After he feeds himself, everything a man does is a search for permanency:
his construction of stationary shelters, monuments, public buildings;
his storing of unutilized resources; his conceiving of a life after death,
and most important of all: his preserving of his thoughts through writing & speech,
and what is at the bottom of it all is man’s desire for
                            a permanency in his consciousness.
 

The impermanency of external conditions is a given in the lives of all creatures;
sometimes rain, sometimes droughts; food today, famine tomorrow,
but man alone lives with the awareness of an impermanency within himself,
such that even when essential rain does fall, on one occasion he is pleased,
while on the next he is angry about his new suit being doused.
 

Thus does man live in physical conditions which by nature are
ever changing and without any permanency,
but also does he live with mental conditions in him which by nature are
also ever changing and without permanency.
 

Man attempts to establish some permanency in the world outside him,
and the degrees of his success are everywhere and visible to all;
civilization itself can be seen as the overall expression of these efforts.
 

The impermanency of consciousness being natural to man  --
he gives it no direct notice, but rather its effects, he manifests obliquely,
and metaphorically – verbally pointing at one thing while unawares,
trying to put his mental finger on some other unknown something.
Man's most common unintentional metaphorical activities focus on death,
for it indeed would seem the supreme example of impermanence in his life,
but men do not actually dread death
for they have absolutely no idea of what it is;
it is certainly a word representing something   –  but no one knows what,
and thus man’s routine expression of harrow thereabout is hollow,
and unwittingly an expression of some other unspoken annoyance.
 

Man’s bother is nothing other than the impermanency of his consciousness;
it has no states or thought-sets that are permanent;
many repeat themselves --  appearing, disappearing, then reappearing –
but all beyond his capacity to pre decide what his next thought would be,
or his ability to fix it permanently in his consciousness.
Under ordinary conditions,
consciousness is like a totally out of control madhouse   --   that somehow works.
 
 

Another way by which men indirectly attempt to establish permanency
in their otherwise impermanent inner life is by the adoption of a fixed name,
and the consistent reference to themselves as though they have a
consistent inner self-of-consciousness;
it is thus that those most successful at accepting this façade
are the ones who mouth with most pretentious confidence the word, “I” --
(saying): “I think so & so!” --  “I believe this or that!”

But none of these efforts to alter his awareness of the impermanency
by the erecting of fixed physical structures, the imagining of an unending life,
or the use of an enduring name succeed
since not reading a situation correctly precludes any change thereof.
 

Man’s ultimate attempt came with writing:
when men began to write  --  about their thoughts,
not about their discoveries concerning the external world –
their awareness of their special form of impermanence became permanent.
 

With seeming total oblivion do humans treat writing as magical and supernatural --  all writing --  if it is in a book --  it is somehow important;
if it were not  -- it would never have been written down to begin with,
nor then preserved and read.
The reason for this overall baseless attitude is again rooted in man’s desire for
a permanency in his consciousness and the act of putting the thoughts of his consciousness into a physical, permanent form is the supreme effort to this end.

A variation of this is in telling others your thoughts,
and either instance offers support for the illusion that some permanency
has been achieved in a man’s consciousness in that at a future time when he wants to express himself regarding some matter being debated,
he can point to his written words and preface his present remarks by saying:
“As I wrote here long ago in my very first book…” or he can remind someone:
“As I said to you twenty years ago…” –
thoughts put in written symbols and placed on permanent materials,
thoughts put into sound and uttered to another;
ephemeral products of consciousness turned into faux, archeological artifacts.
But they both afford -- as much as is possible --
a collectively acceptable form of semblance-of-permanency,
                                   ....but virtual is still virtual.
 
 

Those with interests more complex than those of the crowd
realize that all of these cultured acts are still just matters of pretend, and,
”I hope, I hope, I hope!” --
but to get any further than being just a bemused observer,
if not disgusted critic of this, (and the entire human theatrical piece),
you must see for yourself, and realize in your own personal manner the fact that at the very core of everything men do after they feed themselves
is a search-for --  and attempt-to-establish –  a permanency in their consciousness.
 

The sooner you are able to privately, “call ‘em like they are”
the sooner the game can be concluded, and you can get out of that
stifling umpire’s outfit;
kick back --  have a cold one --  and watch the rest of the world sweat it out.