The Haiku of Issa

… less progress on actual unraveling of meaning in these haiku today, but, several books on the subject, one of which i have ordered for my library… one thing that i knew, but which is confirmed in my exploration today, no single translation can transmit all the meaning possibilities packed into a great haiku… numerous translations are required…

• on turning fifty: from this day on, it’s all profit…
  • was fifty the life expectancy when Issa was alive?, that would seem to be the implication…
• a butterfly flitting, a child crawling, repeat…
  • another one of those ordinary moments
  • but also, butterflies are symbols of rebirth and transformation and are thought to be the souls of the departed… so the image of child and butterfly is one of a conversation between a new being and an old soul…
• on sea slugs not seaming Japanese…
  • as i look up the significance of sea slugs in Japanese culture, i find [a review](http://www.modernhaiku.org/bookreviews/GillSeaSlugs2004.html “William J. Higginson, book review: Robin Gill, “Arise Ye Sea Slugs!"") of [“Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!”: A Theme from In Praise of Olde Haiku, with Many More Poems and Fine Elaboration by Robin D. Gill](https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Sea-Slugs-Robin-Gill/dp/0974261807/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=rise+ye+sea+slugs+gill&qid=1627210821&sr=8-1 “Robin Gill, “Rise Ye Sea Slugs!"")… a book on interpreting Haiku which uses multiple translations to show how much meaning is packed into the tiny space of a haiku… it’s a little expensive for the present moment, but i order it… another rabbit hole is opening up!…
• writing poems to please the rich is not art…
  • i can relate to this… art is too much driven by wealth now as it was then…
• envy of the child being scolded, end of the year…
  • to be a child again?, from the vantage point of old age?…
• cuckoo singing, nothing special to do, even for the burweed…
  • not much information on burweed, another book on Japanese haiku: “Basho: the Complete Haiku” by Jane Reichhold.

Haiku of Issa

• sin is not possible without talent, on a winter day…
  • if talent is lacking then being lazy on a winter day isn’t a sin?…
• four or five pennies for the poor, evening rain…
  • the scene set, it is melancholy…
• a cuckoo singing to the poet and the mountain, the poet and then the mountain…
  • like an echo?…
  • summer harbinger, summer poem…
  • mourning, melancholy, longing… these are the things the bird symbolizes, though, not being Japanese, i don’t naturally pick up on these implied feelings…
• holes in the wall whistle flute like on an autumn evening…
  • imperfect human-verse…
  • there is a without and within to this poem… without, winter is coming… holes in the wall need fixing… but for now… a pleasant song…
• a fat priest with one foot out the door on the last prayer…
  • even priests can be half assed…
• skinny mosquitoes, skinny fleas, skinny children, stupid world…
  • why is the world stupid and not wondrous?…
  • who would think up such a world?…
  • mosquitoes, fleas and children, all in the same world… imagine that…

The Haiku of Issa

In today’s episode…

• a woman sings the rice planting song in the shade of a thicket…
  • the rice planting song is a very important folk song in Japan and rice growing in general extremely important…
  • what i note about this poem is a woman is being rendered with affection… as representative of tradition?…
  • rice planting occurs late spring, early summer, but there is no indication that rice planting is going on, only that the song is being sung…
• pampas grass trembles helplessly…
  • this paints an image in my mind for sure… but what is the meaning behind this anthropomorphic rendering of vibratory grass?…
• an old dog leading the way to the graves…
  • is the dog a dog, or do the Japanese have a similar way of referring to older men as old dogs?… is it an elderly man leading the way?…
  • is this a literal or metaphorical visit to the cemetery…
  • would this be a winter poem with its reference to old age and death?…
• the daughter lifts a melon to her cheek in a dream…
  • melons are taken quite seriously in contemporary Japan, carefully nurtured plant by plant and with musk melons fetching as much as $27,000 each…
  • i don’t know if this is a recent development…
  • is this a summer poem?…
  • it feels like a flemish painting to me…
• a mouse lapping at the Sumida River in the spring rains…
  • this seems like a treacherous enterprise for a small mouse to be lapping at a river swollen by spring rains… perhaps the poem is symbolic of the naivety of the young?…
  • the Sumida River is also the subject of a famous Noh play, Sumida-gawa, about a crazy old woman who comes to find her son only to find he died on the banks of the river… the play was first produced in Osaka in 1784 when Issa would have been 21 years old… the play takes place in the spring…
• the weight of being born a man on an autumn evening…
  • my question is, is man a gender reference or a humankind reference… in Western culture it would be read as a humankind reference, and thus, the weight of being human is knowing we will die…
  • if more specifically a gender reference, then i am less sure about meaning… the responsibilities that older males acquire during their lifetimes?… the weight of that?…

