Tag: poem

Winning In The Attention Colosseum – 8th March 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

You got there first
Tweeted it out
Smugly watching
Everyone shout

Follower explosion
You, the reliable source
Never involved
In meaningful intercourse

Keyboard warrior
Promoted to king
Yet an empty bag
Is all that you bring

If people remembered all of the Significant Events they had forgotten in recent years, they would perhaps realise that they were actually not that ‘signicant’ at all.

Mark Manosn

Finally finished the grading file this morning, after printing, re-printing, fix reprint, changing, re-printing. I think someone else must have fixed all the details last year because I don’t remember it being this difficult. Never mind. It’s done and I did it. With a smile, and potentially I have nothing else to do for the rest of the week.

We have two more weeks ‘at school’ after this, where we are usually doing lesson plans, though last semester we didn’t do any at all. Hopefully it’s the same this time too. I will probably do some new lessons anyway, just to mix it up for the students so they don’t become too bored.

I didn’t end up going for a massage yesterday and I’m contemplating going today but probably won’t. Why? I don’t know! It’s cheap, a couple fo hours. It’s relaxing…. I just like to be at home rather than here around the city. If I’m just at home, I’m actually more likely to go just to get out of there. It’s weird. It’s more convenient to do it now, it’s close by but when I’m not doing anything outside of home, basically kicking my heels, then I can’t wait to get home!

Moving my desk inside has improved my guitar practice productivity, which I’m happy about. I’m thinking about how to get all my CDs inside again too.

A nice cooling rain came last night, hopefully enough so I don’t need to water today. Even after only two or three days of super-humid heat, I’m longing for cooler weather. There are some beautiful floral scents in the air though and I savour catching a whiff of them. The power of smell seems to affect me much more these days.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the rain last night, saving me from watering today and cooling down the night for a good long deep sleep.

Ideal War – 7th March 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

An ideal war is one where
A third party is found to do your bidding
But the world is wising up
As nations respond with ‘Just who are you kidding?’

The ‘why’ is everything and without it, the very suggestion of human progress becomes a cosmic joke.

David Simon

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to the man who sold me 4-stroke engine oil yesterday so that I could use our grass cutter again.

Yesterday was my first afternoon and evening of aircon for the year and I should’ve kept it on through the night as I woke up a few times, uncomfortable in the sticky heat – the fan not enough to help.

The power in the whole village went out for about 40 minutes too. It was fantastic to see total darkness everywhere, making the stars more able to penetrate the still smoky skies.

After a lazy day, I got a burst of energy after watering and cut part of the lawn at the back, covering my topless body in bits of grass. I stopped as soon as I lost bits of strim from the spinner. A little bit at a time – that’s fine. The grass isn’t really growing anyway. Mostly weeds growing through and mostly easy to pull when I feel motivated.

I notice a little weight gain with being home a lot. I can snack any time, which I can’t do (or don’t do) at school. I need to be careful of this during the holidays.

This morning has been good, fixing up the grading files to meet the nonsense requirements. Driving to work, I’m absorbed in the Trojan Horse Case podcast at the moment but will get back to music podcasts again soon.

Hoping to go for a massage or just go home this afternoon. Feeling quite lazy when there is little to attend to – too lazy to even get a massage! As usual – let’s see.

The Week That Was – 15th April 1979

Two Hermits – 6th March 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

When evil enters the heart
The mind speaks not plainly
But would force charity out of others
When desire was a brotherly fight
The bowl was never divided
And their love remained intact

Another Khalil Gibran parable.

Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.

Lu Xun

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to Nong Gratae who helped me learn a little more Thai and can also help Amy get clients in Australia.

The Curse – 5th March 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

My body is a time machine
My brain, it’s brain, it’s enemy
Fighting against itself
Today is another step in time
A footprint in the snow
Disappeared in its melt
Yesterday, or nineteen seventy-nine
A heartbeat never remembered
A breath never recalled
The curse of conscious man

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions – as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

Friedrich Nietzsche

A pleasant day with coffee, cats, some weeding, some reading. I was pleasantly surprised to get a couple of hundred dollars from Bandcamp sales and now thinking about what to spend that on!

I talked with Hayden for 45 minutes about this, that and the other. He sounded pretty good, considering he has Covid. Just a little throaty cough.

I finished watching Trailer Park Boys and feel a little disconsolate that there’s no more. It’s easy to like the, somewhat detestable characters because they have a never-give-up attitude and always display their love for each other, through thick and thin. It’s interesting to consider their virtues/values hold them together, whilst others, of a supposed higher morality, often act quite the opposite, despite the words that come out of their mouths.

Amy was happy to be around her friends there today, comparing their positive attitudes with her childhood friends here. She feels much more connected in Australia. Her friends don’t do much to help themselves, in constant struggle and believing in prayers, temples and fortune will arrive if they just do nothing a little harder! We sigh.

