KEY TO SYMBOLISM:
the city: man's ordinary mind.
the plains (open plains): area of the brain outside the city.
the mayor, the warlord: the principal spokesman & manifestation of a man's ordinary mind.
the king: the non ordinary part of man's mind  ---  the people: the rest.
the collective, the herd: ordinary humanity mentally (non pejorative).
the rebel, the certain man: a person struggling for freedom from the collective city mind (aka: mystic).
the father & son: man's on going, internal conversation: the brain's cortex both speaking and hearing itself speak,
                              with the father representing a mind's rebel.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 
 
 
 
 
 

For years one man dreamed of discovering a magic garden in his back yard,
then one day  --  he did discover such a garden,
and was extremely surprised to find it in his back yard.

A king sent out a call amongst the people for:
“A man not blinded by bluntness,
nor tripped up by the obvious in drag.”

Within each station’s broadcast range,
transmission and reception are essentially the same thing;
     everyone’s brain is divided in two,
     and after that split  --  thought knows what to do.
             “I don’t get it” he said:
             “then you didn’t send it” he replied;
               impotently does the herd talk to themselves;
               only the certain man’s mumbles mean anything
                                                      (and then as always, only to himself).
 
 
 
 

In his head, one man said: "If that is what it will take, I will say that my aim is
to become conscious of my mind, and mindful of my consciousness;
to become aware of attention and attentive to awareness;
to become alert to my thoughts and thoughtful of alertness –
I will call it whatever is necessary to get this thing accomplished.”
The path of the certain man is itself simple  --
it is the walking it that is complex;
two legs; two brains; two minds and the ever present possibility of
doing the right thing or the wrong
('course in the certain man’s case, doing nothing is the only doing wrong).
 
 
 

Anyone who can diagnose in you, a non physical problem cannot give you the cure;
they can easily prescribe treatments  --   but never provide a cure.
In the collective mental life of man the job of institutions is in large part to
establish admirable goals for the people,
and then help obscure the fact that they are unachievable.
In the intangible realm of Goobydust Land,
all diagnosticians must suffer from the ill they identify;
                                       only doctors who know,
                                       won’t say where you should go.
In CertainManLand, but one sickness survives
which no one can see but him,
and no one but him can cure
(if there was a hospital there its motto would be:
“It is not an illness if it doesn’t kill you quickly enough to keep you from
driving everyone around you crazy by talking about it.”)

Health Watch:
Forget about pluralities: the certain man has only one vital sign.
 
 

                                                         stay in a daze,
                                                         stay in a dream  --  then it doesn’t matter.
                                                                       (None but the non certain man ever say life is not equitable).
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

When he heard the art/religion/politics of one city criticized for:
“Having no relevance to the people’s lives” one man mused:
“Hell  --  their lives have no relevance to their lives.”
 

In an elephant parade,
only elephants are welcome,
there are places only for elephants,
and only elephants feel at home;
in an elephant parade  --   only elephants survive.
This is so not only externally, collectively concerning man’s physical life,
but also controls the construct & operation of his inner, individual mental life as well,
and it is from this protective comfortable and predictable parade that
the certain man seeks to flee  --
for to him: what he knows about life has no relevance
until his own relationship to knowing has no relevance.
“Pa pa: I cannot see the clowns from here;
is it the fault of the clowns, or because of where I am standing? –  here in the middle of my mental me  --   where you have so often warned me about?”
 

The escape from ordinary consciousness is the only solving of a
problem in which there was no problem to begin with,
and one man thought: “Humm, well no wonder it sounds so simple,
but is so difficult to do” and his twin brother countered:
“Nay – that is why it sounds so difficult to do, but is actually so simple” and as always, ‘tis a shame there was not a third voice present to complete and congeal the affair.
 

Today’s: Sci-Fi Myth:
In a far away galaxy,
on a far away world
there is a third voice in every mental transaction.     Believe It Or  --  Suck Pulpwood.
 
