Saturday morning, and day was breaking as they pulled into Biloxi,
and father broke the news to son:
“There is even more I can say to you about that CertainHunger,
and extraordinary way to spend your life;”
croupiers, cuties and conga players filled the 24-hour-streets
as longings for neural explosions filled the always-open younger’s head.
 
 

“This for example:
For that extraordinary thing to ever happen to you,
it is first necessary that ten thousand and ten other things occur  --
yet not a one of them is necessary.
Think about it --  and furthermore: if this be true -- (which it is) –
why does not this fact alone instantly drive your thoughts
straight up the wall and into new areas of great profit and wonderment?! –
It should -- yet it does not.   Why?
For the same reason that to ever see what-is-going-on for yourself:
It is first necessary that ten thousand & ten different things occur,
with not a single one of them being necessary”
he pretended to look for a parking place
as he continued making sounds with his face.
 
 

“A faux son might think I am but having sport with words,
but we have been at this too long and you know better than that.
In your lucid moments you understand that all words are soccer balls,
and the only thing that matters is your net;
so: I’m going to be broadcasting at one hundred thousand
clear channel watts –
and it’s up to you not to be trying to receive on a cheap pocket radio,”
and the elder swerved to miss one rain filled rut, running them into another,
thus did they switch streams in mid metaphor,
“Toss out the rest of those plastic pearls,” he said to son,
wanting to take care of the car,
in that it was theirs and they were rental.
 
 

“When we first read that people long before us had been bothered by
an itch inside their skull that no available verbal powder would cure,
and you immediately cried out: ‘Yes!  That’s it! 
That’s exactly what I’m going through!’
and we anxiously read on and discovered that they had even given it a name:
‘Yes!’ you shouted: ‘
Finally I’ll know what this thing is that so delightfully  --  almost driving me mad!’  (although if memory serves,
you did not at that time include the word, ‘delightfully’ --  but I’ll let it go),”
he brushed more of last night’s confetti from his head, and said:
“We found out that five thousand years ago there were sane, intelligent people
already talking about ThisThing and calling it: ‘Being asleep;
living in a dream’ --  and you started to jump up and down, hollering:
‘Yes, yes, yes!  That’s it!  That is Exactly what it is!’ –
and then the book said that there was a way to wake up from that sleep,
and then I could hardly control you  --  you were so excited,
and we commenced to try and follow the method described to awaken.
 

“Ahhhh --  what glorious days they were!” (and the lad vigorously nodded):
“Glorious yet frustrating beyond an ordinary man’s comprehension.
The diagnosis of our condition was plain enough --  and clearly correct,
and the method to change the condition was simple enough, and yet ---
nothing seemed to go right:
for every half second of success you had,
there was ninety six hours of failure;
and no matter how many bursts of extraordinary understanding you had,
your life in general remained unchanged.
It was as though we were sure we were sitting on a treasure chest,
but could not get off and stay off of the lid long enough
to fully partake of the pleasures inside,” (more rapid nods from the kid).
 

“After some time spent in this confounding private activity,
we decided to seek outside assistance, you remember that don’t you?”
(and the nods kept a’comin’).
“We went to hear some of the people who had written some of the books we read that first clued us into the existence of ThisThing,
but you remember what happened --  right?” (more nods from the nipper) –
“Almost within seconds did we somehow understand that they had no more achieved-The-Deed than had we…..somehow it was just --  obvious.
Ah, I can still remember how upset you were,” (Editor’s note:
son was not actually all that bothered by the discovery,
but this is the father’s telling of the story......and your own hearing it.....by the by:
you’re not using one of those dinky throw-away neural receivers to pick it up, are you?)
 
