02 The Daily Read:

The Essential Haiku, edited by Robert Hass, translations by Hass and others…

… Issa…

… todays set of poems are not as remarkable to me as yesterday’s, or are they?… they seem more pedestrian, telling flies to relax and make love (the idea is kind of gross), since the poet is going out (and therefor does not have to be annoyed by the flies, their soul (i reread and think to correct the spelling and then decide the current spelling has more poetic depth) purpose as far as most humans are concerned)…

… another poem about a counting the flea bites on her baby as she nurses them…

… a poem about paying a dime to look through a telescope, were telescopes even around in Issa’s time?… yes, invented more than 150 years before his birth… and wouldn’t ten cents have been rather dear for a look through a telescope at the time?… i wonder if Hass has updated the pricing to make the poem more relatable?… or course today it would be a dollar…

… another poem about a snail being stripped to the waist in the moonlight… as with any animal in Haiku, one has to look up it’s possible cultural significance… snails are a symbol of fertility, tolerance and perseverance… also of duality because of their hermaphrodite nature¹… would this have been known in Issa’s time?…

… after some searching, an article that may explain the stripped to the waist reference in the snail Haiku… possibly referring to Saze Oni, a mythical snail creature that could shape shift into a beautiful woman… they bedeviled sailors much like the Sirens of Greek mythology²… i don’t know if this has anything to do with the snail poem…

… it is interesting that the reading of a small number of Haiku can generate so much additional reading as i look to see if their are meanings and allusions hidden from me, a Japanese culture outsider… much of the time there is…

01 First Thoughts:

… feeling better this AM… yesterday, exhausted, headache, mostly napped and cooked with some intermittent grocery shopping thrown in…

… last night, no dog woke me up in the middle… got the full seven hours i seem to need…

… news about 45 at CPAC over the weekend worries me… he won’t really run again, will he?… i think it is mostly that he is clawing his way back into the news which can’t be a good thing…

… reading Heather Cox Richardson about Biden’s speech on Friday (making business more competative) made me feel better about things this AM… it’s a race to see if the Biden/Harris administration can do enough good for the people, and convince them that they have, that they don’t return Republicans to control congress and then the presidency… my overwhelming feeling about 45 being that he should suffer a stroke or heart attack and die… if there is a god, please make it so, there is already a hell for after we die, why have one on earth?… but i don’t believe in god, heaven or hell, just the will of good people…

… a cardinal has been hanging out around our house, we hear them morning and night, we don’t see them very much but their sound is easy to identify, loud, round, piercing…

… there is a shape shifting chicken in the group of chickens that i tend… two days now, this chicken has been on the outside of the coop fencing but has declined to have me let her in… then the next thing i know, she is nowhere on the outside, but back in the coup… i suppose she knows how she got out and gets herself back in the same way… either that or she has beam-me-aboard capabilities… that would be scary…

… today i must make a skin doctor appointment for a routine exam… i need to get back to seeing my doctors…

03 Micro Poem:

_ Folding toilet paper– the way my father taught me._

02 The Daily Read:

Issa haiku…

… a remarkable set of poems this morning, of the six i read, all six stand out for one reason or another…

… the first pictures a dry river bed seen by the light of a lightning strike… a river bed that is about to flow with water again… a creative mind about to be released into creating by a powerful experience… a poem about summer rains?… where i live, rivers are more likely to be dry in the summer… thunderstorms and heavy downpours are more likely then too… there is also the threat of flash flooding… to much water in too little time…

… the second begs a flea not to jump, as the river is where it will likely land… i suppose it is very Buddhist to wish continued health and well being on even a lowly “nuisance” creature… i would have flicked it to it’s drowning death… of course, the poem might also be about undertaking challenges that are too big, perhaps the flea is the novice, beginner mind, that wishes to forge ahead too quickly and will be drowned if it does?…

… the third talks about how being in this world is like walking on the roof of hell, distracted by the lovely yellow flowers… a poem about not being willing to do the hard work of facing all aspects of one’s reality?… of not admitting the horrors of life which abound… of only being able to acknowledge the pleasures of life, superficial as they may be…

… the fourth is about being naked on a naked horse riding through the rain… now there is a foundational nature image… i read that the Japanese worshipped the horse as a god and “believed that the “divine spirit” appeared in the human world on horseback”¹… i also read that the horse is very important in Buddhism… Siddhartha², the future Buddha, had a white horse that was his favorite and which transported him when he escaped from palace life and began the journey of becoming a spiritual leader… and so, the image of naked human on naked horse in the rain is a deeply spiritual image?…

… the fifth is about a fly wringing its front and hind legs, begging not to be killed… again, i would struggle to be a Buddhist in such a situation…

… and the sixth is about a cat frolicking on a scale and weighing itself… this catches my attention because i wonder what sort of scale would have been in use during Issa’s lifetime?…

