Musings of a Very Strange Man by Hunter Vaughan - HTML preview

Hunter Vaughan

Musings

Of

A Very

Strange Man

ALSO BY HUNTER VAUGHAN

Observations of the Coral Reef

Cole: Transcriptions from the Lilac Club

One Flew Under the Bluebird’s Nest

Quantum Mechanics for Third Graders

Zeno Books

An Imprint of Magellan Press

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. Names, Characters, Places and Incidences are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

MUSINGS OF A VERY STRANGE MAN. Copyright © 2023 by Hunter Vaughan. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For Information, address Zeno Books, 1701 N. Humboldt Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53202

Image Credits: Image Creator, Powered by DALL·E

The Library of Congress has cataloged this edition as follows: Vaughan, Hunter

Musings of a very strange man: Fiction Hunter Vaughan. 1st ed.

ISBN 077-01-4683-7129-5

1. Fiction 2. Opinion 3. Rubbish. Title. QB998. J17 2023

3882081299

First published in Jamaica as 9 Grams of Light: Where Did the World Go?

Flamingos & Morels Ltd. First Zeno Books Edition: March 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

MUSINGS OF A VERY

STRANGE MAN

HUNTER VAUGHAN

ZENO BOOKS LTD

Milwaukee

In Memory of Mom & Dad

“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”

Alan Watts

“I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I say seriously.”

David Bowie

“I don't believe in being serious about anything. I think life is too serious to be taken seriously."

Ray Bradbury

Introduction

Hello!

I’m the very strange man who wrote this book.

I find the universe fascinating. Human beings amaze me and frighten me, as do lions, tigers and mathematics.

Experiencing the carnival of life and existence is mind-blowing. I think it’s cool to be here, and I also think it’ll be groovy not to be here someday.

Thanks for taking time to read my musings before you’re not here!

Hunter Vaughan

The News

You can watch it, listen to it, read it, spread it. It’s ubiquitous, sensational, biased, commercialized, and 99% bad. It stresses you out and brings you down.

Every now and again, some upbeat, happy news makes the cut but it doesn’t help.

Feeling good watching the news is like trying to enjoy a steak dolloped with pig shit.

Pro Sports

Cowboys, Warriors, Yankees. We’re crazy about our sports teams. Literally!

The combined payroll and team values for the NFL, MLB, and NBA is $315,000,000,000. Outlays for beer and pizza on game days? Incalculable.

Meanwhile, all 50 state governments invest a comparable amount to educate 49,000,000 kids in K-12 schools. I’ll be the first to admit I own a 49ers tee shirt, but $315 billion to watch grown men play with their balls?

Politics

One’s political views boil down to whose ox is being gored. If it’s your ox, you’ll protect it. If the ox is not yours... “Let the fucker die, I’m watching Netflix!”

If you have kids in public school, you’ll stand in freezing rain to advocate for increased funding. If your kids are now adults living out of state, you’ll use your tax savings to add HBO Max to your streaming services.

Social Media

The tragic offspring of the internet, Facebook went on to spawn an ever-growing progeny of evil mutations.

Together they’ve unleashed a cesspool of shameless grandstanding, egocentric posturing, cowardly attacks, misinformation, ignorant judgments, and hatred.

If only all that time &energy were devoted to psychedelics!

Camping

Around 300,000 years ago, Homo sapiens evolved in Africa. For the next 299,850 years they went without electricity, indoor plumbing, sewage treatment, controlled heating & cooling, refrigeration, Netflix and a boatload of other modern conveniences. Yet, unfathomably, some people are willing to flush away 30

millennia of progress and go camping.

Marriage

The beautiful bride, the handsome groom! A ceremony which symbolizes a commitment to a life-long bond. In the US, the average cost of a wedding ceremony is $35,000, nearly 50% of marriages end in divorce, and an additional 35% descend into a state of quiet desperation.

I don’t understand why a happy, life-long marriage is so difficult to achieve. After all, people don’t really change much after 20, 35, 50 years, do they?

America

♫...This land is your land, this land is my land, from California, to the New York Island…♫

Well, not exactly. This land was stolen, and the indigenous people were crushed. This land was cultivated by slaves who were treated like livestock.

This land was enriched through brutal imperialism. This land has been scarred and pillaged by industry. I love America, but let’s cut the bullshit.

Ambiguity & Certainty Here we are. Floating on a speck of dust in an incomprehensibly gigantic universe. So, what don’t we know about the place?

Where it came from, whether anything preceded it, how big it is, the composition of 95% of it, how the other 5%

works, whether this is the only one, why it’s here, whether it’s deterministic, the odds that there’s other life in it… the list goes on and on.

Thankfully, we have figured out right vs. wrong, and passed laws, equitably enforced no matter race or gender, based on that incontrovertible knowledge.

