02 Buson

… i keep searching for a name for this daily 02 slot post, which i like to be based on readings that are inspirational or in some way dealing with bigger questions… i intend the readings to be a moment of centering and contemplation, a meditation perhaps…

… this morning i continue with the haiku of Buson as translated by Robert Haas…

… as i open my book, i turn to a reproduction of a painting by Buson… Two Crows in Winter (the left panel)…

… i am reminded of Masahisa Fukase’s photo book, Ravens… an acknowledged masterpiece… i have a copy and look forward to looking at it when i get home…

… a poem about a quilt, stained with urine, drying on a line in Suma Village… Buson has no qualms about mentioning urine or shit, in his poems… we shit, we pee, and not always with decorum… an example of the down to earth nature of his poems…

02 Buson

… crows end their flight, one by one, as they return to roost at the end of the day…

… even holy people crap in the fields…

… a tree, the blow of an ax, the scent of pine, all this in the woods, in the winter…

… Buson poems seem only to be about the here and now recorded as succinctly as possible…

… i can’t decide if i like Buson… i miss the layered interpretations of Basho’s poems, the nod to spiritual dimensions… in Buson, the spiritual is entirely contained within the moment… is not a separate thing… could that be the message?… we find meaning if we engage with the moments, pay attention, notice them… commit them to a poem so we can remember them…

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…

Footprints in the sand,

sea fingers reach in

to erase.

… 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…

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…

… 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…

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

… 12 poems by Basho… i read about abandoned two year old children, tossed some food; horses eating hibiscus; the frost of old age; aging; darkening seas and wild ducks calling; years passing and more of the same; the mists of spring; that oaks are not interested in cherry blossoms; azaleas and women tearing codfish; drunken bees and peonies; that shepherd’s purse hides under hedges; that frogs create sound from water…

… i read of Kyoto and cuckoo’s cries; roads not travelled and autumn evenings; whitebait with black eyes in nets; felled trees and moonlight; autumn moons and chestnut worms; snowy mornings and dried salmon; crows and bare branches; outhouses, moonflowers and torchlight; crane’s legs shortening in spring rain; how spring implies autumn; weathered bones and wind-pierced bodies; misty rains that obscure Mt. Fuji…

… this is what Basho has to tell me in twelve poems… he makes much of little things, brief crystalline moments… i think back to the irritation of messy food falling in my lap, repeatedly, a little thing, a brief moment, a moment i was alive and present… should i be grateful?…

… it’s Sunday,

… i make the metal bowl sing,

… and read haiku in lieu of prayers.

… Brain Pickings brings me the beautiful poem Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye, i quote the last two stanzas:

_Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, _You must wake up with sorrow. _You must speak to it till your voice _catches the thread of all sorrows _and you see the size of the cloth.

_Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, _only kindness that ties your shoes _and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, _only kindness that raises its head _from the crowd of the world to say _It is I you have been looking for, _and then goes with you everywhere _like a shadow or a friend.¹