The good life | Kamiel Choi

How I created a novel meme

Last night, under the influence of the free blended spirits in the backpackers hostel I stay, I told a young traveler named Joey the outline of my satire novel. Joey was interested so with but few leaps and bounds I told him the entire story. He told me he liked it, but what really touched ...

Meditation on humor

Breathe in. Think of the ridiculousness of life, the absurdity of existence, mortal or otherwise, the laughable preoccupations of breathing animals, the inane schemes devised by homo sapiens to cope with all that, and finally the splendid endeavour to derive from it the source of mere funnyness. We are asking if humor is our best ...

Meditation on purpose

We sit still with our eyes closed. In the distance, across the fields, are green hills. Alright, this is my concrete situation perhaps not yours. Never mind. The why-question or more precisely the what are we here for question is personally daunting. So much so, that we assume we can hardly help each other finding ...

The be-who-thy-be new age bullshit

I watched a well-intended speech today for fifteen year old level A students. The gist was that life happens according to your own internal clock, not according to the timetable imposed on us by society. It's okay not to be married at 30 or graduating after 25 or getting your first job at 27. Did ...

Meditation on friendship

Close your eyes. Breathe calmly. You sit here alone, master of your own thoughts. Imagine I am talking to you. I want to know what friendship means. Quickly, construct a differentiation. Which opposite op 'friend' have you found? Mere acquaintance? Or: enemy? But what can we say about a thing of which we cannot determine the ...

But how can art keep us alive when it cannot kill us?

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. - Salman Rushdie

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: All of them make me laugh.” — W.H. Auden

Instagram poetry

Giving in to the social media requirement of visuality and brevity, I also publish poetry on - Instagram. There are a lot of so called "instapoets" but in my humble opinion they are not exactly innovative and their language sounds pretty dull to me. As it happens - and this doesn't contradict my modesty - my ...