a couple of tankas
Limits untested
are victories untasted,
opportunities
for growth, overgrown, wasted.
Just business as usual.
And chances unseized
are immune to all failure.
One hundred thousand
brilliant plans rotting away
in notebooks and graph paper.
A short while ago, I felt brave enough to read through a few of my old notebooks. It was like looking into a funhouse mirror. I could recognize myself, even if the image was distorted, warped and squished.
Some of these notebook entries stretch deep into my past, even further than I can properly remember. And the words inside-both good and bad-give a voice to what would have otherwise been recordless dark-ages in my life. Naturally, there was enough bad poetry between those crusty pages to justify a good old fashioned book burning. And there was more incoherent spaghetti cursive than I could even begin to decipher — it seemed to multiply whenever I turned the page!
However, I was also reminded of old thoughts; every page dug up buried treasures along with the dirt. Good ideas, good memories! The kind you think you could never forget but invariably…
