June
21, 2001.
By eight am the father &
son were already in the gravis pit working,
and at some point the former
said to the ladder:
“It is time you faced the fact
that all my talk about the mind is just,
‘smoke-blowin', shallow-hoein'’
& a general whistlin'-of-dixie,
for the thoughts we have are
of almost no consequence whatsoever;
the only thing of real importance
to men is -- how-they-feel –
not -- what-they-think,
but -- how-they-feel.
Men talk about what they think
in preference to how they feel because they have the impression that they
can do something about what they think, but not so much about how they
feel,
and I am not referring to specific
& treatable physical ills,
but about the feelings due to
moods.
Even though they may discuss
it passionately, men do not really care
if their hometown team wins
the championship,
but on days when they feel-good,
they will give voice to thoughts that say they care, while on days when
they do not, feel-so-good,
they do not have the least interest
in talking, or hearing about it,
and on mornings when they wake
up, feeling lousy,
political junkies won’t even
bother to turn on the news to see what is shaking in the halls of power,
and same with all matters in men’s lives that exist only in their second,
mentally based reality.
When mood-wise, men do not, feel-good,
they don’t give a rat’s ass
about the electives of life,
(and indeed aren’t all in a
swoon even about the essentials.)
Thinking is obviously man’s most
important ability,
and he is instinctively quite
protective thereof;
he pays constant tribute to
the fruits of human thought,
and the most common beginning
of all sentences is:
“Well, I think so-&-so,”
and the greatest respect one
man can show to another is to ask him:
”What do you think about so-&-so?”
Even when men use another word,
and say: “Well, I feel that
such-&-such should be done
about this-or-that” it is understood
that they are saying that is
what they think should be done.
There is no more popular subject
of conversation among humans
than about what they think;
even when they appear to be
talking about another person,
what they are actually talking
about is what they
think
about the other person.
(Ignoring for the moment, the
ever popular, but distinctly different category of talking about specifically
identifiable physical maladies),
people do not talk about how
they feel -- temperamentally wise.
About the most an ordinary person
will normally note in this regard
is to perhaps, in response
to the perfunctory, salutary inquiry:
“Hey, how ya doin’?” say: “I
feel lousy,” but the comment is not generally
taken any more seriously than was the question itself,
and certainly does not then
become the subject of their conversation.
People do not talk about how
they feel vis a vis their moods for the simple reason that they have no
idea what to do about them;
unlike their native impression
that they can change,
do something, have some effect
on what they think,
humans have no similar sensation
regarding how they feel,
in fact if how-a-man-feels becomes
a distinct problem,
(he feels lousy constantly as
opposed to periodically),
he is told to seek, Professional
Help,
(which, in all matters not involving
things you can touch,
means that no one really knows
what to do about the situation.)
Humans do not talk about how
they feel because
no one knows anything to do
about it,
so they talk instead about what
they think --
which is a total handmaiden
to how they feel.
(A core purpose served in men
complaining about a physically diagnosed problem they have, and its debilitating
effect on their psyche, and overall enjoyment of life
is that it allows them to give
some voice, albeit camouflaged,
to the normally impossible-to-talk-about
subject of:
How-they-feel
-- mood-wise.)
Being literally sick has the
one advantage of giving men socially acceptable permission to wail &
whine about, how-they-feel,
even though it not be directly
about the matter of,
temperament-feeling,
rather than, physical-feeling,
and, as strange as it may sound
at first whack,
the former being of more significance
to people than the latter,
in that there are things that
can actually be done to treat,
and some times cure feeling
bad physically,
while no one knows anything
to do to cure just plain -- feeling-bad,
(except to talk about it
-- With-a-Professional, [whose outrageous
fees properly reflect a person
engaged in a known futile activity]).
Laying aside again, feeling bad
from physical ills,
from which none, from ant to
man, can escape,
note further that feeling bad
from simply -- feeling-bad
is also a constant in all the
sentient world;
if a creature can feel
-- it can feel bad,
and, ‘feel-bad’
from its genetic temperament, and not from any identifiable virus, bacteria,
broken bone, or malignancy.
For no observable reason does
both a lion and a man,
some times – feel-lousy,
but a lion does not have any thoughts
about it, and a man has
thoughts 24/7,
and what he is thinking about
at any given instant is a direct
reflection of how he feels,
and yet this indisputable saliency is
not taken into conscious consideration
by men as they attempt --
-- via thinking
-- to account for the nature of their lives.”
The elder rested his shovel &
tongue for moment,
blew away a dollop of sweet,
then continued:
“But if you are to faithfully
pursue our family’s tradition of trying to
effect your own cognitive evolution,
(to engage in that special form
of, mentalitè droit du seigneur,
whereby you are the first to
fuck your own mind),
you must
take this matter under specific advisement.
While it is correct to say that
all awakening, enlightenment & liberation are affairs of mind
-- and of nothing else,
it is also inaccurate in that
it lacks any reference to the boy’s mama –
-- how he feels;
Awakening, enlightenment &
liberation are all matters of How you feel;
Do you FEEL
awake?,
do you FEEL
enlightened,
and do you FEEL
free?
If you asked this of a routine
mystic they would reply:
‘I do not think
of myself as supremely awake,’ (enlightened, etc).
Well hell, boy -- no one
ever thinks that they are awake;
no one thinks that they
are as conscious as a human can possibly
be of what is going on in life
-- you FEEL
it.
You FEEL
it.
You FEEL
it.
You FEEL
it --
just like all the years before,
you felt
that you were asleep & in a dream.
You feel
that you are asleep;
you feel
that you are in the dark,
and you feel
that you are not free.
Shit son, when it comes to, thinking
,
as related to waking up
-- forget about it;
we can talk about
it, but -- forget about it.”
The father leaned over into the
son’s face,
scrutinized him for a moment,
then said:
”How you feelin’ boy -- how you feelin’?”
J
If
seeing-all-the-way-through-to-the-backstage-of-everything was
not almost literally impossible,
what
would be the fun in it?!
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