Archives for the month of: May, 2012
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Green Tips

May 21, 2012 //
1

May 21, 2011

Each evergreen spray
sports a tender light green tip.
Where are my green tips?

We all need green tips.  If we are alive, we need areas of new growth.  It may be scary to try something new.  But that is part of the journey.  What would happen to a baby if he/she never tried anything new?

Eight Reasons to Try Something New:

1. Get out of a rut. I once took a summer and decided that each day I would do something new.  One day it might be to taste a new food,  another day try a new exercise.  One day I might go somewhere I had never been, another day I might read a new author, or prepare a new dish.  It was quite an education.  Some of those experiments are now a permanent part of my life.  This year writing this blog is one of my something news.

2. Develop your brain. The brain loves new challenges, thrives on dealing with the unexpected, making new connections and waking up new areas of the brain.  If you want to stay young, skip the plastic surgery; here is your Fountain of Youth: attempt something new.

3. Keep yourself humble.  Nothing new comes very easy for me.  I have had to work at pretty much anything I have done.  And the things I have become the best at are the things I have worked the hardest at.  So new things are often a struggle and a little struggle fosters humility and a little humility keeps a person close to the earth.

4. Meet new people.  Whenever I have tried something new, whether professionally or leisurely, I have discovered a whole new world – people and places tied to that new interest – of which I was completely unaware.

5. Life is short.  I have run into way too many people who have said to me, “I always wanted to…” or “I wish I had done that” as if their life was over and they were speaking from the grave.  Life is short enough without making it shorter by feigning death.

6. Learn something new about yourself. When you take on something new, it is like opening a new window to yourself.  For example, when I made the decision to learn Danish, I ended up learning so much about language and particularly my native English (which I learned mostly unconsciously) which helped me when I eventually became an English teacher.

7. Make yourself more interesting.  People who try new things become more interesting.  Those people who are in the job market become more interesting to their potential employers.  I had a friend who told me whenever he found himself competing for a position or promotion, he was always successful.  My friend said he knew each time the reason why he won over other candidates: he had worked for a year in another country.

8. Because I said so. I heard this reason several  times growing up, particularly when logic and reason entered the argument, which naturally and immediately made anything else said a moot point.  I thought I would try it on for size.  Not very persuasive.

Tags ,
Categories haiku

Pink Shower

May 20, 2012 //
1

May 20, 2011

I reach my hand up,
touch a branch of crabapple:
pink petal shower.

On occasion, even when I was much younger, I have had the thought: How many more times  will I have the chance to experience this?

It might be to smell the first fragrant flower when it opens itself to the world.  It might be to feel the hot summer sand sift between your toes.  It might be to see the red maple transform itself from green to bright orange.  It might be to hear the cardinal’s cheery call in snowy midwinter.  It might be to taste all of this on the tongue of your being.

We do not know how many times we may experience something again - and that is for the best; but it is also for the best that we do know those experiences, those moments of pure sensual joy, are limited.  How many more times will I be able to experience this pink shower under our crabapple?

Be smart and look up from your smart phone.  Experience this here now.

Tags
Categories haiku

Once Upon a Time

May 19, 2012 //
1

May 19, 2011

The spell is broken:
music stops for the jonquils
whose gowns hang like rags.

This haiku pairs with the haiku across the month-ring, May 4 (“Jonquil Dance”) and relates to the mid-point  of the Cinderella story when Cinderella stays a little too long at the royal ball and in the Perrault version, her carriage reverts to its pumpkin form and her formal attire turns to rags.

Cinderella takes a bit of a hit these days, blamed for placing unhealthy or unreachable dreams in little girls’ heads.  There are definitely some problems: a cardboard prince as the prize and a stepsister society who, at least in the Grimm version, tries to nip and tuck its way to fit in and win the prince.  But the stepsisters’ actions are condemned in the story.  Cinderella, unlike her stepsisters, always remains true to who she is, and is resourceful and willing to work.  It is this resourcefulness and work that allows her to meet a person who is right for her.  Hopefully her partner has done the same work and is more substantial than cardboard.

Tags
Categories haiku

Letting Go

May 18, 2012 //
1

May 18, 2011

It seems so easy
for the white anemone
to let go itself.

If we refuse to die, we can never be born.  That is part of the bargain.  Birth is a death sentence; life – if we are speaking of personality – is finite.  And within that lifetime the same holds true: if we refuse to die to who we presently are, if we cannot let go of our current perceptions of ourselves and the world, we can never grow, we can never become better acquainted with our Self.  It is best to be like the beautiful anemone – become what we are (above), then forget the petals (below) and take a peak behind the scenes. 

It is not often easy to let go, particularly if we like ourselves and our life.  We try our hardest to ride our old trusted camel, carrying all our beloved baggage, through impassable lands to some unknown otherwhere within us.  It is easier if our camel dies and we lose our luggage.  When we are miserable, a needle’s eye does not look so small, and we are much more amenable to making a fresh start.

Tags , , , ,
Categories haiku

Blue Explosion

May 17, 2012 //
1

May 17, 2011

Allium stands strong,
beginning, in slow motion,
its blue explosion.

The history of some words is a real surprise.  Often it can force a person to think of certain words in a new way.  I was not surprised to learn Rev. Skeat’s An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language was James Joyce’s favorite book.  The etymology of etymology points to its own importance.  In Greek the word originally meant “true word” so if we are in search of truth through words, etymology is a good path.  And English is such a lovable mongrel of a language that its story sends a person searching all around the globe.

