Haiku 2023–202

like cut blades of grass

ideas from my commute

wither on the road

— -

Memes on the internet assure me that what I’m experiencing is perfectly normal for people my age. Some thought moves me towards action and as soon as I reach where that action is supposed to take place, I’ve completely forgotten what I was doing. Ideas percolate up in my brain that are very much worth preserving and a few moments later, they’re gone. For the past several years, I developed several systems for myself designed to ingest information into some sort of document that allows me to preserve these thoughts for action later. Unfortunately, gaps in the process still exist.

If I’m lucky, my commute is fifty minutes into work and fifty minutes home. That affords me lots of time to think, but also a lot of time to forget. Some ideas are robust enough they make it to the end of the journey and find their way into my system — several haiku about my commute reflect this. Most are not so lucky, they find themselves mere shells of their former selves when I arrive at my destination… that is, if they make it there at all. This haiku, ironically, preserves this notion and serves as a memorial for all those ideas that didn’t survive the journey.