sat upon the shore fishing, shall at least set my lands in order?
Part of the series of Haiku inspired by The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot and the article, ‘It takes your hand off the panic button’: TS Eliot’s The Waste Land 100 years on by Andrew Dickson.
Mr. Dickson asks, ‘Is it genuinely one of the greatest works in the language, or – as the poet once claimed – just “a piece of rhythmical grumbling“?’
Readers of this blog may remember that from time to time I struggle with the weight of effort of producing a daily Haiku and any thoughts I may have about the words and time that went in the Haiku that day.
This daily schedule of missing a day can bring on a personal mental paralysis wherein writing these entries becomes impossible.
I learned to deal with this by not dealing with it and let it go.
Then when I look at my register of entries and see blank days with no post, I will grab a topic or book or poem for a source and produce a series of Haiku to fill in those blank dates.
This is one of the great benefits of this effort being my blog and my blog, my rules.
It IS cricket because I say it is.
It is ‘according to Hoyle’ because I say it is.
Thus I have this series based on ‘The Wasteland.’
A thoroughly enjoyable connection of wordplay and source of endless discussion in the search for meaning.
For myself, I like that bit about a piece of rhythmical grumbling by Mr. Eliot so said Mr. Eliot.
I have remembered this story before in these posts, but it reminds me of a story told by the actor Rex Harrison.
Mr. Harrison recounted rehearsing a play by George Bernard-Shaw and that the company was having a difficult time with a certain scene when, wonder of wonder, Bernard-Shaw himself dropped by to watch rehearsal.
Mr. Harrison tells how great this was as they went to the play write and asked how did he see this scene – what was he striving for?
Bernard-Shaw asked for a script and read over the scene, read it over again and a third time, then looked up and said, “This is rather bad isn’t it.”
love is a deep and dark like a book read over and over again
Love is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely Carl Sandburg
love is a deep and a dark and a lonely and you take it deep take it dark and take it with a lonely winding and when the winding gets too lonely then may come the windflowers and the breath of wind over many flowers winding its way out of many lonely flowers waiting in rainleaf whispers waiting in dry stalks of noon wanting in a music of windbreaths so you can take love as it comes keening as it comes with a voice and a face and you make a talk of it talking to yourself a talk worth keeping and you put it away for a keen keeping and you find it to be a hoarding and you give it away and yet it stays hoarded
like a book read over and over again like one book being a long row of books like leaves of windflowers bending low and bending to be never broken
a long, gentle curve hardly realize we’re talking love, family, life
Based on the short passage:
I think of all the things I’ll want to talk to the catcher about. I’ll guide the conversations, like taking a car around a long, gentle curve in the road, and we’ll hardly realize that we’re talking of love, and family, and life, and beauty, and friendship, and sharing …
From the book, Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella.
Most folks are more familiar with the movie made from the book, Field of Dreams, than they are of the book.
Field of Dreams is a good movie (made possible by Jim Harrison, but that is another story) but a lot of, shall we say, nuance is missing from the movie that is in the book.
For one, the author in the story is J.D. Salinger and not a fictitious Terrence Mann and then there is the twin brother, but that is for another time as well.
The 15th of February is my Father’s birthday.
The anniversary always brings the book and the movie and my Dad to mind
If I say I wish he was here I certainly don’t mean I wish he was here in realtime.
I don’t wish that he was here and 102 years old.
The best part of wishing is that you get to set the rules.
Not being able to set the rules is maybe the best part of wishes not coming true.
Never the less, I do like to say that I would build a ball park in my back yard if my Dad could come back for a day or two.
Not because I have anything I need to say or that I could have said to my Dad when I had the chance, but because I would like to introduce him to my kids and grand kids.
I would like to take him out to any of the seafood restaurants down here where I live in South Carolina.
I have a feeling that when he was stationed at Fort Andrew Jackson near Columbia, South Carolina, he spent time in Savannah.
The idea of sitting with him in Forsyth Park sounds just right.
We would sit there and talk and he would describe how he remembered the city back in 1943.
It would be a long gentle curve in the road.
We would hardly realize we were talking.
And that we would be talking about love and family and life.
Happy Birthday Dad!
PS: The above photograph, was taken by me on a family trip to Wisconsin to visit my Uncle Jim and Aunt Millie.
It was summertime probably 1968 or 1969.
