I collect experiences, but they are very slippery and will not stay in a row on a shelf to be displayed.
PROMPT: Collections
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Category Archives: Life
PROMPT: Legacy
If “legacy” is defined as something left behind that serves to keep one’s memory alive, then I don’t. I think that goal is futile, illusory, and a bit narcissistic. Even those who are “remembered” long after their deaths are not truly remembered. For example, the Alexander the Great who is remembered to this day likely bears little resemblance to the one who was flesh and blood. What we remember are products of imagination. [Which is fine, but then why tie them to people who lived as opposed to purely fictional ones?]
If I could leave behind some configuration of knowledge of the art of human living that would be helpful to anyone (without it being tied to my identity or memory) that would be a fine thing.
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“There is a finished feeling” (856) by Emily Dickinson [w/ Recording]
There is a finished feeling
Experienced at Graves—
A leisure of the Future—
A Wilderness of Size.
By Death’s bold Exhibition
Preciser what we are
And the Eternal function
Enabled to infer.
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PROMPT: Broken Bone
Have you ever broken a bone?
To the best of my knowledge, I have never broken a bone — neither mine nor anyone else’s.
But it’s not been for a lack of trying.
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Quatrain 62 of the Rubaiyat of Rumi [w/ Audio]
If you desire the self, get out of the self.
Leave the shallow stream behind
And flow into the river deep and wide.
Don't be an ox pulling the wheel of the plow,
Turn with the stars that wheel above you.
As translated in: Helminski, Kabir (ed.). 2018. The Pocket Rumi. Boulder, CO: Shambhala South Asia Editions. p. 4; translators: Kabir Helminski, Camille Helminski, and Lida Saedian
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PROMPT: Sacrifices
What sacrifices have you made in life?
I’ve thrown coins in a fountain, and I once went to a pig roast where someone prayed out loud before we ate, but I’ve never pushed anyone into a volcano — if that’s what you’re getting at.
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PROMPT: Oldest Clothes
What’s the oldest thing you’re wearing today?
A pair of flip-flops I got in Tagbilaran, Philippines almost ten years ago when an airline lost our luggage and we had to replace our travel wardrobe from the slim pickings of a local store. (It was actually a well-stocked store, but Filipinos tend to be smaller — but when they aren’t, they’re apparently much bigger. So, sizing mostly went: XS, S, M, XXXL, XXXXL. And I needed an L in Filipino sizes. Actually, the bigger stock probably just doesn’t turn over. Maybe the lack of L’s suggested it was a popular size.)
Not bad for a cheap purchase meant only to hold up through a crisis.
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PROMPT: One Small Improvement
Use a timer to create distraction-free zones in your day. When you’re working on a task, set the timer for some reasonable time (say, 1 hour.) [Do not try to do many hours at a time, you should move and ruminate on a regular basis.] Until the timer goes off, social media doesn’t exist. YouTube doesn’t exist. Snacks do not exist. Visitors do not exist. Phone calls don’t exist. Texts don’t exist. Only the task at hand exists, and only dire emergency should be allowed to interfere. This facilitates Flow.
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“A Question” by Robert Frost [w/ Audio]
A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.
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PROMPT: Freedom
Of the universe of all possible actions, one can choose to attempt any (or refrain from any) but those curtailed by a small number of laws intended to keep one from impinging upon the freedoms of others or imposing costs / burdens on them to which they did not consent, or by self-imposed limitations (e.g. one’s own ethical belief system or one’s physical / mental limitations.)
Often it is wrongly confused with comfort. A maximally free society is not maximally comfortable for anyone, because one has to accept that others will make all sorts of choices that one would not make oneself (and that it’s none of your business.)
Tiger Riding for Beginners 