01 First Thoughts:

… feeling groggy, a little headache, lots of yard work yesterday, might have overdone, dehydrated, got pretty fed up, tired of going away and coming back to a garden filled with weeds, a never ending battle especially since the neighbors on either side don’t tend to their weeds…

… another night without complete sleep, Fiona pacing the room, i get up, take her downstairs, she goes out reluctantly, drank a bunch of water then we went back to bed… didn’t seem no be a necessary interruption to my sleep… usually it is…

06 Tools of the Omelette Making Trade:

… Iwachu cast iron omelette pan, stainless steel mixing bowl, silicone omelette spatula, wire whisk, chopsticks…

05 Time to Tend the Chickens:

… have i mentioned that i and a group of friends share the responsibilities of feeding and caring for a bunch of chickens?… there are somewhere between 20 and 30 of them… in exchange we get fresh eggs… we also raise chickens for meat, sometimes ducks, turkeys and even goose, which we then participate in harvesting… the harvesting part was hard for me at first, still is to some degree, but i firmly believe that every meat eater should confront an animal that they plan to eat and take part in taking its life… it hasn’t dissuaded me from eating meat, but i do so with a little more reverence than before…

… at any rate, this is to say, that’s all for now… it’s my turn to tend the chickens today…

04 Jennifer Latour:

From Bound Species, by Jennifer Latour…

… i really like this work, looking so much like botanical drawings of yester-yore, but with the contemporary twist of creating franken-flowers, sublime and amusing idea and outstanding execution… and, she has a great instagram feed…

03 What Men Should Want:

… according to AnOther Magazine…

… hmmm… in light of my immediately preceding post an example of how the consumer culture leads us away from the idea that the simple things are enough…

… men’s jewelry from Alighieri (why should women have all the accessorizing fun?)…

… a T-shirt from Palace and Juergen Teller (wrote about this a few days ago)…

Palace x Juergen Teller

… and the list goes on…

… we are supposed to have too much money and spend it on our vanity… at least as far as Another Mag is concerned…

… be spendful and multiply your things!… (or not, you might be happier)…

02 Meditations:

Issa haiku…

… the one that catches my attention this morning is about being under a cherry tree and finding it strange to be alive… cherry blossoms are valued in Japan for there ephemeral nature, flowering briefly and gloriously, gone too soon¹… like life itself…

… Issa knows the lessons the cherry tree teaches, that life is brief and one needs to be alive to it… to find existence strange at any moment in time and space is being alive to it…

… this will be a bit of a non sequitur, but in the film Black Widow, the theme of family is the unifying good… family of Avengers, family, even make believe family, of Russian spies… family transcends everything…

… i find in literature and life, again and again, that what is truly important are the simple things… home, family, being alive to nature and life… all these things can be had and enjoyed for free (or little cost) as long as basic necessities are met… we are constantly being distracted from these core simple things, especially by the consumer culture we live in, where things upon things are the symbol of a good life… even as aware of this as i am, i struggle to execute, have never gotten close to centering my life around the simple pleasures…

… family is a particular challenge for me… my birth family is difficult and scattered to three of the four corners of the continent, my in law family is a good one, but not the family i grew up with… i have never had children, just wife, dogs and cats, which do teach me many things, including the brevity of life…

… as i write this, an epiphany of sorts… living well along the lines of simple pleasures is anti-market, anti-capitalist… it’s generally anti most forms of economic organization… it is rigorously repressed as a way to conduct one’s life…

06 Black Widow Part II:

… tremendous fun!… and what a down with the patriarchy movie!… i mean really, it’s wall to wall women as strong, smart characters and when they are not, it’s because they are mind controlled by evil men… fabulous… women rule!…

Tropical storm Elsa blows through leaving Fishkill Creek pretty angry. Flash flood warnings since yesterday, but not our immediate area. 📷

Does anyone know why pictures from a blog post sometimes render in the feed and sometimes don’t? It seems random too me. Are there rules for picture posting?

05 Black Widow:

… love Scarlett Johansson… beautiful and a really good actress… did you ever see her in Lost in Translation?, with Bill Murray?… one of my fave movies of all time… anyway, here is a review of Black Widow which makes it seem worth going to, and the local theater has it playing and is open!… i am vaccinated, but am i ready to spend a couple of hours with strangers in a theater?… hmmm, tough question…

04 Utility Poles and Wires:

… i am assembling a portfolio of images i have made of utility poles and wires over the years… i used to think it was so obnoxious, these wires and poles all over the place, getting in the way of the view… but then i began to think they are quite often beautiful… they are certainly ubiquitous where i live…

… i have a number of typology studies that i work on, Flattened Cans is one of them… Utility Poles and Wires is another… i am contemplating photobooks on each of the typologies i do…