The Haiku of Issa

… studying and trying to interpret the Haiku of Basho, Buson and Issa, and trying to write my own micro poems has had an interesting effect… it has led me to begin withdrawing from Instagram and Facebook and to reconsider the attitude with which i make art… i have decided that it might be better simply to make and let the universe decide what will come from it…

… on with the Issa haiku…

• napping at mid day, the song of rice planters, shame…
  • are midday naps a luxury in a world that requires our labor to make order in chaos and put food on our tables?… planting rice is a spring activity, so this is a spring poem?
• melons don’t notice the intentions of thieves…
  • human motivation is of no concern to the greater part of the cosmos…
• a pretty girl munching and rustling wrapped up rice cake…
  • for a heterosexual poet, a pretty girl is always worth paying attention to…
• warning the cricket that rolling over is immanent…
  • crickets are symbols of good fortune in Chinese, Japanese and Native American culture… nobody would want to kill one, intentionally or accidentally…
  • Buddhists tend to honor all living things…
• an old dog listening for the songs of earthworms?…
  • not sure what to make of this one…
  • sleeping on its side on the ground?…
  • a poem about old age and death?…
• a crow walking along the field as if it were tilling it…
  • hmmm… the crow acting as if it owns the field… following its nature?…
  • could it be any other way?…
  • crows are about transformation… they move in and clean up the carrion of battles…
  • crows are message carriers…
  • all birds are opportunities for awakening and becoming present…
  • the crow is an autumn and winter bird…
  • the crow is a dusk, or end of day bird…
  • the crow might therefor be associated with old age, and since often thought of as bearers of messages and symbols of rebirth, might have something to do with the wisdom of old age which moves through the fields tilling them for rebirth in the spring…

The Haiku of Issa

• tiger moth enjoying itself, the poet asks how much…
  • wasn’t able to find much about moth symbolism, maybe a connection to departed ancestors…
• horse approaching a sparrow, will the sparrow move?…
  • the horse is considered a god and has been worshipped since antiquity
  • the sparrow, on the other hand, i didn’t find much except a fairy tale, the Tongue-Cut Sparrow, which is a morality tale about greed and friendship…
  • the sparrow might be seen as a symbol of strength and industriousness and in juxtaposition to the horse might be about the wisdom of knowing limitations?…
• apparently, the mountain cuckoo is a crybaby…
  • ahh, here we have more depth to pursue…
  • _The cuckoo has long been popular as a subject in Japanese literature and Haiku, possibly to do with the word having five syllables; and in literature and myth it is associated with the longing of the spirits of the dead to return to their loved ones. Mourning, longing, melancholy; these are suggested maybe by its song and perhaps signals its persistent use in woodblock prints.¹
• dew drops falling by ones and twos, it’s a wonderful life…
  • hmmm… as i look up the significance of dew in Japanese culture, i come across a wikipedia article on directed-energy weapons (DEW)… seems both appropriate and not, ephemerality seems to attend the weapon form in some regards…
• a query to scarecrow, where does cold come from?…
  • a fall into winter poem?… in Japanese culture, scarecrows are thought of as being all knowing… i wonder if there is linkage between scarecrow in the Wizzard of Oz and scarecrows in Japanese culture?…
• apparently the moon bends to the shape of cold…
  • in Buddhism, the moon is a symbol of inner enlightenment, so this poem might be about old age and wisdom…
  • interestingly, in the Shinto religion, the moon is possibly male, but also inconclusively gendered, more appropriate to the pronoun they… the major achievement of Tsukuyomi (in the male form), who was married to Amaterasu (sun goddess), was to kill Ukemochi (the goddess of food) because she she spat out and coughed up food for her guests (appalling etiquette as far as Tukuyomi was concerned)… when Amaterasu found out she promptly divorced him and relegated him to the night sky²…
  • Issa was a lay priest in the Buddhist religion…
  • i don’t think this poem channels the Shinto moon god…

