SoulPancake

[LIFE'S BIG LISTS]

"Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else."—Alison Boulter

:: odd man out by Candy Critic

List 3 incredibly idiosyncratic ways in which you are NOT like everybody else.

1. I drink two pots of coffee a day and have zero issues falling asleep.
2. I toss my own pizza dough every Tuesday night and speak with a fake Italian accent the whole time I’m doing it.
3. I can recite every word of every line to the very first episode of Three’s Company.

:: @CSW

[SP EXCLUSIVE]

Our new Hectic Poetic column isn't just about reading poetry; it's about actually trying poetry on for size. So let's put on our thinking caps! (If you actually own one of these mythical hats, that is. If you do, please send me a photo. I'd love to know what one looks like.)

Today, we're taking our popular haiku challenges a step further. Yes, there are are a few "next logical steps" possible, with the most obvious being the renga and the haibun, or forefather and spawn of the haiku. First, a word about the one we won’t be tackling just now—the haibun. Simply put, haibun is roughly a paragraph of poetic prose preceding a haiku. The economical, often playful, language used in a haiku is used in the prose, which leads up to or elaborates upon the moment sketched in the haiku. These haibuns were pioneered by Japanese master Basho in his travel journals, which I lovelovelove. (He’s such a dreamy ancient man, if ever there was one.)

Now, on to our current task—the renga! Renga, a traditional form of linked poetry, is responsible for the appearance of what we now know as haiku. Typically written by two participants, the first writer composes a haiku (three lines with a 5-7-5 syllabic structure), the second adds two 7-syllable lines, and the renga is constructed by alternating verses in that pattern.

My students recently asked me if I’d ever want to get off this rock and move to a big bouncing lunar suburb. I said no, and they were totally aghast. Why the hell would I NOT go to a new planet where the imported air and water were fresh and fragrant and clean and everybody was in love?

Perhaps it’s the fact that even though we are destroying our planet at warp speeds, I kinda have a soft spot for this place that Carl Sagan calls our pale blue dot—the only home we’ve ever known, infinitesimally lost in the vastness of space, an insignificant speck that Sagan says demonstrates the folly of human conceits.

When this pale blue dot still needs so much work, what makes us think we can just hop-skip-and-jump over to an entirely new planet and start anew? If you had the opportunity to move to another planet tomorrow, would you do it? What lessons from earth should we take with us? And more fundamentally, does our eagerness to blast off belie a feeling that the earth is a lost cause?

The earth has a future, but is it one that we can still have hope for?

:: @pascali

[CHALLENGE: QUICK, WRITE]

“There’s so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears…” —Dean Moriarty, On the Road

:: Kerouac snapped by Tom Palumbo

Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road largely in one six-week outburst on a single-spaced typewriter fed with one continuous roll of butcher paper. Talk about boundless creativity unlimited by rules! Why, then, is it so easy to become frustrated without direction? Like the writer’s block that comes from staring endlessly at a blank sheet of paper.

We think adhering to format might actually supercharge the creative process, forcing the artist to make decisions and commit to something. Think you have the mental muscle to take your creative karma in a different direction? Then throw caution to the wind, find something you’re passionate about, and take up the most demanding of all structures:

Write an impassioned sonnet. (Remember: 14 lines of 10 syllables written in iambic pentameter with an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme.) Post your opus here.

[SP EXCLUSIVE]

And 5 other things NOT to say at an interfaith gathering.

5. “So does that make you kind of like a Jedi?”
4. “I thought you were supposed to cover your ankles?”
3. “So, do you follow any rules, or do you just freestyle it?”
2. “Let's rank the religions! You in the turban, go first!”
1. “Excuse me, but I thought you weren't allowed to eat that.”

Here’s the awful truth: While most of these statements aren’t made at interfaith gatherings, people think things like this all the time—or variations of it, at least.

How do I know this? I’m a confessed religion junkie, an addict who spends his time exploring the collision of religions and how religion affects daily life. From my time studying comparative religion at Harvard University (no, Harvard is not just for studying law, medicine, and Reese Witherspoon) to helping organize local interfaith groups in the New York and D.C. metro areas, I’ve watched the interfaith movement unfold. I have developed a growing interest in trying to understand conflict and resolution amongst religions, understanding unfamiliar faiths, how different religions bring about different perspectives, and why the word “interfaith” has become so taboo. And those are exactly the kinds of discussions I’ll be exploring with this column.

:: tree life lines by ktylerconk

“Anger can be cured by time; hatred cannot… Much may happen to make the angry man pity those who offend him, but the hater under no circumstances wishes to pity a man whom he has once hated: for the one would have the offenders suffer for what they have done; the other would have them cease to exist.” —Aristotle

We use the word “hate” far too freely. I hate getting up early. I hate tailgaters. I hate turnips. I hate hate crimes. That’s probably why the word gets such a bad rap. What if the truth about hate is entirely different? What if hate is a perfectly natural human emotion—and one that has its place? Right now, I’m angry with the man who broke my heart and want him to suffer. I would much prefer to hate him. Because then, according to Aristotle, he would cease to exist or matter to me. And that’s a coping mechanism I can get on board with.

Is there a place for hate?

:: hate-cake by kayepants

[LIFE’S BIG LISTS]

“Make a beginning and all will come right.” —’Abdu’l-Baha

We all have a running list of things we plan to do “one day.” Daunting things. Like quitting smoking. Dealing with our baggage (not the Samsonite kind). Reading Sartre. It’s the matter of ‘doing it’ that’s often easier said than done.

List 3 things you have waited far too long to just do.

1. Resolve the angst-ridden relationship I have with my brother.
2. Create a financial game plan.
3. Take my artistic outlet (read: photography) seriously.

:: @golriz

[SP EXCLUSIVE]

Atheists are a bunch of intolerant bastards. Believe me: I hang out with a lot of them.

We’ll sit at the diner smoking cigarettes, looking effectual. You'd think we're having conversations about humanistic reflections, seizing the immediacy of the moment, and the presence and power of life. You'd be wrong. Pretentiousness rules the day here. Given our narcissistic surety, it’s surprising we don’t order cabernet instead of coffee to wash down our plates of French fries. Granted, cigarettes and high-fat foods probably aren’t a rational combination for people who believe existence is a finite flash that should be relished, but that proves my point: Smugness rules the day. When it comes to our greasy spoons and the possible existence of God, we know best.

Not that we’re all angry atheists, mind you. (OK, there’s Donny, but he’s more of an agnostic, and I think he’s got issues of whether he ultimately fits into the group.) It’s just that we seem unnaturally consumed with ire for the believers and their supposed ongoing negative effect on society, the human race, and our own self-absorbed carpe diem-ing (which should be unfettered by other people’s beliefs). Our whole diner scene reminds me of my grandpa and his WWII buddies sitting around scarfing down burgers and complaining about Bill Clinton two years into Dubya’s second term. Puh-leez. Just pass the ketchup.