JANUARY 17, 2003                                                                © 2003: JAN COX
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A perhaps, sad commentary on the times:
one city fighter says he could’ave been a contender  –  maybe even champ  –
if only he’d been able to find gloves in a color that
more fashionably coordinated with his trunks,
not unlike (we might note) how it could be between a man’s mind,
and the thoughts that dance in its ring.
    Travel News.
       It’s a long way  --  but a short actual trip  --
       from wherever you are to  --  Obviousville (life's laid out to be like that).
Definition Rehabilitation Time.
Irony: bad name for, coincidence.
Coincidence: terrible name for, how-things-are,
    and someone wrote the, Write To Me Man:
    “Sometimes I don’t see where all of this is going,” and he mused:
    “With the author inserting the word, ‘sometimes’
    I expected the letter to be signed: Fred J. Understatement."
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The speaker posed to the crowd:
“What is it about man that is so special?” and someone shouted back:
        “You mean besides him thinking that he is?”
a comment that sent half the listeners into fits of laughter,
and rendered the other half dumbfounded, and after a short pause the speaker asked:
“Then what is it about man that is so spectacularly strange?” and a voice cried out:
       “Same reply as before.”
Once upon a time there was a land where horses were in charge and rode men around, and a momentous day came when one of the stallions suggested that
they change places with man, which they did,
and upon hearing this story, a listener asks:
“And by what name do we remember that eventful day?” --  oh come now sir!  --
you know perfectly well the answer to that one.
(At times it is truly disappointing the way men attempt to selectively ,forget certain features of
                                                                                                                                                               their past.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A father told a son: “Regardless of how you may want to look at it, it’s really like this:

Although it is now far, far removed from its origins
you might be interested to know that the concept of suicide came from a man
who got to the bottom of things,
and if this sounds strange, ask yourself:
why has life made men so strongly condemn the very idea of suicide?
What does life have to fear from the physical act?
Nothing disappears from this universe;
all energy transformed yet survives in its new form,
so why does life cause men to so resist the notion?
Might it be that it fears what they could realize allegorically
should they too long ponder the matter.
The disappearance of some thought is not the same as the demise of a kidney --
though to hear life tell it (whisper it in men’s minds) --  it is.
    There was once a band of adventurous travelers who began to think of illness
as a metaphor for health, and death as a symbol of enriched living
(and life arranged things so that most of them got lost and forgotten).
    There was this one planet that was so deprived and backward that the only myth they could afford told of a man who was asked to tell his life story  --   and declined!
 
 
 
 

A father said to a son: “Regardless of how you might like it to be, here’s how it is:
in your thinking, you’re either original or you’re an empty, stupid suit,
and revisiting the experience your life-provided thoughts like to refer to as, your-life
in no wise fits the definition of, originality.
No man, leaning on another man’s thoughts, or repeating his words,
has ever achieved the realization of what is really going on in life;
thus it be that the originality he needs requires that he mentally struggle to be
a brand new person with every brand new second:
“Now I’m born  --  now I’ve gone;  now I’m born  --  now I’ve gone,” and so on.
For those who understand this aright, the cliché must be reformed:
it is not, death-before-dishonor, but death before honor is possible,
and a king who awoke from a strange sleep looked out on the domain he had inherited, and said: “Kill ‘em all  --   especially any who look like they might be related to me;
it is these faux, pretend family members who so artfully feign being close to me,
and my regal understanding
who so trouble and upset my affairs.”
For the certain man’s tale, the cure of all troubles is --  originality.
     “But how is this possible: only life can be original?!”
“May be,  but me and life are  --   just-like-that  --   like blood brothers  --  tight as hell!”
If any human can pull it off it’ll be a man with no interest in anything mental which
did not originate with him;
that’s how it is  --  and that’s the only way it can be to work
                                           (and ain’t you glad!.......  [well, you should be]).
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Meanwhile: in the city supermarket of ideas,
brand loyalty is always the supreme concern  --
never forget that  --  not if you plan to live in the city
(of course the reminder is superfluous, for if you live in the city it’s impossible to forget it).
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

According to one story, there is an unknown, alien substance in man’s blood that either harms you or helps you, based on whether you approve or disapprove of its presence,
and someone asks: “Well if we do not know it is there, how can we feel one way,
or the other about it?” --  oh yeah, almost forgot, there is a third and fourth possibility:
the third being how it affects people too stupid to realize it is there, and the fourth is it having no effect on you whatever  --   which occurs only in people who
are indifferent to its presence,
and someone overhearing all this ventures a comment:
“What you’re talking about seems to me to be awfully similar to  --   aw!  --  forget it,”
and remember: to live a normal life in the city amongst your fellow kind (sheep  --
none of whose little heads are ever troubled with the concepts of plagiarism or originality) --
brand loyalty is of the utmost concern;
a life-approved mind sticks with the ideas common to his herd;
“Don’t stray  --  don’t stray!  my little ones!” goes out the whispered, private cry of life into the old areas of every man’s mind: “Think and speak as others do!”
(which in life-speak means: “Accept the thoughts and mouth the words provided for you”)  --