Zen

Zen is an outlook on life. One which I find liberating. It douses the flames of fear and nurtures total acceptance of what is. It allows one to have no head and look in the mirror.

Zen masters ask...What is the sound of one hand clapping? When is yesterday today? Where is here and there? Who were you before you were born? Why are there no questions?

Hint: Try to figure out the answers, or don’t try to figure out the answers. It won’t matter

which you choose to do.

God

When it comes to the Lord Almighty you either (A) believe, (B) don’t believe or (C) aren’t sure. Arguably, (B) and (C) are the same thing. If you’re not sure, then you don’t believe.

If you find yourself surrounded by extreme and fanatical members of any (A) group, don’t play the (C) card. Those folks aren’t going to think, “Well, he’s not sure, so let’s execute him painlessly.” These are traditionalists. You’ll either be (A) stoned to death, (B) drawn and quartered or (C) fed to the lions.

Longevity

Do you want to live to 80, 90 or 100? For most people, living that long entails being bludgeoned by the aging process. Osteoporosis, hearing loss, failing eyesight, joint replacements, arthritic pain, cognitive degeneration, dementia, debilitating major surgeries, restricted diets, chemo-therapy, dialysis, assisted living, nursing homes, strokes, diapers! When I begin descending into the quagmire of catastrophic health issues, I’ll gladly pull my own plug. Who knows, maybe not being alive is totally groovy!

Mushrooms

Psychedelic mushrooms have been used by humans since the birth of civilization 12,000 years ago. Probably before then, but newspaper archives prior to 10,000 BC

burned in a fire in Mesopotamia.

If you get an opportunity to try them, in a safe environment with people you love and trust, or in a clinical setting, I suggest you go for it. Your mind will be blown… in a loving and beautiful way. You’ll experience a new, miraculous side of reality and yourself.

NOW

What time is it? Well, it’s always now isn’t it? How long does now last? It’s eternal. It’s always been now and it’ll always be now.

Now is the only thing that can be directly experienced.

Try this… stick your nose into the past and smell the coffee brewing. Or this… reach your hand into the future and pet your dog.

The only place you can be, the only place you can live, is now. So get to it, or you’ll be late!

The

Easier Path

Buddha believed we are all trapped in samsara, an endless cycle of pain and suffering. He went on to teach his students the Four Noble Truths, the Three Roots of Evil, the Eightfold Path, and the Threefold Plan of Action as a blueprint to escape samsara.

If, like me, you’re not great with numbers, you’re in luck!

There’s a shortcut to booting samsara to the curb.

Sisters from Different Misters

Science and magic are entangled. Quantum mechanics is the most precise branch of science. All attempts to refute it have failed. The implications it leads to are magical, and no one understands why the quantum world is the way it is.

• A single electron can be everywhere at once.

• Protons can do the equivalent of walking through walls.

• Even when a million miles apart, two entangled photons will act in simultaneity.

• “Reality” wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t being observed.

Miraculous

Do you wake up in the morning thinking… “Damn, I’m super amazing!” Well, you are!

You’re comprised of 37 trillion cells, and each one contains minute factories, warehouses, transport systems, power plants and McDonald’s.

Your brain makes 20 million, billion calculations per second, which makes a super computer look like an abacus.

If your body’s mass was converted to energy (E=mc²) the explosion would be equivalent to tens of millions of hydrogen bombs.

So contain yourself for Pete’s sake. Actually for all our sakes!

Special thanks to these amazing and wonderful people.

They make my life super-duper special.

I’ve listed them in alpha order to avoid any perceived favoritism. Except for the first three because they are

my favorites and appear in the order I met them!

Elizabeth O'Donnell, Eric Ehlert, Zachary Ehlert Amanda Morden, Angie Mikelatos, Bhavesh Patel, Charles Grade, Daniel Toth, Darin Eich, Dave Luhrssen, Edward Sullivan, Emily Fulton, George Lohnes, Jeff Kosiorek, Jeff Orth, Kristy Keller, Mischa Schultz, Richard Opie, Richard Yake, Sean Fulton, Scott Holverson, Tate Ankenbrandt, Tim Tullis and Tyler Zenisek

About the Author

Hunter Vaughan was born in the United States Midwest in 1959. His parents, Russell and Elizabeth passed in 1998 and 2005 respectively. He was married 32 years and has two sons.

In 1981, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with a degree in Journalism.

His career spanned 35 years, during which he worked for newspapers, magazines and a business media company. He served in positions including news reporter, advertising salesperson, national sales manager, group publisher and senior vice president.

Now retired, he roams the land as a very strange man.

Acclaim for Musings of a Very Strange Man…

The Berlin Gazette,

“Verschwende dein Geld nicht!”

Paris Literary Review,

“Vaughan a l'intelligence d'un élève de troisième.”

The Luxembourg Times

“Amerikanesch Literatur huet en neien Déifpunk erreecht.”