First Thoughts

… we are installed in the cottage… slightly frustrating day doing so… cleaning lady late, dogs pooping and peeing in the cottage… no desire to cook, only the news available… H able to pursue their news addiction, sound pollution for me…

… HCR meter all about how it is increasingly evident that there was a full blown coup attempt… that it only barely failed… that the attempt is not over… the white patriarchy is desperate… democracy hangs in the balance… is the clock running out for dems to do something about it?…

… the internet is so pathetic at the cottage, which has wifi, or supposedly has wifi, but it is utterly useless… even in the wee hours of the morning when nobody else would be using it there is no bandwidth… there might as well not be any wifi at all…

… thinking about Modern Nature… thinking about the promiscuity of cruising parks and hooking up… thinking about the anger towards heterosexuals who would think such behavior among themselves ill advised… sex was rarely just sex to me… i dated one girl at a time and that girl had a chance of becoming something more to me and i to her… there were a few one night stands that were not satisfying… the idea of cruising the park seems crazy to me… that was the gay culture that DJ participated in, embraced, even after being diagnosed with AIDS… he claimed that little penetrative sex was indulged in once the gay community understood how the disease was transmitted… just hand jobs… still, it all seems risky behavior… behavior that was only about sex, not love… i don’t insist on heterosexual love… i just prefer sex in the context of a loving relationship…

… insects chirping outside, grasshoppers?, katydids?, cicadas?, what do they have on the island?… i wonder whether the noises they make leads predators as well as lovers to them… if so, what a risk they take for love…

If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power

… the title of Halsey’s new album… what an interesting dynamic in that statement… i have been known to say i don’t want power… i would perhaps amend that statement to: i don’t want power, but i want to be powerful… that is, i want to be a powerful presence because of the wisdom with which i move through the world, not because i can make the world conform to the way i want to move… now, the idea that it is love or power… hmmm…

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…