Gather No Moss

So a couple weeks ago, I thought that it’d be cool to read a poem to myself once a day. Sort of like following the old aphorism “Starting the day right.” I wouldn’t say that it was a confidence thing. More like find myself some soulful nourishment before going into that cold, hostile environment.

Caveat: It’s not the co-workers that are hostile, but rather the room and environment is. To quote Armageddon “Imagine the most hostile environment ever.”

Off topic: Paige Davis from Trading Spaces is HOT.

So, a couple weeks ago, I went to google.com and did some searches. I used terms like “Daily Poem” or “Poetry Mailing List” etc. The results came in two categories:

Self-affirmations and Other

To those who missed out on those missable Saturday Night Live episodes in the late 80s, Self-affirmations are poems where you stand in front of a poem and just recite something to build your own confident. The phrase “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and doggone it, people like me” epitomizes this movement perfectly.

I can’t imagine basing my confidence on a poem I received off of the Internet.

There were hundreds of these Daily affirmation mailing lists.

The “Other” category only had two entries. The daily Shakespeare sonnet, and the daily haiku. Now what I was looking for was a potpourri mailing list. Where one day I may be reading some Poe, and the next something out of the Sonnets of the Portugese. Give me something written by a wild-eyed long-nailed Aboriginal shaman. Give me an excerpt of an old Viking rowing song.

Give me something RANDOM and PASSIONATE.

And instead, I had to settle for a daily Haiku.

I don’t have anything against haikus. They’re cute. They can be deep. They’re short. They’re not filling. But they are fun.

But for FOKK’S sake! Here are the last two haikus I received from this list:

clipping toenails -
each one chooses
a new direction

-Edmund Hardy

Soft footsteps
of students bunking
class test

-R K Singh

Do people know what a haiku is? 5-7-5 syllabic structure people. It isn’t hard! That’s all I ask. These poems refuse to respect the time honored traditions of the form.

I do like the toenail one though.

I used to run a website called InfoHigh, I saw that the world was slowly becoming a sea of rapid access information. And that certain people would be drawn to being in touch and up-to-date all the time. They would become addicted to being the most knowledgable person in topical events, a la Paris Hilton, Bhutto’s Assasination, the newest releaase of MacOS. You name it, they would know more than you.

I was one of those people, and it’s been hard for me to kick the habit. If only I’d run across Tim’s book earlier, I would have saved a lot of time. Certainly, all that time spent obsessing over the events of the day was wasted, and time that I wish I had back.

A recent guest post at Tim’s blog talks about how to stay in touch without the world, without being smothered by the 24 hour news cycle. You guys should check it out.

I love learning languages. Back in the day, while I was working for the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, I helped setup a tour called “Science in American Life.” Working at the Museum of American History, I interacted with visitors from all across the world. From Argentina to Zaire, and I found that before I could really get to presenting my work, the exhibit and the cool activities we had for children, I had to create a connection between me and my “audience.”

And to do this, I learned how to say “I’m hungry” in a bunch of languages. Last count, I clocked in about 30 different languages. Whenever I meet someone, I ask where they’re from. And if it’s one of the languages I’m familliar with, I practice my little piece of their culture. I say “I’m hungry” in Burmese, Gaelic or Slovenian, and the conversation starts.

People love it when you take the effort to speak their language. Even if it’s something so simple as “I’m hungry.”

I speak English, Vietnamese, French and Japanese, so learning languages has always come pretty easy. I’m moving to Thailand in a couple weeks, so went looking out on the Internet for ways to learn Thai.

I found Open Culture to be of great help. They’ve got a bunch of podcasts for 20 different languages. There’s a Thai podcast, and I’ve downloaded it to listen to OVER and OVER again in the car, in the subway and before I go to sleep. For me, the key to learning a language is repetition repetition REPETITION. Sorta like how most people get to Carnegie Hall.