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.”