This book is a set of true stories and emotions, combined

to produce a work of art. Any resemblance to fiction is

purely coincidental and does not reflect the ability or

extent of the author’s imagination.

Thanks.
Feeling pores through skin and poisons and saves the
world in unexpected ways.
Naturally expecting poison, I start in Greece, in 2007,
with a broken heart.

And shards of heart muscle clinking around the insides

of a man can, I fear, let more of him out.
Imagine a gun on every street corner in Beirut.

Imagine rockets in Gaza and tanks in Syria – the most

dangerous peace in history, the most intelligent people
on Earth and you’re one of them.

Imagine chest bombs in Jerusalem.

Right.

Now imagine Greeks in bikinis and do well not to

forget, for in a trip across the minds that change the
world we begin with the experienced – and few
people have brewed and drunk more poison than
Europeans.
How to Piss Off a Cretan

There is a thing to be said about the cold a man

experiences during the one hundred and fifty-three
hour train ride across Siberia, but none more important,
I’ve noticed, than the simple delight of rinsing it off with
a ferryfull of Mediterranean sunshine and a deckful of
Greek bikinis.

I would have taken a picture but, you know, I didn’t

want to be that guy.

After all, I try to be polite when it comes to most things.

Be nice, considerate, and helpful, I tell myself.

Good boy.

Some things, however, I’m glad to be a prick about.

Scratch that... some things I’m ecstatic to be a prick

about. I don’t mind rocking the boat right off its
timbers as long as it’s full people who are afraid of
water.

I meet a lady in Athens today. It’s Tuesday, April 25th,

2007 and I figure, hell, this may be a good day to get
into a bit of trouble.

What’s the best advice to give to a traveler?

According to my parents it’s “You be safe, OK?”

Which is like telling an ant not to get squashed.

According to the official website of the United States

Department of State it’s “Don’t be a target.”

Which is like telling a turkey not to be delicious.

And according to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

it’s “Don’t panic.”

Which is like walking into a dance club and, after

watching everybody making damned fools of
themselves, you see that one dude in the back just
kickin it, keepin it real, and tellin no lies.

Dig.
Now I’m not saying that the ladies are wrong or even
unhelpful, I’m just saying that Douglas Adams can rock
it in a way that Mom and Condoleeza just can’t.

And I’m staring at this statue of Thesius in the Athenian

Archeological Museum wondering why you’re not
supposed to take pictures of it. Who would care?

It’s so cool, I think. If you look at early Greek art (to the
left and previous page) it’s vapid, dull, and
basically like all art that came before it. Lifeless.
Accurate, sure. Probably the most accurate in history
(check out his man), but the fella’s just standing there
naked. So what? Put it on my grave and don’t charge
me for it.

And then these Athenians come around and make

real, emotional, beautiful sculptures.

I’m staring at a gorgeous one only I can’t take a

picture?

“Excuse me,” I ask the fat Greek who hadn’t left her
post in ten minutes, “do you speak English?”

“A leetle,” she says but she probably doesn’t know most

of the words I’m thinking.
“Is it OK if I take one picture of this really quick?”

“No, no,” she says with no smile, “no pictures.”

“Why not?”

“No pictures.”

Now, to me, this rule doesn’t make sense. I rack my

brain for another ten minutes and just can’t figure out
why this would be the case. Whom could it hurt?

I look at the shape of his bronze muscles, the

expression on his ancient face, the apparent motion in
the fingers. How does someone make that?

I blow off some steam a few rooms over and run into
this naked marble lady, opposite.

A hundred years earlier, art was either a god standing

still or a dude sticking an axe into another dude.

And even the best ones looked like parodies of people

without unique features to parody.
And how about this one? The most beautiful sculpture
in all the land is Michelangelo’s Pietà – but this is
nothing to break a lens with.

It’s carved out of a rock, for God’s sake.

Anyhow, after getting a minor marble man myself I

can’t contain the curiosity any more.

In my opinion, the best test of stupidity is to put a man

in an all white room with a big red button in the middle
that reads

DO NOT PUSH

If he doesn’t push it after five minutes, he’s an idiot.

I don’t care what people say, intelligence requires

attitude.

I walk back. Slowly.

I put on my art snob visage.

I do this kind of thing that makes me look more

dignified than a person should normally look; you see,
I have this trick where I put my hands behind my back
and grasp them together; then, at the same time, I look
at a slightly more upwards angle than that with which
a neck should typically be comfortable.

I meander around, showing a clear but trifling

disapproval of everything I see, as though nothing were
valid enough for my acceptance nor yet quite
disturbing enough for my contempt.

And she looks at me.

Her Greecey eyes follow me around so I just use it as

more of a chance to ignore her still more and grant her
the regard of contempt still less.

La da da da da, I sing to myself.

I reach inside my pocket and turn on my camera.

Dum da dum dum.

Just as she looks away I jump to her left, whip it out of Heavyset woman’s hand, foreground.
my pocket and shoot.

Not pictured: Thesius.

“Hah-HA!” I say after I push the button, but before the
two seconds elapse when the stupid son of a flippin
motherless piece of crap camera actually takes the
shot she puts her hand in front of the lens!
“Click,” says the camera.
Embarrassment. Confusion. Still I just stare at her with
this I won’t go down without a fight look and back up a
few steps.
She stands. Glares.
Don’t panic, I think quietly.
And then I get wise to her whole operation. I hold up
my camera like I’m going to take another picture.
As predicted, she lunges towards me so I run straight
back at her, deek left, and leap to the right. She
follows.
I do a quick 360 around the sculpture and I find
myself smack dab in front of the famed bronze hero
who defeated Medusa with an easy two seconds lead
before the fat tub of Greece can catch her breath and
reach me so I snap the sweetest shot in my quarter of
a century on this earth, stare eagle-eyed straight into
the backs of her corneas, shout “U.S.A.!” with a smile
the size Texas, hightail it out of there as fast as my feet
can carry me, and in my own humble experience I’ve
found that that’s the best way to piss off a Cretan.
Some people say the best way to lose weight is to
exercise? I think if you did something that scared the
bejeezus out of you once a day you’d be pumping
blood like an Olympian.
And as I’m writing this, still with an extra liter or so of
hemoglobin flowing through my head, all I mean to say
is imagine yourself in a society that has meticulously
researched and documented world art history,
invented dramatically new industrial means of
manufacturing art, and produced revolutionary artists
whose works are being bought and studied across the
globe as the most beautiful products ever made – the
most modern society known to humankind, the most
advanced in the history of the planet, and you’re in it.
This is Athens in 500 BC and everything this society calls
great art, everything they know about ancient
masterpieces and modern genius was just about to be
turned upside down by a handful of people.
What were those people thinking?
I am amazed by anyone who can turn marble
(marble!) into something like that.
But I am more amazed with the fact that that intrigue,
that feeling of personal connection to things, seems to
be missing from everyone I know today.

