I can still remember when VIDEO STORES began operating in our town.  It was 1984, the place was called “National Video.”  I was still in the first year or so of having my very own checking account and making payments on my first car.  To rent videos and something to play them on, I had to write a $400 security deposit to leave on file with the store so I could take home a really big VCR and whatever VHS movies (and, occasionally, Beta) I rented.  One of many times I thought my Mom’s jaw would hit the floor…

14

The technology

of VHS in my teens:

Now antique, retro.

 

Stay tuned for a new haiku each day (or evening)…

Doctor Don

——————–

…a haiku series from my last month as a first-year quinquagenarian.

As with many things in life, this just happened.

I had this grand vision of taking a month-long road trip the year I turned 50 and writing a book about the experience, including thoughts and observations on my life (and life in general) so far.

Well, as John Lennon sang–but didn’t originate–in “Beautiful Boy,” life “is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”  So, no trip and no book (yet).

One night a few weeks ago, I woke up from a recliner nap and boom!  I got an idea.  No rhyme, no reason, it just came to me:  For my last month as a 50-year-old, I would write a haiku each night to capture the experience. 

As the Poetry Foundation reminds us, a haiku is “a Japanese verse form most often composed, in English versions, of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. A haiku often features an image, or a pair of images, meant to depict the essence of a specific moment in time” [my emphasis].

Each night for one month I will write and post a haiku.  By September 17, the end-result will be a 30-haiku series.  At that time, I’ll (hopefully) be starting a new year and chapter of what I call my “Age of Quinquagenarius.”