The Haiku of Issa

The Six Ways…

… this is a funny set of six… there are…

• Hell… in which there is a bright autumn moon and snails crying in the saucepan… a kind of hell on earth, if the cosmos is delivering something bad to you…
• The Hungry Ghosts… in which flowers are scattering, water is scarce, the far off mists tease us with the possibility of water… this one about how enlightenment is illusive, especially when we allow ourselves to “thirst” for it…
• Animals… in which it is pointed out that the falling of the flower petals mean nothing to them, they see no Buddha in it, but then again, it might be that they are all Buddhas because they lack desire and the ability to differentiate themselves from the cosmos…
• Malignant Spirits… in which, people carry on petty argumentative lives and gambling, not seeing the shadow of blossoms they are in… a Plato’s Cave type of analogy?… also seems to channel the spirit of conservatives in the present time…
• Men… in which humans squirm around on the ground amidst the blossoming flowers… no better than the animals?… “squirming around” channels the image of worms to me…
• The Heaven Dwellers… in which lazy humans on a hazy day excuse themselves by thinking even the gods must be indolent…

… i really like this set of poems…

The Daily Read

The Haiku of Issa…

… an interesting set of poems today…

… a cricket chirps in the belly of a scarecrow…

… crickets are symbols of fall in Japanese haiku… in the west, they are symbols of summer…

… scarecrows in Japanese mythology (Kuebiko) are wise creatures and is one of three knowledge deities…

… taken together, a cricket in the scarecrow’s belly might be seen as suggesting the autumn phase of human aging, there being wisdom associated with approaching old age…

… another talks about the face of a spring moon 12 years old… the 12 years old part is the dead giveaway to me that the poet speaks of a girl on the cusp of menstruation, becoming an woman…

… another speaks of a woman washing the dishes by moonlight in the shallows of a river…

… this seems a multiple reference to feminine fluidity, the moon being a complex symbol of fluidity in Japanese culture… the river being a direct symbol of flowing time, the woman washing the dishes… the dishes themselves being concrete items that around which all this fluidity revolves… everything is feminine here… evocative of intuitive understandings… evocative of inner knowledge… wow, what a beautiful poem!…

Washing the saucepans—

the moon glows on her hands

in the shallow river.

… i am going to have to continue looking into this last one… there seems to be so much to it…

02 Daily Read:

Haiku by Issa…

… six poems… none of them grabs me… maybe the one about one fly, one human and a large room… flies are annoying… Issa seems to have written a lot about flies… in searching for the cultural meaning of flies, nothing much comes up… an article in Kyoto Journal sites Issa as a major writer on the fly situation… i read the following poem a number of days ago…

やれうつな蠅が手をすり足をする

yare utsuna hae ga te wo suri ashi wo suru

No, not that fly!

It wrings its hands,

its feet, imploringly.¹

… about which the author of the Kyoto Journal article says…

_ Among the hundreds of poems written by Japanese authors about flies and their vexed hunters, the most famous —there’s a whole book about its long genealogy and vast progeny — is without doubt the one written by Kobayashi Issa (1763–1827):²_

… i wonder why Issa had such a preoccupation with flies?… i am not sure that the straightforward answer, that they are ubiquitous and utterly annoying, is the best answer… i think one needs to look to what the spiritual purpose of flies are in a religion like Buddhism, to remind one that being in the moment is important, but not always likable… and that compassion is often difficult…

… another article in Tricycle, a Buddhist publication… about compassion, about flies… a quote from it…

Compassion in all its flavors is woven through the enormous canon of Buddhist thought. Its root meaning is “to suffer with.” We are able to feel compassion toward those beings who look like us and those who are most familiar. (These are not the same thing; dissimilar creatures can be deeply familiar, as we know from our time spent with dogs, with horses—even lizards.) At what point do we extend this circle past what is known, past what looks like us? At what point do we suffer with what is completely strange? And how far must that circle extend before it includes the sheep bot fly?³

… well, it seems after all, there was something to pay attention to in the morning’s poems…

