FIVE WISE LINES [September 2025]

The aim of introduction is to conceal a person’s identity.

George Mikes, How To Be an Alien

From the beginning our philosophers have tried to teach us how to die,
and our poets have taught us that to contemplate death
is to learn to live.

Jonathan weiner, Long for this world

Nothing is harder to see into than people’s natures.

Zhuge liang [a.k.a. Kongming], The WAy of the General

To know how to eat is to know how to live.

Auguste Escoffier

Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.

Mark twain

PROMPT: This Evening

What are you doing this evening?

Who can know such things? I’m not a fortuneteller. But as I just came off a travel cycle, a betting person would put his money on something sleep related.

PROMPT: Ideal Week

Daily writing prompt
Describe your ideal week.

My ideal week would consist of seven days, each day of about twenty-four hours. You could fit four of them in a month with room to spare.

PROMPT: Traveled from Home

Daily writing prompt
Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.

”Home” and “away” lost all meaning long ago, becoming a false dichotomy. “Furthest” is likely presumed to mean the most distant in space, but that is not always the greatest mental distance. Sometimes a place changes while you were away, and that shift through time becomes the most jarring distance.

PROMPT: Ideal Home

Daily writing prompt
What does your ideal home look like?

Big enough to live in it; small enough not to live for it.

Preferably, it teleports on a regular basis, so I don’t have to — you know— live in one place for the rest of my life.

PROMPT: Habit

Daily writing prompt
What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?

I poop. Surely, I would have exploded in my youth if I hadn’t developed the habit. I feel my quality of life as a human must be better than the quality of life of gut bacteria in wall-spattered fecal matter. At least I have the leisure and capacity to contemplate such things.

“Upon the Road of My Life” by Stephen Crane [w/ Audio]

Upon the road of my life,
Passed me many fair creatures,
Clothed all in white, and radiant.
To one, finally, I made speech:
“Who art thou?”
But she, like the others,
Kept cowled her face,
And answered in haste, anxiously,
“I am good deed, forsooth;
You have often seen me.”
“Not uncowled,” I made reply.
And with rash and strong hand,
Though she resisted,
I drew away the veil
And gazed at the features of vanity.
She, shamefaced, went on;
And after I had mused a time,
I said of myself,
“Fool!”

PROMPT: Motivates

Daily writing prompt
What motivates you?

When tigers chase, I run. When sunsets glow, I sit and watch.

PROMPT: Writing

Daily writing prompt
What do you enjoy most about writing?

EPIPHANIES.

But, if you think about it, writing is miraculous. In the scheme of gifts that nature grants, it is way out beyond left field. Encoding ideas and images in simple characters in a way that can evoke emotional or cognitive responses in readers is kind of a superpower. (As is reading.)

PROMPT: Positive Emotion

Daily writing prompt
What positive emotion do you feel most often?

Curiosity. I exist in a state of perpetual perplexity. For example, is curiosity an emotion? If so, is it a positive one? I know it includes a feeling that drives me to make a decision or take an action, which would be an emotion by definition. But I don’t see it on a list of emotions. I consider it positive, but I also try to avoid putting value judgements on all things. Maybe it’s neutral. Can an emotion be neutral?…