That intrigue and connection, which make us curious,

may be the first step in creating value from thought.

In fact, the way a sculptor must feel before he or she

creates wealth from rock is so noticeably absent from
our society that I’m inclined to pick up sculpture myself.

...only I don’t have the time.

So I hop on another ferry and sail the Aegean.

Hahahahahahaha!!!

Thesius, baby.

Oh yes. Thesius.
The Last Time You Giggled

“We, too, have too many old people in our country,”

the Dutchman says to me this morning, “and too few
young people.”

I skewer a fresh slice of apple, orange, and pear with

my fork and scoop up a large helping of yogurt and
granola in this bowl of Anatolian deliciousness that’s
just been served to me. Very tasty.

“But we are solving the problem,” he goes on as I listen

through that sound of granola crunching inside my
head that’s much louder for me than it is for everyone
else, “free cigarettes for everyone over 65.”

“Skydiving lessons, bungee jumping, rock climbing, no

charge,” he says, “all expenses paid visas to Iraq, Iran,
Syria – they love it!”
Nice, I don’t say. Nice.

And this is how my day starts. Breakfast, jokes, and no

water because it’s too expensive.

This is the story of the first time I’ve giggled in years.

It starts with breakfast.

It ends with relaxation.

The sky is blue.

I wear flip flops now because I lost my shoes in Izmir,

and with each of the thirteen thousand five hundred
steps (as I have ample time to calculate), I flip and
then I flop, swallow no spit down my parched throat,
and then vow to take better notice of my stuff.

Also I have Let it Be by the Beatles atemporally pacing

its way back and forth through my head, for the top of Some dude sticking a trident into another dude.
the mountain is where Virgin Mary used to live – and I
am on a pilgrimage.
National Ephesus Museum

It is said she attributes her health to the purity and

particular holiness of the natural springs underneath
this house.

The road to Mother Mary’s.
Cave of the Seven Sleepers, one mile to the right.
I flip and flop and sweat to drink from these springs.
But I have far to go.
Consider a riddle.
You are in a room alone. The room is empty except for
a lead pipe sticking twelve inches out of the ground
and a ping pong ball resting loosely at the bottom with
about an eighth of an inch wiggle room on either side.
With me so far?
OK. How do you get the ball out of the pipe?
You can’t do anything stupid like “go down to the store
and buy an ice pick and stab it” because that’s not
how good riddles work. You can’t leave the room and
you can’t use anything that isn’t naturally apart of you
(let’s even say you’re naked) or would naturally come
out of you except you’re not pregnant and I’m not sure
if that would help anyhow and you can’t damage the
ball, the pipe, or yourself.
When I find myself in times of trouble... I curse Paul
McCartney for writing such a catchy tune and flip and
flop another thousand times, as I mentally exaggerate
my struggle.
Flip let it be flop let it be flip let it beee-flop-eeee oh let
it flip be...

And then I summit. Ahh.

Actually, I don’t relax just yet. It feels good, but the real
twist in my twine was my thirst.

Figure out the riddle yet?

Ghandi said that to a starving man God can only

come in the form of bread. I know this and so I know
these springs will taste lovely even if they came from
the sweat glands of Satan’s hound. Or Detroit.

And still, I admit that some minor magical ecstasy

caressing through my veins is not entirely unexpected
from this water.

First, I walk through her house/chapel thing, light a

votive candle, diligently cross my chest, feel the stones This is a good picture ... like it or not.
underneath my arid fingertips, and bow my head to
the painting of the Mother of Christ.

Humility is to observation what rock is to stone.

And now to the springs.

 I futilely strain to wipe away all my preconceptions in
an effort to honestly observe the taste of the water.

Then I remember the chapel. This helps.

I unleash the source of the well, wash my hands, and

drink.

Ahh.

That’s the stuff, I think.

But before I tell you what it tastes like, and overly

bastardizing your opinion with my own, I should
disclose that I devoutly believe in God, but agree with
no one as to who he or she is and what he or she does.

Making me maddeningly irreligious.

I mention this because the water is exactly as crisp,

Mother Mary’s house, partly reconstructed. pure, smooth, and magical as anything else I’ve drunk,
and that basically says it all about my faith.

I drink for about five minutes, burp a slight amount of it

up, swallow it back down, and resign to sit in the shade.

Ahh.
That’s the stuff.

Observation is the beginning of all things.

Confucius said that nothing can be accomplished

without honest observation of the world around you.

And yet few things are more challenging.

I stand up and start flipping and flopping down the

other side of the mountain to see the ruins of Ephesus,
the city where Saint John brought the blessed virgin.

Flip flop flip flop another seven thousand times

because flip one step is a foot and a flop half and
it’s seven flip miles to the ruined gates of flop Ephesus
and...

Ever notice how you have more than five senses?

You can sense pressure even without a sense of touch, To the left, Corinthian columns; to the right, tourists;
and know the position of your limbs, too.
underground, John.

You smell with your tongue. You taste with the roof of
your mouth all the way down the back of your throat
and you can taste more than just sweet, salt, sour, and
bitter – the most famous is the “flavor” of MSG called
umami.
Women living together synchronize their meunstration
cycles. People next to you can adopt similar emotions
to yours without seeing, smelling, or hearing you.

Your brain vibrates at different frequencies, you know,

depending on your state of mind. And just as a rattling
snare drum resonates with the one next to it – causing
it, too, to rattle – your mind travels into other people’s
heads.

I’m not saying you can read other people’s thoughts,

but as I sense the existence of liquid inside my bladder I
recall how much goes unobserved because we ignore
the possibility of being able to observe it.

And it is important to remember this.

The amount we know about sensation can be fit into a

library. The amount we do not can be fit into the rest of
the universe.

So I make it to Ephesus but my eyes are set, and have

been for the last two months, on seeing my first ancient
wonder of the world.

Except now I have to pee.

Very badly.
And there are no restrooms.

Everywhere I turn... to the left are tourists taking

pictures, to the right is Caligula’s grave, up ahead is
a second-century aqueduct, and behind is the most
massive theater in ancient history.

Probably better hold it in, I think.

But Ephesus is large and by the time I leave my gut is

practically beerbellying and my seeing a dried up
Roman fountain is not helping.

If only it had some fluid in it, I think.

Today is a good day for me, but not while I’m walking
a solid mile down a road plastered on either side with
fruit stands, carpet-bagging huts, and knick-knack
shacks.

No. No, not at this time at all. The Great Library at Ephesus, large enough to hold all
we know about sensation and observation, ruined.
This time, for me, becomes unbearable.