Stuff The Chicken – 4th March 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Fixing the world at your barroom tables
Shaking fists at your agreeable fables
It’s simple in your circle of influence
To discount all the unsavoury elements

Warring in nations at your profitable leisure
Prodding the monkies to provide your pleasure
Your war is better than theirs, you beg
Stuffing the chicken back into its egg

9th Jun 2024 – Submitted to Ragtag Daily Prompt – stuff

When you have two choices, choose the more difficult one.

Stoic thought

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for everyone who helped me at the hospital. They made it very easy for me.

Woke up during the night with aching hips and starting to worry if I’m going to need replacements sometime! I got up with my alarm despite wanting to snooze more and did some hip stretching exercises which were tough but pretty effective. I hope the aching hips don’t become more of a common occurrence that disturbs my sleep.

Today was a repeat of yesterday in that I got to school and chatted with Dylan and the students. I had planned on teaching, at least with 2/9 but there were only six students at school! I ended up giving everyone their grades – some students were happy but others, less so. They all started to appreciate how lazy they had been with my work and I just hope it inspires them for next semester. Overall, I can see improvements in about 80% of them. I gave them all encouragement.

I got home again about midday after shopping and picking up my vaccine passport from the hospital. I rode there on my bike and felt 100% and started thinking about a long ass bike ride this weekend. It’s damn hot during the day though and the air quality is starting to suck again too. Let’s see how motivated I am on the weekend.

Excited that football season starts in a couple of weekends. Excited for Amy too, ending her first week in her new job with lots of positive feedback from her boss.

Let’s enjoy the weekend.

Sleepwalking – 3rd March 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Meeting you, asleep, amongst flowers
I curse you for destroying my youth
You are my enemy, I could kill you
The misty veil cannot hide the truth

And I too, your daughter, sleeping
Wish that you could also be dead
Standing between my freer self and me
My life will not echo all you have said

The cock crows, dew evaporates
Eyes open to the love of daughter and mother
The human condition, the order of nature
There is nothing else to be placed above her

Based on another Khalil Gibran parable

Discovering you were wrong is an update, not a failure, and your worldview is a living document meant to be revised.

Julia Galef

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to find that I can get a booster vaccine at the local hospital this morning. Need to go early and queue up.

Yesterday afternoon I had a little snooze and felt much better afterwards – got in a much more positive mood. I messaged Aing to see how she was doing and she told me she got a booster vaccine at MFU hospital and suggested I get it there so that’s what I did this morning.

Got to school at 10 and chatted with students and Dylan before coming home again around 11.30! My good feeling continues despite only six and a bit hours of sleep last night. Also messaged with Hayden and Bronwyn. Hayden finally caught covid, had one day of feeling rough but felt better today. Hope it stays that way.

I want to make sure I stay in contact with my friend more (via messaging) just so I don’t get too isolated in my current solitary lifestyle. Still, feeling and happy again right now.

The Week That Was – 8th April 1979

Mere Man – 2nd March 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Mother, I am a mere man
I will climb mountains higher than you can understand
To show what a human can do
Tut and scoff, weep and worry
Yet it is something I must do
I will attempt impossible things
Because in the death zone, I come alive
I will be strong
I will leave no brothers behind
You taught me everything
And this is to honour you

Written whilst watching 14 Peaks.

People get the mind and quality of brain that they deserve through their actions in life.

Robert Greene

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for this chocolate muesli to break up my normal breakfast eating. What a lot of work must go into making muesli.

It’s getting horrible hot in the afternoons and I have to have the fan on at night. I finished off all my grading this morning, then hung around a little with the kids, who were pretty happy not to be studying. Many, I didn’t see though, and I think they didn’t bother to come to school. It was a fun morning and I came home early again and snoozed for about 40 minutes but the heat woke me up again.

Amy is moving into a room in Century Tower in the city today. It’s expensive but she can walk to work, has her own room and will be able to meet some new people. She’s happy, though I’m not sure how long she will keep enjoying the work – it’s very different to what she is used to. I miss her a lot again today. I will cuddle our cats for her.

The Warrior Intrepid – 1st March 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

My brain switched off, distracted
Just a second; my car, crashed it
Left it in gear, forgot the handbrake
Rolled on forward and smashed the gate

No real harm done, not this time
Scared one day I’m gonna get mine
Older, feeble-minded, decrepit
No longer the warrior intrepid

For mortals, the ‘easy life of the gods’ would be a lifeless life.

Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for my guitars that I can pick up and play when I feel like it.

So the plan today was to go to school and hang around for a bit and then go to Central to get my booster shot. I was going to go yesterday but forgot my passport, which apparently is required. I woke up feeling pretty good, exercised and fed the cats etc. I did feel a bit absent-minded though and I was missing Amy more than usual.

So, I did hang around at school, doing grading and nosing around the ‘event’ – I don’t know what it was, an open day, but only open to students. Each program had a stall set up and all students were supposed to go to each and get a stamp on a sheet of paper. Something which could be achieved in under an hour, but will go on for two days.

It only just occurred to me, the absurdity of the program names. Something I keep reminding my students when they don’t want to work – this is the ‘Talented English Program’. We have lots of ‘Talented’ programs as well as ‘Genius’ programs but just calling them that doesn’t make them so! And there are programs such as Hospitality and Aviation or Japanese Business! Why?

I know my own education history is singularly English, 1980’s style and that it generally sucked and I couldn’t understand why we learned the things we learned and here I am on the other side of the classroom, not understanding still. No clues are given either.

I’ve mentioned before that the most contented teachers are those who don’t really care – just let the kids have fun, sing songs and play with their phones. But I can’t be like that. I want to do a good job, I want to inspire where I can.

I think about the Stoic phrase along the lines of ‘Get up in the morning and get to your work as a human. It’s your job.’ I have a job as a teacher, as a human, and I want to do it well.

Anyway, I went off to Central to find out they stopped the vaccine centre there yesterday! I was tired and running out of energy, not wanting to face going back to school and walking around the same stalls I’d already seen twice, earlier. So I drove home, a little dizzy and distracted. I pulled up at the gate and got out to open it, noticing the car was suddenly moving forward! It pushed the gate off the roller rail before I jumped in to stop it, knocking a hole in the gate panels. Argh! Fuck!

I cleaned up the mess, fixed the gate back on the rail, popped the car bumper back in and decided I needed more sleep.

I really don’t like these school days outside the routine. This shows me what I need in my life to be comfortable. I’m not normally a fan of routine as such but can recognise its advantages for me. If I stop working, I will have to build myself a new routine that works for me. I can’t just melt into the couch all day – tempting as that might be.

Dust – 28th February 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

‘I am a piece of fallen skin’
‘I am a broken hair from a spider’s leg’
‘I am from dirt the cat tramped in’
We three wait

In a corner close to the walls
Behind and beside the washing machine
We see the day come and go
And we wait

Ants wander by often, lizards, sometimes, too
The cat peers under the machine
About once a week
And we wait

One day the machine is gone
And all traces of worldly humans
Soon the plaster and brick will crumble
And we wait

We see the weeds encroaching
Pushing through every crack
The wind will never find us here
And the heat and cold bother us not
And we wait

Now there is only darkness
Every living thing has disappeared
We float away in space
Waiting for a reformation

7th Nov 2024 – Shared with Ragtag Daily Prompt – dust

The most important skill of a species intelligent enough to understand both their insignificance and their mortality is the capability for distraction.

Tim Urban

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the great variety of food I can find where I live. It’s still new and refreshing to me.

Pee dreams have been waking me the last couple of nights. I’m already contemplating how to manage when I’m too old to get out of bed fast enough! Less water in the evenings, maybe?

I’m sitting in the cafe doing grading this morning. 3 down and 5 to go. Should be pretty simple though. It makes me happy to think about my students and how they have changed over the last 12 months. Some are improving and those that aren’t I’m just encouraging to try as much as possible and not be lazy. Need a break now, though, my eyes are sore. Though my break will involve reading!

The Week That Was – 1st April 1979

A Meta Verse – 27th February 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Would you volunteer for a fatal addiction
To an electrical pleasure, brain implant
The sum of all pleasure, constant highs
A simple flick of the switch would grant?

Would you sacrifice your suffering
The demons and devils of your daily fight
The needles that give you balance
Just to die tomorrow in orgasmic delight?

We own our own minds – and together, we can take them back from the forces that are stealing them.

Johann Hari

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to be able to watch my garden grow and change over time. It’s amazing.

A contrast of days for the weekend. Saturday was a fantastic day of reading in the hammock, reading in the living room, watching YouTube and Netflix, playing guitar and savouring every minute as they appeared to rush by because it was soon time for bed. What a great day!

And this morning I knew a guy was coming to fix the camera setup around the house. He was due between 9 and 10 and he actually made it on time. Excellent, I thought. Can be done by lunch time and can take Aing and Now off for lunch and furniture shopping that Aing wants for her new shop. Through various mess-ups and requirements, we didn’t get out until 4pm and there was nothing much I could do except to be patient.

I took them into town to a few shops and we were all so tired after an hour or so that we came back and then it was time to bring washing in, do some watering and feed the cats. No reading yet, no guitar, no TV yet, and it’s almost time for bed. Still, it’s good not just to be enjoying every day to the max. Setbacks come from everywhere and it’s a testament to the nevermind attitude of Thai people that often annoys the fuck out of Amy and me but must also be practised often in order not to go crazy. I still enjoyed my day.