Jim Kacian
Okay
so maybe overall it’s not so impressive a species, with its chest-thumping and blame-shifting, its futile hovering between the ancient infantilisms of the limbic system and the incipient dementia of an engorged frontal lobe, its delusory propensity for disappearing into the Oneness wedded to its harsh clamor for personal identity with the gods, who look increasingly like itself. But consider what the remarkable few have accomplished and have been able to supply for the rest. Consider the 4 noble truths, the 8-fold way, the 46 discovered subatomic particles, the 57 varieties of beans. Consider language — its song and poetry, its moments of glad grace, and even greater, its ability to pass these things on. Or does it? Is it possible that calculus has been invented once a million times, and what has been passed on is merely the belief in some glorious world, an El Dorado of the mind, that only those with sufficient credulity, enough otherworld faculty, might visit?
from the penthouse indecipherable gestures in the street
About the Author
Jim Kacian is founder and president of The Haiku Foundation as well as chairman of its board; founder and owner of Red Moon Press; and editor in chief of Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W. W. Norton, 2013).