The flips are worse than the flops, I reckon, and each
one seems to percolate more and more fluid out of my
lower intestine and into my bladder.
Ungh.

I start to walk on my toes because it’s less bumpy.

Finally I get to the site. Millennia ago, it looked like the

replicas (to the left) but now the only thing that stands
taller than three feet is a single monumental pillar.

Brigoddamniliant, I think. Now how can this many

people be rushing around trying to sell me maps and
old coins and necklaces and statuettes and not have a
single bloody restroom.

Not many tourists, I think. If I can only find some shelter

or maybe hop the fence and head out into the fields and ...

Then it happens. I’m no gastroenterologist but I’m sure

there is a scientific term for the mental breaking point
after which all social limitations become sidelined by
immediate biological needs.

This point is reached at 2:35pm on May 7th, 2007 in the

ancient grounds of the fallen Rome for one Sean
McGowan of Santa Maria, California.

At this point my moronic pilgrimage – a plight I would

suggest could be of the most sophisticated of all
human endeavors – is reduced to a clumsy rush for
cover by an animal literally tripping over his own flip-
flops, wading through the marshes of the ruined site
at Ephesus, and reaching a spot where I finally finally
finally observe that no one is watching because I’m
hidden behind the massive Corinthian stone
column that housed the ancient Temple of Artemis and
I let loose like a fire hydrant, expunging a full gallon of
Virgin Mary the mother of Christ our Savior’s holy water
all over the seventh wonder of the world and, as
sometimes happens, I get that funny little tingle up the
length of my spine just when that last little bit tinkles out
and I surrender myself to that wholesome childish glee,
giggling for a good long while like a kid in a pool.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

Heeheehee.

Feeling such a wave of carefreedom, I actually laugh

out loud as I make a demonstrable fool of myself
lying on the ground trying desperately to get the whole Ephesus, no longer with working plumbing.
thing into a good shot.

Heehee, I think.

That’s also the answer to the riddle, by the way. You

pee in the pipe.
Stupid? Yeah, I know. All riddles are.

But at present I’m drinking an ice cold beer, getting

the keys on my laptop dirty because I’m massaging
my feet in between paragraphs, and for some reason I
can’t help but think that everyone is stupid but me.

It sounds silly but I’m serious and God poison my

water if I’m wrong no one’s opinion is as valid as my
own. Same for you.

Geniuses are overrated these days, because I prefer a

good meal to a great work of art.

You take the dumbest man alive and sit him in front of
Stephen Hawking for an hour, then take him
skydiving and ask him which was more memorable,
fun, and helpful.

The most accurate – and funniest – stuff comes from

direct observation.

Everything else, as the saying goes, is dust on a rose.

...or holy urine evaporating into the air we breathe.

A Quick Slice to the Neck

“Don’t take pictures,” the UN soldier tells me, “people

will think you are an Israeli.”

Across the street a Lebanese clutches his M16, standing

on a tank, and stares straight at me.

Something tells me, this time, I should listen.

I leave the UN envoy and head farther south – into the

stronghold of the militia that calls itself the Party of
God and America calls terrorists: Hezbollah.

Destruction and construction are everywhere.

Empathy is important, I think to myself, but almost trite.

People kill and people die; I lose the benefit of thought
as I keep relating to this same story over and over
again.

Tyre was razed a thousand years ago. Today, as I look

out the window of my taxi, I see the same stones
littering the same streets from the war a few months
back.

As we slow I see a great photo opportunity ahead. No

one is around so I stick my camera out of the cab and
take this shot anyway, which turned out rather good.

Hezbollah is sponsoring much of the rebuilding here

and gaining no small amount of popularity because of
it. After the 1996 war they gave $40,000 in American
cash to anyone who lost their house to Israeli battle
bulldozers.

Very popular.

This is their stage.

Last year, backed loudly by Syria and quietly by Iran,

they launch war against Israel. It happens like this.
Symbolism in Tyre.
In the midday sun rockets fly across the no-man-zone.

Israel invades Lebanon, shells Beirut.

Thousands die.

Half a million flee.

 The worst fighting that takes place, according to the
Italian UN envoy I am just leaving, is in Maroun er Ras.

And so we drive South.

The air gets colder.

Here’s a woman with a pile of rocks for a home. Here’s

an entire demolished neighborhood. No wonder they
flee, I think.

Sorry if this sounds coldest of all, but I’m tired of

empathizing with these people. The story’s been told.

Instead I find myself thinking about the person who will

end this. I’ve learned nothing from history if not that
human creativity can both ruin and grow us in
unimaginable ways.

The faultline between heaven and hell, here on Earth,

A I meet the woman who still lives here, and gets a is the electricity delicately sparking between your ears.
discount on air conditioning.
There is someone who can stop this.

How does that person feel right now, I think?

One hundred and twenty miles south of here Hamas

fires rockets into Israel, luring them into all out war.
A slab of muscle no heavier than a grenade pin lies just
behind your forehead and with half an hour of exercise
each day it can create a law for all humankind – or
settle for a quick slice to the neck.

Many bombs are falling now. Very sad.

Hezbollah makes it hard for bombs to stop them. A

decade ago they took to the nasty habit of blowing
themselves up and massacring civilians in the process.
They also begin kidnapping Westerners.

Both of these strategies are exceedingly effective.

They wanted the US to leave in 1996. They bomb

western embassies. We leave the next week.

I get out of the cab into an eerie calm at Maroun er

Ras, eight hundred meters from Israel and the no-mans-
land border.
Israel – Lebanon border in the immediate background
First thing I do? Naturally. I take a picture.
(running left to right).

Sure, the guy just went to war.

The rules are: Arabs go on this side, Jews go on that
side, or this guy shoots you.
Sure, he probably thinks I’m an Israeli spy.

Sure, he has a gun and is staring straight at me.

 I have a person reading this book who is for the
moment convinceable that a system of order can be
followed that will end all serious war for the next
thousand years so now that I’ve shot you you’d better
make damn sure that no one publishes this book after
you shoot me.

He walks up to me.

The wind blows. Heavily.

Mosquitoes swarm.

“Min ayna enta?” He says. Where are you from.

The cardinal rule of these situations is to know how to

say ‘peace be with you’ in Arabic.

I can’t remember.

Would you stay? My mind freezes. I forget.

I learn that the panic process of my brain (known

as the sympathetic nervous pathway) has somehow
developed staggeringly strong instincts to increase
my heartbeat, sweat, look nervously in all directions,
clench my jaw, widen my eyes, and above all
pathetically pretend like I’m not panicking.
“Ameriki,” I butcher, “Ana Ameriki.”

