I opted to remain material for the moment, opted to hit the open road and 'hobo' to my next avatar, newly born in Atlanta, Georgia. It was late spring and everything was blooming, the wind blowing fresh and fragrant, packed to the hilt with the pollen and musk of flora and fauna looking for love spewing spores across the countryside. Everything was spewing. It was wonderful. It was spring in California. And California spews in spring, let me tell you. Certainly, until it falls into the ocean, this land holds my favor as one of the finest patches of terra on the planet. There are others, of course. Working my way through the city towards the outskirts, I found the railroad yards, found them full of activity, found the scene both reassuring and disconcerting, both beautiful and ugly. It was grand that men had conceived and constructed such a monstrous steel web so gargantuan and precise in scope; yet disconcerting because they used the contraption to fuel industry, the same industry they would use to enslave the people and nearly smother the planet over the next thrity years, disconcerting because of the many homeless men inadvertantly riding the trains in futility, seeking for sunnier horizons, better jobs, better lifestyles, disconcerting, because it was a largely unconscious act on humanity's part. It was a sign that things were going bad, the men riding the trains to nowhere. If the 'Great Society had had vision they could have seen all this trouble coming, but they didn't. Humans: amazing powers of conception, no vision. The potential for vision exists, but the only ones who make use of it are the visionairies, and no one listens to them until its too late, anyway. Go figure. Wandering through the yard, I happened across an eastbound train headed for towards the Middle West. Feeling spontaneous, I jumped aboard a departing cattle car carrying twenty or so lost souls. Men from all walks of life adorn the walls -- winos, arrant college boys, Asians, journeymen, artisans, runaways and whatnot. And so there I was, Pi, the immortal, traveling along with the hobo nation. The Hobo Nation. The Nation of the Road. The oldest nation. As old as the oldest profession, prostitution. It's a close call as to which came first: the hiker or the hooker. This is tribe of the wanderers, home to the seekers and mystics, lost souls and maverick intellects. They live life on the Road. And the Road has been the same for eons. Telling the same stories, singing the same songs, for all who might chance her wonderous revelations by breaking the chains and shackles binding mortal men to the mundane. Traveling increases the mind's sensitivity to the resonations of the Cosmos. You'll understand everything once you've allowed yourself to break away from the mores and limitations of society, which seeks only to maintain a day-to-day status quo. The status quo. This is a bad thing, because existence evolves, progresses whether society and the status quo wants to or not. A wanderer realizes this epiphany on the road, which tends to make him luminant. You learn light, living on the road. On the roadside, that's where you'll find the Buddha, that's where you'll find out all there is to know, if you allow it to take you over. On the roadside, or in a boxcar, the wisdom runs the same. You're traveling. And since the days before Gilgamesh, that's been the same experience for all who dared behold the wisdom one receives from moving about constantly and wandering amongst mystics, martyrs and madmen. Every now and then you run into a god. _ _ _ "How d'ya do," said the wanderer to the god, sitting on the lip of a cattle car doorway watching the sunset. "Name's MacGregor. Call me Mac." "Vajra," I said, looking over to meet the clear hazel eyes of a scruffy, stout-chested Scotsman. "Call me Vaj. A pleasure to meet you." "Likewise. Vajra, eh? You a Hindu?" "Somewhat. I was given this name as an orphan by the monks of a monastery in Nepal. I was raised there." "You're a long way from home." "Not so far." "Where you heading, New York? I hear there's not a lick a work to be had in New York." "Not looking for work." "Travel for traveling's sake?" "Moving about, taking in the terra." "How d'ya live?" "I just live. I have nothing, wont for nothing." "A holy man." "Something like that." Mac nodded in grasping for understanding, listening to the clacking steel wheels, watching the sun setting in the horizon behind us, setting into the jungle Los Angeles. The desert lay ahead, and as the city fell off into the distance, Mac surveyed the desert with the last of the light, a long, weary gaze drapped across his otherwise rugged countennance. "I work in stone," he said. "I've been here since after the war, but I'm thinking about making passage back to Scotland. Not much better back there, but it's home. Things are bad here in the states. Think they'll be turning for the worse. Getting out while there's still good getting to be had. Best to be home during hard times." "I understand," I said, and smiled. Smiling, I was, not because it was funny, what he said, but because I knew he'd be alright. He looked at me askance, a bit put off by my grinning at this hardship beset upon civilization. "You're a strange man, Pi, but I like ye nonetheless." "You're a good man, MacGregor, and there's