closer to nothing (NaHaiWriMo prompt on natural disaster)
St. Andrew's Parish Church tower, Bacarra, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
closer to nothing
under its shrinking shadow–
Bacarra tower*
Ooops!! 5-7-5, sorry Michael! Didn’t mean to. But just to share for now…
*brick and mortar tower in my hometown where according to legend, a Spanish royal guard could ride on horseback through the stairs inside of it, bearing the red and gold colors to the third window. This baroque tower built on ‘obras pias’ (alternate tribute of hard labor by the natives) in the 1800s completed toward the end of that century, was known to be the tallest in the archipelago so much so that its domed tip could be seen towns away and the toll of its enormous bells could be heard amid the raging South China sea. Its top window broke during a massive earthquake in the 1930s (can’t recall the exact date) with its dome humbled onto the fracture. With each earthquake, quite frequent in the Philippines, the dome would be crunched lower and lower until another strong one pushed it off its precarious perch to fall on the ground. Ruins of its first window from its base of brick and mortar are all that remains.
the calm/rereading cards/round and round (3 tanka on the calm from the earthquake elsewhere)
Mie and me on her last visit to Vancouver
1.
the calm–
from Kyoto Mie writes
far from earthquake
the wedding garden today
light snow on cherry buds
2.
rereading cards–
from Michio in Saitama
her New year’s wishes
of Rabbit hopes and dreams
today mine for her in pray’r
3.
round and round
moon and earth mirror each other
chaos of winds
ruined faces blemished cheeks
to be cleansed over and over
my haiku on Japan’s calamity at the NaHaiWriMo fb site
More than any of the recent and past images of earthquakes and tsunamis, that of Japan’s make of movies cardboard play. Perhaps because haiku is a Japanese art and as an art, it has as its heart, reality and Nature, postings in response to the disaster prompt at the still-on NaHaiWriMo fb site has been good with mostly exquisite haiku. I’ve posted these two so far:
#11c
tsunami–
swirling in the depths lives
and budding cherry trees
#11d
from haiku scribblings
to a prayer
on a giant wave
tsunami (a haibun draft)
What else but a surreal image? That’s how sizes and dimensions gape at us when Nature takes on our own nature of maniacal rage. An earthquake and a tsunami, for example, when men are turned into nothing but grit and as equally irritating to be winnowed out–if only Nature were like our eyes and hands that miss the tears along with the grit and spare some in prayer.
But sizes do not end where our span points midair or our eyes on walls of horizons. Dimensions spawn spaces blank beyond our knowing. What births in such depths and heights? Men have invented words to describe their fear. They brew these in inner cauldrons but fail to empty them out onto sand.
The steam scalds them at times, the overboil sometimes burns them. But dimensions distract them as they control what’s unseen, what heals, what’s scarred and soothed with words.
Beware do not build on an earthquake fault. As if the fissures may not crack elswhere. Leave the lush volcanic soil. As if men’s hankering for paradise can be tamped down. Live each day as if night were true death. As if, as if deafness can resist the moon’s whispers. Sizes and dimensions on sand only children can fathom turn out to be the truest picture. But even with a heart like a child’s men loses in his tangled thoughts a vision of sizes and dimensions, hence,
towers of sand
suspending stars and sky–
then come billows
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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