Absurdity.
Category Archives: Life
Icarus Tree [Senryū]

a dead tree
stands above the living;
it didn’t pace itself.
PROMPT: Successful
Adjust your definition of success until you’re there. It is, after all, a completely subjective term.
PROMPT: First Time
I would not be the same person. It would not be the same book.
PROMPT: Grown
Horizontally.
PROMPT: 20-year-old
I’d probably tell myself to take a different undergrad major (I did 4 years of military before college, so it would still be relevant.) That said, I don’t know that my 20-year-old self would listen to me any more than he did to anyone else.
PROMPT: Mars
Probably, and life will probably be short and toilsome for quite a while. Short because there’ll be loads of unintended consequence and we will probably learn there are many more aspects of Earth that are consequential to our wellbeing than we ever understood. Toilsome because, as European explorers in Africa thought that everything was trying to kill them, Mars colonists will find that there is not one thing there that wants them alive. Every task involves pushing a boulder uphill.
Stony Ground [Haiku]

hot patch of granite:
from any crack or cranny
something learns to grow.
PROMPT: Expected to Hate
I’ve had it the other way round (i.e. disliked a movie I expected to like,) but I can’t really say I’ve ever watched a movie that I expected to hate. Do people do that? In the very short life one has, are there people who sit around entertaining themselves with movies they expect to not be entertaining? Despite all that I have learned in this life, people perplex me more and more each day.
PROMPT: Meaning of Life
I don’t know that there is a meaning of life, and — if there is — I truly doubt that it’s one size fits all. I’ve got to give it to the Existentialists on this particular question.