03 The Daily Read, Part II:

The Haiku of Issa…

… today’s haikus are a little enigmatic…

… one about a moth finding brightness in the chamber of a woman, and being burnt to a crisp… the woman’s chamber is significant and brings the poet directly into the action… there is no need to describe the setting as a woman’s chamber unless there is an intended double meaning, that the poet is drawn to the flame of the woman and metaphorically burnt to a crisp for his labors… it does not sound as though his visit was entirely satisfactory… i look up moths as cultural symbols and find nothing substantial…

… another about scarecrows all being crooked… i look up the cultural significance of scarecrows in Japan and there is some… it is a folk deity, known as Kuebiko, representing folk wisdom, knowledge and agriculture¹… Issa notes that he doesn’t know about the people in the town but the scarecrows are crooked… is this meant in a corruption kind of way?… or just a state of general disorderliness represented by lack of attention to their scarecrows, which are deities after all… or that one can expect problems with wisdom, knowledge and agriculture from the town he is entering… he identifies the town as his home town, so maybe it is about memories and formative experience… is he talking about himself more than the town?…

… another about plum trees blooming in January in other provinces… this is odd, plum trees do bloom from January into February and are considered harbingers of spring… so Issa is saying they bloom in other provinces but not where he is… since he does not identify the province he is in, i assume it is metaphorical, something about old age perhaps?… reaching the place of having little life left to offer?… an article in Wikipedia² confirms the plum blossom as a symbol of spring and is believed to be a protective charm against evil… so the lack of blossoms is likely about old age and or lack of protection against evil… both?…

02 The Daily Read:

… yesterday i found and downloaded a book on animals in Issa’s poetry… i was expecting a book about animals as symbols of the culture… it turned out to be a book about animal ethics and what Issa has to teach us about treatment of animals… i believe that animals feel and think more than commonly given credit for, that one should always handle them with respect… i regret killing ants on the kitchen counter… i cause to be killed, or in some cases, kill animals to eat… so i am not that interested in the idea that we should never kill animals, that it is unethical to do so…

… Issa was a Buddhist¹, and worried about the karma of killing insects, yet he did kill insects… my perception is that Buddhism respects all life…

… nature is constructed such that one animal is food for another… it’s a cycle of life… humans perhaps have reached the place where they think about the consequences of their actions and are capable of offering respect to animals, even as they kill them… Native Americans are thought by many to have had this down… one takes only what one needs to survive… one takes with honor and respect… one gives thanks for what one is able to take… this is an ethics of resource treatment i can get behind… i am mindful of the book Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer in which the Native American attitude towards natural resources is laid out in full…

02 The Daily Read:

The Essential Haiku, edited by Robert Hass, translations by Hass and others…

… Issa…

… todays set of poems are not as remarkable to me as yesterday’s, or are they?… they seem more pedestrian, telling flies to relax and make love (the idea is kind of gross), since the poet is going out (and therefor does not have to be annoyed by the flies, their soul (i reread and think to correct the spelling and then decide the current spelling has more poetic depth) purpose as far as most humans are concerned)…

… another poem about a counting the flea bites on her baby as she nurses them…

… a poem about paying a dime to look through a telescope, were telescopes even around in Issa’s time?… yes, invented more than 150 years before his birth… and wouldn’t ten cents have been rather dear for a look through a telescope at the time?… i wonder if Hass has updated the pricing to make the poem more relatable?… or course today it would be a dollar…

… another poem about a snail being stripped to the waist in the moonlight… as with any animal in Haiku, one has to look up it’s possible cultural significance… snails are a symbol of fertility, tolerance and perseverance… also of duality because of their hermaphrodite nature¹… would this have been known in Issa’s time?…

… after some searching, an article that may explain the stripped to the waist reference in the snail Haiku… possibly referring to Saze Oni, a mythical snail creature that could shape shift into a beautiful woman… they bedeviled sailors much like the Sirens of Greek mythology²… i don’t know if this has anything to do with the snail poem…

… it is interesting that the reading of a small number of Haiku can generate so much additional reading as i look to see if their are meanings and allusions hidden from me, a Japanese culture outsider… much of the time there is…