only a few good men. The remainder, the majority, well, there mucking it up but good. You're going to weather this thing, you'll survive this depression just fine. This Great Depression! You know what it is? It's a war between the Victorians and the Intellectuals. They 're bickering over who's in control, over who's at the helm. The Intellectuals scored big here in this decade, and so the wealthy Victorians have killed the engine of economy by pulling their money from the banks. It's like a richman's Hari-Kari" "What's Hari-Kari" "Ritualized suicide," I said. This was before the Second World War, and not many Westerners knew what honorable, ritualized suicide was all about. They would find out the hard way, of course, in the next decade as the men of Japan, clad in the 'Zero', killed themselves by the thousands on the decks of American and Allied warships, falling like core-bound steeled swallows aplummet from the nimbus thunderheads above. I debated whether or not to relate this thought to Mac, opted against it, let it pass and drift off with the howling winds wailing down from the Sierra-Nevadas looming in the distance, shawdowed purple and green and blackjack black. "Hari-Kari's an act you perform as a means of last resort," I said instead. "It's an honorable way of making a final stand. It's death before dishonor. That's what the Victorians are doing now -- killing the creature they created, rather than turning control over to the Intellectuals." "Aye, that's what they're doing." Mac said, "Killing themselves and the working men and women with them," Mac said. He was good man, but angry. I sensed it beginning to well up inside him. "The poor suffer no matter who's in charge, simply because someone's in charge." "Until the poor are in charge." "No, that changes nothing but the mattress under which the money is hoarded. To date, that is. Someday things will change. Someday they will learn." "Aye, and for now they bicker like wild dogs over the carcus of a goat." "Well put, Mac." "Thank you, Vaj. Would you be for a slug of whiskey?" "I don't drink liquor." "Cures what ails ya." "No, Mac," I said, "it kills what ails you. It kills your mind. And a being without a fully-funtioning mind lives in a world of hurt and suffering, I assure you. The only escape from suffering is through your mind." "What about God?" "God. Yes. Indeed, what about God? Humans learn that which is God by using their mind. Everything moves towards becoming God, but there's a certain amount of effort on the individual spirit's part. 'God' doesn't do everything for you. You have to work at it yourself. You need to show an effort. You need to show your work. Humanity refines, reshapes the definition of 'god' constantly throughout the eons, moving ever nearer to complete singularity. This is called evolution. One day humanity will finally realize they've all been talking about the same thing. It's only the descriptions and the rituals that differ." "Whaddya saying?" "That all sciences and religions are moving towards describing the same thing. They've broken the Whole into pragmatisms, jargons, rhetorical models and methodologies, all the while totally, utterly failing to make the connections between them. Eventually the connections grow themselves together. It's inevitable, because a molecule is a microcosim of the universe, and is connected to the same whether humans define it that way, or not. Things are as they are, regardless of how institutionalized science and religion claim it to be. They merely delay the Truth, by promulgating fear and ignorance." "You're losing me here, holy man," he said, took another slug of whiskey. "Your mind feeds on information. Information is energy. Total energy is God. Experience increases the amount of information, increases the energy, brings one closer to that which is God. Fear and ignorance produce very little information, hence little energy. Lower energies make it difficult for a mind to make the connection. The connections, the forces between the objects, rather than the objects themselves, that's the most important part. That's the part that holds it all together, the part you don't always see. That's where you'll find the scent of God. It's like this: Minds connect to bodies, bodies connect to the planet, planets connect to the galaxy, galaxies connect to the universe, which connects to the cosmos, which becomes God by and by. Hence the potential connection between the human mind to God. Does that help at all?" "As sure a mute describing the moon to a blind man. What's the connection?" "Particle wave resonations." "ehhh . . ." "Sort of like a radio." "Aye, now that's a fancy gadget." "That's only the beginning, my friend, wait and see what's next. You'll be amazed. This century humanity will bring about the foundations for the End of Time," I said. And Mac eyed me curiously, cautiously for a moment. This was 'crazy' talk. Again, I smiled. "Always you've got that smile, damn your eyes. Always your sportin' that 'I've-got-a-secret-shitte-eating grin on your face. Makes me want to rub it right off," he said. The booze was making him surly. "Take your best shot," I said. It made me slightly sad. He was going to attack. I saw the fury rising in his eyes, saw the veins popping up in his frontal lobes, saw smoke coming from