I recieved a visitor today, here at El Mitadore'. A zealous, vital, soul-searching, spirit-freeing Man of the Cosmos, he was, to be sure, albeit a bit odd. Tall and lanky, with a shock of red hair glowing like the gaseous Nebula of Sephrens, I first saw him hacking his way out of the jungle, covered with underbrush and monkey dung, smiling a toothy grin you could see from the highest point of the highest temple. He made his way to the acropolis, pitched a tent, stripped down to a pair of shorts and began to roam about the ruins. I watched him, immaterial, from the temple's peak. From the onset, I knew he was not a Man of Science, but a Man of God. You know a bodhisattva by the spring in their step, by the ever-present, ever-near-laughing luminance gracing the furrowed lines of their counntenance, and by the way they take absolutely nothing too seriously. Which is a good thing, of course. The ability to laugh and dance and play like a child links mortals to Immortality. There are others, of course, but resonations produced from laughing, dancing and playing remain some of the best. Exploring the city, listening to the vocal vibrations of the Mayans whispering their secret, audible only to finely-tuned minds, the wanderer made a survey of the stone temple remnants, eventually making his way to the top of the temple where I made my perch. I had company! There would be no offerings of tea and crumpets, however, for I had nothing to offer but information, which is not food for the body, but fuel for the mind. Which is better. Walking up to the edge of the ledge that ran along the front and sides of the temple, his spine straight, his arms outstretched, head lifted to the sky, he stood there like a monopole. For a moment I thought he might take a spontaneous swan dive, but he just held his stance there, reveling in the easily accessible vibrations of cosmos, as did the Mayans in the days before they learned light. After two hours of montionless monopolism, he sat down cross-legged on the protruding lip and gazed out over the surrounding jungle, his eyes barely open. Now was my chance. I became material at the base of the temple, shucked off my haik and donned a pair of cut-off's left by an arrant archeologist several month prior, an extremely unbalanced fellow, a Man of Science who'd come to the acropolis and gone mad shortly thereafter, running off naked into the thick jungles of Guatemala to go native, running off, in actuality, to become part of the food chain. A lower part. Anyway, I donned the shorts, climbed back up the temple, found the wanderer sitting exactly where I left him, a unique trait for someone who travels alot. I was pleased. He was in a deeply meditative state, motionless, egoless and what not, but we could go there anytime, so I spoke. "Hello," I said, and then he wandered. Indeed, he wandered upwards about six feet in the air, springing up like a cat caught napping, nearly making that swan dive. "What the hell! Who are you? Where did you come from?" "The jungle. Where'd you think I'd come from?" "I didn't know anyone was around." "There's more where I came from." "Is that so?" "That is so." We stood looking at each other, and I could see he was sizing up my body, wondering about my motives, thinking of escape routes and the like. I wanted to put him at ease. "I saw you wander in. Don't get many visitors in this deep, and normally when we do, they're worth talking to. I often find them kindred spirits. So I saw you enter the acropolis, saw you meditating here on the Mayan stage and just thought I'd come up and make your aquaintance. My name is Vajra, but you can call me Vaj." "Rutger," he said, offering me a handshake, slightly shaken "Call me Rug." "Pleasure to meet you, sir." "And you as well," he said. "How long did the trek take you?" "Four days. I opted against the mule." "Takes longer without the mule," I said. "I was in no hurry." "How long you staying?" "Until the food runs low. . . three or four days." "Ah, I see. Come up for the view?" "The vibrations, actually," he said. This made me happy. "They're good here, the resonantions. This entire area provides an excellent place for alignment." "That's what I'd heard. How long have you been living here?" "About fifty years," I said. Which was the truth. I'd moved here after the awakening of the tenth Arbitrary Constant. I was aged 85 at that time. I opted not to reveal this to Rug right off. "Came here when I was in my twenties and never left. Nice place: quiet, fresh water, enough to eat. It seemed like a good idea at the time, still seems like one today." "Never missed civilzation?" "Modern Civilization is a contradiction in terms." "Ain't that the truth," Rug said, his grin widening. "To be sure. The word 'civilization' is over two-thousand years old, and was created by the Greeks who turned it over to the Roman Empire, who ultimately rotted the meaning away in their ceasar-civilized manner. They became a bureaucracy." "They broke that old rule 'don't shit where you eat'." "That's one way of looking at it. But anyway you look at it, the word stuck fast to the History of Mankind, written by the scribes of kings, who wanted the idea of civilized society to stick so that they might dominate the spirits of men and women. This always inevitably leads to their decline and fall, of course. All great civilizations fall. That's been the tendancy thus far, which leads, logically, to a flaw in the premise of the foundations of the idea of 'civilization' somewhere, but the idea is continually reiterated thus far, flawed and fetid, yet kept in tact by playing on humanities collective fear of death." "Which is nothing to fear." "Of course not. But try telling that to the ignorant." "They never get it." "They haven't yet, but they will eventually. Everything evolves eventually, whether it wants to or not, towards ultimate Quality. It's what the organism does cognitionwise with the evolutionary advance that determines the amount of freewill it exerts over its finite state of being, or the rate that it nears perfection." "Humans have the potential, then, to make living easy or hard on themselves? Is that what you're saying?" "To a great degree, yes." "What's the lesser