Craft Beer Bar Mitzvah by Jeremy Cowan & James Sullivan

Author:Jeremy Cowan & James Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Malt Shop Publishing
Published: 2010-07-12T21:00:00+00:00

When I left for Asia, I had no idea if I’d ever get back to working on He’brew. I thought it could go either way. I felt horribly guilty losing everyone’s money, but I honestly knew I’d tried the best I could to make it successful.

I’d never paid myself a salary, just covered expenses. Before skipping town, I had one last work-related conversation with an acquaintance in San Francisco. Sean, a graphic designer starting his own company, had been bouncing around the beer shows and networking in the community. He wanted to get into craft beer, and he pitched me on doing a project with him. I had no money, and no need for new graphics. The only hazy notion I could muster for the future of He’brew involved the seemingly unrealistic goal of one day putting Genesis and Messiah into six-packs. Given my failures so far, the scheme seemed unlikely at best, but he convinced me to let him and his partner take a stab at re-doing the packaging — if nothing else, to use for their portfolio and pitches to potential beverage clients. I acquiesced, sent him the graphics files we’d used, and directed my mind toward sunnier days.

In Asia, I kicked around Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. Gawking at giant Buddhas and hiking beside howler monkeys, swimming in the most beautiful water I’d ever seen, reading everything from the collected writings of the Dalai Lama to Italo Calvino’s poetic imagining of Marco Polo and Ghenghis Khan in Invisible Cities to the backpackers’ assigned reading The Beach, I knew I still hadn’t gotten over Tracy and our divorce.

I went to what I thought was a yoga meditation retreat (I’d never done yoga, or meditation) in the foothills of Thailand, a place that had been recommended by Rob and two other friends who’d gone a few years before. They said, “You can’t talk for ten days. It’s an incredible spiritual journey.”

After sleeping on a thin straw mat on hardwood floors, visitors meditated in full lotus position from five-thirty to eleven in the morning, occasionally walking in a small circular path around a dirt grove. Each morning, in his very strong accent, the esteemed elder monk offered a slow, monotonous teaching that was meant to inspire our concentration and learning for the day. The problem was, he sounded like a ten million-year-old man speaking through a ten thousand-year-old microphone.

I’d read one small pamphlet on the very basics of Buddhism, so once or twice I recognized a word he would mumble repetitively: “Ssuh-ringg… Suhh-ffrnng…” Yes, the core of human unhappiness: suffering. I had no idea what else he was saying, but I sat quietly, hoping to catch a phrase or thought to help me focus through the day.

Suffering: It was a hundred degrees and humid as a sauna every day. It was so hot that the ants were dying in the trees above and falling onto us. Unprepared for sitting for hours at a time, my knees were absolutely killing me.

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