He doesn’t believe it, I fear, and waves his hand back

and forth saying la, la, la, la, la, meaning no, no, no,
no, no.

What are you doing, he asks me in Hebrew.

I’m stupid but I’m no ... well anyway I’m smart enough
not to respond.

“Who are you with,” he demands in Arabic.

Good question. I’m presently on the market, but by

myself.

“What are you doing?”

Also a great question but he doesn’t mean it in a

philosophical sense. I assure him with a huge smile that
I’m a friend, a tourist, am just here to see what Background: wall ruined thousands of years ago.
happened, and al-Hamdu lil-Lah. All praise be to God.

Foreground: wall riuned last year.

“There is nothing to see here,” he tells me, in English,
“they have destroyed everything.”

He tells me about Israeli bulldozers that ran through the

entire village last year.
I’m sorry. Salaam ‘alaykum, I now remember. Damnit.

I notice these tiny little bugs that have amassed
themselves by the hundreds on my clothes and my skin.
I’ve never seen them before. Like gnats only smaller
and stickier.
It’s hard to get them off.
I wander for an hour and then return for a shower. The
little pests eventually covered all my clothes and skin.
To see an army so close to war, so ready to pounce
at the faintest sign of danger, it helps me to see how
much we all want to avoid that situation.

They start to sting. In fact, the Lebanese here are the most peaceful
people I’ve ever seen, despite – or perhaps because
The man looks around and walks back to his post with – it’s happened for fifty thousand years.
a wave of his right hand.
And despite all the guns.
I walk away from him and take a few more pictures,
shown on previous pages. Anyhow, they hope I publish this book, I think.

It is very very quiet here.

Stay on the roads, I think.

The UN estimates a quarter million cluster bomblets

failed to explode on impact in Lebanon last year, and
presently litter the countryside. They are shiny, too, so
the bigger problem is that children tend to find them.

Stay on the roads.

Think Well

I wake up this morning and Al Jazeera is on.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Jihad,” they say.

Ah.

They are right. A militant group called Fatah al-Islam is

firing mortars and anti-aircraft missiles at the Lebanese
army 45 miles North of here. The army has brought in
tanks and is shelling the Palestinian compound where
the militants are hiding.

Jihad if the ones with the weapons will it, the way I see
it.

This is how my day starts. And it’s all downhill from here
as 36 ghosts can attest.
The sun rises and sets.

Bodies stay warm for hours, I overhear a local man say

in an interview tonight, not understanding the
expression used when asked when things will cool
down here. The bodies may cool soon, but half an
hour ago something snapped two inches above the
nape of a guerilla and ten minutes later a bomb
explodes twelve blocks south of me. Flames climb the
walls and fire extinguisher drips into the gutters. Glass
windows and shopfronts are shattered up to three
blocks away. As the buildings burn, I think, this may
take longer to cool.

However, as the country I just bought a kebab in falls

into war I want to write this before I change my mind:

I don’t want to go.

I want to stay.

Nuts? Damn straight.

I have no idea what makes a perversion. I’ve read

dozens of books on neuroanatomy and
neuropsychology, hundreds of studies and journals,
and thousands of people’s faces and I can’t for the life
of me explain the root causes of mental abnormalities.
 Some people are just looney and for whatever reason
believe the senseless and commit the dangerous.

What I can’t figure out, though, is why there’s so many

of you out there.

Everyone in my family, twenty or so American friends,

and five Europeans all seem to agree with the purely
absurd principle that when war breaks out I should, of
all things, leave.

But what could be more dangerous? What could be

less sensible?

Who’s making this world safe, after all?

I take a good hard look in the mirror and all I ever see
is my face. But take a look at half a ton of shattered
glass that’s sucked into the streets from a colossal drop
in pressure and in the reflection I only see madness.
Soldiers on every other street corner makes it easy
I see a desire to get away from this and bury it and
to respond quickly.
never speak of it again. I see people telling me this is
other people’s problem.
I’m going through my email now.
Opposite is what I read.
They may sound like the voices of rational, emotional,
sensitive human beings but I assure you underneath
that veil, which appears to give them the qualities of
perfectly healthy people, there is simply a thought
which has yet to occur to them.
And the beast that prowls in silence prowls wild.
This blast, one of many, hits close to me. Very close.
But because they don’t see it, it hits much closer to
them.
Because they aren’t here to smell the smoke
churning out of families’ furniture, it threatens them far
more than me.
My family and I are all close. Really close. When they
read this they need to understand that, of course, I
mean no harm. Least of all do I expect to recruit them
into the Red Cross or anything.
But I do expect them to learn one thing from this. The
history books for the third millennium have yet to be
written, but I predict that when they do this thing will
It’s selfish because you’re doing what you want
to do and its [sic] hur ting Mom and Dad
tremendously.
-Lon (brother)
Don’t forget for a second that you are sitting on
a powder keg .... [You are] a foolhardy young
man who is on some kind of mission that is taking
[you] blindly into danger with no obvious benefit
nor clear outcome.
-Stu (godfather)
I had a terrible dream last night about you. I
won’t even tell.
-Terri (mom)
...please get your ass out of Lebanon. There will
be plenty of other times to check it out when it
isn’t about to erupt into civil war.
-Rob (brother)
Ma just called worried sick and going craz y.
And Dad’s literally begging you to leave. As is
Stuar t.
-Scott (brother)
Please, please leave that countr y, now.
-Paul (dad)
be the first chapter. This thing is not to be ignored, but
neither is it to be backed up by ancient history.

Those emails in my inbox are powerful so I’m going to

have to be equally emphatic about this.

I want to be clear.

Not only am I going to put a box around it and put

plenty of space above, below, beside, and through it
to accentuate its clarity and importance, I am also
going to put two pages of white space before and
after it to further solidify the point that, while I mean no
harm, it is above all not meant to be taken lightly.

OK?

OK.

Now, wait.

Wait.

Alright, go ahead.
I love you but you don’t have the luxur y of sitting this one out.
Also, don’t blow anyone up. I assume they know that,
though.

With me so far? I don’t want to lose you and have you

start thinking I’m crazy or anything.

Good.

All I mean to say is that this planet of ours is shrinking in

half every 40 years. The maximum capacity of Earth to
provide food and water will be reached in under two
decades.

And most people I know are still making babies.

Close or distal this war is all of ours and is fought at

home.

So we fight. The last thing we need to combat racism,

prejudice, and terrorism is, at the end of the day, a
military. But oh, the thoughts we think.

The things we think. The things you, of all people, think

are seconds away from your neighbor’s reaction and
only months away from a gentle cascading of ideas
trickling it into a great pool of the reaction of all
civilization.
So take care, as they say, and think well.

Your children will thank you.

I’ll work on figuring out the exact nature of your

neurosis later.

