Five Haiku, for your dining & dancing pleasure:
Origin
[A nod to the origin of the art of Haiku:]
Solitary bloom
culled from fragrant abundance
striking lotus breathes
Water:
Creek meanders then
tackles ever larger stones
cold river rises
Sun:
Vaulting into light
each new time zone a ruckus
from a sleeping silence
Music Box:
Rigid plastic doll
popped out of her pirouette
into velvet abyss
Imperative:
Splash into the glass
drip drip i can hardly wait
coffee saves my life
Light a soccer match
In a secret pocket of
Barcelona, Spain
Photo Credit: Oriol Tarridas
Haiku by C.T.Thatch (though it can be argued that it pretty much wrote itself)
Totall random post. I'm just bored and too brain fried to do any more work on my portfolio atm.
So this one time? at band summer camp? there were half a dozen of us: Katherine, Katie, Kathy, Kat, Kathleen, and me, Catherine. The Katherine went by Katherine and I went by Catherine. The tribe of us were already so prone to mix-ups that they tried to get one of us to go by something else. They asked her, how 'bout 'Kay'? Vast swivels of dramatic head-shaking ensued. They asked us, how 'bout your last names? I roared 'Never. Ever. Ever.' I had the name of the adoptive couple I stayed with, and hated it. It began with C and I pointed this out. One of the kids said: "C.C.!" My eyes went wide - I loved that! I was so surprised, really, and felt that weird sense of honor to be nicknamed. But it didn't stick very well, because I then sang, "C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me. Hey!", and:
Everyone started calling me Cookie.
This is a chocolate chip cookie from Levain Bakery in Manhattan; photo credit: My Baking Addiction
I just loved it. I was tickled anytime anyone used it, especially if I was introduced that way. 'C.C.' held here and there, but 'Cookie' won the big prize. In typical 10 year-old style, I started writing it on everything.
Alas, my beloved CYO camp (Don Bosco that year) session came to an end, and I was Cookie no more. Ever since, I've referred to myself that way in my head, maybe not as often as 'Cath' or 'Hey' or 'Dumbass', but it's never really left. I think I've held this secret hope that somebody else would (cosmically?) think it up for me again. Well, no such luck yet, so you know what? I'm resurrecting it myself, damnit. It ain't the same exactly, but whatever. It's cute & I love it and it's mine.
COOOOKIIIEE!
I grew up in a big American city. I recently lived in one of the Ten Point Alpha World Cities, and I'm moving to one of the four Twelve Point ones in the near future. Ever in an urban environment, I've routinely seen of every conceivable type of behavior, all my life, from heroic to abysmal. People will make your heart sing with their unbounded kindness one moment, and they will break it with tragic indifference or mean-spiritedness the next.
Agatha Award winning Jacqueline Winspear wrote for The Naked Truth. Just prior to its demise, she had lamented discourteous behavior (amen, and it was cathartic to commiserate). But she introduced the transgressions as “[giving her] pause to consider – again – what sort of people we’re all becoming.”
Heavens, what is the world coming to?
I understand this thought, I really do. But I disagree. Humans have been both beautiful and awful (sometimes within the span of a single moment) for the full length of our history, and we are hardly the only animals so capable. Elder generations have been critical of and distraught over the wretched behavior of the upcoming generations since the dawn of humanity. People of all kinds everywhere for all time have experienced that jolt of dismay over a disrespectful act, been shocked at the depths of another’s cynicism and how that worldview causes him or her to behave, and seen heartbreaking apathy or cruelty.
The basic nature of our race is not changing. Not even a little bit. Yes, there have been enormous, drastic changes to our world since the Industrial Revolution that have rocketed civilization forward - novel types of changes, and at a shocking pace, I realize. We have experienced mindblowing cutting edge scientific advances. We have amazing new tools for looking at ourselves and measuring who we are and how we and our world is coming along. We have new technology so astounding that they look even to most of us like impossible, improbable magic. I know, things are different. And yet? We are in our deepest nature simply the current issue of who we have always and forever been.
I am definitely not saying that there are no disturbing new trends and particularly horrifying people (school shootings, Jeffrey Dahmer). I am saying that there have always been disturbing trends and particularly horrifying people (The Crusades, Caligula). There will be disturbing new trends and particularly horrifying people until the Sun gets too hot for Earth to host human life.
We are not becoming an impolite race from having been a polite race. As long as humans exist, we will have rules governing our behavior, and there will be times when we will break them. There will be people who have a chronic habit of breaking them, sometimes in a most colorful manner. As always, most of us will put some kind of a premium on good behavior and develop a set of measures for assessing it. We will hang our heads in despair when we or other people’s intentions or actions fall outside of them. We will celebrate with happy hearts and renewed faith when the usual expectations are exceeded.
It's the same as it ever was. There will always be good guys, good chances, good days, redemption, sweetness, the capacity to move others beyond words and be so moved. There will always be the humdrum, the remarkable, the specular. There will always be grief, disappointment, loss. The vast majority of us love somehow, or understand some kind of love, who at some point grasp how short our time is here and begin making choices which reflect that.
We are animals; magic touchscreens & transcontinental travel changes how we do things and how fast, not who we are. What is the world coming to? Well eventually, indeed, an end. I can't know how long humanity will remain on this planet, but I'd put my money on at least 3 of the whole 3.2 billion years Earth has left to host us.
photo credit: