my first ever ginko walk/my 100th post
Still imitating Melissa’s ‘numbers’, I’m posting my 100th as a report and the haiku I wrote from my first ever ginko walk with the newly-formed Vancouver Haiku Group. Vicki McCullough of pacifi-kana has helped in its formation with Angela Naccarato as organizer and we’ve been meeting every 3rd Sunday since. Here is Vicki’s report on our first ginko walk in Vancouver:
“Alegria Imperial, Angela Naccarato, Carole MacRury and Vicki McCullough had a lovely wander through Strathcona and Cottonwood community gardens on October 3. The skies were grey, but not precipitating, and the temperature comfortably warm. We marvelled at the immense diversity of flora and of garden plot designs. A few hours later, tea/coffee and treats at an outdoor table a few blocks away in the heart of the Strathcona neighbourhood capped the afternoon. Everyone departed with a head—and in some instances, a camera—loaded with garden images.”
My take on the ginko:
“It was my first ginko walk. My senses had since been so awake and sharp I’ve been quite confident I’m finally writing haiku though some good some ‘yikes’. But not only the garden, I believe, worked like magic–mixed in the potion was Vicki, Angela and Carole. Like children, which I think, is the spirit of haiku with its constant wonder, we gushed at everything–the sound of wonder–such as the blush of huge blooms as well as the remains of the once-beautiful or the once-sweet. This must be how the haiku ‘haijin-s’ (I’ve ben using ‘sensei-s’ to mean master but I think it has something to do with music) drew out from the novices their ‘reflections on the moment’.
And two of my haiku Vicki included in her report:
grey skies
on opaque pool–
no secrets
hydrangeas–
the same whispers
the same sighs
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About
autumn wind
wondering about lilies
in a mountain pond
Tell me a writer who really gets a satisfying jornal, in Spanish a daily wage or its equivalent, and I’ll bare a spirit in constant bouts of doubtfulness. Does a writer earn more because of what he writes and how he does it? Or is a writer paid more or less because of who he is? Is it money or honor he expects to receive?
Ahhh … but money as wage, and praise or honor as reward would be too predictable, too common as Job lamented in the Book of Job. It is in these lines that read: “Is not man’s life on earth nothing more than pressed service, his times no better than hired drudgery? Like the slave, sighing for the shade, or the workman with no thought but his wages, months of delusion I have assigned to me, nothing for my own but nights of grief. Lying in bed I wonder, ‘When will it be day?’ Risen I think, ‘How slowly evening comes!’
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls. Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind. Remember that my life is but a breath, and that my eyes will never again see joy.”
Not money but joy is the ultimate wage as the passage implies. And joy is not hard to earn for it is in everyday life if we have eyes to see, a nose to smell, fingers to touch, ears to hear–a heart beating. This to me, is how a writer earns a daily wage. His wages then take the guise of treasures his heart can transfigure into a universe of thought that taps into other hearts, that causes a swirl in the depth of other souls, or that makes wings to sprout on leaden heels.
Sometimes not joy but rueful, poignant moments are my pick. Take what I earned once: On my walk home in my neighborhood, I caught two clumps of snowdrops–such tiny blossoms smaller than fingertips that do not look up but shyly droop close to black patches on the ground winter has frozen. That afternoon in the frosty wind, they trembled as if ready to turn away and run but how could they? For that poignant moment on seeing the wintry rain beat on the fragile snowdrop–as if pushing it to go home now, go to sleep–I earned my jornal, my daily wage.
Once on summer walk, the crackle of dried leaves just hit me both like the laughter of children and sobs long suppressed. Neither one of them would resolve the dryness, but I recalled how each does bring tears: laughter for joy, sobs for healing that comes with the release of a dammed-up pain. My jornal that day came as two haiku.
Fall has since shortened the day and the heart begins to crave for lost space that it doesn’t even recall which or where. I feel that most treasures have turned into mush so much so I wouldn’t be able to sift them off the ground. Yet I caught the dying day yesterday–so glorious in the gold of autumn it opened a flip side of serene heaven. Blades of grass coated in diadems of rain that carpet the lawns render royal walks poor by imitation. A burst of red maple against an inky blue sky humbled me, a soul bragging about her skill to recreate beauty in words.
I suppose I’m taking Job’s reflections to heart. I’d rather not gloss over each day and look beyond what’s there, right before me, or else fragile as is my breath one day “my eyes may never again see joy” to write. With what then will I compare the eternal joy, the ultimate wage I await?
Yet for now, as other eyes hanker to make the invisible visible, I put a tag on some moments of joy. Like on seeing the snowdrops, I paid myself $200 as my jornal.
What could have been yours?
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jornales 
[…] also to another blog which celebrated its 100th post this week — Alegria Imperial’s “jornales.” In it she recounts the story of her first […]