DAILY PHOTO: Courtyard at Beomeosa
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PROMPT: Languages
Daily writing prompt
Which languages do you speak and how did that impact your life?
Fluently: English; With a substantial grasp of vocabulary and grammar: Chinese; Only polite words and basic phrases: Spanish, Hungarian, Thai, Japanese, and maybe still some Russian (which I took in Grad School — the worst possible language learning environment.)
Starting to read Chinese has been thrilling. It has opened a whole new world, and the nature of the language is so different that definitely rewires the brain a bit.
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Red [Haiku]
its red cap
gives the mushroom away,
hiding in leaf litter.
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Trail & Creek [Haiku]
the trail is straight;
the creek meanders —
trail feet — creek mind.
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Icarus Tree [Senryū]
a dead tree
stands above the living;
it didn’t pace itself.
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DAILY PHOTO: Yanghwadang, Chunggyeonggung Palace
PROMPT: Advice
Daily writing prompt
What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?
Make decisions 25% more nervy than you currently see yourself having the courage to pull off.
Also, develop some uniquely human skill for the time (you are likely to see) when ai/robotics does all productive tasks better, faster, and more efficiently than humans. (Think nursing, philosophy, sex work, cage fighting, etc.)
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Straight & Tall [Haiku]
slender-stalked mushroom
stands straight & tall & still,
but not for long.
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Paper Beats Rock [Senryū]
sapling grows in boulder,
splitting it in twain;
paper does beat rock.
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BOOK: “Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club by Chuck PalahniukMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher Site – W.W. Norton
Through a weird and wild storyline, Palahniuk offers insight into two (intertwined) crises of identity that have only grown more prominent since the book (and the David Fincher film adapted from it) came out in the late 90’s. First and foremost, there is a craving for, yet confusion about the nature of, masculinity. As men raised by women struggle to ape masculine behavior only to over-emphasize conspicuous features such as violence and aggression while missing more subtle aspects such as the instinct to protect and a grasp of responsibility, self-empowerment, and fortitude. The second identity crisis is self as consumer, wherein people start linking who they are to their consumption, and this becomes demoralizing because it’s such a hallow way of seeing oneself. (I say the crises are “intertwined” because it’s a long and painful fall to go from “protector” to “consumer-” the latter having nothing at all to feel good about.)
This is one of those books that people either find illuminating or unreadable. There is a lot in the book that is stomach-turning. For many, this will be the violence, but — for me, and I suspect many others, — it’s the “mischievous” pranks that Tyler Durden and the unnamed lead “play” as they work as waiters. Upton Sinclair once said of The Jungle that he aimed for the reader’s heart (i.e. to bring awareness to labor issues in the meat packing industry) and hit them square in the stomach (i.e. people’s main takeaway was that how their food was made was gross and needed to be corrected.) This may be a similar situation. Palahniuk, I suspect, is trying to show how these full-grown men in some ways haven’t escaped the grossest era of boyhood as they attempt to find their power in the world, but it mostly reminded me to not eat at banquets or other gatherings of rich people.
I found this to be an insightful book and would highly recommend it for anyone trying to figure out some of the oddities of the world in which we find ourselves living.
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