This was taken aboard the SS City of Midland, the car ferry that went between Ludington, Michigan and Manitowoc, Wisconsin across Lake Michigan.
This was how my Dad dressed for vacation.
Almost always he had on a jacket and often enough, a tie as well.
These were his fun clothes.
That is if your idea of fun was to pack 11 people into a car and drive off into the wilds of Wisconsin.
If this was 1969, my brother Paul was now married and my youngest brother, Al, hadn’t made his appearance yet so the 11 of us, my parents and 9 kids were probably the biggest bunch of us altogether on trip we ever took.
Taken at the National Railroad Museum in Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin
We were running all over the ship and my Mom and Dad found a place in the sun out of the wind.
I wanted to take a picture.
I guess I had an interest in photography back then or at least I wanted to be the one taking the pictures.
I whined and whined until my Dad gave me his camera and let me take this picture of Mom and Dad in sunshine.
Then I wanted to take another photograph.
I wanted to take a picture of the bow of the ship cutting through the water.
I explained this to my Dad and he said okay and went with me as far forward on the ship as we could get.
The very peak of the bow was blocked off by a yellow rail so there would be no “I’m flying – Titanic” scenes on this ship.
As I remember the railing of the ship was just above my head level when I was nine so my Dad got a deck chair for me to stand on.
I hopped up and now the rail was about waist high and I leaned over.
My Mom called out but my Dad waved that it would be okay.
I leaned back and my Dad handed me his camera, his new nikon and back over the edge I went.
“Hey, hey hey!” my Dad yelled.
I stood up straight and turned and looked at him.
He reached over and put the camera strap over my head.
“Don’t want you to drop the camera!” he said.
PSS many people have asked and yes this is the photo I took looking down at the bow of the ship … mjh
Stafford, the Bengals bumbling franchise Detroit does everything wrong, right?
I remember reading about that Science had discovered quarks or neutrinos or some such particles of energy that were created as the Sun decayed or something like that.
An experiment was designed to capture a picture of one of these things and somewhere out west, a section of mountain was excavated and filled with cleaning fluid.
This was supposed to capture the moment one of these particles came by or decayed or something.
This giant pool of fluid was filled with photo cells and then the scientists sat back to wait.
And they waited and waited and waited and nothing happened.
After some years the scientist decided there were three possible explanations to what went wrong.
The first was that they did their math wrong.
The second was they set up the physical experiment wrong.
The third explanation was that the scientists had no clue to what they were doing or even talking about.
For most of my life, the third explanation applies to the Detroit Lions football team of the National Football League.
The latest Super Bowl is one more example of how hard the Lions work to show how much they have no clue to what they are doing or even talking about.
First off is the the now Super Bowl winning Quarterback, Matthew Stafford.
Mr. Stafford played for the Lions for 12 seasons and never got past the first round of the playoffs as the Lions management just could not put together the team around him that could win.
The Los Angeles Rams appears to have put that team together, including late season additions in Stafford’s first year.
What did the Rams do that the Lions did not do?
Then there are the Cincinnati Bengals.
In 2020, the Bengals were 4 -11-1 while the Lions were 5-11.
in 2019, the Bengals were 2-14 and the Lions were 3-13.
IN 2021, the Bengals were 10-7 and 13-8 overall, making it to the Super Bowl.
The Lions were again 3 and 13.
What did the Bengals do that the Lions did not do or do that the Lion did not want do or do that the Lions can’t do?
The Bengals were worse than the Lions and in 2 years made it to the Super Bowl.
It can be done.
Its not space science.
Do the Detroit Lions do everything wrong?
Why do I think that if someone took a yellow pad and wrote down everything the Lions did, from brand of Hot Dogs for sale to the colors of the team (and I love Honolulu Blue) maybe change the name, put everything on the table, and do the exact opposite who knows what might happen.
I will even write the dread words, how could it get worse?
We say that every year.
And somehow each year the Lions do the seemingly impossible and make last years team look better and create a true sense of insecurity.
I am reminded of the scene in the movie, Tin Cup, where caddy Cheech Martin has golfer Kevin Costner put a golf tee behind one ear, put all his change in on pocket and a bunch of other weird stuff.
When Costner then hits a ball down the fairway, he looks at Martin and asks how he it did it, Martin responds, “you ain’t thinking … period.”
Or in the case of the Lions, as Ted Williams once said, “If you don’t think so good, don’t think so much.”
No Haiku For You 