Thanks.
Why I Left

There’s a man playing a lute across the street from me.

I’m eating half a chicken.

Not just half the meat, mind you... I’m looking at liver, a
couple feathers, and half a goddamned tongue.

It smells worse than it tastes, though. Really.

I’m two hours from the Jordanian border at a busstop

and not in the mood for the bus to be stopping.

Actually, this is a good time for a breather. Take a few

minutes to relax, for you’ve read a lot – and this is not
an easy book. And it doesn’t really make sense, so far,
does it?

You’ve sweated and disagreed with me at every page.

I know.
You’ve been disappointed with the allusions to every
genre, the morals of every story, and the
punchlines of every joke.

But still you’ve read on.

And here is a fine story.

A story of creativity.

Here is a story of conquest and, unfortunately, one of

irreparable tragedy.

It stings.

But the tragedy is inevitable... and the brilliance at our

disposal is worth it.

Here is May 27th, 2007 – the capital of America’s rogue

nation “sponsoring terrorism”, the fourth corner in the
Axis of Evil, the home of two million Iraqi refugees, and “Assad! Assad! He’s our man!
the heart of the world’s oldest living city.
If he can’t do it...” Bang!

Yet it starts with an animal looking out across the

savannah.

The air is cold.


Me ignoring the only two bits of advice
Condoleeza Rice has on her Syria website:
avoid large crowds and don’t take pictures.
She is in love and has three children. She has no name.
She has no food.
She lives in fear and lives in astonishment. I see a large
white tent in front of me surrounded by armed guards
and think about this tale of surprise that ends with the
creation of a young woman’s soul, but still I feel no
astonishment like she.
Flabbergastery, some may even call it.
Bewilderment.
Her brain fires and fires like gunshots and mortars. She
balances when her ears feel gravity and when her
mind fills with music she sings to her babies like milk
from her breast.
As Bashar Assad songs fill the air I watch men run down
the streets of Damascus to hole up in canvas tents with
doctors and needles to make them bleed thumbprints
pressed onto presidential ballots, for it is election day
in this dictatorship – and the people must choose.
Yet they know no beauty like the tune of a heartbeat
heard from inside a womb, and I know no one who
does.
The heroine of my story is not always happy, but she is
always accepting. She always observes. She sees how
sticks and rocks kill people easier than fists and teeth
– and heavy sticks are best of all.

There is weight in the space that lies an inch and a half

behind her left eyebrow and she understands that the
wall in front of her cave makes her children safer – and
larger walls are better still.

I meet a man with a large automatic rifle who has

finally agreed to take me – against the law – inside
a voting tent and from there he explains to me how
much he likes his iron-fisted ruler, Bashar Assad, and
how he is proud to vote in blood instead of ink. He is
serious. He does like Assad but of course he has no
choice in the matter because he’d be shot, imprisoned,
or worse if he campaigns against him.

“Can I see a ballot?” I ask.

“La la la la la,” he says, singing my rejection.

The parade outside rages.

“Assad! Assad!” The mob shouts within eyeshot of

literally hundreds of photos of him.
 The mob has no choice and that’s the difference
between our heroine and the man in front of me.

Knowing their value, she collects rocks.

She hears a sound.

Uh oh.

Fear.

Which rock is best for safety, she wonders. Which rock

is best of all?

As I say, her powers of reason are as sharp as yours

shortly after you roll out of bed and so it takes no time
to reach a consensus inside the congress of her head.
The voices all agree.

Yes this one, she thinks. This one is best of all. She waits
The “Let’s All Take a Day Off Work and Celebrate and waits and the sound stops.
How Great I Am” Parade, downtown Damascus
Safety.

But then something happens.

It is a very great thing. An irreparable thing and she is

again surprised.
Befuddled, even.
Astounded.
She is ecstatic, for a thought has passed the frail wiring
from one side of her brain to the other – and though
nothing in front of her has changed, history has been
written.
This monumental affair, which is silent, is a feeling that
then exists in the universe for the first time.
Now and never before an animal looks at the rock and
sees how it can improve.
Now there is creation behind the eyes.
She is not satisfied.
And dissatisfaction is not an old affair for our ancestors.
She breaks two rocks against each other and a sharper
weapon is made from a dull one by means of
destruction. For once, a tool is made, not just used.
At this time a human is made from an animal by means
of creation.
Here is the woman who forms the soul which is so weak
in the man across from me.
The wind blows through the third millennium in
Damascus. I ask him again if I can see a ballot for a
second.
“La.”
He’s nice, regardless. He goes to get me a cup of tea.
I edge closer to the registration table and record this
ghastly display of imprivacy.
Men register their ID card, name, address, and
thumbprint in front of a government official. The
official then watches which way the man casts his vote,
publicly records it, and places it in a clear plastic bin.
Can I take a picture, I ask the gunman? He asks to see
my camera.
I give it to him and he shoots me instead (with the
camera). Picture on the next page (note the above
average composition skills!).
Better than nothing, I think.
Still, I consider for a second the predicament that Syria
 and I are in.

Humans are of the very special species of animals who

can actually make tools, instead of just use them.

To get frustrated is easy. To be dissatisfied and creative

takes a particular kind of mild insanity and is one of the
most difficult things to do on a consistent basis.

Yet that principle is precisely what this book is about.

What, you might ask, would this heroine do if she were

in Syria today?

Well it could be argued that she would line up to vote,

register her name and address, and (in front of the
government official) mark a big fat “no” in type AB
blood and suffer the consequences.

This is possible.
The optometrist who rules Syria, and me.
However, I have unique, disfigured wrinkles on my
cerebrum and I personally like to think that she would
sneak into a voting booth, befriend one of the
militiamen, get him to trust her, and when everyone
turns their back to see that a large speaker has just
fallen over from the wind outside she’d grab a voting
slip, stick it in her pocket and run from the tent that has
a ninety foot poster of the goofiest looking patriarch in
the land above it and ten men with ten automatic rifles
outside of it and hightail it the hell out of Syria so fast
that half of her belongings stay at the hostel which is
trying to rip her off anyhow so she can shoot it with her
trusty digital camera and show everyone who is willing
to get suckered into a thirty dollar book by an
unknown author exactly what the only official
referendum slip to make it out of Syria looks like and
propose to the world that, while there is actually such
a thing as an election ballot with only one name on it,
there is no such thing as a clear choice.

But I never met her so your guess is as good as mine.

How does she do it?

Time screams through my ear as I sit with another ten

minutes to go before we head to the border. I am not
in the mood to wait.

Busstops are murder for the impatient.

My heart was broken 215 ago and this trip is, for me,
about discovering why I would impulsively travel across
the world and through the Middle East.

Today I know the reason why I left America.

