DAILY PHOTO: Namgyal Chorten of Pokhara

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Photograph of the Namgyal Chorten located on the outskirts of Pokhara, Nepal.

PROMPT: Author

Daily writing prompt
Which author would you love to have dinner with?

If this was one of those “living or dead” scenarios, I’d have to go with Mark Twain. But as it may not be, and I wouldn’t want to have dinner with a box of bones, I’d say Chuck Palahniuk, or — in nonfiction — David Brooks.

Desert [Haiku]

Photograph of mountainous desert with bare soil high in the Andes.
hard, compact earth
where nothing grows;
bird hops, then flies off.

Season Bridge [Haiku]

yellow daisies grow
from crack & fissure;
bridging Summer & Fall.

DAILY PHOTO: Saqsaywaman Wall

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Photograph showing the fascinating mortarless Incan masonry at Saqsaywaman, an Incan site overlooking Cusco, Peru.

PROMPT: People

Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment when a stranger completely restored your faith in people?

I will admit that I’m quite jaded, but the only place I need my faith in people COMPLETELY restored is online. Almost anytime I interact with real people in the real world I come away with a sense that people are generally good and mostly trying to do right (in as much as they can determine what “good” and “right” mean in our complicated world.) However, as soon as one allows for anonymity, shittiness blossoms — whether that anonymity is due to the nature of the online world or because one is otherwise not interacting face-to-face or because one (while not strictly anonymous) is homogenized by life inside an echo chamber.

Huh, maybe I do need my faith in people restored because I guess I’m saying that people in the light of day are loveable but in the dark they slouch toward depravity. Maybe we’ll figure it out. For most of humanity’s existence, anonymity was not an option. There’s no hiding in a tribe. It’s all part of what our species is working out, I suppose. I suspect that most people if given the choice between having the ill-gotten gains of their anonymity or being truly and deeply seen would opt for the latter.

Shadow-dappled [Haiku]

shadow-dappled
forest floor stretches to a
confusion of trees.

DAILY PHOTO: Lapu-Lapu, Rizal Park

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Photograph of the Statue of the Sentinel of Freedom, aka. Lapu-Lapu, in Rizal Park of Manila, Philippines.

PROMPT: Future Self

Daily writing prompt
If your future self could send you one sentence, what do you hope it would say?

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure we die in a reasonably robust mental and physical state.”

I don’t want my future self to get comfortable with the idea of pooping ourself in bed or forgetting the few people we know just because he’s gotten more cowardly about death in its proximity.

DAILY PHOTO: Qatari Ministry of the Interior

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Photograph from a park of the Qatari Interior Ministry building.