02 Buson

… Buson continues to be a very down to earth poet… one about a snail with unequal horn length, wondering what is on its mind… another about a frog swimming awkwardly which resonates with a song i learned in grade school, (middle school?)… i google it, there is a wikipedia entry on it which gives me the complete lyrics…

_ What a queer bird, the frog are_

When he sit he stand (almost)

When he walk he fly (almost)

When he talk he cry (almost)

He ain’t got no sense, hardly

He ain’t got no tail, neither, hardly

He sit on what he ain’t got hardly

… i learn the song was first published in 1922 and attributed to “a young Norwegian living in Chicago at the time…

… a fun song… stuck in my mind (mostly) all these years… Buson brought it back to me…

… thinking about Buson and Basho, it seems to me that Basho was often looking for the transcendent metaphor, the one about plowing a field and a stranger asking for directions then disappearing being a prime example… an immediate literal interpretation, a second metaphorical one… Buson seems to be more concerned with moments in and of them selves and for themselves… in a way, this is transcendent too, because being purely in the present moment is that… right here, right now, that is what matters… very Buddhist…

02 Haiku of Buson

… the poem that grabs my attention…

Fallen petals of red plum—

they seem to be burning

on the clods of horse shit.¹

… it makes me laugh, the contradiction, something so ethereal in nature juxtaposed with something natural that is not…

… another one catches my attention… it is about tilling a field and a man who asks the way then disappears… my first understanding is literal… that a man has asked directions and once received, has proceeded on his way and moved out of sight… with a second reading the metaphorical nature of the poem comes through to me… the man asking the way is the same man doing the tilling and the way is spiritual practice… physical labor grounds one in the right hear, right now… the way… is that how crewing on the boat today will be?… my doubts and questions will recede into the necessity of the moment?…

04 Basho to Buson

… i have finished reading the poetry and prose of Basho in the present volume… it concluded with The Saga Diary… an account of his time at the home of a friend… in it, i think i perceive that Basho might have been gay… this reminds me of my own mentor, M, who died long ago during the AIDS epidemic…

… yesterday, i thought of the work i did with him… M was a true master… he thought highly of me… i have not lived up to the expectations i have of myself because of this… still, i keep trying…

… i read the introduction to Buson, who seems to have been a more down-to-earth artist… he enjoyed earthly things, drinking with friends, Geisha girls…

… he loved the poetry of Basho…

… in this introduction to Buson, i learn that the struggles i have about whether to feed the art market (make some money from my work) or not are not new (did i really think they were?)… it seems that as long as there has been art and a market for it, this has been the struggle… i am fortunate to not require an income from the art i make… though the occasional sale is welcome…

… the sun is well up… the birds continue to twitter outside… the dogs sleep in the living room… a cool breeze brushes over my back… in the distance the waves break on the shore… i feel good in this moment…

… i have a thick book of haikus composed by Basho, Buson and Isa… i have been reading two to four pages worth daily as a kind of spiritual observance… i think about them, summarize them, sometimes quote particular ones that land more firmly than others in my mind…

… the one that lands most firmly this morning is about being in a winter garden, the moon thinned to thread width, the insects singing… if it’s winter, the insects wouldn’t be singing, at least not where i live, and not in Japan?… the poem is about the garden of old age, the light diminishing, insects singing the poet off into approaching blackness…

… i learn about… Risshaku-ji, a mountain temple, an unusually well kept quiet place¹… i morning-dream of going there… i know i am unlikely to, would be a cool adventure though… the more i read the Haas translations, the more i think they might not be so good… the first Haiku i read this morning …

Stillness—

the cidada’s cry,

_drills into the rocks.

… i have no knowledge of the Japanese, but i would never think of the noise cicadas make as a cry, is that really the best translation of the Japanese?… it is loud and i can imagine it drilling rocks… it’s a high pitched washboard sound, that’s how i’d describe it… or, simply, cicada noise, most of us know it… still, i do get the image…

… the next one, fifth month rains swell a local river… as they do Fishkill Creek at home, something i have photographed many times… Haiku strike me as minimalist notes on attention paid… can i replicate this in a photograph?…

Basho

… birds weeping, fish crying; dusk in spring, no bells in the village, how is life possible; art origins, planting song, back country; chestnut trees, in written chineese, west + tree = amida’s paradise, the wood useful for walking sticks and pillars of a house; summer grass, warriors dreams; fleas, lice, horses peeing near one’s pillow…

