Haiku

I've decided one thing to do before I die is learn and practice the art of Haiku.

Why Haiku? Three reasons. Those are the challenge, the experience, and the convenience.

As self expression goes, a single thought into 17 syllables is fairly trivial, craming it into exactly 17 is non-trivial, and doing it well is very challenging. Mix with my own semi-perfectionist nature, and this gets interesting fast. Example: "W.T.F" is a complete thought, but how would you express the same thing in 17 syllables?

I can't explain it, but there's something about the experience of Haiku which is simply amazing from start to finish. The setup, the suspense, the contrast . . . it's just awesome to finally look at even a decent haiku (much less a good one) and simply enjoy the way it works on me.

Third, poetry takes lots of itterations before it's anywhere near good. Haiku's being as short as they are, the cyclic rate for a complete set of revisions is high (even if the number of revisions is longer). This is more compatible with my lifestyle as I much more frequently have 15 minutes (which can be enough to ponder a single word choice) here and there than the hours it would take to consider the implications of a single work or comma on a larger poem.

A Difference Between Friends and Acquaintances

I have had reason within my own personal life to ponder the difference between being friends with someone and being merely acquainted with them. One major difference can be summarized as follows:

• Friend: Someone you want to spend time with and are willing to actively work to make time for as it is possible to do so.
• Acquaintance: Someone who you spend time with incidentally, not intentionally or with whom you are not willing to make time for beyond the incidental. People you only see in class or at work would could as such.
  

The sticky bits are with respect to

1. a person you simply do not have time for regardless of whether or not you would work to make time if you had any. I would say this is more a friend than an acquaintance.
2. People you have been acquainted with over an extended period. Then this could be said to have grown into friendship.
3. People you were friends with but now no longer spend time with.

So as even I must admit, the above distinction leaves something to be desired. But I never said it was the whole definition.