3.21.2021 – a person, stable

a person, stable,
unimaginative, acts
in his or her life

Adapted from the book, The Architecture of Happiness (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

Consider the struts on the backs of two chairs.

Both seem to express a mood.

The curved struts speak of ease and playfulness, the straight ones of seriousness and logic.

And yet neither set approximates a human shape.

Rather, the struts abstractly represent two different temperaments.

A straight piece of wood behaves in its own medium as a stable, unimaginative person will act in his or her life, while the meanders of a curved piece correspond, however obliquely, with the casual elegance of an unruffled and dandyish soul.

According the The New York Review of Books, this is “A perceptive, thoughtful, original, and richly illustrated exercise in the dramatic personification of buildings of all sorts.”

What I find irrestible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.

I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.

Neat trick in writing a book.

If I knew how to do that, I would.

3.20.2021 – No Haiku for You?

No Haiku for You?
became no haiku for me
the day words stopped

Just over 2 years ago I started putting words and syllables together into what I generously titled, Haiku.

A little bit after that I started writing short essays on what brought those words and syllables together.

It all just happened.

I would see words, or read something or look at the floor or the sky and the haiku fell out of my brain.

About a month ago they stopped.

From what I read, I have hit a writers block.

So begins the introspection.

Why did they stop?

I have a new job that on the surface is the same job I used to have, working with online content, it has a big difference.

Today however I am called on supply a lot more the creative side of the content instead of just putting it online.

The old job had become kind of rote.

We put stories online.

After 20 years I could tell you what the stories would be before they were written.

I would joke with reporters, “Is it time for the bad cherry crop in Traverse City story already?” or “Time for the gold coin in the red bucket story.”

News Directors would say in meetings, “You know what made a good story this time of year in the past …”

And out would come the “No snowplows in Atlanta” story or the “Watch out for big waves on the Pier” story.

The cycle rarely changed and when it did we called it “Breaking News.”

Now I am not only responsible for getting the stories online, I am responsible for writing them, finding the photos, taking the photos, and getting them online.

Maybe my creative needs have found another outlet.

That is a possible reason.

Another is that recently I broke the 4th Wall and thought about my audience way too much.

I started to look at the keyboard and imagine someone reading what I wrote as I wrote it.

It was like I imagined myself in front of everyone.

Sure death for creativity.

As a side note, I remember how back at Crestview Elementary School we had to learn a song each spring and then have a parents event where all the classes sand their songs.

When I think my parents, with 11 kids, went through this yearly ritual from 1950 to 1980, I think of other forms of cruel and unusual punishment.

One year, I think in 3rd grade, I found out that if I rocked on my heels and locked at my toes, it wasn’t so bad to be up in front of all the parents.

Even though later in the evening one Dad said to me, “You’re the kid who never looked up,” I felt I had discovered a great work around to being up in front of people.

The next year, in 4th grade, during rehearsal in the school gym, I couldn’t wait to try it again,

All the classes were in the Gym for an assembly and took turns singing their class songs.

My class lined up on the steps to the stage in the Gym.

We started to sing.

I rocked back on my heels and looked at my toes.

This time I rocked back with a little too much enthusiasm and went right over on my back.

I was in the front row and like dominos or maybe bowling pins, I knocked down all the kids behind me.

With my ‘reputation’ the teachers and the Principal had no time for my explanation for my theory and I was banished to the hallway for the rest of the rehearsal with dire warnings of what would happen if I tried that during the performance.

This experience gave me great incite to the trials and tribulations of explorers and scientists in their efforts to garner support for new ideas.

I felt a kinship to Thomas Edison.

But I digress.

Some folks have noticed my lack of production and attributed it to the disappearance of Mr. Trump from the national stage.

I freely admit Mr. Trump’s antics were responsible for much creativity.

Maybe he just exhausted me and I need to recharge.

Maybe it I am experiencing a general exhaustion with Covid and elections and global climate change.

I also relocated from Atlanta to a small coastal town in South Caroline.

My wife has noticed the slow life of the low country.

Maybe its just the lack of stimulation.

Or maybe it is too much stimulation.

I also have been working from home and not driving to work.

Much of my thinking and mental puttering around was in the car during my endless commutes in Atlanta.

That I was off in Haiku land and not paying attention to the drive should come as a surprise to no one.

But I starting working from home a year ago due to covid and that didn’t stop my outputbut then I did have the election and the orange guy for inspiration.

Maybe it is because I started reading Fran Leibowitz’s writing and watching her show, “Pretend its a city.”

She famously has suffered from writers block for decades.

Ms. Leibowitz writes that her editor says, “that the paralysis I have about writing is caused by an excessive reverence for the written word, and I think that’s probably true.”

In searching for use in my Haiku the outstanding in the use of language, maybe I too, came to a paralysis about writing, caused by an excessive reverence for the written word.

Yeah, sureeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Maybe I live too close to the beach.

Maybe I just wore out.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

As I love to quote Frank Lloyd Wright, “Well, there it is.”

I will continue to read.

I will continue to think.

I will continue to ponder.

And when I feel it, I will contine to write.

Until then, No Haiku … for me.

3.19.2021 – defiantly

defiantly
political decision
be free on own terms

Came across this quote the other day:

And I began to wonder if just the decision to be free on his own terms isn’t, in itself, defiantly political. And I wonder if his search for some type of grace – and his celebration of beauty where he can find it – is not also deeply political. Particularly now, and at the time when we were making this film, when in the US there was this relentless, grotesque debasement of language, of thinking, of journalism, specifically of writers. I wonder if the celebration of those things is not, in some ways, a manning of the barricades in and of itself. Maybe it’s one of the most powerful things we can do, when faced with as much vulgarity as we’ve been faced with in the last few years.

It is a quote from the actor, Jeffrey Wright.

Mr. Wright was commenting on the role he plays in the upcoming movie, “The French Dispatch.“

The movie is reported to be a look at the workings of the New Yorker Magazine in the 1930’s.

(I am really looking forward to this movie.)

Mr. Wright plays a character modeled after writer James Baldwin.

James Baldwin is the HIS in the above quote, ‘free on HIS own terms.’

3.18.2021 – sunny sunshine sounds

renew mind daily
tide cycles twice evert day
my mind out of sync

I feel the need to renew my mind, transform my mind, to the think on these things.

Once a day.

A daily process of renewal.

The tides come in twice a day though.

I am out of sync already with the world.

Part of a series based on an afternoon spent at the beach on Hilton Head Island.

I wanted to see if I would be ‘inspired’ by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Some turned out okay.

Some were too forced.

Some were just bad.

Some did involve some or all of those feelings.

As far as it goes, I guess I was inspired by by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Click here for more Haiku in the BEACH category —

3.17.2021 – analyzing the

analyzing the
meanings that emanate from
practical objects

Adapted from the book, The Architecture of Happiness (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

We will, of course, run a risk if we spend extended periods analyzing the meanings that emanate from practical objects. To be preoccupied with deciphering the message encoded in a light switch or a tap is to leave ourselves more than usually vulnerable to the commonsensical scorn of those who seek little from such fittings beyond a means of illuminating their bedroom or rinsing their teeth.

To inoculate ourselves against this derision, and to gain confidence in cultivating a contrary, more meditative attitude towards objects, we might profitably pay a visit to a museum of modern art. In whitewashed galleries housing collections of twentieth-century abstract sculpture, we are offered a rare perspective on how exactly three-dimensional masses can assume and convey meaning – a perspective that may in turn enable us to regard our fittings and houses in a new way.