readily locate the “I-of-themselves,” but would take the “Not-I” part as being clearly “out there,” existing somewhere other than still in their own inner “I.”  To City eyes, the Equation seems to patently affirm that “A is A,” and “B is B,” but the Revolutionary understanding of it is that “A is also B,” and “B, A.”  (It is only after you escape the metropolitan grip that mathematics begin to smile, to sing and dance for your supper.)

It is, as you might have suspected, good ole Yellow-Circuit-City Consciousness that not only concocted the word “infinity,” but then went right on to perceive of it as a posthumous affair.  (Couldn’t you sometimes just “pick up” the City and give it a big ole hug and shake?)

If one person tells you they “like you but don’t understand you,” you have dominating traits.

If more than one person says they “like you but don’t understand you,” you have charisma.

If many people say that they “respect you but don’t particularly like you,” then you have the marina to launch an armada of potential grief.

I heard that at one City hospital a chap showed up late one evening absolutely insisting on surgery to remove, as he put it, his “I-like-and-don’t-like-gland.”  (Lucky for him Dr. Yoohoo wasn’t on call.)

Beware the flamingos of the mind.

Then there was this entertainer who was less than fully confident of his dominant position who had an unlisted microphone.

J.

Hypocrasy

It kinda seems that, by now, someone in the City would surely wonder what use it is to offer up gifts and sacrifices to their gods, when history obscenely shows that those deities are eventually going to wreck and wrought every possible form of havoc and sunshine regardless.

Two weeks ago, on a Monday, I heard the half-twin brother of a previously featured Big-Town-sore-head say, “You know, whatever your name really is, it seems like every time my brain gets a hard-on my tongue gets impotent…and vicey versy.”  (Couldn’t ya just sometimes “grab-up” those City folks, and hug ‘em real, real good?)

Another Official, Maybe-Law of “City Physics”:

The more mechanical and unavoidable something is, the slower it is, and the more likely it seems to be related to the “D” family, why, the more “serious” it just gotta seem.  (Now go vicey versy that.)

It is about time that the People properly recognize, and suitably acclaim, hypocrisy, for without it, affairs in the City would never efficiently progress from “point A to B,” go from good to better, as Men are predisposed to resist obvious change.

Try and hear what I allude to beyond these words; brace your young selves and blink not into the light, or the glint of the rifle barrels.  Listen up, and brave up, my little troopers.  At its own level, Life does not like OR dis-like Man.  Insofar as Life, simply IS.  (And I gotta tell ya, as far as I’m concerned, that’s plenty good enough for me.)

Although enlistees cannot be expected to remember, and apply themselves to the Revolution one hundred percent of the time, they can be bound to the duty, when they do remember, then apply themselves with one hundred percent of their efforts and energies.  How could you POSSIBLY expect otherwise.

J.

City Entertainments

Last Thursday, or maybe it was last April, I heard this tall, City person dramatically hurl the challenge for anyone to refute his contention that, “The prime, single source of all intellectual error is in the mis-naming-of-things.”  And although I didn’t bother to do so, I could have replied, “Oh yeah, how about the NAMING of things.  Hmmm?”

Books have been called many fine and poetic names, such as, “Windows of the world,” “Men’s mental genealogy,” and “Lighthouses in time,” yet never called what they are: packets of freeze-dried info.

You know he’s becoming serious when an enlistee begins to ask, “When do I get to take The Oath?”

One death = murder
A million = TRIUMPH!

The more I think about it, the more I believe YOU should think about it: Which is the ultimate City entertainment, anticipation or guilt?

And from yet another view (number 726, I believe), this Revolutionary activity could be seen as the private struggle to keep your ever blooming speech from strangling your understanding.

J.

Temporarily Out-of-Order

Over in one section of town I have run across groups of People playing a new game, sort of “Intellectual One Down-manship” whereby one person might say, “Believe it or not I have never been to the symphony”.  And another responds, “That’s nothing, I’ve never actually read a full page of Shakespeare.”  It still sometimes surprises me what People in the City will do to keep from being thought of as…

In the City, nothing is certain except the past, and memory’s power over those who believe and trust in it.

After attending a history lecture, I once heard a fellow muse to himself regarding some of the statistics just encountered, “How can it be that throughout history, four percent of Men have ruled the other ninety-six?”  How indeed, can the few so control the many.  Now and then, it is good to find a person not enslaved to that curious habit of self inspection.

