Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night
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14 June 2009
10 March 2008
Coffee - Three Dollar Bill
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person in the whole world who thinks of the impossible.
Sigh.
Today I see this lovely advertisement and it occurs to me that, against all odd, it seems a foreign country is able to understand the subtle minutia of the American political system even better than we.
Good morning.
The caption reads: A WORLD THIS COMPLICATED NEEDS A GOOD EXPLANATION.
Stupid Europeans. To point a fact, the whole continent seems to have had our number down this week. In all reality we got whooped on most respectable fronts by the Europeans this week.
Today is Commonwealth Day in the Commonwealth countries - am I the only one who looks at this picture and thinks about depantsing both people? Probably so...
And that's just my point.
Probably it's only fun because it's impossible, you know?
The interesting thing about it all is that sometimes the impossible becomes possible. When fantasy becomes reality and makebelieve becomes made no one celebrates like I do.
And this morning I'm pleased to announce the release of the three dollar bill:
Stupid Europeans....
Sean McGowan | Denver
05 March 2008
03 March 2008
Coffee - Why We Get Along
Of course I know why we get along. Let me just say this. Two people look at the cloven hoofed animal - one sees a work of God's art and the other sees bacon.
Good morning. Two people, two perspectives. I'm not one to mix politics and breakfast, but there is a sort of ethereal, metaphysical, emotional, insert another innocuously vague term here, gray understanding that I have with coffee. You may have picked up on this.
For me, coffee plays a very important role. It supports thirty million farmers, if only just. It is consumed in cups - half a trillion every year. It washes down my bacon breakfast sandwich delightfully well but the point is that it may be something still greater. I wake up this morning and expect new perspectives. Seven billion people, seven billion perspectives. Mine involves more caffeine than most, that's all.
American jets launched missiles at a Somali town this morning.
A further 12 people, at least, were killed in Kenya today.
A few hours ago, President Hugo Chavez ordered eight battalions to hold the Columbian border and mobilized his air force.
Today might be more interesting than most people who woke up this morning might have expected.
This is interesting. One may say that coffee has nothing to do with this. Others would say they are right.
Still others would disagree on personal grounds but they don't read my writing.
Clearly, most would agree that three of the world's largest coffee producers witnessed massacres this morning and the only coincidence was the world's seventh most popular crop. Perhaps this is true.
Or perhaps trading perspectives is more worthwhile – coffee is the key to understanding why we get along. How?
1. Coffee smells fantastic.
2. The world economy's most crucial resource is the American Public's water supply - a third of which is used for coffee.
3. War is waged over coffee crops. Peace is signed over coffee brewed.
4. Civilization has arisen from nothing more than ranching, familial heritage, and subsistence farming, of which coffee makes up 4%.
5. The sheer volume of coffee (there are ten billion coffee plants) makes it a vital stabilization of humanity.
6. Like all warm beverages, coffee is often the first sign of hospitality.
7. Caffeine stimulates serotonin and encourages grander perspectives.
8. Coffee smells fantastic.
Coffee helps us get along.
If only just. Still, I take mine black.
Happy Monday,
Sean
Want to read a good book that has nothing to do with coffee? Get it now
25 February 2008
I don't believe in God, but I miss him
Interesting article by writer Julian Barnes, of the death of his parents.
01 December 2007
Reason
You might not get why I write.
I do. I write because Newton was a better poet than Wordsworth; because Shakespeare teaches us more about psychology than Freud. Because Picasso created more wealth than Microsoft, I write.
It seems unimportant. The lines between dreams are easily crossed – more so when people have only one fantasy. Salespeople stay in business. Doctors stay in biology. Painters stay in art. But the lines between disciplines, the distinctions between a cartoonist's dream and a chemist's, can be crossed like a blond over double yellows by a person with adequate typing skills and decent wit.
It is important. Musicians need to money and live, economists need to study the pieces that make up our brains & the reasons our brains make pieces of art, and scientists need to stop avoiding an open dissection of creation & industry... and why they can't get dates.
I write because four billion people believe an invisible force is trapped inside our biological skins awaiting a release foretold by ancient Middle Eastern prophets.
Good luck. Start.