… here are a few more of the UP and W series…

03 Maria Lax, Some Kind of Heavenly Fire:

Night Flight, Maria Lax from Some Kind of Heavenly Fire

… a photographic rendering of UFO sightings in a small Finnish town up north in the 1960’s… the sightings seem to have occurred at a time when there was an exodus of people to find work in the cities further south… it was a time of economic hardship and struggle… the photographs are beautiful and remind me a bit of Gregory Crewdson images, sans the people… they are noir in their generally dark and brooding character… they are on display as an OpenWalls Arles 2021 winner… i came very close to ordering the book… don’t really have the money right now…

02 Meditations:

The haiku of Issa…

… the poem that stand out today is about a snail climbing Mt. Fuji… the poet backs the snails endeavor but urges slow and steady… the apparent futility of a snail climbing a mountain is the poem’s pivot point… the snail might be viewed as the poet and climbing the mountain a spiritual quest… does the poet remind themselves that slow and steady is the way to go?…

… another poem about an Oriole singing at midday…

Image in the Public Domain

… the Black-naped oriole is the only oriole extant in Japan, and is a relatively rare sighting… it is not related to orioles of Europe and the United States…

… so, that an oriole is present and singing at mid day next to a river, an exceptional moment?… there doesn’t seem to be symbolism beyond that… birds in general are related to death and rebirth, as they are in many cultures, but no special significance seems to be attached to the Black-naped oriole…

… so, an Oriole singing at midday while the river flows quietly is perhaps a contemplation of middle aged life…

… the Oriole seems to be more important in Chinese culture…

… and then i learn that the Japanese have adopted the Chinese character for Oriole to represent the Bush Warbler, their equivalent to the Black-naped oriole… both birds have beautiful songs and both birds herald spring… so, it is possible that the oriole in the poem is a bush warbler… and the poem gets seasonal reference by its presence…

01 First Thoughts:

… i have been thinking the past couple of days how frustrated i am that i get no engagement with my posts from the m.b community… i engage daily with them… i post half a dozen times a day, plus or minus… i don’t expect every post to be engaged with, not even most of them, but i know i post the kinds of things that other people do, yet, no engagement… i wonder what that is about?…

… i wont’t stop, i like the blogging environment, it is the perfect home for notes on attention paid… maybe one just has to be around long enough…

… listening to “The World Keeps on Turning,” by Holly Honeychurch, one of the m.b members… i like it… in her introduction to it she talks about life’s hardships and how it helps her to get through them to have the daily rhythms, the chance for a new day dawning, every day… it reminds me of the micro poem i posted yesterday which makes the same point…

Chaos in the house— and still birds greet the dawn

… the music is lovely, very contemplative… immediately following, i cue up the Gregorian chants i so often listen to in the morning… i am part monk…

07 Fiona:

… our dog Fiona tested positive for a tick born disease in routine blood work… on to the PCR test… $200 later, all is well… better than prophylactic treatment with antibiotics…

06 I Wish:

… i could be sure that my country isn’t heading to a very bad place, but i can’t…

05 Photo Notes:

From today’s walk…

04 Micro Poem:

Chaos in the house– and still birds greet the dawn.

03 My Photography:

Flattened Cans…

I have been collecting images of flattened cans for a number of years. They represent uniqueness out of homogeneity to me. They start as cohorts (particular brand, particular size) of perfectly shaped and, for all intents and purposes, identical industrial objects. When tossed into the environment (sadly, there is no end of subject material) they continue the entropic process of becoming unique and beautiful objects.

02 Meditations:

Buson, from New Flower Picking…

… a story about foxes appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the night… foxes (Kitsune) have a long mythic tradition in Japan… old foxes are thought to be extremely intelligent, long lived, and have magical powers, like shape shifting into human form… the mythology of foxes is my main takeaway from New Flower Picking…

… anxious to move on to more haiku, i read the short biography on Issa, whose life was peppered with difficult situations with his step mother and with marriages which were tragic or unfortunate…

… of the first three poems, one about snow melting, the village flooding, with children, stands out, because the flood one expects is that of water, instead, it is of children…

… Issa is supposed to be more down to earth than Basho or Buson…

01 First Thoughts:

F…k my life!…

… living with peeps and animals isn’t always a joy… that should be a surprising statement to nobody, but there are times when you need to explitate and this morning is one of them…

… went to bed with H in a bad mood…

… evidence during the night that they didn’t sleep well and continue to be in a bad mood…

… woke up this morning to find a miscreant dog had peed on the couch… said pee spent the whole night soaking in… stripped the cushions to throw in the laundry which promptly resulted in goose feathers spread all over the place… cleaning up pee mess and vacuuming up goose feathers at 4 AM in the morning is not my idea of a day off to a good start…

… what can you do?… s…t happens…