01 First Thoughts

… no middle of the night waking by either dog, but Chas is ready promptly at 4 AM… it’s ok, no alcohol last night and in bed more or less on time…

… the heat should break today… there isn’t anything abnormal about a few days of this kind of heat at this time of year… not like the Pacific Northwest where temperatures are breaking records, and in the case of British Columbia, setting an all time record… 116 degrees!…

… this morning’s Heather Cox Richardson is all about how the oil and gas industry are lobbying states for legislation that favors the fossil fuel industry and makes it harder to pursue green energy strategies… the problem with capitalism… money equals power and big oil and gas have lots of money… interests are entrenched… numerous states depend substantially on the oil and gas industry for jobs and revenue… we should be better at adjusting but the market capitalist system often makes it difficult to do what is beneficial in the long run…

… a sweet story about Gertrude Tate and Alice Austin love affair in Brain Pickings… Alice Austin was a pioneering photographer… Maria Popova describes her work as brilliant, i am not as clear that it was, but she was both pursuing photography and loving a woman when both were difficult to do… i think her genius was in just getting out and doing it, recording people, in dignified portraits… here is an example…

Street-cleaner at 34th Street, New York City, part of Alice Austen’s 1896 series Street Types of New York. (Alice Austen House archive.)

… trying out Craft after a high recommendation from a Micro.blog community member… trying to see where it might fit into my workflow…

… the internet is so freaking slow this AM… that is what i hoped i was leaving behind when i came home… what gives?…

04 Mindfulness

… today’s haiku effort…

_ Oppressive summer heat, errands anyway.

03 Scenes From a Walk

… meanwhile, back in Beacon…

02 Meditations

Buson Haiku…

… i decide that two pages a day, generally six haiku, is better than 4 pages a day, generally 12 haiku… haiku may be brief, like the cherry blossoms in May, but, like the cherry blossoms in May, they can evoke endless reveries and are worth lingering with, to let them unpack a bit, before moving on…

… a poem about how the sun reddens plumb blossoms and moves on to “attack the oaks and pines.”… i have never thought of sunsets as attacking anything, making anything bloody… what sort of mood must the poet have been in to make this juxtaposition?…

… another poem tackles the joy of eyeing a lover hiding behind her white fan?… Buson is a down to earth poet, writing about lovers, did Basho ever write about love or lovers?… nothing comes to mind but i am sure my knowledge is not exhaustive…

… another poem takes note of the “morning breeze rifling the caterpillar’s hair… how utterly mundane and miraculous at the same time, the sacredness is in paying attention…

01 First Thoughts

… arrived home last night at about 8 PM, cranked up the AC, settled the dogs and cat, unloaded the car, popped the cork on a bottle of Chardonnay, watched a little Rachel Madow, went to bed…

… Fiona got me up at about 2 AM… it appears she wanted some water and to go out… hoping this will settle down as we return to routines of Beacon…

… dogs both got me up at about 4:30 AM… good thing i am rested and generally don’t need a ton of sleep…

… computer terribly slow to boot and load… it’s been sitting in all this heat turned off… maybe something rearranged in its circuits even so?… heat gremlins…

… my copy of Afternoons, by Jenna Westra, was in the pile of mail, also the blurb book of my solo exhibit, also the new neck gators i ordered from Coolibar…

… my impression on getting home last night?… we need to do something to brighten home up… three weeks in a bright sunny interior changes your ideas about things a bit… still, glad to be home, typing on my desktop computer, regardless of how slow it is being…

05 Mindfulness

… today’s haiku…

Milkweed blossoms plentiful, where are the Butterflies?

Pre-dawn gloom, birds twittering, moonlight paints a window on the floor.

04 What I Am Looking Forward To

… that i don’t have or cant do on Block Island

• wifi that works
• letting dogs out into the back yard to do their business
• a king sized bed
• a well equipped kitchen
• a desktop computer
• seeing friends

03 So Irritated

… my dog Fiona has become undisciplined… i don’t know why… this morning i walked her round and round the house, waiting for her to do something, anything at all… round and round… round and round… nothing… i finally gave up and brought her back in… within minutes she pooped on the living room rug… i was livid… H says we are going to have to figure out why she is doing that… the only solution i have found is to take her for a substantial walk… i resent that… i want my god damn mornings to be uninterrupted… i want to get up and have a few hours of quiet where i can think and read and write… i have told H that the next time we are out here we must roll up all rugs and put them in the basement… one thing i have learned from our years of dog stewardship is that rugs are destined to get ruined no matter how good the dog… best just not to have any…

02 Meditations

Haiku of Buson

… i am finding the haiku i am reading this morning have more dimension than those i have read in the past few days… all of them are Buson… have i hit poems with particular affinity to my self, or am i more receptive this morning?…

