Two of the town philosophers were at their regular post,
this particular morning debating: “The source of wisdom”
when a kid whizzing by on a skateboard shouted to them:
“Well it sure doesn't come from just talking about it,”
and one of the wise ones shouted back: “Ah, shut up!”
Two woodcutters at the edge of town were on break when one of them said:
“Originally the term: being-enlightened simply meant: seeing-things-as-they-are,
but it apparently didn’t sit well with most men’s minds at the time,"
and the second axe man spit, smiled and nodded his understanding.
A man sitting alone in his room looked out the window toward down town  --
then off toward the woods  --  then mused:
“If the history of what man has said is truly the history-of-everything-human
then why doesn’t history teach us more?”

How Rituals Appear Far Overdone From Outside Positions.
“Hah!  --  starching your socks!” scoffed one man to another in the laundry room
as he ironed his.
“All in all,” said the all-in-all man, “do men commonly attempt to hide
their ignorance behind sarcasm, and those with an additional couple of I.Q. points believe they take it to a higher level by proffering their affected perception of
situations of irony being a widespread infection.
Catching others in hypocrisy is more fun than landing a thousand pound marlin  --
and as easy as scooping a minnow from a coffee cup.”
    (Injects the city mayor: “All in all I’d say the all-in-all man should keep his mouth shut.”)

Every time this one man would drown  --  he’d try to take someone down with him.
    (“Not an uncommon occurrence,” noted a lackadaisical synaptic lifeguard.)

Definition.
Civilization: Man’s mass attempt to regiment his mind in a manner similar to
that natural to the body (that is: predictable and limited in its responses).
For civilization to work beyond its collective, coercive enforcement
requires that a man have a personal understanding of  the mind and body.
When threatened by an axe, even the roughest of pine trees can be made to act civil,
but one only really is who has taken the measure of its own sap.

Many will no doubt be pleased to learn that:
Having conditional plans is almost like having no plans at all.

"Dear Dr. Exacto: Every morning immediately upon awakening
when I first pour water into my coffee maker, it shudders and makes an awful noise  --   almost as though it wants to withdraw?!?”
    “Dear Sir: Are you sure you’re talking about your Cuisinart and not your mind?”

Always remember this (unless, at no additional charge you’d like to forget it):
Everyone who complains knows exactly  what the real problem is.

Travel Note.
There’s a by-pass on the way to damn near everywhere.

Mused a priest to a physician: “Who has the bigger challenge:
you, trying to predict illness and second guess its progress while men are alive,
or me, having to foretell to them the circumstances of life-after-death?”
to which the medical man replied: “If I had a sense of humor, that’d make me laugh.”
(And standing near by, an economist and psychiatrist wondered why they hadn’t been included
in the question.)

When one king who took the king-thing most seriously,
heard the truism regarding the proposed equality-of-man that says:
“Both peasants and kings put on their pants, one leg at a time,”
he gave the people twenty four hours to either rid themselves of pants, or legs.

Another definition from our: Super Sensitive Dictionary.
Progress: Inching toward death.
    (“Though no one asked me: I don't see the sensitivity in that.”)

Confided the city comptroller to a political intern:
“Entering into secret-alliances can later prove embarrassing.........but then again:
what can’t?!”
The wolves who get anywhere in the struggle for external power over their peers cannot afford the useless expense of chagrin:
                           it’s got to be: die  --  if not win.
The battle to wake up from man’s normal mental dream is the archetype of
the whole-hog game;
you can be partially asleep, but not partially awake.
    “But that’s not the way it seems?!”
True  --   when you are still partially asleep.
(A fact by the way: which if you knew better, would make you feel better.)

From the fans on the city’s side of the field came this cheer:
“Brilliance  --  If Possible;
  Beauty  --  If Able,
  But Above All  --   Continuity!”
(Which is why the rebel is never invited to any of the Synaptic Last Suppers
[he’s always interrupting everything]).
Once upon a time all the world’s mystics, sages and metaphysical teachers
gathered for the: Ultimate Transcendental Conclave,
and one man they’d pressured to appear gave as his speech this one sentence:
“If it’s not original  --  it’s not magical.”
(Need you wonder if he was the hit of the conference.)

Everything that grows to real maturity secretly outgrows its name.

About the most that can be said about the temporal aspect of life as lived in the city
is that: The past is temporarily out of town.

After many years of struggle, a man said:
“I now understand so much that it is almost impossible for me to say what it is
that I understand,”
which made a man who heard him want to question him,
but also (for some reason) made him frightened to do so.
It’s been done right when your mind is too full to contemplate itself.
    “I assume you mean: For it to any longer deceive itself that it is doing so.”
Only fool’s fire can be used as light to study fire.
  (“And only a man asleep can say he’s awake, huh!”)

We interrupt for this special bulletin.
“There is a cow consciousness;
  there is a wolf consciousness;
  there is a bird consciousness,
  and there is a  worm consciousness  --  but:
  there is no such thing as: human consciousness.”
(You may now return to your regular programming and state of cow, wolf, bird,
and worm consciousness.)

There is no such creature as: individual-morality:
it is a herd phenomena:
in an individual it is: individual understanding.
There is no morality ‘twixt bird and worm, and neither between men,
save their verbal averments thereof.
    “Which is not a criticism, correct?!  --
      since that is the actual foundation of man’s civilization and collective morality?”
 Correctamundo.

One day a physicist, a congressman and a blues singer were talking,
and the physicist said: “The one certainty in the universe is that even a dead man
can’t be late for his own funeral,” and the congressman countered:
“Nay --  the one inescapable reality of mortal life is that nothing is as terrifying as seeing a one eyed woman cry,” which finally stirred the blues singer into saying:
“The long sought for: Law Of Everything you two have just managed to deliver
in forty words or so.”
    (“By which am I to assume, he means to say that men’s everything amounts to nothing?!”)