An author's job is to recount with painless precision the sights he pains himself to see. If I've seen a single thing in my life it's a community of folks, needing only a drop more organization to get along beautifully well. I write because sometimes we forget the drop.
The drop is understanding all walks of life – from personifying a deep spiritual humility to concocting different flavor combination of Skittles. A wise man said, it has been noted more than once, life without Skittles would be no more than theoreticall mumbo jumbo. Perhaps more importantly, a lame man once said life without Skittles would be fruitless – if either are wrong, I may not impossibly die of diabetes.
19 November 2007
Clean Pipes
In the last four weeks four of my friends changed four of their last names. Oh well, my plumber tells me, world's going down the drain – all you can do is pick where you get flushed.
Good morning.
Naturally this plumber horrified me. But something concerned me more. It was twofold, actually. Partly I got a bad feeling about his seeming inapacity to understanding gum, let alone my overflowing toilet. Mostly it was his coffin.
Got it made up in Nederland, he tells me, even carved his own epitaph. I didn't ask. I'm the kind of person who's pretty OK with being dead one day, but never quite in the mood to select a graveyard. The problem with the plumbing, he says, is a five year old clog. Can you fix it?
Of course. But one clog fixed, he sits back on his shoes, looks expectantly at me, is another waiting to happen. So, how can you fix that?
He thinks. Larger pipes, he concludes.
And what about larger clogs?
He pauses and shortly composes a heartfelt plea for larger awareness of fluid dynamics.
The study of dynamics is called Systems Theory: all things change, so what are you gonna do about it? Analyze the systems that cause change in all things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_Theory
The CIA helps overthrow a government in Ethiopia, but the same situation will rise up again, elsewhere, unless governments become more cooperative or America becomes more tolerant. How do you change the system to give rise to fewer problems? Houses catch fire so you build more fire stations, but Systems Theory dictates laws forcing more fire-retardant construction materials. Land is given to alleviate the suffering of a people following a great holocaust, but System Theory dictates international rights protecting others from being persecuted in the process. A hungry man will eat a school of fish, but Systems Theory dictates fishing school.
If the man I spoke to is any representation, plumbers find these theories largely unhelpful. Still, I like them. Systems Theory itself is evolving at a very fast rate I tell him - and faster still is the Systems Reality it is supposed to represent. Does this make sense?
None at all, he assures me, because you talk about change like it's always the same. You draw lines in the sand but people walk over them like a blonde over double yellows and it's probably stupid to follow them anyhow.
We get upset with the poor choice of political candidates in America so we vote for the opposition most of the time, but Systems Theory dictates Republicans getting water-tortured.
Eventually there are accelerations of accelerated rates of exponential change. Eventually there will be common threads of change that define the rate that the change changes at and we will have some order, some manner of prediction, right? Nope, he reasons, I see what you're saying... just too many pipes.
At first I disagree. But I take a walk this morning to a Starbucks and eventually the rate of acceleration we are evolving at will be accelerating so quickly and the Systems Meta-Meta-Theory will be so mind-bogglingly complicated the world will be a tie-die wash of combatitive religions, amoral populism, twenty-seven different Skittles flavors, men with other men's hearts beating inside of them, six dollar coffees, country music outselling rock and roll, Cheney, living souls digging their own graves, and four billion people who believe an invisible force is trapped inside our biological skins awaiting a release foretold by ancient Middle Eastern prophets.
Yep, remember him saying, best part is you still get to pick where you're flushed.
05 November 2007
Surprise
I used to be a night person, but I changed. People ask me all the time how to change and the answer is simple. Surprise.
Good morning.
For example, I was astonished to find that I could drink, heavily, most of my college career. Now I'm a morning person, for the one thing a body learns when drunk every evening is how to function hungover. I surprise myself.
I learned how to draw last week. Good morning. Surprised? I was too. I can even draw in my blog.
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Know what that is? It's me bowling (and this is a smiley face :) and at this point my dad is cringing reading this because these are terrible jokes and I should feel embarassed.
Wrong. I love making bad jokes! I laugh the hell out of myself... on the inside. There's a drug pimping its way through your brain when you laugh called serotonin. I may not be able to dance to save my life but at least I have no problem with THAT. The jokes are for my sake. HE's the only one embarrased!
