If there’s anything that I learned in all those years of Social Science education, it’s that forecasting is a sucker’s game.
I don’t know where I’ll be, but I hope it’s someplace I never saw coming. #embracethechaos.
PROMPT: 10 Years
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DAILY PHOTO: Ulsoor Lake by Morning
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“Laughing Song” by William Blake [w/ Audio]
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;
When the meadows laugh with lively green,
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,
When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing 'Ha, Ha, He!'
When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread,
Come live & be merry, and join with me,
To sing the sweet chorus of 'Ha, Ha, He!'
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PROMPT: Everyday Things
My wife, movement, new & interesting ideas, play, and epiphanies.
[I’m presuming we’re using the word “thing” in the broadest possible sense — as a stand in for any noun. If it is meant in the narrower common usage of trinkets, gewgaws, baubles, and tchotchkes, then I’ve got nothing.]
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Daruma [Free Verse]
He is carved as an
amorphous stone,
Suggesting he stared
into the rock until
any distinction between
himself and the rock
vanished. . .
But the sculptor couldn't
help but add a face.
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DAILY PHOTO: Gates of Lucknow
PROMPT: High School
A psychology teacher taught us about what he called “the gestalt of expectations.” It’s when one builds an alternative reality in one’s mind (typically a worst-case scenario) and then one acts as though it is a reality, when – in fact – it is not. (Though sometimes it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy situation, which — of course — triggers selection bias in people of the unexamined life.)
It was my introduction to what I would come to know as the most fundamental insight of human existence — i.e. that one’s experience of the world is not the world itself, and while one has minimal influence over the latter, one can have tremendous influence over the former. One can even train oneself to perceive difficulties and sorrows as learning and growth opportunities.
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“Poetry Is a Destructive Force” by Wallace Stevens [w/ Audio]
That's what misery is,
Nothing to have at heart.
It is to have or nothing.
It is a thing to have,
A lion, an ox in his breast,
To feel it breathing there.
Corazón, stout dog,
Young ox, bow-legged bear,
He tastes its blood, not spit.
He is like a man
In the body of a violent beast.
Its muscles are his own. . .
The lion sleeps in the sun.
Its nose is on its paws.
It can kill a man.
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Liquid Hours [Free Verse]
liquid hours poured forth,
rolling over rock
& into the sea.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 