degree?" "The lesser degree manifests in those who resist perfection, those who oppose the natural human tendancy to adapt and evolve to changing surroundings. This is a dynamic process, not static. Those who place static expressions on dymanic interactions find themselves far, far off track over time. Over a great distance, a discrepancy of one half degree strays light years from the intened destination. This increases the potential for entropy in this system state. Increased entropy ultimately leads to extinction. That's the lesser degree." "Then the lesser degree is ultimately unneccessary." "No. It's necessary until humans understand fully the weltanshuang in which they live. The lesser degree has an affinity towards the greater degree which drives it forward, albeit erradically, struggling against its 'will', nonetheless still moving towards perfection. Some get there sooner than others, but all make it there over time and distance. This, of course, remains the highest aspiration of Humanity and all matter, for that matter: to join the universe by becoming bandwaves of eternal, focused energy." "Then it is possible?" "Possible? It is probable, though not inevitable. The difference is in the amount of diffusion at the moment of learning light. "How's that?" "For the universe to continue to exist, all matter converts to energy over time, or the total distance traveled. Most matter is relatively stupid, and when converted to energy, simply diffuses unto the whole. Humans, on the other hand, harbor the latent, evolving potential to become bandwaves at will, at which point the flesh becomes arcane. That's when the lesser degree becomes unecessary. As a species, humans are decades away from such a collective exodus. Centuries, in fact. Certain individuals, on the other hand, learn light as we speak. Once they do, they don't hang around. This is why such wholistic information trickles down so slowly through the ranks and bottomless files of collective understanding: "The enlightened leave nothing but a wisp of smoke rising from the imprint where they sat," I said. "No empirical evidence, no numbers to back the hypothosis, or apotheosis in this case, no theory," Rug said, "That's the way they run it. Nevermind that the instrumments they use can't sense it, nevermind that the same theories tend to develop independently at simultaneous moments around the globe, nevermind that positivism is actually negative when disregarding anomalies as 'chaotic' and 'random' and dismisses them as inconsequential." "When, in fact, those forces remain quite consequential and sequenced." "That was my big problem with college." "The problem is academic, not personal, I assure you." "How do you know so much about academics after you've been out here in the jungle for last half-century?" "I listen to my head, and the resonance of the cosmos, of course. Between the two, they'll tell you everything there is to know, if you allow it to speak. Western academia has sought to smother this voice and the vibrations it transmits and receives since the days of Aristotole." "Since the onset of Aristolean Method?" "Precisely. Certainly, this notion was crucial to the development of Humanity, but the problem of specialization has developed. The list of kingdoms, phylums, orders, classes, families, genui and species became so lengthy that academicians shattered understanding into little pieces, each group learning about a little piece. This would be okay but for the fact that the sciences no longer jointly pursue the pinnacle peaks of Wisdom. Physicists don't exchange theories with physcial biologists on a professional level. Human understanding currently looms so vastly pragmatic and embedded with job-security movtivated dogma that they could come upon the actual solution to that which they seek, and never know it simply because they fail to communicate, fail to speak a common language; and, most predominant, remain terrified at being 'one-upped' by a brother or sister science. The answer to their question lay beneath their noses, stinking up the heavens, and they don't even realize it because they refuse to accept information not only from other sciences, but from other sources as well, like art and spirituality. Humans don't yet see that those concepts all interrealate." "Excuse me for saying so, but you talk like you're not human." "Oh, I suppose I'm human enough. This flesh will expire at some point. It's what I know that makes me unique. What I know and what I do with it. If you think you can handle it, I'll let you in on a secret." "Handle it. I can handle anything. I've done things, you know." "I know." "And I can keep a secret." "It's a secret that everyone is aware of, but few fail to find." "What's the secret?" "I've learned light." "How that?" "I've learned to become a band of light. Well, I had some help, had a serious lift upwards when I was but a child. The point, the truth of matter, is that because flesh is made of energy, its tendancy is to become energy. With proper focus, luminance and unattachment, matter becomes a band of unwavering light, simply put." "And what's so hot about being light?" "Mostly the speed with which you can get from place to place . . . like this" I said, and became a band of light right before his eyes, which were now wide open. "Sonofabitch," he said. "Yes," I said, becoming material again, "but that had nothing to do with it." _ _ _
In the dim glow of a forgotten streetlamp, where shadows dance with whispered secrets, Kevin M. Cowan weaves his tapestry—a symphony of ink and circuitry. His words, like ghostly echoes, traverse the corridors of time, painting worlds where the past and future entwine in a delicate waltz. As a musician, he crafts melodies that linger like the scent of rain on asphalt, haunting yet familiar, resonating with the pulse of the city night. In the realm of technology, he is the silent architect, sculpting digital dreams that flicker like neon in the fog. Together, these threads form a noir narrative, a hypnotic blend of the tangible and the ethereal, inviting us to wander through the labyrinth of his
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.
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