Another example. Here's the reason I'm writing a Monday morning blog entry on Monday afternoon:
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~~ ~ ~~~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Look like a bunch of clouds and mountains? It doesn't, I know. But let's pretend it does. Note the complete lack of 737s. That's right: delayed flight.
And guess what this is: -----O-O-O-O----------O-O-O-O------
Attempted suicide. Ha! Right? Right, nothing teaches yourself better than a little kick in the ass or a hangover each morning or an inside joke that nobody gets but you.
"That one's for me," as I say.
Or an blogged masterpiece just to cheer up a delayed traveler. Surprise is the first thing I consistently wake up to on Monday morning, if the last thing I expect.
And it helps.
Good Morning,
Sean
29 October 2007
Size of a Shoulder
A young man walks for miles through wind and sand.
He climbs.
Four thousand footsteps. His sandals decay.
Don't.
Think about it. He climbs.
His parched body reaches the top of the mountain, the monastery. His parched neck hydrates. The wise old man who sits on the top of this mountain is not here, for trouble exists elsewhere and he is a very wise man, the young man's parched throat is told.
His lips crinkle.
That lemony shiver that sometimes rides up the middle of your back all the way to the base of the spot where your skull rests on your neck, (interestingly, a perplexing human development occurs at this point, as people always mentally imagine it about two inches too low) shivers behind the middle of his back all the way up to the true base of the spot where his skull rests.
There is a seat of power, he discovers, at the highest point in the highest tower in this monastery on top of a very high peak in the Hajjouin Range outside Damascus. It is vacant.
The young man climbs stairs. His hand presses against the carved red stone, dragging slightly behind the anticipation of reaching the top, which at the time had a three step lead, in just such a fashion as to delude an already foolish child's impression of a world's characterization as still heavier than it ought.
Sky.
His innocent dendrites fire madly parallel processing lightning synapses in a knowingly impossible frant to understand a landscape intoxicatingly beyond comprehension. There is a range in these particular mountains where one experiences a perfect irony over the course of only one minute: sunlight burdening a climbing man with the exact weight of a summiting man burdening in revenge.
And this young man was weighed upon heavily.
He sits on a seat overlooking the world and nimble thought solidifies into reality with great mass under horrible weight. He sings and entire cities celebrate.
He smiles and respectable senators break into laughter; he cries and little children die in the street.
Listen.
Believing this could remain with him, he walks. Down stairs. Through the gates of the mighty monastery with a peak from where all who summited had left.
Down paths of sand and wind he falls. The sun again becomes heavy over the shoulders of the man.
At the bottom of the very high mountain sits an old man quietly being sunburned. Perplexing. The young man asks.
Are you the wise old man who lives on top of the monastery on top of the mountain on top of the world?
Silence.
This is an odd email to get in your inbox on Monday morning, I know. But you know it is well agreed that some tales deepen a soul's understanding of its surroundings. The meaning of these next words must therefore be taken to be greater than they are, for this email is not one of them.
Gravity, the old man says. I can't help but keep a good body down.
And for only one second there is a child who stares straight into the heart of a frightening mass of an entire the world, straight into the heaviest mass of his mind and the naked gruesomeness of a small portion of humanity in torture chambers and riots across a massive globe whose weight is only now fully understood, and, if only in his head, if only for his own good, if only for one second, grows broader shoulders.
Six billion and six hundred million people survived last week. I'm glad you did too.
25 October 2007
The Funny Thing About Death
...is that everyone does it. Just not very well.
In fact, statistics show that most people who do it make demonstrable fools of themselves. Imagine jumping off a building and landing on asphalt. That would really hurt. But most people who jump to their own death don't die. That is pretty much the only time I would want to die: after surviving a suicide.
Strange. But not as ironic as one would suspect, having read the near-perfect irony in the above paragraph. Indeed, life is always more shameful than death for the simple reason that cadavers can't fight back. And if there's anything worse than a silent stiff it's an uneven match (I still love you, Rockies).
For example, no one likes a necrophiliac.
I, however, am a fine example of the lifeblood of this world. People love me - and not just because I have sex with living people. I will lead the world to a new definition of dignity when I die, and folks who meet me know this.
I will have such esteem and class when I step into the void of voids people will think twice about following. Populations will live for centuries out of the shear terror of performing with such inexperience what has just been performed with such panache.