02 The Daily Read:

Issa haiku…

… a remarkable set of poems this morning, of the six i read, all six stand out for one reason or another…

… the first pictures a dry river bed seen by the light of a lightning strike… a river bed that is about to flow with water again… a creative mind about to be released into creating by a powerful experience… a poem about summer rains?… where i live, rivers are more likely to be dry in the summer… thunderstorms and heavy downpours are more likely then too… there is also the threat of flash flooding… to much water in too little time…

… the second begs a flea not to jump, as the river is where it will likely land… i suppose it is very Buddhist to wish continued health and well being on even a lowly “nuisance” creature… i would have flicked it to it’s drowning death… of course, the poem might also be about undertaking challenges that are too big, perhaps the flea is the novice, beginner mind, that wishes to forge ahead too quickly and will be drowned if it does?…

… the third talks about how being in this world is like walking on the roof of hell, distracted by the lovely yellow flowers… a poem about not being willing to do the hard work of facing all aspects of one’s reality?… of not admitting the horrors of life which abound… of only being able to acknowledge the pleasures of life, superficial as they may be…

… the fourth is about being naked on a naked horse riding through the rain… now there is a foundational nature image… i read that the Japanese worshipped the horse as a god and “believed that the “divine spirit” appeared in the human world on horseback”¹… i also read that the horse is very important in Buddhism… Siddhartha², the future Buddha, had a white horse that was his favorite and which transported him when he escaped from palace life and began the journey of becoming a spiritual leader… and so, the image of naked human on naked horse in the rain is a deeply spiritual image?…

… the fifth is about a fly wringing its front and hind legs, begging not to be killed… again, i would struggle to be a Buddhist in such a situation…

… and the sixth is about a cat frolicking on a scale and weighing itself… this catches my attention because i wonder what sort of scale would have been in use during Issa’s lifetime?…

02 Meditations:

Issa haiku…

… the one that catches my attention this morning is about being under a cherry tree and finding it strange to be alive… cherry blossoms are valued in Japan for there ephemeral nature, flowering briefly and gloriously, gone too soon¹… like life itself…

… Issa knows the lessons the cherry tree teaches, that life is brief and one needs to be alive to it… to find existence strange at any moment in time and space is being alive to it…

… this will be a bit of a non sequitur, but in the film Black Widow, the theme of family is the unifying good… family of Avengers, family, even make believe family, of Russian spies… family transcends everything…

… i find in literature and life, again and again, that what is truly important are the simple things… home, family, being alive to nature and life… all these things can be had and enjoyed for free (or little cost) as long as basic necessities are met… we are constantly being distracted from these core simple things, especially by the consumer culture we live in, where things upon things are the symbol of a good life… even as aware of this as i am, i struggle to execute, have never gotten close to centering my life around the simple pleasures…

… family is a particular challenge for me… my birth family is difficult and scattered to three of the four corners of the continent, my in law family is a good one, but not the family i grew up with… i have never had children, just wife, dogs and cats, which do teach me many things, including the brevity of life…

… as i write this, an epiphany of sorts… living well along the lines of simple pleasures is anti-market, anti-capitalist… it’s generally anti most forms of economic organization… it is rigorously repressed as a way to conduct one’s life…

02 Meditations:

The haiku of Issa…

… the poem that stand out today is about a snail climbing Mt. Fuji… the poet backs the snails endeavor but urges slow and steady… the apparent futility of a snail climbing a mountain is the poem’s pivot point… the snail might be viewed as the poet and climbing the mountain a spiritual quest… does the poet remind themselves that slow and steady is the way to go?…

… another poem about an Oriole singing at midday…

Image in the Public Domain

… the Black-naped oriole is the only oriole extant in Japan, and is a relatively rare sighting… it is not related to orioles of Europe and the United States…

… so, that an oriole is present and singing at mid day next to a river, an exceptional moment?… there doesn’t seem to be symbolism beyond that… birds in general are related to death and rebirth, as they are in many cultures, but no special significance seems to be attached to the Black-naped oriole…

… so, an Oriole singing at midday while the river flows quietly is perhaps a contemplation of middle aged life…