The word explosion existed well before Alfred Nobel.  It comes from Latin and most likely originated in the theater to accomplish the opposite of applause: drive someone from the stage with disapproving noise (“to applaud away”).

In our garden, one flower follows another on to the stage.  As one’s theatrical glory fades, a new star is born and the old is “exploded” off the stage.  If I may apologetically play a little with William Shakespeare, who played so creatively with the English language, and parody his “Seven Ages of Man” speech from his play As You Like It:

All the garden’s a stage,
And all the flora and fauna merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one bloom in its time plays many parts,
Its acts being seven ages. At first the green sprout,
Moving and peeking from its Mother’s arms;
And then the uncertain shoot, with bud in tow
And variegated green, winding like worm
Willingly to sun.  And then the lover,
Smelling like lilac, with a woeful salad
Made for its mistress’ tulips. Then a soldier,
In full regalia, and bearded like the iris,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick to open,
Seeking the bumblebee’s advance
Even in its pistil’s mouth.  And then the justice,
With fair round belly, petals hang like capes lined
or else severed – beard of flora cut,
Full of wild seeds and future instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
To lean and shriveled petalless stem,
With speckles on nodes and seed pouch dried;
Its youthful leaf used up, this world too cool
For its shrunk shaft; and its essential juice
Turning again toward hidden tubers, bulbs
And roots in the ground. Last season of all,
That ends this strained botanical history,
If not perennial, is mere oblivion,
Sans leaf, sans fruit, sans seed, sans everything.

And now I leave the stage for today to deafening explosions.

Tags , , , ,
Categories haiku

Inspiration

May 16, 2012 //
1

May 16, 2011

This moist earth in May
inspires all these great green works,
inspires these small words.

Our garden has been the inspiration for these haiku, first convincing me to attempt this impossible task of expressing with clumsy words the delicate grace of even a single flower, and then attempting to teach me to let go of myself so Nature can breathe freely through me like wind through a flute and find for Itself those sounds that truly express It.

Based on my structure of the ring composition which organizes and links the haiku I have been writing, today’s haiku reaches across the month-circle to relate to the haiku from May 1 (“April Showers Bring…”).  The haiku for tomorrow, May 17  (“Blue Explosion”) will relate to May 2 (Allium”), and May 18 (“Letting Go”) will will speak to May 3 (“Anemone Now”), etc., as we move through the second half of the May-month.

Tags ,
Categories haiku

Labyrinth

May 15, 2012 //
1

May 15, 2011

Follow the lines in
this columbine labyrinth
to get to its heart.

The labyrinth offers to the pilgrim a quest to its hidden heart and back again.  If you can make it back.  It is a meditation rather than a maze, for enlightenment rather than confusion.  Though at times you may be confused.  It is an initiation rather than a trap, a descent into the underworld and a rebirth: a womb rather than a tomb.  And thus it fits appropriately, symbolically, in the great cathedrals, the “Our Lady”‘s of Medieval Europe.

The labyrinth in Chartres cathedral (left) was actually called the “House of Daedalus” (Domus Daedeli),named after its mythological creator on Crete, and at its center originally, within its six-lobed flower was a plaque illustrating the battle between Theseus and the Minotaur.  The labyrinth of Chartres looks similar to the symmetrical double-headed axe (right), called the labrys used in Ancient Greece for the sacrificial slaying of bulls.

The circuitous path of the labyrinth, like the curved lines of the columbine, leads inward to the center of the flower.  This is the quest offered to the pollinating bee allowing for the flower’s future rebirths.

Tags , , ,
Categories haiku

Crabapple

May 14, 2012 //
2

May 14, 2011

A crabapple tree,
laden with shocking pink buds,
hums and buzzes love.

Walking past the crabapple tree in our backyard when its flowers are in full bloom, one hears the bees at play.  When I was a child, a crabapple tree was planted in our front yard.  It usually bloomed around Mother’s Day, and while both the children in the family and the tree itself were relatively little, we would stand in front of it, dressed in our Sunday best, for a photo.

Tags
Categories haiku

Kaleidoscope

May 13, 2012 //
1

May 13, 2011

A fortunate wind
jumbles the garden’s colors:
kaleidoscopic.

The Greek etymology of kaleidoscope is “to see beautiful forms.” And that is our world: beautiful forms.  Our world is forms that shift and collide and mix and reform.  Nothing new is added; nothing old is taken away.  But things definitely change and, if we can continue to see the world with a child’s eyes, we will continually be surprised by wonder.

Perhaps that is the job of an artist: to help us see the world through a child’s eyes, to surprise us with beautiful forms.  I remember my first visit to the National Gallery in London when I saw Georges Seurat’s Bathing at Asnières.  I was not able to move on. There was much more to see in the museum but I could not leave that painting.  I had to sit down.  When I stood up to move closer to study it – the technique I later learned was called “pointillism”, the painting became even more incredible.  How did someone create that?!  Large beautiful forms created by tiny dots of oddly-chosen color.  How could someone create that?!  And yet there it was.

I do not know how long I was there, how long I sat, stood, stared stunned.  Time did not really matter anymore.  My experience became a poem, then it became a story, “Portrait of a Small Boy in an Art Museum,” which is included in this blog from February 3 (“Blizzard!”).  I used Seurat’s painting Bathing at Asnières as well as elements from a study for this painting (Horses in the Water) for the painting in the story.

Tags , , ,
Categories haiku

Bleeding Hearts

May 12, 2012 //
1

May 12, 2012

A delicate string
of collected hearts tremble
when a cool breeze blows.

Tags ,
Categories haiku
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 83 other followers