JAN’S FRESH REAL NEWS
                          © 2001: Jan Cox
                                             *********************************************

August 23, 2001.
 
 
 
 

               THE FATHER & SON MOW SOME LAWNS
                     ---------------------------
 
 
 
 
 

Once they had the machine cranked, the elder began:
“He who understands is the supreme pretender;
while others just pretend  – he pretends to pretend.

The progress-of-understanding runs like this:
you go from attempted resistance
(e.g. stopping thought; breathing consciously, etc)
to, knowledgeable-indifference,
(note I call it 'attempted' resistance
because when you attempt to engage in such resistance,
that which you plan to resist --  disappears.           Slick, huh?!)
The progress can also been viewed as going from
attempted struggle to the uninterest-of-understanding,
'attempted' in that what you try to struggle WITH
is the thing you use to STRUGGLE with;
thus you unwittingly struggle with yourself --  The Struggler,
or more bluntly put:  the struggle struggles with itself.
(Around and around and around to no whereville.)
All in all, increasing understanding of what is going on leads one first from biased, imaginary entanglement to impartiality,
then finally from a lack of personal bias to a lack of interest --
in things you must pretend are true & meaningful to be interested IN.
 

Presently the most popular show on the telly is a fictional drama
set on Downing Street in the Prime Minister’s private chambers
which purports to give an inside view of the mechanics & exercise of political power, and in fact it is said to be a must-see for all those who
work therein, but the pretentious, socially-concerned dialogue presented
is not what kings & alpha wolves talk about in private,
and anyone even slightly exposed to the inner workings of
politics & power knows the expressions voiced by the characters
that speak of the welfare of the governed being their foremost concern
is never heard in such circumstances and is near laughable --  and yet even those involved therein, who know from their own experience
that the dialogue presented bears no resemblance to what is actually said in such surroundings --  even they are faithful viewers,
as though what they personally know to be blatant fiction has become
reality, (and the same situation be true in other media regarding other activities, [the law, medicine. etc]).
Amongst the ordinary, an oft repeated, intellectually pretentious question is: ‘Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art?’
(Do earthquakes affect the weather or does the weather affect earthquakes? Does desire affect action or does action affect desire?)
The brain’s present standard of consciousness does not permit (or at least certainly does not urge men to) an ongoing awareness of the lack of distinction between them and their environment; both physically (absolutely undeniable when considered but momentarily),
and mentally (never even suspected);
thus do chamberlains & surgeons praise the realism of dramatized accounts of what is said and worried over in their respective milieus when they know from first hand experience that it bears no resemblance to what is actually said & talked about:
is it a grand conspiracy? --   no,
it is simply life making the consciousness of man’s brain treat certain areas of which it makes note & comment as though they are
other than they plainly be.
Art does not imitate life  –  life makes art (and everything else)
do what it wants it to do;
art is the same as life same as your skin is the same as you;
and why would life imitate art? – what would be the point? –
how could it, even, since art was produced by life?
What: life imitate itself? --  for that is what it would amount to.

No boy, there is no conspiracy going on
(other than life conspiring to keep you & it alive);
what is going on is a forced game of unrecognized  –  Pretend.
                         Clean out that area behind you.
 
 

At a monument against war,
if a man who understands and is free of pretense
was obliged to make a comment thereon,
he’d nod approvingly and say something like: “Quite meaningful,”
pretending to pretend that it is meaningful,
(only the most dense of pretenders ever rail out about
man’s collective pretensions);
those minds behind & which support such mortal artifacts pretend that the public denunciation of war (hunger, injustice,
the unfairness of death itself) is important --  significant --
meaningful and --  accomplishes something,
and when you are forced to pretend that you believe something, you will, (Sweet Willie), believe it.
 

Man’s thoughts are born into an already established,
inescapable world of pretend;
thoughts themselves,
save for those directly connected to survival,
ARE pretensions;
whenever thoughts are about matters in man’s mentally constructed, second reality, which is to say: about things that do not actually exist --  then how can the thoughts about such things
be anything but pretense?!    They cannot.
 

Thus to those innately made to pretend that railing against war
is meaningful  --  it IS meaningful, but in ways not realized by them.

                             Use the best clippers on that.
              (Men are not always aware of who is trimming who)
 
 
 

Here is another example of how it goes:
I say that I do not vote and I do not need to vote
because it is a meaningless act,
and you say that it is important to vote,
and that a man’s single vote does make a difference,
and here is the truth of it:  if you think you need to vote,
then life needs you to vote --
that is why it made you feel that you need to vote.