… the Oriole seems to be more important in Chinese culture…

… and then i learn that the Japanese have adopted the Chinese character for Oriole to represent the Bush Warbler, their equivalent to the Black-naped oriole… both birds have beautiful songs and both birds herald spring… so, it is possible that the oriole in the poem is a bush warbler… and the poem gets seasonal reference by its presence…

07 Mindfulness

_ A raven squawking outside my window— how poetic._

02 Meditation

Buson Haiku…

… the very first poem i read is about cutting the last flower, a peony, from the garden… peonies are spring flowers and come relatively early… it is interesting that it is the last flower in the garden, unless it is a garden dedicated to peonies only… i suspect symbolism here, as it seems one always must…

Also known as the ‘King of Flowers’, the peony is a Japanese flower that is used as a symbol of good fortune, bravery, and honour. It is often used in tattoos to signify a devil-may-care attitude.¹

… so, a poem about old age?… a life that has run out of good fortune, bravery, honor?… both?…

… a poem with bird symbolism and historical reference, written on his death bed, a winter warbler in the hedge outside and a reference to Chinese poet Wang Wei… is the winter warbler the same as the Japanese bush warbler?… if so, it is a harbinger of spring and rebirth in Japanese literature, film and art… Wang Wei was a famous Chinese poet from the Tang Dynasty period…

02 Meditations

Buson haiku…

… several poems land in this morning’s set…

… one about old man ears and the sound of rain falling down the rain pipe… my old man ears are listening to the rain hitting the pavement outside…

… another one talks about hearing the moon and seeing the frogs croak… what an odd displacement…

… several flowers are mentioned…

… white chrysanthemum…

Chrysanthemums have noble connotations, appearing on the Japanese Imperial Family’s crest for generations. But white chrysanthemums indicate purity, grief, and truth, and are used for funerals.¹

… the peony…

The Japanese peony, considered the “King of Flowers,” has a symbolic meaning that includes wealth, good fortune, honor, daring and masculine bravery. The peony originated in China; around the eighth century, the Chinese introduced the peony to Japan.²

… the iris…

from dark purplish variants to their more pale, pastel violet hues, these are used to represent loyalty, having a noble heart, and good news.³

… i have plunged down a rabbit hole on haiku, reading more and more about what makes haiku, haiku… a lengthy article on the rules developed in North America for haiku content and structure and how those rules are contrary to the classic haiku traditions exemplified by Basho and Buson…

02 Meditation

Buson Haiku…

… the first poem stands out most to me today… a bottomless tub blowing around in the autum wind… it seems so contemporary, i can easily imagine the scene happening in the coming fall… what constitutes a tub for a poet writing in the 1700’s as compared to now would be interesting to see… it could be that the Japanese for tub has more of the time connotations… in English, it is still a much used contemporary term…

… another poem notes a Camellia falling into an old dark well… i don’t have an image in my mind for Camellia, so i look it up… it’s like a carnation and comes in a number of colors but most prevalently in pink or red… i wonder if it signifies anything to the Japanese and look it up… here is what i find in a guide to giving flowers in Japan…

_ Among warriors and samurai, the red camellia symbolized a noble death. Otherwise, the red camellia means love. However, they don’t make good presents for people who are sick or injured because of the way the flowers “behead” themselves when they die._¹

… the flower was popular during the Edo period in Japan… Buson composed poems in the heart of that period… with that information the poem opens up… the flower as symbol of an honorable death, or as symbol of love makes sense in the poem… the flower falling into the old dark well (death) could be a straightforward allusion to seppuku, which ended with beheading by a second’s sword… it could also be a bit more allegorical, the old well symbolizing the poet himself, the Camellia symbolizing love, taken together, finding love at an old age?… could there be a may/December relationship here?…

… it seems that when reading haiku one has to examine every word or phrase for it’s possible symbolism… what seems to be a straight forward observation of a moment can be fraught with implied meanings…

05 Mindfulness

Daily Haiku…

_ Walking, lost in thought— a deer jumps across the trail._

02 Meditations

Haiku of Buson

… i read more on haiku yesterday, trying to ascertain what makes a haiku a haiku as i continue to compose my own on a daily basis… many of the “rules” are broken these days, as they were even in the days of Basho and Buson, though more regularly now…

… of today’s six poems the first stands out because it shadows my own present experience… a grove in summer, and no leaf stirring, meaning no breeze, no relief, which is frightening?, such stillness is frightening, full of portent…

