Author: Mellow Curmudgeon

My blog touches on many things, often with humor and/or haiku. I have been a scientist; an engineer; an Alzheimer’s caregiver.
photography, seasons

“Fall, shmall.  Gonna set seed.”

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
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Yes, I know that garden gurus recommend doing many things in fall.  I also know that some plants routinely set seed then.  But most of my lawn only kicks grass into flower beds in spring and summer.  Intrigued by a patch that seemed to be proclaiming this post’s title, I took a break from raking fall leaves to photograph the nonconforming grass from angles that yielded contrasting backgrounds.  Growing more vigorously than most of my lawn, this little patch may be onto something.

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haiga, haiku, philosophy, photography, science

Mortality and Defiance

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
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~ Mortality #1 ~
Emergent
from dancing atoms,
life is short.
~ Mortality #2 ~
I live life
with defiant joy,
all the way.

Defiance ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #328

An earlier version of this post responded to a challenge inspired by Basho’s last haiku, written when he knew he was dying.  Contributors were asked to imagine Basho writing a haiku for his closest followers from his deathbed.  While I admired the resulting excellent sad poems, I defied the expectation of sadness and imagined Basho rallying briefly to encourage his companions with a pair of short haiku in 3-5-3.

My response to the previous challenge bungled the initial line of Mortality #2.  My first thought was that Basho might tell his followers to

Live your lives / with defiant joy, / …

Telling people like me how to live is a reliable way to elicit angry defiance, so I rejected my first thought, neglected to defy my own fondness for alliteration, and settled on

Let’s live life / with defiant joy, / …

despite some misgivings.  Hmmm.  Wish I had used

I lived life / with defiant joy, / …

as what Basho might say on his deathbed.  Hmmm.  I can use it now in the present tense because I am still fairly healthy for my age, in defiance of the odds against those who bungle things more consequential than a line of poetry.  So I use it in the revised Mortality #2 here, with defiant joy.

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