The flash comprehension of this one sentence is the impassable
divide between a man who can see what is going on,
and everyone else;
the reality behind those several dozen words is the model for
mortal mind’s suspicion of: A Great Devourer,
but it is not some demon, or evil force,
but the reality of how things really are, which,
when put into words --  eat their own selves up.
The Secret, when reduced to verbiage is, A Grand Locked Room:
                                      no way out --  and --
                                             no way out.
 
 
 

Immature adult teachers (by way of encouraging the presumed benefits of loose imagination) are wont to tell children:
“What you pretend to be so --  is so,”  and no better lesson could be had for all children --  young & old alike,
but the brain’s routine running of collective consciousness
will not allow all-grown-up thoughts to hold this fact;
ordinary consciousness of things physically non essential
is nothing but pretend;
the second, cultural reality of man is totally dependent on his
continuing pretending that things therein are meaningful,
and that thus pretending will accomplish things.

Everything you do physically, accomplishes Something;
nothing you do pretentiously does  ---   other of course,
than what life forces you to pretend that it does.

                          Careful there: weeds are growth also –
                           -- which is exactly what I was just talking about.
 
 
 
 

Ninety nine per cent of what goes on in people’s minds is meaningless,
and ninety nine point seven per cent of the world’s people accept it:
one per cent find it motivatingly irritating,
and their effort to do something about it is called:
Trying To Wake Up  --  The Search For Enlightenment,
                                       and the way it goes is like this:
 

first you realize that nobody knows what they’re talking about
in matters of a non material nature,
then you realize that the thoughts life provides in your head,
don’t either.
It is not a question of the degree of inaccuracy;
it is not a question open to debate,
and it is something that is impossible to show to
ordinary thought;
forget, ‘proving it’  –
routine thought cannot even comprehend the concept.

   Imaginary creatures cannot conceive of themselves as being imaginary.

Could not men (& their thoughts) pretend to take seriously
things that are clearly outrageous, preposterous & impossible,
life as now collectively lived, would self implode.

                                             Leave those as they are;
                                  never bet against the hedges.
 
 
 
 
 

To live among other people  --  you must pretend;
to appear sane & be accepted as one of them --  you must pretend
to take seriously those things that they pretend to take seriously,
and for you to live with yourself (if you are routine)
and feel that you are sane,
and to find yourself reasonably acceptable to yourself
(your thoughts, actually)  you must pretend that the thoughts
life forces through you are ones you yourself chose.
Do you spot the bad spot on the lawn in this?
To remain sane & ordinary you must pretend that the
never ending thoughts automatically flowing through you
are ones you willfully chose to have, and one of them is the thought which stringently informs you that if you do not go along with this pretension, you will go insane & be a public outcast.

Do not sweat the back room shenanigans in Vegas –
the world’s biggest, fixed-game is right in your own home town.

                                  Keep those blades sharp.
 
 
 
 

To be blind & distracted is to pretend, (same as everyone else);
to be open eyed is to only pretend to pretend, (when called for);
for the few, the most crippling pretense is that of attributing
the capacity to accomplish something
to things which clearly cannot,
and it does not require an extended period of study
in the mountains with a mystic;
just a millimeter behind the thoughts that life is
running through you is the pie faced, everywhere, plain reality of what things are meaningful and accomplish something in life,
and what things do not,
and most assuredly does thought have a vested interest in you
not ever coherently realizing the distinction,
                      (do you see where this is inevitably headed).
 
 

One of a rebel warrior’s pithiest weapons in all of this is silence.
The real opposite of pretending is  --   un interest;
the true sign of understanding the difference between something that accomplishes something & something that means something to you (the thoughts you are forced to house)  is  --  un interest.
 

Ordinary people pretend;
a man who knows only pretends to pretend,
and therefore,inside  --  the distracting noise of the pretense machine is stilled.
 

To host pro or con is to be a man with sight who pretends he is blind;
to condemn or excuse is to be an idiot pretending to be in charge of the asylum;
to tell what you know, when you know you know nothing,
is to pretend to be a normally functioning human being when
                                                     that is all that life requires.
 
 
 

                               Come, grab the gas can, and
                    let’s go set the mowers & ourselves on fire.”
 

                    J
 
 
 
 
 
 

He who thinks anything is wrong  --  understands nothing;
he who believes anything is wrong  --   is stuck in pretending that something is wrong.