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Transcript
- I caught my reflection in the chrome of a toaster oven this morning and realized it was judging me, hard. That’s when I knew I had to write a haiku about its cold, unblinking eye. So, there I was, standing in my kitchen at 6:45 AM, which is roughly equivalent to the age of regret for anyone who isn’t a morning person. My coffee hadn’t brewed yet, my hair was doing that thing where it looks like it lost a fight with a balloon, and I was staring directly into the abyss of my breakfast appliance. It wasn’t just a toaster oven, though. It was a mirror. A shiny, stainless-steel mirror reflecting a woman who had decided, perhaps out of sheer boredom or mild insanity, to start writing haikus for everything she owned. Now, if you’ve been listening for a while, you might remember that episode where we talked about finding your rhythm through drumming. Or maybe you recall the one where we drew cities that don’t exist on maps that aren’t real. Those were about creating order from chaos, or building worlds from scratch. But this? This feels different. This is about finding the sacred in the mundane. This is about looking at the things we ignore every single day—the staplers, the spare keys, the lint roller—and asking them who they really are. What’s the texture of a Tuesday morning viewed through the lens of a broken pen? Tell me more about that feeling. Because I think we’ve all forgotten how to look closely enough to see the magic hiding in plain sight. Let’s be honest for a second. How many objects in your home do you actually see? I mean really see? Not as tools, not as chores, but as entities with presence? Most of us walk through our lives bumping into furniture, clicking pens, sliding drawers open and shut without a second thought. We treat our surroundings like background noise. And maybe that’s practical. Maybe it’s efficient. But it’s also terribly lonely. When I started this little experiment—writing haikus for everyday objects—I wasn’t trying to become a poet. I’m not even sure I know what a good poem looks like anymore, honestly. I was trying to break the silence. I wanted to interrupt the autopilot mode that keeps us so busy surviving the day that we forget to inhabit it. There’s a certain kind of intimacy in paying attention to an object. It forces you to slow down. It asks you to consider the weight of a mug in your hand, the coolness of a metal spoon, the way light hits the plastic edge of a remote control. It’s a tiny rebellion against the rush. A small act of defiance against the idea that everything must be useful right now, this second. Sometimes, something can just be. Even if it’s just sitting there, waiting for you to notice it. Take my stapler. You know the one. The heavy, black, industrial-looking beast that sits on my desk like a sleeping dragon. For years, I hated it. It jammed. It required two hands and a bit of physical effort that felt unnecessary in the digital age. But last week, I picked it up to write a haiku for it, and suddenly, I saw it differently. Five syllables here: Heavy jaw, cold steel. Seventeen syllables there: Holding papers together, Keeping secrets safe. Eight syllables left: Snap. Done. Did you feel that? Just for a second? When I wrote those lines, the stapler wasn’t a tool anymore. It was a guardian. It was holding things together in a world that constantly falls apart. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do? Keep our thoughts, our memories, our loves pinned in place before they scatter? Writing the haiku didn’t change the stapler. It changed me. It made me grateful for the small, sturdy things that keep my chaos from spilling onto the floor. Let’s dig into the velvet of that moment. Because there’s a lot of softness hidden inside hard edges, if you’re willing to look. Then there was the toaster oven. That’s where we started this morning, remember? The judgmental chrome. I sat down with a notebook and stared at it for ten minutes. Ten whole minutes. My cat walked by, looked at me, and walked away because he could tell I was losing my mind. But I kept going. I watched the heating elements glow orange. I listened to the click-clack of the timer. Here’s what came out: Red eyes blink awake. Bread turns golden, warm, and sweet. Silence fills the room. It sounds simple. Maybe too simple. But in that simplicity, there’s comfort. There’s ritual. The toaster oven doesn’t judge how tired you are. It doesn’t care if you replied to that email. It just does its job. It warms bread. It offers heat. In a life filled with complex demands and vague expectations, there is something profoundly grounding about an object that has only one purpose and executes it faithfully. Writing about it reminded me that I don’t always need to be productive. Sometimes, I just need to be warmed. I just need to be present. And that’s okay. More than okay. It’s necessary. This practice isn’t about becoming a literary critic. It’s not about rhyming schemes or perfect meter or impressing anyone at a dinner party. It’s about training your eye. It’s about developing a relationship with the world around you that is based on curiosity rather than utility. When you start noticing the haiku in your daily routine, you start noticing other things. You notice the way the dust motes dance in the afternoon sun. You notice the sound of rain against the windowpane. You notice the quiet pride in your partner’s face when they make coffee for you. These moments are fleeting. They vanish as soon as we acknowledge them. But by capturing them—even in three short lines—we give them a little shelf life. We say, 'This mattered. This was real.' And in a culture that often tells us our value is tied to our output, our achievements, our visible success, this feels radical. It says that your experience of the ordinary is worthy of art. That your perception is valid. That you are here, fully, in this kitchen, with this toaster, and that is enough. So, here is my invitation to you. I want you to pick one object today. Just one. It can be anything. A shoe. A fork. A houseplant that is barely surviving. Sit with it. Really sit with it. Look at it until it stops being a thing and starts being a presence. Then, try to write three lines. Five syllables. Seven. Five. Don’t overthink it. Don’t edit it. Let it be clumsy. Let it be weird. If you can’t find the words, that’s part of the process too. The struggle is the point. The reaching is the point. And then, share it with someone. Text it to a friend. Write it in a card. Leave it on the fridge. Because connection is what we’re really after here. When you share a haiku about a stapler, you’re saying, 'Look at this with me. See how strange and beautiful it is.' You’re inviting someone else into your world, however small. You’re breaking the isolation of modern life, one tiny poem at a time. What’s the texture of your Tuesday? Tell me more about that feeling. I’m listening. Thank you for letting me into your headspace, even for a few minutes. Go touch something today. Really touch it. Feel its weight, its temperature, its reality. I’ll be here, probably writing a haiku for my lamp next week. Take care of yourself, lovely. We’ll talk soon.