However, I have absolutely no idea what that reason is
and this phenomenon is not all that unusual.
There is in fact a famous term for this irony: insplosivity.
A nobel prize winning geneticist puts it like this:
When you suddenly see the p roblem, something
happens that you have the ans wer – befo re you
a re able to put it into wo rds. It is al l done
subconsciously. This has happened many times
to me and I k now when to take it ser iously, I’m so
absolutely su re. I don’t talk about it, I don’t have
to tel l anybody about it, I’m just su re this is it.
Her name is Barbara McClintock and she is right.
Creativity happens under the surface, but it’s simple.
First, be dissatisfied.
Then wait.
Wait.
And have faith in yourself. The solution comes.
It really happens. It really works.
I’m a natural sucker – most of all for myself – so I have
the distinct advantage of being a believer when all
hope is lost, tragic dealings comes to heroes and
heroins across the world like a Stalin over Russia, and
still believe that a brilliance of mind, a sharpened
sense of observation, and that part inside of you that
lets loose and kicks everyone else’s ass is worth it.
Answers come from your subconscious if you welcome
the thought.
But the wait can be murder.
Go, bus, go, I think.
“La,” says the bus.
Sigh.
What Say We Look Away

A boy looks up at the desert sky with me.

The warm breeze walks through the dry valley hills of

a little town that goes months without rain this time of
year.

The white stars and yellow planets plist through the

black, blue universe and revolve so slowly it reminds
me how my own youth is being so gracefully forgotten.

This fragile traveler from the United States of America

looks out over the village, slept in moonlight.

“Jesus was a good man,” says the fourteen year old

Iraqi.

I adjust my body, for the rooftops of churches are often

not as comfortable as the pews underneath.
The boy and I sit together and wonder at the pure
unnameable and purposely unspecific.

And we see them.

We watch fireworks explode over Jerusalem, for the

Shabbat has ended and today we are in the West Bank
on the anniversary of the Six Day War. Forty years ago
today, the Israelis claimed this land and called it Zion.

Today, while Jews celebrate in Tel Aviv, Arabs lay olive

branches at the gates of Bethlehem.

And so, today, we in the West Bank pity Palestine.

“Jews are very bad people,” the boy says. To his right is
his old, probably broken M16.

“They are the same as me and you,” I say, having

heard this often, and look at him, “and you know this in
your heart.”

I’ve found that saying that can sometimes make

someone second guess racism, if only for a few
seconds.

He sits quiet for a moment.


The little town of Bethlehem, with 30% unemployment.
There’s a train bound for Philadelphia, OK?
OK. And it’s going to run over three innocent women
who are passed out on the tracks, unless you heroically
pull the lever and reroute the train onto a track on
which there is only one innocent, unconscious woman.
Do you pull the lever? Switch from track A to B?
Think about it.
Of course you do.
It’s not pretty. In fact it’s downright despairing. But If
you can pull the lever, you have to make a choice – A
or B – and so of course you stitch the wound in pain
and pick the lesser of two evils.
OK so now here’s a better question.
There’s a train heading for Philadelphia and five
women are passed out on the track one mile ahead,
about to get run over and killed by the train. But this
time there’s a big fat dude just next to you and the only
way to stop the train is to push him in front of it. He will
die but it’s sure to save the five ladies’ lives.
Do you push him?
Think about it.

Of course there’s no good answer, but if you’re not

frustrated you’re really missing something upstairs.

Also, if you don’t give it a stern effort...

“Let me tell you a story,” I say to the kid.

I bring out my camera and show him the pictures I took

this morning, for this morning I wake up in Jerusalem
and see a great many things.

“You will see hundreds of tombstones,” I hear, sleep still

in my eyes, ”they are for Jewish people, but each one
represents an entire city, community, or village that
was massacred.”

I walk through the Holocaust museum and after the

sixth room, lined floor to ceiling with tombstones, I feel
faint.

I tell this to the Iraqi boy.

I show him the last picture I have. It’s a coat, opposite,

that a Nazi soldier made out of Hebrew scriptures to
humiliate Jewish prisoners.
 “Six million dead,” I say to him, “the worst crime of all.”

He puts his hand on his rifle, for tonight in Palestine we

pity the Jews.

I sniff.

“You are wrong,” he says, curiously, “but I cannot say

why.”

On the Palestinian side of what Israel calls the Security

Fence (the Palestinians call it the Apartheid Wall) that
stingily encloses this land from Israel there is painted for
miles the work of brilliant artists.

The graffiti, if you can call it that, shows flowering

imagery of paradise and judgement.

“First they ignore you,” it reads, at Tantur, in English,

“then they humiliate you, then you win. –Ghandi.”
Emotionally powerful art on the great wall being
A mile from Gaza lies an Israeli town called Sderot. For
built by Israel “between” the two nations.
the last few years, an average of eight Qassam rockets
have hit the town a day.

According to Amnesty International, Israel killed

around 4,000 Palestinians, mostly unarmed civilians,
slaughtered, including around 800 children, in just the
last seven years.

It’s often said that to understand the Arab-Israeli

conflict is to ride two bicycles at once. My two cents
is that it’s good practice to skin your knee and give it a
shot.

This afternoon, after I get scared white at the

Holocaust museum, I pack up and go to Palestine. At
the wall I see riots (to the right).

Police. Protesters. Military.

And near a nearby pineapple juice stand is a young

Arab with an automatic rifle who clearly wants to talk
to the white man taking pictures.

“Salaam ‘alaykum,” I say to him, remembering now

(thanks to a method better than shock therapy) how to
say ‘peace be with you’ in Arabic. Megaphone vs. Army ... normally this is no competition
but the speaker is a left-wing nut so no one cares.
He’s not impressed.

Score one for the gun.

“Where you are from,” he says.

“Ana Filisteen,” I say. I’m Palestinian.

He starts shouting.

OK kid, kidding kidding just kidding, cool your jets. I’m

American, I say, just like you.

At this he laughs and the second’s difference between

getting into a heated debate about President Bush’s
foreign policy and having a good chuckle when he
tells me he’s from Fallujah was easily stemmed by a
good joke.

Score one for the pun.

We start talking and before I know it we’re drinking tea

in Bethlehem and then he sneaks us onto the stone roof
of the church built over the cave where Jesus was born
(crib inside the cave pictured to the left).

He tells me about his home, a mere five hundred miles

away and, for me, closer than ever.

I have met no one who likes the fighting down here.

Here is a mix of people not wanting to pull the lever on

that train and people reasoning that, once they have
pulled the lever, they have the liberty, the responsibility,
or – scariest of all – the duty to determine the fates of
others.
“Will you ever go back to Iraq?” I ask quietly.

“Yes,” he says and looks far away, “when the fighting

stops.”