… this morning’s set seems more cryptic than some… how does summers grass evoke warriors dreams?… one needs to be in the spring of youth to fight?… i like that chestnut trees are associated with the western paradise, the place of pure bliss, that because of that one fashions walking sticks and house pillars from the wood, to embody the place one hopes to attain… a village without bells, no time keeping, no regulation of the rhythms of the day… how does one perceive weeping in a bird, or tears in the eye of a fish?, the later especially something to do with cosmic integration, and sadness of animals at the end of spring… human projection?, and in any case, most of us are happy with the arrival of summer…

… sleepless nights, oil freezes; after winter crysanthemums, radishes; she cats, love and barley; a monkey’s face is a monkey face; fish guts smell; a woman fingers back her hair while wrapping rice cakes; life is a makeshift hut like Sogi’s; summer robes and lice; when there are clouds, moon watchers take a break; is there a god?; even children gaze at the moon while husking rice; heat shimmers above dead grass…

… i have this thought, what if we only spoke to one another in haiku?… would we make progress?…

… as a spiritual practice, i read haiku, twelve at a time… i learn broadly about moments right here, right now…

… i read about midnight frost and borrowing the shirt of a scarecrow; dusk dimming the eyes of hawks and quail chirping; spiders singing in the autumn wind; calm moons and gay boys fearing the howling of foxes (do foxes howl?); human sadness, the cry of a single cukoo; sadness, morning glories and bad paint jobs; that banana trees are superior to bush clover; the painting of field stubble black by winter rain; first snows on bridges only half finished (this in particular strikes me as a metaphor for the plans we make for our lives, ever the unfinished work, we leave this world still without ever finishing); cocks crowing, hard winter rain, cow sheds; bamboo groves hiding winter storms; that winter worlds have one color brushed by the wind…

birds praising the dawn

the dog paces

its a new day

… my attempt at a haiku sort of poem… one thing the Robert Hass translations have given me is freedom from the syllable structure…

… i turn to the Haiku of Basho, Buson, & Issa for the centering spiritual start to my day… one by Basho catches my attention in particular…

the spring we don’t see—

on the back of a hand mirror

a plum tree in flower¹

… at first i read it as a comment on vanity, that we stare at our own reflections in the hand mirror, and fail to notice the flowering plum tree out the window… then i realize that the back of the mirror is likely to be decorated with an embossed or painted image of a plum tree in bloom… still, there is the issue of being more interested in our own reflections than the beauty on the other side of the mirror…

… the more i read, the more i realize that Bell Jar is a feminist work, carefully outlining the options available to women in the day and setting the heroine up to choose among unappealing alternatives… we’ve had the fatherly doctor-to-be proposing marriage already… it seems to be a fantasy that Esther doesn’t want… now we are following her and Hilda to work… Hilda, who is busy being a store mannequin and looking at herself in every window that bounces back her reflection… Hilda seems to have settled on the fantasy she wants…

… a dramatic twist, a blind date, Marco, attempts to rape Esther… her last night in the city… it prepares to spit her out…

… Buddy Willard proposes, Esther demurs… well, so far, the chapter jumps oddly to skiing and a broken leg, Buddy plays the part of fatherly ski instructor then doctor… does this mean she will un-demure?… i find the scene descriptions a little forced, overwrought… H said it is depressing, i am wondering when i will get to the depressing bits, unless you count hurtling towards a life of wifely banality depressing, which it could be… if that is what we are heading for, it is uncertain at present…

… about Constantine taking her to lunch and her own inadequacies, which are legion… this chapter all about what nice girls do and don’t do, while she decides not to be a nice girl anymore… this chapter is about the place of women in the lives of men and our heroine does not like it… to wit…

And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard’s kitchen mat.¹

… sadly, she never has sex with Constantine… if SP lived in the current time, there would have been sex… and our heroine would not have been a virgin either…

… well, the trouble with Buddy seems to be that he wasn’t straight forward and honest about sleeping with a waitress two or three times a week for the better part of a summer while working on Cape Cod in a hotel… hmmm, why should anyone lead with that?… when i was growing up, most young men had significant sexual experiences at a relatively early age… many young women too… why are we supposed to lead with that?… i suppose you tell someone eventually if the relationship is serious and it seems important they know… or is it only in a world where virginity is important that it matters at all?…

… this chapter about Buddy Willard, handsome Yalie, whom she decided she couldn’t love… the chapter a flashback about when he asked her to some dance… these two sentences are highlighted 855 times…

