A difficult life is not less\nworth living than a gentle one.\nJoy is simply easier to carry\nthan sorrow. And your heart\ncould lift a city from how long\nyou’ve spent holding what’s been\nnearly impossible to hold.
\nThis world needs those\nwho know how to do that.\nThose who could find a tunnel\nthat has no light at the end of it,\nand hold it up like a telescope\nto know the darkness\nalso contains truths that could\nbring the light to its knees.
\nGrief astronomer, adjust the lens,\nlook close, tell us what you see.
\n~ Andrea Gibson
\n", "date_published": "2026-10-20T14:42:03-07:00", "url": "https://commonplace.rumon.ca/2026/10/20/a-difficult-life-is-not.html", "tags": ["Poetry"] }, { "id": "http://rumon.micro.blog/2026/10/12/please-use-ai-by-shawn.html", "content_html": "“Please Use AI”\nby Shawn Smucker
\nBe sure to use AI when making\nyour next, I don’t know, meal plan,\nfor example. Definitely do not call\nyour friend who loves to cook and ask her\nfor her favorite recipes or tips or ways\nto save time making meals,\nbecause you will end\nup talking for longer than you had hoped,\nhearing, perhaps, about her father’s cancer\ndiagnosis or how lonely she’s been or even\nwhat she’s planted in her spring\ngarden and then lost with the early frost.
\nAnd be sure to use AI when planning that next\ncamping trip, the last one you will take\nwith this particular child. Definitely do\nnot text your friend who has fly-fished every\nriver in Pennsylvania and biked every\nbackwoods trail, because you might end\nup texting back and forth for the rest of the day\nor even meeting up late for a beer and hearing\nhow he has ended each recent night black-out\ndrunk, or perhaps you’ll hear how his\ncousin is an idiot on Facebook or maybe just\nthat he repaired his own washing machine\nand is pretty damn proud of that.
\nAnd be sure to use AI when your next child\ngets married, so that you can write them\nthe perfect toast or poem or speech or song\nbecause no one wants to hear your\nwords, the actual poorly written words\nof a parent (you) who changed\nhundreds of diapers for said child or fed\nthem in the middle of the\nnight from your actual body. Or cried\nwhen they were late home because\nyou were positive they were dead. We don’t\nwant those words—we’d prefer the sterile\nwords of a machine that never lived, never\nhad an original thought, never felt\nthe pain of miscarriage or broken\nrelationships or the joy of a friendship restored\nor of seeing spring’s first\nrobin dancing on frost.
\nAnd be sure to use AI when working on your next\nbook or essay or piece of art or photography,\nand then smile or even laugh at your own\ncleverness when you see how good it is,\nand how easy,\nbecause who the hell has time\nto work at something, to give time to craft, to\ncreate with their own minds, to spend\nyears being mediocre. Why do that when\nmastery, or at least competency\nis so simple\nonly a good prompt away?
\nHow magnificent\nthe funeral song our children or contemporaries\nwill write for us, a song they will make by\ntaking our obituary and Facebook posts,\nplus random quotes from our algorithm,\nand feeding them into Chat\nor Gemini\nor Claude.\nThe tears that will fall in the face of such\nsanitary sweetness!
\nBe sure to use AI
\nand while you do I’ll be over here in my 50th\nyear, my youngest daughter asleep on my chest,\nmy arm falling asleep because I dare not move\nlest I scare away this moment,\nlying here melancholy about my older\nchildren moving out and my middle\nchildren no longer needing me, at least\nnot like they used to, weary about this body\nthat fails me now in ever increasing ways\nthat will never be restored. Sighing\nover stories I tried to write but never hit\nthe page the way they felt in my mind.
\nBut isn’t that, my flesh-and-blood friend,\nthe natural order of things?
\nthe longing for something that could always be\na bit better
\nor the way that anything\nworth doing feels a bit clumsy and painful,\nespecially at first
\nor hearing another human voice and somehow\nrealizing the beauty of life is found in all of these\nsubtle imperfections
\nPosted originally on Substack: shawnsmucker.substack.com/p/please-… (While I’m not a fan of Substack, if you enjoyed this piece as did I, please give Shawn kudos/a repost there, as have I.)
\n", "date_published": "2026-10-12T10:41:32-07:00", "url": "https://commonplace.rumon.ca/2026/10/12/please-use-ai-by-shawn.html", "tags": ["Poetry"] } ] }