No bridge

and the sun going down—

spring currents.¹

… the poet has arrived at the edge of a stream and needs to cross, the stream is full and currents are fast… there is no bridge, soon it will be dark… what to do?… rather than isolating and freezing a moment in time, this haiku implies a past and a future for the poet… a journey…

01 First Thoughts

… going home day… looking forward to it, not looking forward to it… temperatures in the mid 90’s most of the week… Block Island hasn’t cleared 80 while we have been here… the house will be hot and stuffy when we get there… crank the AC up right away…

… got the haiku done for the day, good thing, it will be a busy day and there may not have been time later…

… pleased with the weight trend… a new approach to eating has been helpful… hearty breakfast mid-morning… snacks until dinner… light dinner… seems to do the trick…

… we had our traditional last supper at Eli’s last night… ice cream at Aldos afterwards… i got two scoops instead of the usual one… two scoops was about half a scoop too much, the sweetness started to turn on me towards the end…

… a carousel operated by dollar bills… a family gathered round, watching a child with some kind of syndrome/affliction ride the pony… at the end of the second ride, her serious face breaks out in a big grin and the family heaps praise on her… later, three girls, a little too old, a little to big, go for a ride and snap selfies to send to friends…

… feeling pretty good today…

05 Haiku

… trying to write at least one haiku a day as an attention to simple things discipline… today’s effort…

Packing and cleaning, late afternoon sun, paints window onto floor.

04 Poulomi Basu

… an article on Poulomi Basu, woman photographer from India… her body of work sits at the intersection of fine art, fiction, documentary… a conflict between government, capitalism, and natives… i wonder, will anything change because of the work?… or will it be enshrined in museum halls of the capitalist machine, the self critique that offers a veneer of respectability but alleviates no suffering because, after all, capitalism values extraction of minerals under the ground more than people living above that ground…

03 Influencer

… a review of Sweat, a new Polish film… the story about a social media influencer, exercise guru… it catches my attention because i make social media efforts, i crave followers… i don’t think i have more than 500 followers on any platform i post to… i want to be worth following, i want to be followed…

… as i write this i also know that followers and likes are the crack cocaine of social media sites…

… one of the things i love/hate about micro.blog is that i don’t know how many followers i have… i don’t know if my words are appreciated unless someone goes out of their way to let me know… there are no likes or hearts to appreciate with… you have to say something about it…

… my greatest mindfulness challenge is to give up the need for attention and just be… find joy in what i create, experience, because the here and now of my existence is enough in and of itself…

02 Meditations

Haiku of Buson

… stars shining in the not-dark-yet sky… leeks and bare trees… the winter quilt is not long enough to cover head and toes… flitting bats, moonlight and plumb blossoms… peonies dropping their petals in little heaps… moored boat, end of spring… dew, still water, evening… flies, sick girl, summer heat… summer rains concealing the path… a gift of trout… dog barking, peddler, peach trees blooming… a visit to the scare crow and return…

… none of this morning’s haiku are about anything other than particular moments to which attention has been paid… this is how i think of my photography, my writing… me paying attention to what unfolds around me, and there are so many things, any one noticed is therefore notable… this is existence within the moment… why did this scene become a haiku and not that one?… why did i make this picture and not that one?… why do i write down what i write down?… there are no answers, only questions on questions… give up the questions that have no answers and just let it all be…

01 First Thoughts

… P & M to dinner last night… P in a belligerent mood, picked a couple of fights, expressed disapproval of mariage of S & B, what business is it of theirs?… still annoyed this AM…

… birds singing madly, like they do every morning…

… Chas got me up at 3:00 this AM, for no purpose whatsoever… as soon as i sat up he climbed into his chair and settled, satisfied with his work…

… crazy heat wave in Seattle, WA… 101 today, 110 tomorrow… that’s nuts…

… writing this reminds me there will be a family meeting today…

… we return to Beacon tomorrow… we will spend the day cleaning up the house, packing, doing laundry, etc… tonight we will go out to dinner…

… i am happy to be going home…

06 Scenes From a Walk

05 Scenes From a Walk

04 Scenes From a Walk

03 Scenes From a Walk

02 Meditations

Buson

… more mundane moments… devoid of longing, desire, sorrow, regret… just observations… a heavy cart rumbles by shaking the peonies… fish in the shallows having eluded the cormorants for another day… a man escaping his wife and children on the porch, summer heat… things are as they are, nothing more is meant by them, is that the foundational message of Buson poetry?…

… i want to think there is more, that there is meaning that once discovered will render me wise beyond my years… that would be a lot of wisdom… maybe what i am looking for, what we all look for, is being at peace with it… just being and taking joy in that…