Even the basest of tyrannies are freely supported by some. (Put THAT in your pipe-of-self-knowledge and see who salutes it.)

If the sign is correct and instructive that says, “If temporarily out-of-order, please do not bang on this machine; the owner is NOT inside.”  Then why do Men continue to bang on one another? 

J.

See-the-Cracks: Jump-the-Tracks

Why does apparent spontaneity seem so different from actions that are planned?  Why the feel of improvisation, and the mere playing of someone else’s score?  It all comes from within a Man, so what might we be talking about?  Different energies?  Dissimilar pressure involved?  Or, could it be simply a matter of varied tempos?

In that the State’s pre-eminent religions support the Ruling Powers and not the Revolutions, what might Life be indicating regarding certain areas of creativity?

An oblique maxim for the malls-of-the-mind:

Either “buy it all”
or abandon shopping.

If you can see-the-cracks
you can jump-the-tracks
(and be somebody else).

Speaking of shopping malls and the like, I just gotta tell you this; over by their insurance counter, and near the franchise spaces they rent out now to dentists and lawyers, one store set up a “Philosophy Booth,” and on opening day their resident pundit proclaimed the following: “He who hates stupidity dislikes himself.”  And when he heard this, one old-timer standing next to me was so overcome that he nearly bought a pair of boots.

J.

Singularity

A person is not a Real Revolutionist if they do not have a continuing awareness of their singularity.

The People still take consciousness to be a “who,” while the Revolutionist recognizes it as a “what.”  Consciousness not of the “who-am-I” variety, but of the “what-electro-chemical-process-does-I-believe-it-is-anyway” type.

Now here’s a subject that at first blush strikes me as truly challenging:

The Struggle To Improve On Patience.

When ordinary People speak of love, it is just Life making passing note of possible avenues of change and growth.

We could say that the Red Circuits can certainly “act,’ and the Yellow ones can “think-of-acting,” and I suppose you could say that the Blue Circuits are the closest thing to an attempted connection between the private and public voices.

J.

The Right Idea

From an expanded, revolutionary view, the only acceptable patriot would be one with an invisible homeland.

Mountains only BECOME mountains by trouncing on hills.

My motto, “The Future Is Now” is indeed superb and telling, but for the effectively dangerous, it should be, “Your Future Was 60 Second Ago.”

The Polite Version:
Once you’re king you no longer need ancestors. 

The Revolutionist’s Rendition:
Once you’ve arrived, no one cares how the hell you got there.

The past is operationally irrelevant to those who are, and who make, the future.

For correct Revolutionary activity, it is okay if you have only one idea, so long as it is the RIGHT idea.

J.

To Reveal or Conceal

Speech can be used to reveal, or conceal, (hide or be hid).

The more dramatic, crude, and clumsy the contrast, the more readily Man can accept the picture as archetypical.

And over in one section of the City, I ran across these people boisterously set on raising funds with their cry of, “A liver is a terrible thing to waste.”

All ideas, truths, errors, laws, and dreams ARE Man; they come from Man, and from nowhere else.  Man is they and vice versa…naw, that ain’t so, it’s just something I read.

Although I have come to expect less than impressive notions arising from the City, I did recently hear a chap say the following, “Are the Blue Circuits to the Yellow and Red as the brain is to the senses?”  Ain’t too shabby a question for a City boy.

J.

The Ultimate Entertainment

Another distinction of the Real Revolutionist is that he knows the small is never too little, nor the lame too big…and that all the news is no news.

Could it not be truly said that anticipation seems the ultimate entertainment?

It is only in the City that the broken can be fixed…no, let me be more exact: it is only in the City that the obviously broken can apparently be fixed.

To revolutionary consciousness, “yesterday” has the pertinence of parsley, the significance of a fourteenth century train that crashed with no memory of survivors.  If you simply MUST remember something, be sure it is something that has never happened for sure.

Men have proclaimed that “Honor is like an island with no harbor; once we leave, we can never return.”  And a good, sturdy axiom is: but why didn’t Man expand this idea to likewise apply to “ignorance” back when he had the chance.

J.

Beware the Saccharin of the Mind

Beware, the saccharin of the mind.