 

The son of a rebel asked a librarian:
“Are some writings more substantial than others?”
and the book tender squinted an eye at the lad and replied:
“Isn’t your father a rebel?” and when the boy nodded in the affirmative,
the librarian said: “Then I won’t be answering that.”

One day the mayor turned to his Legal Advisor and asked:
“Who new, should be included in our criminal class?”
and the counselor thought on this for a bit, and replied:
“How about we add to the roster, anyone smarter than Your Excellency”
and at first the mayor was delighted with the idea  --
but after pondering the potential ramifications of such a thing,
was not so sure that it would be a move flattering to him.
If you are impressed by the vigor with which the heart, lungs, and stomach
will protect themselves,
wait until you get a full view of the mind in such action –
why do you suppose the skull is the strongest bone in the body,
and dreams, the mind’s most cherished possession.
 
 
 

Question: How does the ordinary mind spell entertainment?
That’s easy: The routine ramblings of other people’s ordinary mind,
and a son said: “That does not sound like entertainment to me”
to which the father replied:
“But you only say that after it has been pointed out to you”
and the lad almost heard something   --   did you.
(“Almost” [on some maps] is a place somewhere between Irrelevant and Impertinent.)
The certain man travels only to where the sun always shines –
not some times shines, and not, almost shines;
he achieves this by the magical smooshing together of father & son.
 
 

The less a man individually perceives any significance to life
the more will he take it personally.
In a metaphorical milieu you could describe ordinary men’s mental take on life as either that of an artist  --  with a self-centered, totally subjective view,
or of a scientist  --  with one removed and objective;
there is, by the by, a place beyond mere metaphor where the two merge,
and produce something new and unknown to the city herd.
 

And one man proffers this metaphysical rhyme:
“Having blank paper does not mean you must draw;
having a mind does not mean you must think,
having a bottle does not mean you must  -- no! --  wait just a minute:
having a mind does mean that you have to think!.....doesn’t it?!.....
oh, never mind.”
   “Never what ?!”
“Sorry.”
 

Another inherent talent of man’s institutions (external manifestations of his collective mind)
is their ability to treat impossible goals as faits accomplis,
(and don’t short change man's capacity for buying it).
 
 
 
 
 

As reward for having rendered a boon to a genie,
a man was offered the choice of having either:
simple feet and complex shoes, or:
simple thoughts and complex interests,
and after weighing the two, asked the jinn:
“Exactly what is the difference between them” and the magical one replied:
“I guess it is a question of whether you are going some where,
or just thinking about going” and the man said:
“Okay, I can see that, but how about concerning: thoughts and interests?”
and he replied: “Same deal”
and the man ruminated on this for a bit, then said:
“I suspect this is a trick” and the sprite replied:
“Is that a statement or a question?” a reply that seemed to greatly annoy the man
who began to kick up dirt and slap himself in the forehead  --
--  which the genie took to be his dichotomous decision.
 
 
 
 

From the city a voice cried out: “Habit will be the death of us all!”
only to be followed by another which shouted back:
“But without habit  –  we would have no life!”
and the collective neurons making up the city, operating as much as possible as a unified entity took sudden, unexpected note of itself in light of these two comments, and exploded.
The day that Mudville became ClearTown.
 

Institutions are to collective consciousness as life is to the alert individual;
institutions are to collective consciousness as the secret is to those-who-know;
institutional thought is to the past as the instant moment is to the certain man,
and collective consciousness is to normalcy & predictability as
                                                          this kind of stuff is
                                                          to those kind of people interested in
                                                          this kind of stuff.
 
 
 

One man concluded that he had some sort of floating-virus
that was affecting a particular part of his brain  --
and discovered it could be kept in check by simply watching it.
 

From one view: when the body gets sick  --  it dies;
when the mind gets ill  --  it begins to live;
thus it is that liberated, expanded consciousness is beyond all
polarized descriptions of man’s condition.
 

In reference to physical travel, ordinary men will often remark:
“Getting there is half the fun”
while with the certain man’s secret adventure  --  it’s even more than that.
In achieving the realization, the effort and the accomplishment both
singularly offer more rewards and pleasures than does
their combination in any other mortal activity.