“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
magpie gripes (another unpublished haiga, an experimental image)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
deeper haiga
deeper
than echoes
our heartbeats
The image is an unsigned framed watercolor painting the size of a picture that I found in a second hand bookstore.
the wind we chase haiga
reflections
the wind we chase
traps us
haiku: alegria imperial
image/photo: eleanor angeles
detail of bronze sculpture at the NY Botanical Garden fountain
hummingbird haiga (found in New York)
who senses me
when I’m gone?
hummingbird
haiku: alegria imperial
photo/image: eleanor angeles
found haiku at New York Botanical Gardens (in The Bronx)
First posted separately at NaHaiWriMo under ‘migrating birds’ prompt by Pris Campbell
harvest moon (haiga6 for 19 Planets Art Blog)
harvest moon haiga, my second water color attempt for 19 Planets Art Blog
harvest moon
melting banks of darkness–
our silent walls
I like the haiku which the artwork prompted. This process, as Rick Daddario keeps saying, has turned ‘way way fun’, for me. I do have a vague landscape in my mind before I start playing with the water color pencils (that I chose as medium for easy handling) at first, but something else begins to take form with my first stroke and on to the next. As more colors waft on the frame, it is then, too, when the haiku, writes itself, as in this haiga.
I think it’s not a good one because the image describes the haiku. I believe that with this genre, they should be apart like strangers sizing up each other. In this haiga though, I, the author, slips in between them, bringing with me what I would wish the moon would do more than what we know it does. Also, a haiku as author-driven as this is termed anthropomorphic, if I recall correctly, and it isn’t quite a good haiku. Still, I like this haiga and I hope you do, too.
‘buttonhole’ haiga4 for 19 Planets Arts Blog
haiga4 another clip art creation with Microsoft Publisher
buttonhole–
fireflies sneak
into my dreams
Another post composed with clip art on Microsoft Publisher for Rick Daddario’s haiga-a-day 19 Planets Art Blog.
The haiku came out of a reflection about dreams and fireflies. How often like children do we wonder what makes what seems not possible possible like what makes a firefly glow in the dark. Science does explain it with a chemical they carry like luminescent creatures of the sea. We say, ahhh to that. But tell that to a child and she looks at air. Nothing there. I must have done it many times as a child because the wonder stayed. No matter how much I read now as an adult and discover answers to what once was unexplainable, I remain with the mystery and the dream. And for me, fireflies will always be those fallen stars I used to catch as a child and slept with one, if I did, in my tight fist, expecting it would still twinkle when I wake up.
‘in the thicket’ (haiga for 19 Planets Art Blog made with clip art)
'in the thicket', my first ever haiga made with clip art
in the thicket
waiting on clouds
frogs
I think it looks awful, not artful at all! It reminds me of cards I pick up on shelves of thrift shops, the kind no one makes these days. But I have to try something. And I did with Microsoft Publisher, the only program I have that allows me to do some layout and a bit of art. Maybe I can learn to paint with the program because it’s possible. Still, I have to give it a shot and suffer through the birthing.
Thanks to Rick Daddario for giving me the spunk to do this.
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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