Oh it will be a day to remember.
Parties from here all the way around, and the long way around at that. If you are waiting for this monumental, solemn, outrageous event to occur, let me suggest a different alternative than murder: afterlife preparty, baby!
Let the fact that death has not yet taken you (yet... not yet) be celebrated with a grandiose tailgating party that puts shame to the World Series and next year's Super Bowl combined. Bratwurst my ass (remind me never to write that again) throw a celebration that in all likelihood will move the "kickoff", as it were, up a few months.
No harm dying a few years prematurely, as I always say.
Actually, people who know me understand when I always say "no harm dying."
Pretty simple I guess most people just don't see it that way.
Anyhow, I'm off to make all the more spectacular my own demise. Ciao!
23 October 2007
No Happy One Wears a Coat
I stole a sense of decency from a man. My father. But he didn't miss it. He just forgot how to use it because he stopped using it so long ago because he kept forgetting how to use it. I shared mine with him later on by losing my shoes.
Actually if I could just stop for a second you should know there's this lady behind me in this coffee shop who can't stop complaining about how cold it is. I don't mean to break your undivided attention and full immersion you were giving me just now :) ... but she could not make my point better.
It's not even a little bit cold here.
I found weather. I found heat and I found cold like you'll have to keep reading to believe.
I had no shoes. It goes like this...
My father has atrophying decency. I leave him in Istanbul with the idea that I might walk the mighty Earth in flipflops.
Today is October 23rd? This was 186 days ago. There were angels in the sky that day keeping out the cold, for I slept under stars. I've made a lot of mistakes, but few greater than giving up any chance I have to tell people this: shoes, sweaters, & jackets are pointless burdens for a decent individual.
While old men whine in the wind and the rain, sensible teenagers just generate more heat, drink profusely, or ask a stranger for shelter. That (and now I'm speaking to you) is the brilliance of decency: freedom.
And so I was.
When the exact flipflops I wear now are the only things between you and the afterlife, when globes of sky and moons and stars heave (for that is not too strong a word) above you at night and frosted sand melts in 110 degree heat at noon and stiff medications of sunscreen and aloes are not on the list of twenty four items in your bag on your back and dehydration starts from the inside out it is not hard to see yourself traipsing the globe as though it were only a mile wide and being propelled, heaved behind you as you balance on top, only pausing long enough to take a picture so your friends and future self - both known to be more skeptical than they ought - believe you.
There was weather. 185 days ago. 184. 183.
Troy.
Izmir.
Ephesus.
Thunder. Sandstorms. Sun. There was weather.
Syria.
Lebanon.
Palestine.
Be on your best behavior, they all warn, for Sean McGowan is on his way.
And decency's only downfall is disuse. Neglect. Tautology.
160 days ago. 159. 155. Heaving towards the present as only the past can. Almost, though not entirely, unlike now: waiting in limbo for the future. Almost entirely not heaving forward but patient and reading. Fully absorbed. :) Waiting...
":Ashrab Wahiid." The man tells me. 21 hours to Riyadh.
"Arba:ah sadat al Baghthad." Four hours to Baghdad.
What would decency dictate?
As I write this (because I wrote this 121 days ago in that bus station) I have no decency nor shame, for the buses left without me.
Sadness.
So I guess I put it up on my blog to make a bit more of a hero out of myself - since you don't know me - than I actually am. I write it to tell a true story, and then omit all fear. To focus only on the protagonist that is in fact - among all things - my favorite: acquired decency.
My father could use the freedom to take his hat off, for wiser folk than I often speak of growth. And if you're foolish enough to believe it there's no decent person on this planet who wears shoes, and no happy one wears a coat.
~S
15 October 2007
Book Synopsis
Sorry for not posting in a while. Been busy getting into a lot of emails (and conversations) about my book. "What's it about," they ask?
Really, I've never had an answer. It's just about you, I wanted to say. Since my book officially launched today, here now is the official synopsis.
It begins in Greece. I examine the world's finest art and the brains of the finest artists - but then I get kicked out for... well, let's just say I get kicked out for a very good reason. Ten pages later I'm in Ephesus taking the most memorable picture of my life, and a further ten pages leads me into Lebanon.