I also look away.

I ask him if I can take his picture.

He says no.

I listen.

The virgin mother that may have been, if she ever was,
surely did not chance to miss witness of the moment an
Iraqi and an American sit, loaded M16 and all, above
the church that shelters the little cave where she gave
birth to the tiny Jesus of Nazareth, and, underneath the
clouds which no one can see in the darkness, age.

We look at ourselves and I like to think that here and

now we both take a minute, if only inside our heads, to
try and stop all the fighting in all the world.

And in between the heavens, we think.

Hire the Shrink, Fire the Rifle

Who are you?

For me, it’s an easy question. The simple fact, as any

psychiatrist can attest, is that I’m two states away from
sanity and a half a klick upstream.

Really.

Today I trudge through the land of the Hashemites,

who claim to be the only true descendents of Moses,
and see the temple where Indiana Jones swipes the
Holy Grail.

I flipflop for over an hour.

Oy.

I start at the crack of dawn at the crack of a mountain

torn in two by the naturally disagreeable attitude of
tectonic plates.
The walls are high.

After climbing the mountain and traversing the

desert I arrive at the valley of the canyon of the
Crescent Moon.

It’s very impressive but, like meeting a movie star in

person, always slightly shorter than you expect.

I take a few shots and move on, for a nomad is

marrying his first wife tonight – and I’m invited.

I flipflop another eight miles.

Now, thanks for reading and I’ve tried to keep you in

the passenger seat so far but if you want to get off this
is your stop.

There are some adventures only fit for badass

Harrison Fords and me, after all. There are some
depths of thought you reach when you don’t want to
open your eyes, for there are many frightening
creatures to be found in the abyss below your skin
– and more still beneath the skin of another.

So here is my advice to you.

Play it safe. You’ve kept the world from exploding this

long so give yourself a heavy pat on the back and a
healthy bloody kick of dopamine to the lump three
inches behind your nose for doing such a good job.

Nice work. Seriously.

Pack your things and don’t forget to check for any

personal belongings you may or may not have brought
on board.

But this is it.

Me, I’m different. I’m an explorer.

I’m glancing through a dense cognitive psychology

book now and I find out that I had Turret’s Disorder as a
teenager.

Not as comically represented, it involves nervous ticks

and involuntary movements (and, less commonly,
inappropriate phrases of speech).

This was not just a cute thing either, I find out now I was
clinically sick.

I wasn’t the Easter basket filled with colored eggs Freud

got from his mom but I was quite a shy height above
the nest.
Tension builds up that I have to release and ticking
releases it. Head ticks, mouth ticks, and leg ticks are
the worst.

No one has perfected self-governance, though, so you

know what it feels like to jitter or tap your fingers when
you’re bored.

It is just more extreme for some.

Some patients with Turrets click their tension up so tight

they snap their own necks and die on the spot.

As I say, this is not the world for you.

It’s hot.

The sand sticks to my sweaty feet and the sun scorches

my newly-shaven head through no protection of
sunscreen.

SPF-0 we call it.

And then I get to the Bedouin village.

An Arab in a man-dress waits for me.

“Salaam ‘alaykum,” I raise my right hand.


Bedouin child who taught me a few swear words in
Arabic.
“Min ayna enta?” His eyes are fixed on me.
“Ana ‘Ordunni,” I smile. I’m Jordanian.
He and his camel stare at me. Then he roars with
laughter, signals to his son, who is apparently
hiding behind me with an AK47 waiting for me to turn
out to be an American spy or some other chap worth
firing a couple rounds into, and shakes his head.
Eep.
I don’t like this at all.
Too many guns and too little water, I think. This place is
enough to give a good man a headache.
They give me a huge embrace and show me to the
wedding.
When I was a child I was obsessive compulsive.
It seems to come down to a lot of little things I thought
were normal. When I spun around one way, I had to
spin back around the other way... there is an obsessive
urge that has to be satisfied.
I still cringe at the thought of stepping only one foot
on a crack, and sigh out loud in relief at the thought of
“evening it out” by stepping on it with the other foot.

Ahhhhhhh.

You know what this is like because emotion is only a

matter of degrees. If you’ve ever scratched a mosquito
bite you know exactly how this feels. It is symmetry to a
sculptor and cadence to composer. Hunger, fed.

Fools exaggerate our differences but you’re not far

from the looney bin and I’m not far from the stock
exchange.

Instead we are all caught somewhere between death

and normalcy in a happy little bell curve of relative
insanities.

Bedouin folk songs rage.

It is an odd thing to attend a wedding and, from start Bedouin wedding. Jordanians wear the red kuffiah,
to finish, be entirely sober. It occurs to me that without
Saudis wear the white.
my spontaneous desire to travel the world and my
frequent insistence on humor in inappropriate situations
And they can all shake it.
my first sober marriage would likely have been my own.

And that is a scary prospect.

My Muslim friend to my right tells me that there is no
alcohol here because it is unhealthy and unsafe.
Untrue. If this were the case, I observe, the Muslims to
my left would not be firing their AK47s into the air unless
Allah were to see those bullets safely return to the earth
and out of my way.
As it turns out, He does.
At this, he decides that I am indeed a good Muslim
and tells me that I also may fire a gun if I wish.
I do not.
I am comfortable being mad and still staying safe.
But you?
By all means, you be good little boys and girls and
obey the law, OK?
Good. Crazy thoughts and original thinking never led
to anything but danger and instability.
There is after all a great torrent of explosive thought
sealed behind our ignorance and contained under
great pressure.
To release this requires a special kind of intelligence – a
frightening, useful, and fun kind known as initiative.
I’ve met many dangerous characters but none like the
madmen that flow through my veins. I just prefer to
make friends with them. You, though, are surely sane
enough not to worry about anything below the glia of
consciousness.
And now, if you are still on board, seriously get the hell
out of my car because it’s mine and I’m sure you’re a
fine driver yourself.
Just play it safe and don’t go over the speed limit.
Me, I’m crazy enough to hike a mountain with a broken
foot and a wicked sunburn, even enough to stop at the
top of a cliff in raging winds to set my camera up for
a delayed exposure knowing that it could quite easily
careen down into the nothingness of the canyon at any
second so I could get myself in the shot, but not quite
enough to hire a shrink or fire a rifle.
But that’s me.
You, well, call and let me know how the world looks
below 60 mph.
Or start catching up.

Insanity, right, against the world.

After The Middle East

If the stars in the sky had ascended from the earth, it is

only reasonable to assume that the celestial launching
ground from which they began would have left
behind some scorched trace of their humbler
beginnings. Twelve thousand four hundred and fifty
seven years ago today, the sparkles in the atmosphere
we call Orion’s Belt aligned perfectly with the sands
of Africa where three mighty pyramids of stone now
stand, so large that the entire population of Egypt can
not rival the weight.