his Scottish cauliflowered ears. Simple reptillian fear and anger in response to the unknown. Collectively, the world was furious, manifested this fury in each and every being tethered to its confines. It was nothing personal. I remained grinning, looking right at him. "I'd be asking you to stop mocking me, old man." "I'm not mocking you, highlander, I'mteaching you." "I've got a thing or two to teach you," he said. He lunged, I rolled back lightning quick and sprang to my feet as Mac smashed forehead first into the door of the cattlecar, and knocked himself out cold. The other hobos looked at me with a mixture of awe and anger. My movements were not that of a normal human. I'd tipped my hand to them, shown I was of some other ilk, and now they had to either kill me or run away. That was fear and ignorance in prime form. The reaction would be the same if I appeared in front of the House of Representatives, or the cardinals of the Vatican, or just about anywhere, save for a few isolated temples and mosques. Humans still had ooddles of growing to do. Very slowly, I moved towards the door, with the nightwinds howling by, propped Mac's frame upright, waved the whiskey bottle under his nose. Sniffing at the bottle, he came to, felt a little less enraged, but I'd alienated myself from the clan aboard the car. He ceased making eye contact, stared at the floor. The train rolled along through the night, trundling across Nevada. I was done with it. "Mac," I said, "what I've told you is now lodged in your memory. That's information. Think about it. Remember it, and someday it'll make sense. Until such time . . ." I said, jumped off the train and into the night, left Mac sitting in the doorway with a nasty knot on his forehead, slightly slackjawed and his eyes wide open. It was a beautiful exit, and one of those times it was good to know the lightness of being. It was one of those times when it was good to be a god. _ _ _ In the night I became light, resolved to limit my interactions with mortals. They were simply still too angry, too maligned, too filled with primal reptilian rage to avatar. They just didn't get it. It's ironic, the relationship between gods and men, I thought as I whizzed through the night sky like a comet, shooting towards Atlanta, Georgia. Inextricably entwined, with a constant communication between the two -- obviously there's a symbiosis; yet for all the reverence and love and admiration there exists an equal amount of jealousy, hatred and defiance. As it stands, this relationship appears doomed, ultimately, to total failure. We're either all together, unified and whole, or scattered, disjumbled and disconnected. Inbetween there is progress towards this unification, or destruction. At the moment, mortality seemed hell-bent on destruction, determined on returning to the mud. I would balance this tendancy, of course, by awakening spirits of great courage and tranquility. They would be both reveled and reviled, as usual. Despite my efforts, many great men would be slain by a group of dangerous infantile regressive humans know as 'fundamentalist conservatives'. These men harbor beliefs identical to those of the Inquistion, a European group responsible for killing, maiming, torturing, raping and pillaging in the name of God. Again, this was all a whopping load of hooey. If inept human beings want to kill in the name of fear and ignorance, they should do it in the name of Man, not God. Omnipotence knows neither fear nor ignorance, and takes full responsibilty for both catastrophies and miracles alike. In other words, when gods bless or curse, they do so in their own name. It runs with the territory. Now some humans, on the other hand, they bring fear and ignorance to new lows constantly. Of the twelve avatars I would create in this era, four of them would be slain by zealots in the name of God. This would be one of those lows, and a whopping load of hooey, of course. Mentalities such as this bring the Humanity to a screeching halt, sending the best and the brightest through the windsheild. Collectively, this brings out the anguish in a culture. So it was no great suprise that 'the blues' became quite popular in this era, and remained so ever since. Go figure. _ _ _
In the dim glow of a flickering streetlamp, where shadows dance with whispered secrets, Kevin M. Cowan crafts his world—a symphony of ink and circuitry. His words, like ghostly echoes, weave tales that linger in the crevices of the mind, haunting yet beautiful. As a musician, he conjures melodies that waltz through the ether, each note a spectral whisper of forgotten dreams. In the realm of technology, he is an alchemist, melding code and creativity into digital phantoms that flicker in the twilight of innovation. Here, in this noir tapestry, Kevin stands at the crossroads of art and algorithm, a conjurer of the unseen, a maestro of the modern enigma.
Kevin M. Cowan is a writer, technologist, and artist whose work spans novels, AI development, drumming, and filmmaking. From his fiction roots in Nebraska to experimental media projects and cutting-edge AI, Kevin blends storytelling, sound, and code into one creative continuum. Explore his world — one story, rhythm, and idea at a time.
Music. Video. Visuals arts. All composed or curated by Kevin.
Neo, Archive Guide