_ I decided to expect nothing from Buddy Willard. If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed._¹

… a double edged thought… expect nothing, get nothing goes the saying… it might be better to be disappointed in the long run…

… so far, i am feeling this novel is not the work of a full fledged novelist, that it has, here and there, clunky descriptions, that the story is not especially engrossing, the kind of novel one might read on the beach in the summer… H says it is depressing… i haven’t gotten to any bits that are depressed, unless you count the general malaise of being a human in this book…

… a line about learning short hand as a practical skill… i think about learning to touch type, way back in High School, the most useful skill i ever learned…

… an extended description of puking ensues… the whole chapter seems about puking… i am wondering in what way that moves the story forward… metaphor for how it sucks to be a woman?…

… paragraph upon paragraph about food and how the protagonist can eat as much as she wants and never gain weight… and then, this…

Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it. What I couldn’t stand was this shrinking everything into letters and numbers. Instead of leaf shapes and enlarged diagrams of the holes the leaves breathe through and fascinating words like carotene and xanthophyll on the blackboard, there were these hideous, cramped, scorpion-lettered formulas in Mr. Manzi’s special red chalk.¹

… there is something elemental about this paragraph, the difference between a feminine and masculine outlook?… she couldn’t stand the shrinking of things into letters and numbers… she couldn’t stand the draining of texture, color, life, from the cosmos… she couldn’t stand the reduction of qualities into quantities… she couldn’t stand the basis of capitalism, which is to turn everything in to quantities to be bought and sold…

I don’t believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water.¹

… those of us who don’t believe the prevailing mythology have to find sacred in other places… a hot bath or, in my case, a hot shower, is one of those places… we, the secular, find religion in what makes us feel good, feel ourselves, feel alive, and perhaps this is why we don’t transcend…

… i suspect this chapter is the beginning of descent, but it is a descent brought on by the external world, filled with girlfriends that are prettier than you and catch the man who gets them drunk to the point of throwing up at your feet…

Because the price of living wholeheartedly (which is the only way worth living) is the heartbreak of many losses — the loss of love to dissolution, distance, or death; the loss of the body to gravity and time — and because loss leaves in its wake an experience so private yet so universal, the common record of human experience that we call literature is replete with reflections on grief:¹

… I Measure Every Grief I Meet: Emily Dickinson on Love and Loss

… it’s a novel, but reads autobiographical, written in the first person… it opens up with death, the electrocution of the Rosenbergs, the experience of seeing a cadaver, foreshadowing?…

… the introduction to Buddy Willard, who went to Yale, is that he is stupid because ”he didn’t have one speck of intuition.”, hmmm… i suspect that is right, true intelligence requires intuition, an ability to leap…

… in the forward, i read…

Plath’s suicide on February 11, 1963 brought her instant fame in England, where she had made occasional appearances on the BBC and was beginning to be known through her publications.¹

… how is it the world pays particular attention the moment an artist dies, especially if they were promising and commit suicide?… how does that work?… we become frantic to gather everything the artist ever did, to preserve it, because there will be no more?…

… the article catches my attention because it describes a 22 year old Vonnegut as a prisoner of the Germans in Dresden when it was fire bombed… the book is about Dresden… i did not know that…

… have i read this book?, there is a movie, right?, Art Garfunkle?… google informs me that there is a movie, i haven’t seen it, AG wan’t in it… yes, now i remember, that was Catch 22… the book is apparently about the allied bombing of Dresden during World War II, 130,000 peopled dead, target of no strategic importance, except to break the back of the will of the German people… strange to have this come to the front in the same morning Susan Sontag helps me remember and fill in the gaps of the Vietnam and Desert Storm wars… also the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia… H was lamenting the death of one of the breeders of Chas, ‘the universe is cruel” she said, i pointed out that the universe is indifferent, it is people who are cruel… we believe they can choose not to be cruel and shake our heads over and over again when they don’t… is there free will?… prevailing science seems to think not, so maybe even people are not cruel, they cary out the indifference of the universe…

… the article on Literary Hub is a reprint of “a 1969 review of Kurt Vonnegut’s Iconic Anti-War Novel”… Vietnam war era, an oblivious time in my life, the draft ended as i turned 18… i still got a draft card, number 27 or something like that, i would have gone, or J said once, been shipped to Canada…

… i read the review, it mentions Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist, as being unstuck in time and abducted by aliens… ahh, i did read it, a long time ago… the aliens and unstuck time welded to my consciousness, the rest i have no memory of…