I see the great pyramids of Giza point still towards the

Milky Way as if three massive balls of burning gas had
hardened the surface of the planet, dragging dollops
of it behind as a whisk leaves monuments in whipped
cream, likely to the wide astonishment of the locals.

And here, in the earthly produce of the heavens, I

vomit.
I need to go back home.

“In the quest for human knowledge,” Confucius writes,

“the first step is to learn things by their correct names.”

The unfunniest thing happened to me today. At least

half a dozen camels watch me practically pass out
from sunstroke at the base of the ancient pyramids.

“You need help?” A man asks me from the top of a

huge beast that is clambering back and forth, inches
from my legs.

For Allah’s sake, I tell him in Arabic, f*!# off.

Good thing I learn languages from little kids, I think. It

helps to get the point across.

And here goes.

I’m nervous and dizzy but I get weaker at the knees One of the camels that may or may not have made
every hour I fail to write this down.
fun of my inability to cope with desert weather.

It’s not funny, either. They nearly spit on me.

Cavism, you see, is a word Confucius would have

loved.

There is millenia old vandalism on the pyramids.
Second best graffiti around.
When we’re young, we often suffer the unpleasant
experience of biting our tongue.
And when we’re really young our reflex to pain is to
clench our jaw, biting harder and harder as we go
through a painfully twisted cycle of self torture, from
which we arguably never recover.
It’s quite serious to the victim, but the audience usually
gets a good kick out of it.
This is a cavism. Until, later, we realize the clenching
reflex is actually in our control and we grow, a little bit,
where no one can see, just in that one spot you’d love
to show.
In fact, we figure out almost every part of our body is
like a puppy obediently awaiting our gentlest thought.
I twist my stomach and pound my brain against my
skull. The sun is slowly burning its way inside my head,
it seems, and I need to find shelter fast but it’s hard
to think clearly when, you know, the sun feels like it’s
slowly burning its way inside my head.
A whim is all that’s needed to breathe, to open our
mouth, and to cry. More to the point, when we cry as
babies, we order our mother around.
In a way, we’ve been caught in another cavism,
unaware that we’ve controlled her this whole time.

Then we get a job guarding volatile borders or running

a patriarchal dictatorship and with an open mind we
look back at our life as one continuous discovery of our
greater and greater control of the world.

Unrecognized power. A cavism is the Earth on the

shoulders of a man who can’t stop staring at the sun.

The sun stares at me.

Too hot, I think, as I crawl down the sarcophagus-sized

tomb beneath Kufu’s mausoleum and literally moan in
relaxation at the feeling of the pristinely cold grave.

I can’t think straight but I can find cold air.

After all, our brains can only click and click for so long
until something snaps. “Ha-HA! I AM the camel king!”

We click and we click and before we know it we’ve

Just kidding but he’s pretty funny, eh?
snapped at a Syrian election guard and put our safety
at risk for apparently no purpose whatsoever. But it is a
fun and useful activity, for the muscles in our mind are
cultivated with practice – and spontaneity is always a
sweet thing to grow.
 We click and we click and sooner or later we’re
desecrating monuments and we’ve snapped over four
thousand pictures and pissed off a dozen people with
nothing to show but a red cheek and a picture of pee.
But to think with flexibility is worth it, for it is a building
block of our own competent control of the world – and
few parts of us are worthier of our building.

We click and we click and without warning we’ve

snapped at a kid holding a rifle and a soldier with no
sense of humor because he lived through the invasion
of his home town. But to switch your mental frame of
mind from Palestine to Israel may one day save a
civilization – and the inability has already destroyed
many.

I drink water.

A kid in with a bucket of Evian is overcharging me.

The tallest building in the world before the Eiffel Tower. I buy.

An old man once figured out how to excavate the

planet and stack two and half million stones on top of
one another – and then stack them all on top of him
– yet the weight of all the works of all the emotion in
all the world is mere petty jealousy compared to me,
thirsty, with cold water.
I drink.

It’s the first day of summer, the longest day of the year,
and today I buy a ticket for the Rocky Mountain
sunshine.

Ahh...

With consciousness fading in and out, my head seeing

what I can only hope are hallucinations, and soles as
worn as the tops of my shoes, it ends.

I’m writing goodbye under African skies and humming

the Paul Simon tune so far away from life that
nothing can hear me save the mosquitoes I pray have
no Malaria, for I have no pills and bleed no vaccine,
so as you read this, though I may be scuba diving the
Great Barrier Reef or lying in a hospital bed in Kabul (or
possibly dead from Malaria or sunstroke), at the time I
write I do confess a mountain of sympathy and
gratitude for an audience patient enough to read all
these words and if I write just one more, it should be my
favorite of all and that is initiative.

The greatest drive towards safety in a land of

overbearance, is, after all, our own overbearance
returned. Its name is initiative.

My dirty, dirty feet, having flipped and flopped too
many times, ready to go.
And that is a promising prospect.
Imagine yourself in a world with more spontaneity.
Imagine a flexible, driven, and motivated, head on
your shoulders.
Imagine yourself with twice the personality.
Imagine creativity.
Thoughts and feelings are the winds that wear this
world, not mortar shells and landmines, for the former
are compounded billions of times over from
Washington to Baghdad – and the latter cool off in a
matter of hours.
So take care and think aggressive thoughts.
It even may salvage a bit more peace out of a
passively poisoned planet
When you’re clicking away the moments that make up
a dull day, remember there’s no snap like the snap of
your own initiative to create some humanity for
yourself, to make some healthy life out of cold steel
and computer screens, and grow a safer world.
It can really take the monstrosity out of work, I tell you.

I stare up at the night sky and across the first, oldest,

and only surviving wonder of the world (completely
dry, you’ll be happy to know) and it occurs to me how
much the heavens truly do affect this planet.

The thoughts that twinkle in your skull are the pillars of

my family’s home and the steps my children will walk
on, so squeeze onto your own initiative as tightly as a
kid does his M16, and when you feel like snapping at
someone consider it a personal favor to me, and give
‘em hell.

Just don’t snap anyone’s neck.

Thanks,

Sean McGowan
June 21st, 2007
Giza
Notes

My family and friends help me a very great deal. Most

notably, I give enormous credit to Stuart Weiss and
even enormouser to Scott McGowan, without the
obstinance of whom I’d never have learned to think for
myself.

This work been released into the public domain. This

applies worldwide. I grant anyone the right to use
everything in this book for any purpose, without any
conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Thanks,

Sean McGowan
July 4th, 2007
Denver
Why would a publishing house release

a book into the public domain?

Find out.

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