… as i sit here i wonder if i should purchase poems by Robert Bly… a volume of haiku… is there one?… i have a look… the internet is so slow… it is early and didn’t the Verizon man improve it yesterday?…

… i prefer a physical book for meditation fodder… makes it seem more sacred… i look up the word fodder, is it the right choice for this context?… it is, and more appropriate than i thought… the primary meaning, feed for livestock… the meaning i am familiar with: expendable people, as in factory fodder, cannon fodder… this leads me to remember “no man is an island,” a poem i memorized when i was a kid, after reading For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Earnest Hemmingway, which i loved…

01 First Thoughts

… large swings in weight, water coming, going, like the tides…

… Saturday, we return home on Monday…

… this morning, i need a hand crank to get going…

… foggy day… picture taking will be interesting… back to the boat basin…

… i check the weather forecast, increasingly windy in next few days, not quite enough to cancel ferry, but enough to make things rock and roll…

… we are wondering what our garden will look like when we return, there has been rain back in Beacon… we expect lots of weeds… will we have any veggies?…

… dog restlessness, not quite ready to get them, hope it settles down…

… birds tweeting madly…

This morning I posted three haikus I wrote yesterday on the Beach to Facebook. I described them as “haikus” because I was aware that I had not followed the traditional 5-7-5 syllable format when writing them. I was pretty sure someone would question me on this, and, someone did.

I wasn’t at all surprised because I had been taught, probably in High School, that the proper format for a haiku is five syllables, then seven syllables, then five syllables again. I think most of us in US English classes, at least of a certain era, were taught this.

While on vacation, I Have been making my way through The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson and Issa. I noticed that Robert Hass, the translator of the poems and editor of the book, had not rendered the poems in the 5-7-5 format I expected. I figured that rather than hold to syllable structure, which might have forced words that were not the best translation of intent, he had opted for making the cleanest translation rendering the mood and imagery of the poems most accurately. It turns out I figured well, but there was more to it than I thought. More about that in a minute.

Reading Hass’s translations gave me the idea that very brief poems focusing on the exquisite moments of a scene could be successful. I set out to ignore the 5-7-5 rule and focus on capturing the moment.

As I wrote all this to answer the individual who questioned the format on FB, it occurred to me that what constitutes a syllable in Japanese might be somewhat different than what constitutes a syllable in English. I did a search and this very detailed article about the differences popped up. I was right. Expecting Japanese syllables to be the equivalent of English syllables is, as the article put it, like expecting the one Japanese Yen to equal one American dollar. They aren’t and it doesn’t.

Japanese syllables are (almost?) always short and staccattic, whereas english syllables run a gamut of length and intonation. There are all kinds of subtle differences that start to arise as a result. For example, 17 syllables in English can be twice as many words as would be possible in Japanese pursuing the equivalency idea. Japanese Haiku are therefore almost always being more minimal with words than English haiku written to the 5-7-5 standard. For that reason, poets writing Haiku in English often don’t stick to it. It is also the reason why trying to preserve 5-7-5 structure in an English translation of a Japanese haiku is probably not the best way to go.

There are other fascinating nuances arising from the differences, making it counterproductive to try to adhere to 5-7-5 in english. You can read about them in the referenced article.

One other thing I learned about Japanese vs. English haiku that I might actually start to emulate. The arrangement of haiku into three separate lines is a western convention. The Japanese write it all on one line.

01 First Thoughts

… i often wish i could hit the ground running and that profound thoughts would pop out of my mind and course through my fingers to the keyboard and into the digital nether lands… profound thoughts don’t happen often and how ready i am to run generally depends on how much wine i had for dinner the night before… last night was not bad in the wine department, so i am fairly ready to go today…

… it looks cloudy and possibly a bit foggy… might be a day to photograph the harbors, boats in the mists are very photogenic…

… news that Rudi Giuliani has been suspended from practicing law in New York and will likely be disbarred… an amazing fall for a former SDNY prosecutor and Mayor of NYC… it boggles the mind… does the lust for power really overwhelm all other rationality?…

… continued spreading of conspiracy theory around the country, centered around the big lie, has raised concerns of violence going forward, especially in August, the month 45 has told his followers he will be reinstated as president of the USA… i never thought i would live through such insane times…

… dogs starting to be restless upstairs… i will have to go get them soon…

… back from a walk with dogs out to Dicken’s Farm Preserve… dogs fiercely on the hunt going out, more leisurely coming back… the Bull Thistle is spreading and starting to grow to stature described…

… the thought that, photographically, i am circling around something but unable to pin down what that is…

09 Beach Haiku

Child squealing,

waves breaking,

indolent summer chatter.

08 Beach Haiku

Cloudless summer sky

meeting smooth sea,

in linear mutuality.