… i read yesterday that haiku’s are the capturing of moments of revelation, sudden understanding… i don’t think the Buson poems are this… i think they are renderings of momentary experience, any leaps being made are leaps into the moment… noting the moment, opens doors for further contemplation…

… another poem depicts the reflection of the moon on the water, which escapes the nets and ropes… a reflection of the moon, not the moon itself… why not look directly at the moon?… why not be in that moment?… something magical about light shimmering on the water… something magical about moonlight… i am reminded of Monet’s waterlily paintings, where what’s reflection and what’s not is a central theme… what is it about reflections that make them so enchanting?… surface of water, humankind’s first mirror?… still water… i wonder if, when we look in a mirror, we have memories of ancient still water mirrors programmed in to our brains… to apprehend the self, that it is self seen in the reflection, what kind of leap is that?…

06 Mindfulness

… today’s haiku…

_ Oppressive heat— where are the thunderstorms?_

02 Meditations

Buson Haiku…

… an old well with a fish jumping at the bottom of it… this reminds me of the “frog pit” at Madam Brett factory… a little square plumbing access pit, no more than 30” square, filled with water, and a frog living in it… such a circumscribed world… i wondered why the frog chose to live there… how it made a living… did it reproduce?… did it ever come out of the pit?… i used to visit the pit regularly until someone decided to seal it up… it seemed like a sacred place, an old well… i wonder how the fish came to be living in the old well?… did someone put it there?… this leads me to a childhood memory, when i discovered a live trout in a cistern on a property near the road… someone must have put it there, to keep it clean?… to preserve until a future dinner?…

… another of the poems describes the beyond-reproach nature of the pigeon and questions whether the mountain cuckoo is… a little research on the internet suggests that the cuckoo was often considered an ill omen, portending tragedy or doing the bidding of the restless dead as in this Kunisada print on the tragedy of the Soga Brothers…

… pigeons are a more benign bird in Japanese lore, encouraged on the grounds of temples and shrines where they are thought to assist the transmission of “hopes and prayers” to the appropriate deities… a woodblock print by Watanabe Seitei, “Ginko and Pigeons”…

… the depiction of pigeons with a Ginko tree, often depicted as Buddah’s Dragon Tree, is a significant indicator of the benign, possibly sacred, nature of the pigeon in Japanese lore… both Ginkos and Pigeons were encouraged on temple grounds¹…

… Ginkos are symbols of longevity, living as long as 1000 years²…

… Ginko trees were among a number of tree species that survived the blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and continue to live³…

… well, this morning’s meditation turned into a bit of a research paper…

02 Meditations

Buson Haiku…

… i decide that two pages a day, generally six haiku, is better than 4 pages a day, generally 12 haiku… haiku may be brief, like the cherry blossoms in May, but, like the cherry blossoms in May, they can evoke endless reveries and are worth lingering with, to let them unpack a bit, before moving on…

… a poem about how the sun reddens plumb blossoms and moves on to “attack the oaks and pines.”… i have never thought of sunsets as attacking anything, making anything bloody… what sort of mood must the poet have been in to make this juxtaposition?…

… another poem tackles the joy of eyeing a lover hiding behind her white fan?… Buson is a down to earth poet, writing about lovers, did Basho ever write about love or lovers?… nothing comes to mind but i am sure my knowledge is not exhaustive…

… another poem takes note of the “morning breeze rifling the caterpillar’s hair… how utterly mundane and miraculous at the same time, the sacredness is in paying attention…

02 Meditations

Haiku of Buson

… i am finding the haiku i am reading this morning have more dimension than those i have read in the past few days… all of them are Buson… have i hit poems with particular affinity to my self, or am i more receptive this morning?…

No bridge

and the sun going down—

spring currents.¹

… the poet has arrived at the edge of a stream and needs to cross, the stream is full and currents are fast… there is no bridge, soon it will be dark… what to do?… rather than isolating and freezing a moment in time, this haiku implies a past and a future for the poet… a journey…

05 Haiku

… trying to write at least one haiku a day as an attention to simple things discipline… today’s effort…

Packing and cleaning, late afternoon sun, paints window onto floor.