dailyprompt

Working this body is best experienced walking to the beach for a swim

eejoseph,

What is your favorite form of physical exercise?

I was born within a five minute walk to the Atlantic ocean, and getting to the beach was not only a shared joy it was good for our young bodies. A couple of fresh water ponds nearby also provided walking and swimming opportunities, and yet I never became a strong swimmer. Being a grown and flexible person, I walk when there is no ocean, and where there is an ocean, I swim. Sometimes the ocean is not a part of any physical exercise besides hearing the sounds, smelling the surf, and seeing the sights.

Out of place and right on time

eejoseph,

Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.

This pairing of time and place is a good reason to explore the vital connection between time and place, two things that imprison us.  I have to imagine that for some creatures neither time or place are not as traumatic as for humans. I have felt out of place for four years, and the geographic disorientation I experienced during that time – the points of the compass were out of place – cements my appreciation of being out of place and being right on time. For more see my https://eejoseph.com/2023/10/06/out-of-place-and-right-on-time/

Vibrant, victim no more

eejoseph,

Why are we going crazy about walls, land and loot? Could it be we’ve given up loving the truth? Your life without a computer: what does it look like?

Pushing Through. Song by Kyu and Ganjy

I have enough years on this planet to remember life before Microsoft, Dell, Acer, Google and Apple and mobile telephones. I also have enough sobriety to take strategic breaks from personal computing power, and I am acquainted with how to use books to gather information and do the kind of research that matters in my life. I will not be wringing my hands over life without a computer, even when the demand for all citizens to be computer literate and connected is universal. It will be a good thing to have nothing to sell or buy when the vast majority of humans will be identified as salespersons.

Life is vibrant today without computing power. To be a participant in the marketplace of the future is to be a victim of the lords of rapacious merchandising.

Beauty and the Blues

eejoseph,

What motivates you?

I thought a few words, probably less than five, would answer today’s prompt, but here I am explaining Beauty and the Blues. Motivators show up and disappear a mile a minute. Death, life, peace, war, famine, feast, deceit, honesty, kindness, and brutality have been known to motivate me. They all fall into two categories: comfort and discomfort, or ease and disease. That’s an easy filter that both artificial intelligence and the princes of the world will have major problems using to solve the mystery of slave trade, colonialism, patriotism, homicide, and the human longing for beauty and peace. I think I have a simple motivation continuum for a complicated family.

Assurance of satisfaction

eejoseph,

What do you enjoy most about writing?

Granting that writing fulfills itself where the audience reads, I have to say that writing brings me an ocean of contentment . I get the satisfaction of getting my thoughts into a form that informs readers reliably. My readers get to build their confidence in the common and certified sources of information, without arm-twisting and without rabbit holes and deadly concoctions threatening the integrity of the relationship.

Me and mine

On a purely personal level, and secondary to the writing-reading combination, I can also say that discoveries always await me, and discoveries inspire me to keep learning. Discoveries also come with pointers on how I can creatively express my findings.

I admire civil servants

eejoseph,

What profession do you admire most and why?

Civil servants are the face, hands and feet of government. They put themselves at our disposal before they see us. Who would not admire such devotion? Uninformed agitators, ungrateful manipulators and pork-barrelers.

Ignorant people call them names and some may deserve it, but civil servants serve us even on the holidays. Civil servants do their work regardless of who forms the government, regardless of what we look like, regardless of how uninformed we are, and they are happiest when we leave with a smile they caused.

For a penny: trips to the landfill

eejoseph,

If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

On sale:

Guaranteed one-way trips to the landfill.

  • alliances between religion and politics
  • religious republics
  • thinly disguised plots to break
  • cheer-evoking slogans that will in a court of law end in contempt and conviction

Today’s Special: free excoriation of bishops, imams, rabbis, philosophers and gurus who abuse their own books and insult the common decency.