PROMPT: Vacation

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Describe your most memorable vacation.

That’s a tough one, but I have to go with a trip to the Peruvian Andes about twelve-ish years ago. As a person from Northwest Indiana (where anthills appear on topographic maps,) it was my first time in the Very High Altitude range. We hiked through the Salkantay Pass (15,000+ft / 4500+m) on the second day of a trek with me vomiting (water, as my stomach was long devoid of other contents) every couple switch-backs. I’m told I was literally green, but can’t confirm for lack of mirrors. But I trudged through, one glacial step at a time.

At the end of our trip, we were in Arequipa and needed to get back to Cuzco for our flight out. After buying bus tickets, we discovered that the road from Arequipa to Cuzco would be shut down by a transportation strike, and that everyone was honoring the strike as they sometimes turned violent. After a day of frustration, we surrendered to the situation, traded in our Arequipa-Cuzco tickets for Arequipa-Lima tickets, and we got into Lima (where we had a layover) early enough to arrange to join the flight there.

The reason this stands out as such a wonderful trip (besides all the beautiful sights: Titicaca, Machu Picchu, the Andes, all the Incan ruins and old Spanish churches; not to mention the delicious food) is the powerful life lessons it taught me. First, I’ve never felt closer to death than crossing through Salkantay Pass, and yet one step at a time got me through. Second, I learned not to butt heads with changing circumstance, but rather flow over, around, or under. Lastly, trips where things go wrong produce the dividend of great stories. Nobody cares about your trip to Paris where everything went smoothly, but they can’t get enough about the trip to Zaire where you got Malaria and were caught up in an insurrection or the cruise where passengers started turning to zombies.

PROMPT: Authority

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On what subject(s) are you an authority?

If by authority one means “having such expertise / understanding that you can just take my word for it with regards said subject,” then I claim no such authority — graduate degrees and certifications notwithstanding. I certainly don’t take anyone else’s [single source] word for anything, and I take the Jnani’s view that all knowledge should be subjected to one’s own experience and reasoning.

If, however, one means “having more insight than anyone else about the subject,” I would claim authority on the experience of operating the mind / body that is typing this reply.

Gull Prowl [Haiku]

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gull on the prowl:
 wings move erratically,
  head methodically.

DAILY PHOTO: Beach House

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Summer Storms [Haiku]

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Summer beach day;
 swollen clouds slog nearer:
  mass exodus.

Berry Game Theory [Haiku]

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summer berries:
 to pick or let ripen?
  what will birds do?

DAILY PHOTO: From High Ground

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The Abyss [Free Verse]

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Nietzsche said:

“And if thou gaze long
   into an abyss,
  the abyss will also
    gaze into thee.”


I must admit
   the first several times
    that I read this quote,
  I couldn’t tell if it was wise,
    or just had the patina of
     wisdom that comes from 
     parallel sentence structure.

Crisscrossing subject and object
    lends a ring of sagacity.

“If you can’t take 
    Mohammad to the mountain,
  the mountain must come to
    Mohammad.”


“Ask not what your country 
    can do for you,
  but what you can do 
     for your country.”


“If you can’t get the carrots 
    out of the refrigerator,
  get the refrigerator 
     out of the carrots.”


Yes, that last one is nonsense, 
    but it’s not nonsense like:

“The banana pirouetted fuchsia
     all over the underside of
      an A-sharp chord.”

The carrot quote probably took
     your mind some time —
      if only milliseconds —
       to relegate to the
        trash heap. 

That’s why this sentence structure 
     is beloved by godmen &
      politicians: because you can 
       sound wise even if you’re 
       kind of an idiot.

So, I was ready to classify Nietzsche’s 
     quote pseudo-wisdom when I realized 
      that my smartphone was the Abyss, 
       and it was certainly staring back at me.

  It stared through all the data collection &
     neuroscientific and psychological
      research designed to keep 
       a person scrolling.

Maybe Nietzsche was on to something
    that even he didn't fully understand.

PROMPT: Romantic [Or, romantic]

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Daily writing prompt
What’s your definition of romantic?
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Depends on the context. If I’m thinking about poetry or philosophy (which I often am,) then it pertains to the early nineteenth century movement that counterpoised the Enlightenment. Those “Romantics” disliked what they saw as the cold rationality of Enlightenment thinking; they valued spiritual and mystical experiences, and they believed it was important to not throw out the spiritual “baby” with the bathwater. That is, like many Enlightenment thinkers, they realized that it was necessary to jettison many of religion’s noxious ideas (e.g. the concept of “chosen people”) and also realized that mindlessly following moral dictates that may or may not have made sense in the pre-Christian Levant could be detrimental to their present-day life experience. However, unlike most Enlightenment thinkers, they did find value in spiritual views of the world as well as in the pursuit of mystical experiences. William Blake (even though he is often labeled pre-Romantic) provides an excellent example. His poems are spiritual to the core, and yet explicitly reject a lot of the moralizing and toxic aspects of conventional religion.

Of course, that variety of “Romantic” is usually given a big-R, and so I suspect the question is after a more colloquial definition. With that in mind, I believe “romantic” means “that which facilitates the unity of two (or more, I don’t judge) people in an immersive intimate experience of each other during a common period of time.” I’m not big on trappings. I think people obsess over trappings because it allows them to slack on the physical / cognitive demands of being fully engaged. This is why sex (done well) is such a great tool both for relationship building and for personal development. It makes it relatively easy (i.e. rewarding) to stay fully engaged in a common experience and in the moment, and to not fall into the attentional abyss.

Farmland, Unchecked [Free Verse]

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From a hilltop,
   farmland stretches
    to the horizon:
 
parceled into rectangles
   of brown, beige, and oh 
    so many shades of green.

It must be the tropics,
    for ripe grain to 
     coexist with verdant
      & fallow patches.

So different from the farmland
    of my youth
     where all the rectangles 
      were one of two colors -
      because everyone had to
      pack into the same tight
      growing season.