Sun is Shining, the Weather is Sweet
To the rescue, here I am. Want you to know, y'all. Can you understand?
Welcome to another episode of my flagship scroll, The Book of Sean M. P.
On Easter Sunday I went outside to smoke some 420 on 4/20. Not more than several tokes in did a family come for an egg hunt on the front lawn of the elementary school—Columbus—on whose front bench I sat. So I moved around the corner to a low stone border between a curved row of plants and another patch of grass and perched there in the sun. It was a beautiful day and even though I was irritated to have to relocate, I was better off for it in the end. That’s a lesson I try always to remind myself of: that change is good, no matter how bothersome it may seem initially. Indeed, it’s the fundamental law of existence.
I note that No Other Land, the Oscar-winning documentary whose name and message inspired one half of my new video series, The Armenian Quarter or No Other Land, recently streamed in the U.S., ending a de facto viewership ban. It’s a brilliant work of guerrilla cinema that shows the degree to which the Israeli state—backed by the U.S.—goes to maintain dominance in the West Bank, ceaselessly killing and injuring residents and destroying homes, schools, businesses, and other foundations of life and society. That tier of violence has only been exceeded in Gaza, where the U.S. and Israel continue to defy the U.N. and international law in their war of attrition.
Meanwhile, for anyone who can spare a Lincoln, I’ve launched a “Buy Me a Coffee” as a modest but very meaningful way to appreciate the labor I donate to create all the “free” content on this site. And it’s all free—there are no paywalls here.
On the flip side of the coin, I’m patiently awaiting an angel investor to join my Pantheon, for which you’ll receive both my boundless gratitude and a one-of-a-kind personalized artifact from my archives.
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Now on with the show. <3
Call Me By My Name: Pedant. (Claro.)
As of this writing, I’ve officially changed the categories of this scroll to “U.S. Politics” (primary) and “Culture” (secondary).
I wish Substack offered a third category of selection so that my work here could be represented under the heading of “Philosophy” too, but I suppose that comes with my being. I hold a doctorate in philosophy, and philosophical thinking—in a long, meandering lineage from Socrates in the 400s B.C.E. to the students I question in my day job using Socratic technique today—is what I practice joyfully and unapologetically.
If that stance makes me a “pedant,” as a fellow Substacker recently called me, then I plead guilty.
After all, none other than John Donne, one of my all-time fave poets, deemed the sun a pedant—and as someone obsessed with sunshine, I couldn’t agree with the comparison more.
“Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide / Late school-boys and sour prentices,” Donne instructs the source of life on Earth. “Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride, / Call country ants to harvest offices; / Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, / Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.”
In other words, Donne implores: Sun, turn your spotlight on everyone but my lover and me, embedded as we are in a space absent time.
Needless to say, time is an illusion, as Donne, metaphysical poet that he is, knew full well. For the sun is indeed “everywhere.” Just because it can’t be seen at night in the western (or eastern) hemisphere doesn’t mean it’s not still there at the center of our universe, holding Earth in place with its gravity.
Among other characteristics, a pedant is a person “who is excessively concerned with minor details and rules.”
Well, we can delete “excessively” from that definition, since (1) it’s an opinion and not a fact; and (2) as the usage example indicates, there’s nothing excessive about accuracy, given the mere addition of a prefix (“ex”) and punctuation mark (“–”) to clarify that the palace in question is no longer inhabited by royals but was formerly so.
Too, poetry—my first and co-favorite art form along with painting—is all about the seemingly “minor” details that, together, create a grand whole. That’s why it was one of my favorite written genres to teach when I worked for English departments in the 2010s, because most people miss the details that make up our lifeworlds. Poetry compels the reader to pay attention, and in so doing it reconnects them with their senses.
Then again, what’s minor to one person can be major to another, just as surely as the sun shines on one area of the planet while another remains dark.
And speaking of dark remainders: This week I started reading Keila Shaheen’s The Book of Shadow Work (2025) and I’m lovin’ it the way I love the Mickey D’s I haven’t eaten in weeks so as to arrest my waistline’s expansion. (I enjoy the fries most of all, which remind me that I’m not forcibly starving as the Palestinians of Gaza presently are and as my Irish kin have been in the past.)
“Shadow work is often an exercise in understanding how that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” Shaheen writes on page 22, imbuing an old truism with new meaning. “Most of us have heard of post-traumatic stress disorder. How many of us have heard of its very real counterpart, post-traumatic stress growth?”
I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I have.
Indeed, as someone who’s lived with post-traumatic stress disorder for the last five years and is now on the upswing, I listen for this “hearing” every moment of the day.