War breaks out. Refer to my previous blog posts and videos of the refugee camps and escalating warfare. Bombs. Jokes. Art. Neuroscience & wisdom from the wisest teachers I've known.
Gunfire at weddings.
Fireworks in war zones.
Children.
I see it all. You can see almost all of it contained within 156 beautifully photographed, imaginatively written pages, which tell the story of a lifetime: yours.
21 September 2007
Free Painting Today!
An 1878 painting by Maurycy Gottlieb depicting Ashkenazi Jews praying in the synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. Traditional elements shown include tallitot, the Torah, kippot and the segregation of men and women in the synagogue. The artist has painted himself (to the right of the seated rabbi, looking outwards) among the people of his hometown of Drohobych.
19 September 2007
Global Warming?
Now, I'm basically the last person to speak out against global warming. But.....
I seem to have a different perspective than that of the rest of the world.
No-impact lifestyle?!?!? You want to live a no-impact lifestyle?!?!?!
Seriously, there's people who take the notion of a "no-impact lifestyle" seriously. "We need to stop damaging the environment" they say.
I don't exactly eat baby penguins while extinguishing my cigars on baby whales while urinating on baby seals... Far from it (indeed, I haven't eaten a baby penguin in weeks), but to live a NO-IMPACT lifestyle you must hate yourself!
Look at yourself! Every animal on the planet is trying to CHANGE its environment. That's what life does. "Make it more suitable for me to live in" is the basic motto of oaks and pigeons alike. Not "Make my impact as little as possible."
Here's a thought. Maybe a little pollution is worth it IF YOU DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR LIFE. If you're going to sit around and watch TV all day, by all means make your existence as nonexistent as possible - at the very least, don't pollute my streams - but if Medicins Sans Frontiers or the Red Cross or Amnesty International need jet fuel to feed refugees and non-biodegradable containers to transport water into Bangladesh you'd have to be a masochist to advocate a zero-impact policy.
The whole concept is nutty! Zero Impact! Seeing as you're spending all your time covering up the tracks you've been so careful not to make in the first place, why bother living at all?!?? In fact, let's all take the day off work to show how much we love the environment, how sorry we are that we've changed things, how grateful we are for the opportunity to live on this Earth and how responsible we will be with our burdens that we intelligent creatures have nobly undertaken as guests on this planet and commit suicide.
It'll be swell.
Let's not waste our fossil fuels trying to improve this world, no no no, let's stop using fuel altogether! That's much wiser, you see, because human beings are evil and so the less they impact the world, the better off we'll all be.
Ridiculous.
Absolutely ridiculous.
In all seriousness, if you pollute a lot, try to pollute less. But instead of spending all your time definitively negating your impact on the earth, consider that you will never 100% succeed at this goal. You WILL harm the planet, so maybe try to make up for it by doing something productive in the interim.
Maybe you can pollute the world a little bit and still help it out a lot more, you know? Instead of doing less and less, consider the help you can do for us all if you do more and more.
18 September 2007
Comedy
Comedy happens to have a formula to it.
Status, you see, is a categorization of something - especially a person. Most statuses are assigned without thinking of them. These statuses can be shifted, or changed, to something more in tune with reality. A roomful of women doctors and male nurses, for example, is a comical situation... not because it's unlikely, just because it's unexpected (and harmless).
Apparently if you have a status shift happening within your brain in a surprising and harmless fashion, you laugh. That's how it works.
Like that one priest in Denver who kept holding "late Sunday" choir practice for the older teenage boys, when someone decided to secretly videotape what was going on behind the curtain. You guessed it, they practiced choir the entire time, then the priest went home to his wife. As expected, right? Of course.
You expect people's status to stay the same. It's shocking to see it change. A shock that poses no threat makes you laugh. As it turns out, harmless shock is apparently funny.
Like the suicide bomber in his basement trying to wire his chest bomb and ends up blowing himself up. That's comedy, pal.
It is said that puns are the worst form of humor, physical gags are the most primitive (naturally my favorite), satire is the best form of humor, and irony is the most sophisticated.
Monty Python, au contraire, is just silly.
11 September 2007
Free Photo of Public Art
The Louvre in Paris.
Very very nice. Also, expensive.
And very large, if you click on the image to expand.
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