My mother groan'd! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I leapt:
Helpless, naked, piping loud:
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
Struggling in my father's hands,
Striving against my swadling bands.
Bound and weary I thought best
To sulk upon my mother's breast.
Is your life today what you pictured a year ago?
I make no predictions. Forecasting is a sucker’s game.
Tell us about your first day at something — school, work, as a parent, etc.
I can’t say I have strong recollections of any of them. I have a vague recollection of the flight to basic training (first time flying, but mostly I remember there was a drunk dude sitting next to me,) but I don’t recall anything from my first day in the military proper. No first days of school or on any job have stuck.
I guess my clearest memory is for the most recent major first — first day living in Bangalore, India (a little over eleven years ago.) I must say, however, I just remember snippets of being lost in a walk around the neighborhood. One might expect a first day in urban India to be daunting / overwhelming- even for a reasonably well-traveled Westerner, but if it was I don’t remember that bit.
"Time to put off the world and go somewhere
And find my health again in the sea air,"
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
"And make my soul before my pate is bare;
"And get a comfortable wife and house
To rid me of the devil in my shoes,"
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
"And the worse devil that is between my thighs.
"And though I'd marry with a comely lass,
She need not be too comely -- let it pass,"
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
"But there's a devil in a looking glass.
"Nor should she be too rich, because the rich
Are driven by wealth as beggars by the itch,"
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
"And cannot have a humorous happy speech.
"And there I'll grow respected at my ease,
And hear amid the garden's nightly peace,"
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
"The wind-blown clamor of the barnacle-geese."
Just, oh so many of them. Virtually all of them. I’ve succeeded in every breath I took (so far, fingers crossed.)
Half of my life is gone, and I have let
The years slip from me and have not
fulfilled
The aspiration of my youth, to build
Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
Of restless passions that would not be
stilled,
But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
Lying beneath me with its sounds and
sights, --
A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and
gleaming lights, --
And hear above me on the autumnal blast
The cataract of Death far thundering
from the heights.
I borrowed these one month ago, yesterday.
I'm returning them today.
I borrowed five and return four --
Repaid, but for Original Emptiness.
NOTE: This is one of three Death Poems attributed to Ikkyū, supposedly the middle one.
What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? Why?
Probably to leave a job. Because it was a move from stability, security, and respectability to… not.
[Note: I will assume this to be the colloquial usage of “pet peeves” as I have no peeves about pets whatsoever (in fact, compared to most human children I see running around, I find pets to be positively civilized.)]
With that in mind:
1.) Forcing a “favor” on another person in expectation of some kind of reciprocation (usually outsized in scale to the fake favor.)
2.) Using the Q & A section of a program to make one’s own speech (the subtext being that one — rather than the lunkhead who just presented — should have been the one invited to speak in the first place.)
3.) Acting as though one particular set of cultural norms is the only moral / ethical way to live.
Bonus response: As we are presently on a blogging platform, I should mention a blogger’s peeve: Using another’s comment section as an advertisement for one’s own content — particularly with no actual comment about the post to which one’s “comment” is attached. I realize blogging is inherently a self-centered activity, but let’s not fall full-Narcissus into it.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 