Lap Dogs to Power
In my last dispatch I roasted Axios even as I relied heavily on their reporting and writing. And though I detest the horse-race approach of mainstream political coverage, Mike Allen and company deliver the best information with the best color commentary, so I tolerate the aspects of the enterprise I dislike. (How mature of me!)
In the above excerpt, however, no commentary is necessary since Trump’s lap dogs are more than happy to provide the context themselves.
He thought it was badass, said one of Trump’s reaction to Ukraine’s drone operation against Russia, which involved zero boots on the ground. But I guess for a man who dodged the draft five times, including once for the grave ailment of “heel spurs,” exacting immense destruction without any threat to your own life would be “badass.”
Come to think of it, isn’t that the role of the Commander-in-Chief, as Trump epitomizes? To authorize maximum carnage on defenseless people and their property from the sunless security of the Führerbunker?
And then behold the next bit of misplaced praise about punching up, in which the delusions of grandeur truly runneth over: From an international perspective, you’ve got a chihuahua inflicting some real damage on a much bigger dog.
I mean, if David and Goliath is the go-to myth for Trump and his sycophants, then the freedom fighters of Hamas are the fiercest attack dogs, pound for pound, of the international order given how they’ve defeated the U.S. and Israel—the biggest bullies on the planet—for 20 months now.
Come to think of it, isn’t that the role of the Commander-in-Chief, as Trump epitomizes? To authorize maximum carnage on defenseless people and their property from the sunless security of the Führerbunker? And then behold the next bit of misplaced praise about punching up, in which the delusions of grandeur truly runneth over: From an international perspective, you’ve got a chihuahua inflicting some real damage on a much bigger dog. I mean, if David and Goliath is the go-to myth for Trump and his sycophants, then the freedom fighters of Hamas are the fiercest attack dogs, pound for pound, of the international order given how they’ve defeated the U.S. and Israel—the biggest bullies on the planet—for 20 months now.
Brain Break
The academic year recently wrapped at the bespoke school and learning center at which I teach, and one of my students now on summer vacation used to play a-ha’s “Take on Me” during our breaks.1
It wasn’t until the umpteenth spin that I realized the lyrics include the phrase “odds and ends”—a saying I’d already borrowed for the back-of-book section of this scroll.
Which just goes to show: Jung—and Lao Tzu—are exceedingly correct about synchronicity as a function of alignment, whether between heaven and earth or between the disparate elements of the self.
At the end of the day, of course, those two unions are the same.
Odds and Ends, Especially Tight Ones
I was gobsmacked by the statement above from David Horovitz—founding editor of the Times of Israel—that the Jewish state (also somehow a democracy) lacks a propaganda division.
Funny, because I’m pretty sure I saw Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy challenge all the hasbara coughed up by the “Government Spokesman for the National Public Diplomacy Directorate in the Office of the Prime Minister” of Israel regarding the massacres of aid seekers in Gaza this week.
Of all the insights and rhetorical moves the Israeli genocide of Palestinians has popularized since 10/7, the most potent for me has been “Every accusation is a confession.”
Although the phrase predates that historic day, its application to Trump matches the inside-out strategy of the Israelis (see the “Big Beautiful Bill” that’s anything but, championed by a man who thinks beauty requires self-tanner—and one which he maybe makes himself with a baby carrot and Betty Crocker Super Moist Orange Cake Mix).
Finally for this incident of The B.O.S.M.P. — — — I followed Cannes this year and was disappointed to learn that Wayfarer Studios’ heads Justin Baldoni, Jamey Heath, and Steve Sarowitz are among the executive producers of Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, Eleanor the Great.
That trio is also among the defendants in Blake Lively’s lawsuit over the sexual harassment and retaliation she experienced during and after the filming of It Ends With Us (2024)—a topic I wrote about six months ago (scroll to “Non-Blind Item #2):
There’s been updates to Blake’s case—and to Baldoni’s countersuit—this week, but all I want to memorialize here is Scarlett’s sad response to a question about the unfortunate overlap in producers.
When Baldoni's name was brought up in her Vanity Fair interview, Johansson laughed and simply said that Wayfarer "were super supportive throughout the process" of making her own film.
“But yeah, such weird timing," she added, referring briefly to the legal drama.
So much for #MeToo.2
Solidarity is for white women, as ever.
Ciao for now,
Sean M. P.
ICYMI⥥⥥
A Short Address on Joe Biden's Inherent Vice: Deceit About His Mental and Physical Form
A Neo daily show on life after Hollywood, Washington, and New York (aka the U.S. of Israel, the world’s leading criminal racket)
Amid all the news this week I missed the revelation that the band’s lead singer, Morten Harket, whom I’ve been watching on screen for months, has been living with Parkinson’s disease for some time.
And in another “weird” connection, Harvey Weinstein’s ex-wife, Georgina Chapman, attended the screening with her current beau, Adrien Brody.