MORE UP THAN DOWN

                                   MORE UP THAN DOWN

 

In a not unusual spasm of chronic digressmentalitis, probably triggered by all the uptossers’ up words tossed up in a recent blog-up titled ‘Writing for Fun’, I must mention that I won’t be up or down for anything unless I cook-up some comestibles in the kitchen – a place in which I am not widely known to write-up blog-ups in between meet-ups, coffee-ups, tea-ups, sneeze-ups and knees-ups.

Due to rampant uptosserty, drink-ups are ubiquitously preferred to drink-downs, which is yet another example of all the up stuff being way up in common parlance compared to the down stuff, and therefore ridiculously disproportionate.  But are these well tossed up, and not so well tossed down words really necessary?  I think, and it’s only a flexible thought, not a hardened religious belief, atheistic mindset or an exercise in pedantic semantics, that humans could well do well without stupidly abusing the innocent up word.  Do humans dream in up words? 

More importantly, where’s the awareness when awake?

I feel more aware of what is within and what is without when only using up and down words that relate to physical reality.  Even so, with as much conscientious consciousness that I can muster, I sometimes hear myself inadvertently uttering some of those unnecessary up and down utterances in the moment I utter them.

Next up.  Does a fry-up taste any better than a fry-down?  In the absence of a deep down fat frying basket, the hot inflammable oil and fat goes both up and down in a frying pan and the pan-fried food eventually goes up to the mouth, but these are fleeting moments.  99% of the fry-up is down in the pan and goes down on the plate and then down the throat – unless there’s a fire going up in the kitchen, which of course goes down when doused by firemen who are always up for it. 

Besides, the rungs on a fireman’s ladder often go up and down – whereas a firewoman’s greasy pole only goes down.

Neverthelessormore, a fry-up is only one example of the multitudinous variety of ups and downs in life which may not be efficacious for recovering bungee jumpers. 

According to the law of earthly gravity, we say “what goes up must come down”, including the male erection.  But in the weightlessness of outer space where anything can go in any direction propelled only by the soft power of a silent fart, this common phrase is not true.  Well, perhaps only a few male astronauts can testify to that, plus a few truth seeking scientists with powerful space probing telescopes. 

Moreover, according to human notions about up North and down South – when you are having a summer barbecue party at the North Pole, the smoke rising from cooking freshly found well preserved frozen Arctic explorers’ spare ribs, goes up into space.  Therefore, at a similar summer party at the South Pole, the barbecue smoke should go down into space.  But no.  Humans always want their smoke to go up, even when it’s going down into the earth’s atmosphere from the South Pole.

Furthermoreover, in the Vatican Palace of Catholic power, somewhat on the side of the planet, the Pope’s macabre election smoke always goes up – never sideways, or heaven forbid – down.

What is true as far as the truth be known, is that nature designed humans to live (down) on the ground – not (up) in outer space.  And yet humans condition each other and themselves to become addicted to up words in desperate denial of down words.

What is so good about up and so bad about down?  Does it matter whether we go up to the pub or down to the pub?  Why not just go to the pub without any ups or downs, even if the journey is over hill and dale or a level minefield in which we could be blown up and then have to come down.  Not much upside in that scenario, unless you happen to sell artificial limbs. 

Some say the answer lies in the soil, but deep furrow philosophical farmers who are up for digging down for it, still haven’t found it.  Perhaps the answer lies in the shallow top soil of the human mind’s over-imaginative imagination that imagines going up to heaven or down into hell after death.  But this polarised decision of deservedness depends on the difference between an assumed number of life-long fuck-ups and fuck-downs being assessed on a self-indulgent guilt trip imposed on innocent people by judgemental religious evangelists down and up the anus of history.

If there were such destinations as heaven and hell after death, there would be only a smally few up there and a littly few down there.  Billions of other humans just live and die with the ups and downs of life as nature intended, whether or not they are brainwashed by man-made religious notions of heaven up and hell down.  But I suspect that all the up word stuff is still a determined denial of the down stuff of death.

It seems that we puny humans with delusions of grandeur are nevertheless driven by existential anxiety to amplify the ups and attenuate the downs, despite millions of tons of human excrement going down the drains every day.  The rest of nature doesn’t give a shit about what’s up or down.  So perhaps we humans have more to learn from nature about how to achieve a central balancing still point between the dynamic extremes of up and down – both of which can cause mental and physical sickness.  However, we don’t have to take it lying down when we’re so good at taking it standing up.

If up and down are two sides of the same coin, then in the desperate desire for up all the time, half the value of the coin is lost down the drain of that desire. 

To be up all the time is not sustainable, nor is being down all the time sustainable.  Hence, extended ignorant emphasis on the way up sooner or later causes trouble and strife on the way down – except for defunct satellite space junk, stuck in perpetual orbit round and round the planet without going up or down. 

Upside down is a welcome reversal of the normative emphasis on downside up.  Up needs down, and down needs up.  So why the ridiculous addiction to the up word at the expense of the balancing benefits of the down word?  Answer – it’s a mad human world. 

A fuck-up is meant to mean a mistake has been made – a dire downer even with the up word on the end.  But a fuck up and down, over and under and in and out is what nature intended for human happiness and the continuation of the species.  Maybe the weird way we use words to communicate is not always as good as a physical fuck.  So why not “shut the fuck up” as the they say.

Finally then, in the wise words of the great Greek philosopher Testicules – “After all is said and said, skirts must go up and trousers must come down.”