7.31.2021 – cannot enjoy palm trees

cannot enjoy palm trees
suffused with resentment and
incomprehension

Adapted from the book, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

Yet it was more than a little disingenuous for the airline to deny all knowledge of, and responsibility for, the metaphysical well-being of its customers. Like its many competitors, British Airways, with its fifty-five Boeing 747s and its thirty-seven Airbus A320s, existed in large part to encourage and enable people to go and sit in deckchairs and take up (and usually fail at) the momentous challenge of being content for a few days. The tense atmosphere now prevailing within David’s family was a reminder of the rigid, unforgiving logic to which human moods are subject, and which we ignore at our peril when we see a picture of a beautiful house in a foreign country and imagine that happiness must inevitably accompany such magnificence. Our capacity to derive pleasure from aesthetic or material goods seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional and psychological needs, among them those for understanding, compassion and respect. We cannot enjoy palm trees and azure pools if a relationship to which we are committed has abruptly revealed itself to be suffused with incomprehension and resentment.

Part of the series of Haiku inspired by from A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton. I discovered this book entirely by accident. When searching for books online, I will use the term ‘collections’ and see what turns up. I figure that someone who has taken the time to gather together the etexts of any one author to create a collected works folder is enough for me to see what this author might be all about.

In this case I came across the writing of Alain de Botton. I enjoyed his use of language very much. Much of the words he strings together lend themselves to what I do.

As for his book, I recommend it very much though written in 2009, it misses the added layer of travel under covid but still the picture of the modern airport is worth the read.

7.30.2021 – locked and loaded

locked and loaded
umbrellas, coolers, ready
its time for the beach

For some folks beach day is not an easy day.

My wife and I have been spending a lot of time at the beach lately.

We got it down.

We have two small folding beach chairs with shoulder straps.

A collapsible cooler with a couple sandwiches and some chips inside.

A beach bag with two beach towels and two thermos water bottles filled with ice water.

A kindle and a book and we are ready for a day at the beach.

We can set up in a minute and pack up in less than a minute.

Time at the beach is the point and we plan to spend as much time as possible enjoying the beach.

I watch other families hot the beach with as much equipment as the US Army landed in Normandy at D-Day.

Beach roller carts filled with umbrellas and tents.

Multiple coolers filled with a multiple choices of drink and eats.

Separate coolers of snacks.

Then there are the beach chairs.

Chairs I would be proud to have in my living room.

Chairs with more configurations that a rubics cube.

Chairs with cushions, pockets, slings and even seperate umbrellas.

Then there are the beach games.

All the toys necessary to be able to enjoy a day at the beach.

Sometimes all this equipment is packed into multiple beach carts so that families look like they are headed for the Oregon Trail rather than Normandy.

Then the site selection conversation takes with bits of information considered like is it high tide or low tide and how far are the restrooms.

A choice is made, this the place says someone and camp is set up.

It must have been like this to watch Moses and the Children of Israel march across the Sinai.

Umbrellas are reaised.

Tents are pitched.

Chairs are arranged in millimetric relationship to each other and to the sun.

A beach game or two is set up.

Towels are spread.

Coolers are opened.

Drinks and eats are passed around.

They venture down to the water and maybe wade in up to their waist.

They gather on the edge of the surf for a group selfie.

The Mom or someone will stand at the edge of the water and use an iPhone to make a movie.

They all return to camp.

They sit back.

They look at each other.

Someone checks their watch and says what time are the dinner reservations and how long will it take to get ready?

With silent universal agreement, the camp is struck.

The equipment is packed up.

They are gone without much more than footprints left in the sand.

We are still there in our two little fold up chairs.

I feel almost bad.

That first group won’t be back until next year.

We’ll be back next week, if not tomorrow.

Part of a series based on an afternoon spent at the beach on Hilton Head Island.

I wanted to see if I would be ‘inspired’ by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Some turned out okay.

Some were too forced.

Some were just bad.

Some did involve some or all of those feelings.

As far as it goes, I guess I was inspired by by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Click here for more Haiku in the BEACH category —

7.29.2021 – will not write about

will not write about
gulls, terns, other seabirds – what
hasn’t been written

Part of a series based on afternoons spent at the beach on Hilton Head Island.

I wanted to see if I would be ‘inspired’ by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Some turned out okay.

Some were too forced.

Some were just bad.

Some did involve some or all of those feelings.

As far as it goes, I guess I was inspired by by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Click here for more Haiku from the BEACH

7.28.2001 – teach ideas can be

teach ideas can be
communicated in wood as well
as they can in words

Adapted from the book, The Architecture of Happiness (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

It may be easy to laugh at the grandiloquence of claims directed at objects which on occasion resemble giant earplugs or upturned lawnmowers. But, instead of accusing critics of reading too much into too little, we should allow abstract sculptures to demonstrate to us the range of thoughts and emotions that every kind of non-representational object can convey. The gift of the most talented sculptors has been to teach us that large ideas, for example, about intelligence or kindness, youth or serenity, can be communicated in chunks of wood and string, or in plaster and metal contraptions, as well as they can in words or in human or animal likenesses. The great abstract sculptures have succeeded in speaking to us, in their peculiar dissociated language, of the important themes of our lives.

According the The New York Review of Books, this is “A perceptive, thoughtful, original, and richly illustrated exercise in the dramatic personification of buildings of all sorts.”

What I find irrestible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.

I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.

Neat trick in writing a book.

If I knew how to do that, I would.

7.27.2021 – reflections wet sand

reflections wet sand
mirror sun, clouds, sky images
but for a moment

Part of a series based on afternoons spent at the beach on Hilton Head Island.

I wanted to see if I would be ‘inspired’ by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Some turned out okay.

Some were too forced.

Some were just bad.

Some did involve some or all of those feelings.

As far as it goes, I guess I was inspired by by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Click here for more Haiku from the BEACH