To try and be a serious proselytizer for a Real Revolution would appear to be the supreme fool’s game.

In the City I hear, “The end must justify the means,” and as usual, they stopped too soon, or went too far.  It should read, “The end must justify the means, or at least be ‘end-to-remember.’”  (i.e., an end-what-am-an-end; and end that will make a line backer forget the signal; an astounding end, such that it would make anyone forget any reservations regarding the so-called “means”).

In the City, many believe that when lust knocks, love will answer.  (Right: Sweat dials, and Incense says, “Hello.”)

While others amuse themselves with discussions of Man’s purpose being the “conquest of nature,” or the “conquest of one’s self,” the Revolutionist is busy actually engaged in the conquest of the useless, and the boring.

J.

Rhyme for a Saturday

The Real Revolutionist knows that in his truly outstanding engagements and productions he is both the performer and audience, and no one else is needed.

No one knows what they REALLY want except those who believe they do.

The Revolution is a private attempt to personally re-define the public concept of the word, “complete”.

In the ordinary comings-and-goings of life in the City, Men often “leave”, but are seldom gone.

A would-be-poet-cum-intellectual in the City has rhymed away:

“When my brain’s had little thoughts
 it always says, ‘Let’s write ‘em,’
Now notebooks fill my rooms and drawers
 and may fill infinitum.”

Oh, I could go on like this forever, or at least until my pen, or brain,  gave out!

J.

Making the Useful Beautiful

For those of you who sometimes pine for the halcyon days of simple truths, and uncomplicated directions, here you go:  Those who don’t pay their own way usually don’t go anywhere.  (Unless you enjoy watching your neighbor’s slides.)

Then there was another ole sore-head in the City who offered this off-priced, philosophical notation, “I have been able to somewhat limit my righteous rage, and control my intellectual expectations, in a manner somewhat related to a method used by Sir Isaac Newton and that is, I have positioned myself upon the shoulders of mental pygmies.”

And yet from another verbal view, we could say that the real Revolution is in making the useful beautiful, and even vice versa.

I cannot vouchsafe for the veracity of the tale, but it was told of a far side of Life’s universe/body where death only happened to those who knew OF death.

The Revolution is NOT about “getting out of the City” only to settle back down, and accept some NEW set of limits.

J.

Mock Seriousness

Ordinary wit, ordinary wit I say, is usually at the expense of a Man’s understanding; sad, but true, ha ha ha.

In the City, if you run across a Man who doesn’t like to talk, you have found yourself a corpse, or a displaced hermit.

No one can correctly describe “things as they are” if they are limited to the truth, and only the crudest of City-ites would even dream of trying.  If you just come-right-out and “say” what something is, you’ve probably ruined it for everybody (and you’re no Monet, Moliere of mine.)

Men unthinkingly hurl the cliché, “Too good to be true.”  But in our case is it just barely possible that this could BE possible?  (Or is it just another instance of “Too CORRECT to be true”?)

In the City, all seriousness is mock seriousness.

Yet, in the Bushes, even mock seriousness has its place and is fun.

Never forget:  God helps those who help him.  (Well, what’d you think?)

J.

Who Has More Fun?

In the City, the effort to refurbish an old item unto its original condition will almost always end up costing more than a similar new one.  (Revolution dear; rehabilitation, astronomical.)

There was once a middle-aged chap who thought it time to find himself a religion; he eventually chose Christianity, and submitted himself to all of the required rituals and initiations.  He later heard that some of his new religion’s factions believed circumcision to be merely an allegorical “act” symbolizing a “clean start,” and he said, “Now, you goddamn tell me.”

And I heard yet another ole-sorehead who said he worked for Proctor & Gamble.  (Who has more fun than those City folks?)

Serious involvement, by an Enlistee, in verbal matters regarding the question of, “good and evil” is one, or more of the following:
 

Simply a sign of limited knowledge,

A serious sign of serious ignorance,

Simply a sign of limited experience,

A serious sign of being too long in the City,

Or, a super-serious sign that one did not like the truth when they saw it,

and has simply erased the whole episode from their mind.

(And above all such explications by me, you know not to let your hearing/thinking molecules take this seriously.)

In the City, nobody can tell anybody anything, all is known…and to think that some burgs have called ME curious.

J.