PROMPT: Hated Question

Daily writing prompt
What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.

Being a traveler who lives abroad, the answer is simple: “Where are you from?”

As a traveler, I can’t grasp tribal / jingoistic people’s obsession with where one fell out of one’s mom, and it always feels a bit xenophobic — as though, noticing one’s foreignness, there is a rush to determine whether one is one of the tolerable foreigners or one of the really bad ones.

As an introvert, the question offends my preference to be talked to by people who have something to say, and to be left alone by people who are just playing out social programming with the objective of breaking silence that they find objectionable (but which I, as a rule, find delightful.) (Even being highly introverted, I can converse for hours with someone who has something to say on a topic that is neither themselves nor me — i.e. I love ideas but hate small talk and interaction for the sake of interaction.)

Plus, it just gets annoying being asked the same question sixty times a day when I’m in more remote parts — a question, the answer to which will be forgotten in three minutes and is merely sound for sound’s sake. In the unlikely event that one hopes to have an actual conversation with me, one must start with something that is not your culture’s default socially programmed question. One must get to at least the second most commonly asked question, a question varies from person to person (in my case, it’s: “Why are you such an asshole?”)

FIVE WISE LINES [March 2025]

Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble?

george bernard shaw, PygMalion

Refrain from talk of others’ shortcomings; don’t rest on your strengths.
[罔谈彼短; 靡恃己长.]

Thousand Character classic [千字文]

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

george bernard shaw, Man and superman

A child is the most reliable measure of time. His daily growth is proof of your daily ageing and decline. The child’s gains are your losses, and the closer a child gets to anything, the farther you withdraw, as though you were tied to one another on opposite spokes of a wheel and the wheel, without your noticing it, turns. Dawn for the child is dusk for you.

Otar chiladze, A Man was going down the road

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

George bernard shaw, Pygmalion

“To Tirzah” by William Blake [w/ Audio]

Whate'er is Born of Mortal Birth
Must be consumed with the Earth
To rise from Generation free:
Then what have I to do with thee?

The Sexes sprung from Shame & Pride,
Blow'd in the morn; in evening died;
But Mercy chang'd Death to Sleep;
The Sexes rose to work & weep.

Thou, Mother of my Mortal part,
With cruelty didst mould my Heart,
And with false self-deceiving tears
Didst bind my Nostrils, Eyes, & Ears:

Didst close my Tongue in senseless clay,
And me to Mortal Life betray.
The Death of Jesus set me free:
Then what have I to do with thee?

PROMPT: Grow

What experiences in life helped you grow the most?

The ones that involved repeated non-catastrophic failures (e.g. martial arts practice.)

Also, the ones that confronted fears (e.g. open sea swimming.)

“Away with Funeral Music” by Robert Louis Stevenson [w/ Audio]

Away with funeral music -- set
The pipe to powerful lips --
The cup of life's for him that drinks
And not for him that sips.

“Lethe” by Walter de la Mare [w/ Audio]

Only the Blessed of Lethe's dews
May stoop to drink. And yet,
Were their Elysium mine to lose,
Could I, sans all repining, choose
Life's sorrows to forget?

Let it Float [Lyric Poem]

Sans fear of dying,
The angst of trying
Is felt and left
To float.

“Water” by Ralph Waldo Emerson [w/ Audio]

The water understands
Civilization well;
It wets my foot, but prettily,
It chills my life, but wittily,
It is not disconcerted,
It is not broken-hearted:
Well used, it decketh joy,
Adorneth, doubleth joy:
Ill used, it will destroy,
In perfect time and measure
With a face of golden pleasure
Elegantly destroy.

PROMPT: Favorite People

Daily writing prompt
Who are your favorite people to be around?

People who take nothing seriously. A distant second goes to those who take everything seriously. And dead last, being people I avoid at all costs, are those who have a sizable set of ideas that they believe should be treated deadly seriously by everyone, while finding others’ serious stuff to be mockable.

Einstein said there are two ways of viewing the world, as if everything is a miracle or nothing is. I’m sure Einstein recognized that there were many people who, in fact, believed their own sect to have “legitimate miracles,” while believing the miracles of other sects were mere superstition. And what he was really getting at was that the latter stance is presumptuous, indefensible, and – quite frankly – ridiculous. Anyhow, my own spin is that there are two legitimate ways to view the world: to take nothing serious and to take everything seriously. All others are shades of petty narcissism.

[As I think of it, I guess I could have answered more simply with the single word: “Travelers.”]

“Worldly Place” by Matthew Arnold [w/ Audio]

Even in a palace, life may be led well!
So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,
Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den
Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,

Our freedom for a little bread we sell,
And drudge under some foolish master's
ken
Who rates us if we peer outside our pen --
Match'd with a palace, is not this a hell?

Even in a palace! On his truth sincere,
Who spoke these words, no shadow ever
came;
And when my ill-school'd spirit is aflame

Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win,
I'll stop, and say: "There were no succour
here!
The aids to noble life are all within."