five rabbits from Snow Country chasing a red dragonfly
Or my title should be
five rabbits from Snow Country got lost in Madison chasing a red dragonfly and flew and flew to Vancouver
My friend, Melissa Allen’s prize of a book finally arrived yesterday, the bubble envelop dented, its edges wavy–signs of that long flight from the opposite side of North America! I fought to disentagle the two-inch tape that secured a package which when I pulled out glowed as the sheer treasures that they are.
Melissa did not only give away her second copy of the more exquisite UNESCO edition of Yasunari Kawabata’s “Snow Country”, she also enclosed two hand-crafted rabbit new year greeting cards, one of them a rabbit origami, the other a cut-out rabbit coated with tiny blossoms and butterflies on hand-made paper; and three creatively picked cards–one of them a cut-out from something like a children’s book, and another a 1909 cottontail rabbit postcard hazed by the sepia of years ( I now have in my possession a 102 year-old postcard!). I regressed, as childlike I held them close, peering into the rabbits’ eyes.
And oh, she lovingly wrapped the book in blue pastel petal prints and tied it with a matching blue string. Her dedication wasn’t written plainly on the title page but on a cutout of yes, an unusual breed of brown rabbit.
Here they are in the order Melissa arranged them so I could unfold the haiku messages on friendship she had handwritten :
card no. 1
greeting and haiku
new year
a new friend becomes
an old friend
–MLA
rabbit #2 folding away/the year/paper rabbit
rabbit caught among my winter roses
haiku and quote of a dialogue between two rabbits
new year
opening the door
for a friend
–MLA
“Can I come in?”
said the bunny.
“Yes,” said the bunny.
And so he did.
rabbit #4
rabbit #5
postmark and clipping on the cottontail rabbits-
Year of the rabbit
I give away
the litter
–MLA
The Cottontail Rabbits (Sylvilagus floridaus and relatives)
Several kinds of cottontail rabbits, and their allies the brush and swamp rabbits which lack the conspicuous “cotton tail” range collectively from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. These denizens of the briar and brush patch afford pleasure to those who love to watch them when at rest, or their headlong dash for cover at the least alarm.
"Snow Country" unwrapped
title page
New Year–
last year’s mistakes mended
with snow patches
–Melissa Allen (“red dragonfly”)
If this is not a shower of all the blossoms I can’t name that rabbits brush in their search for carrot patches, tell me how less lucky I am–more so with “red dragonfly” friends
winning the race
rabbit number six switches tag
with number one
For me from hereon on every…
first snow–
the rabbits’ fur
whiter
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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