 

“Yes, you were pret-tee upset, and even began to wonder if there was anyone alive who had actually experienced TheGreatScratch,
and understands it, (though if recall is reliable, at that juncture I do not believe that
you had begun to add, ‘understand it’ to your mental repertoire,
but since you’re still recovering from pat’s hurricane season,
we’ll let that minor discrepancy slide,” (and with the appearance of
a new water puddle   --  slid, they did --  right into this):

“Then, (you remember), every other day you would privately threaten to
abandon the whole thing;  just --  give it up!  by gawd!
Hell! --  why drive yourself crazy?   Maybe it’s impossible; maybe no one’s ever done it!

And yet our desire was so strong  --  the whole idea so fascinating
that no matter how you threatened --
we could never keep it from our thoughts for long.
 

And yet about all you seemed to get from all your efforts was frustration:
a second of something resembling, or foretelling, success,
always followed by hours of --  nothing!
You cannot even call it hours of failure –
it was not failure in the sense of trying to throw a basketball in the hoop
and missing: your effort toward a visible goal did not succeed;
the ball did not go into the net; you failed in your effort,
but the lack of success in TheGrandEndeavor
is like not showing up on the court to even throw the ball --  and better than that: you are not even aware that you did not show up;
all you have to do is remember to show up in ThisSpecialSport
and you have instantly damn near succeeded.

                             Ahhh!  --   what is there to compare!
 
 
 

“But somehow we hung on; we did not quit and you did not go crazy,
and then one day, (you remember that day?!” [and son’s head near’bout
fell off from excited nodding, Yes]):
“It finally hit you square between the appropriate eyes/I’s:
after years of being asleep and hating it:
and after a lifetime of studying the matter in your personal life –
to such a depth that you, (in all objective modesty) may well have understood what ‘being asleep’ means better than all the recognized masters and teachers of same,
one day it suddenly struck you full face,
that you did not have the slightest idea of what, ‘being asleep’ is.

                  My God! --  what a moment!

You realized that you did not have any idea what the term even meant –
and that neither did anyone else --   Whoa!  --  and neither CAN anyone!
The mind is literally not capable of understanding the idea:
an idea that came FROM the mind!
How can such a thing be possible! ---  better still: how come no one realizes it?”
father was now so exuberant that potholes were avoiding him. 
 

“And then --  right, righteously then  --  is when the whole smear hit you:
you suddenly saw WHY thought cannot understand what, ‘being asleep’ means –
even though it alone is responsible for noticing the condition & naming it;
in spite of this, thought/you/your mind has no conception whatsoever of
what, ‘being asleep’ is    ----     which is what  --
                                                   '‘being asleep’ IS!”
 
 
 

They were both now beating themselves uncontrollably on their knees
and whooping with wide-eyed joy.
“How thoroughly magnificent can one human hobby be?!

For the first time in your sorry ass mystical life you realized clearly
what it truly is to: ‘be asleep and living-in-a-dream’ –
                            it is thinking that you know what that means!      Yikes!
 

It certainly means SOMETHING! --
and there certainly is a condition in your head that you find fits the description,
but the plain, simple, glaring fact that only you can realize inside your own consciousness is that, even if the mind is living in a dream,
it can never understand the concept of: living-in-a-dream.
 

Remember how, (once you saw it?” [nod, nod, nod, went son,
even before hearing the rest of the question]),
“You fell to the floor --  amazed at how it took you, (okay, us), decades to see
the very floor we were standing on --  (treasure chest we had been sitting on).
 

Whoa!  --   bless us sweet bourbon street!
I can still hear you shouting up from your prone position:
‘Everybody who’s trying to wake-up would finally have a real taste of what it is if they could just realize that they have no idea --  what it is!
That would do it for them!’ you said,”
and father reached over/up and patted son on the head.
 
 

“And once again: the universal singularity of ThisMarvelousThing shows itself:
the only activity known in which: recognition of failure IS success!
(a crude way of putting, but hey! --  this can be a crude universe”
said he, pointing to his head.)
 
 
 
 
 

                             Have you ever seen the Gulf  --   bright, early morning,
                             after a long, dark night of frivolous, neural carousing?!
 
 

                                      The son comes up  --   but this one never goes down.

                                           
                       J