flaring petals (haiga link)
I can’t figure out how to add the visual (media) here, and so, please click on the link to view the haiga. Sorry!
flaring petals
breath within breath
their dawn
STREET NEWS an experiment on mixing haibun and haiga (haibunga)
Street news (a haibun)
A school of clams caused a shoreline village to gather whispers. A fisherman proposed that the shaman must talk to the chief clam. What about? A boy asked. The chief clam passed the word around…
hum by hum
moonlight floods
the secret code
Betrayed, the villagers turned to the clams and pried them open. In the streets, a furor rages…
about time
the chill turns
a white page
“tilted sky” haiga at NTFG
Notes from the Gean December 2012
enormity, my haiga at NTFG January 2013
enormity in and out
a haiga at Notes from the Gean, January 2013
Colin Stewart Jones, editor
composed on my iPod Touch with Eastern drawing
chilled lines (haiga shared at Fusion)
chilled lines sunsets once
reflection composed with doodooo on my iPod
shared at Fusion
magpie gripes (another unpublished haiga, an experimental image)
magpie gripes
over empty skies
a haiga from my iPod, the third line being the image or what and how it is read as a composite
would the moon (an unpublished haiga)
would the moon
descend this low
for love?
ai, haiku/esa, image 2012
(blue heron perched high up on a weeping willow by the Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC, where I live, taken last summer)
‘sunlight on the other side’ (a haiga)
Silk Bridge, Bennington, VT
sunlight on the other side
somehow louder
ai, haiku/esa, photo
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?
Recent Comments
alee9 on … madhuri on … alee9 on My latest at Bones journa… alee9 on My haiku awards alee9 on a beggar’s prayer
jornales 