those lucky ones whom
clocks no consequence, times true
emotional drift
Adapted from the line:
“The summer came and went quickly which is the nature of summer for people who are not children, those lucky ones to whom clocks are of no consequence but who drift along on the true emotional content of time.”
from The Summer he Didn’t Die – A Brown Dog Novella, by Jim Harrison
summer came and went
quickly, summer for people
who are not children
Adapted from the line:
“The summer came and went quickly which is the nature of summer for people who are not children, those lucky ones to whom clocks are of no consequence but who drift along on the true emotional content of time.”
from The Summer he Didn’t Die – A Brown Dog Novella, by Jim Harrison
satisfying first
the needs for understanding
compassion respect
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.
taking out the trash
into the Carolina night
warm dark overallness
Karen Blixen as Isak Dinesen (or Isak Dinesen as Karen Blixen) wrote in her short story, “From the Forests and Highlands – We come, we come” about living in Africa that, “The chief feature of the landscape, and of your life in it, was the air. Looking back on a sojourn in the African highlands, you are struck by your feeling of having lived for a time up in the air.“
Having lived the first 50 years of my life in the great state of Michigan, I say that the chief feature of the landscape was also the air.
The COLD air.
Living up in the cold.
It wasn’t an Alaskan, Jack London, type of cold.
But an annoying, I forgot a sweatshirt, my feet are cold, nagging type of cold.
Always there.
Always lurking just below the surface of the warmest days.
And taking over the night even in the middle of summer.
My weather friends tell me that West Michigan is the 2nd most overcast region in the continental United States.
50 shades of gray dreary damp unoutshone only by Seattle.
Gray, dreary damp cold.
I am not enamored of the somewhat cheerful term of ‘sweater weather’.
The term ‘sweater weather’ was created by realtors or Canadians who endeavored to present a picture of a fun, if cold, lifestyle.
I now live in South Carolina.
I was outside last night.
It was in the mid 80’s both temperature and humidity.
Walking outside the dark warmth closed around me like a blanket
The type of blanket known as a comforter.
And I was comforted.
Lest you think I had forgotten my roots, the cold weather of Michigan was much on my mind.
I left my apartment and walked first into the building common stairway.
This part of the building has South Carolina air conditioning.
South Carolina conditions its inside air much like the city of Atlanta but on steroids.
As far as I can tell, air conditioners are installed and the settings are locked into the lowest possible temperate and left on forever.
Someone wrote that one of the benefits of Great Lakes beaches was that even in summer you could dig a shallow hole and bury your beer to get it cold.
In South Carolina, all you have to do to cool your beer to is leave it in the hallway.
I walked into the hallway in my shorts, T shirt and flip flops and tried to breath.
In my mind, it was Michigan in February.
Congealed is not a pleasant word.
Then I got out of the hallway and into the night.
My mindset had shifted to Michigan Summer nights.
No disrespect to Bob Seger and his sweet summertime, summertime.
Even at its warmest in Michigan, you can feel autumn moving in.
I was ready for chill.
I was ready for thinking why didn’t I have a hoodie on.
I was ready for thinking why didn’t I have a socks on.
Warm, thick socks.
And then, I didn’t think those things.
I didn’t because it wasn’t cold.
It was warm.
A thick delicious warmth.
The dark was so deep I could touch it.
I literally stepped out INTO the night.
And there was a light breeze.
There always seems to be a light breeze at night.
Just enough to keep the air moving.
After all the reading I have done of sea stories and navy adventures, I should have had expected land breezes and sea breezes.
They are real.
When the sun sets and the land stays warmer than the sea, a light breeze comes in off the ocean.
It was a delight.
It was delightful.
I was full of delight.
I had to laugh.
I had to laugh out loud just for the sake of the delight in the dark warmth.
Ms. Blixen also writes, ” … you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.”
I know what she means.
And while I can say that, I still have a hard time believing I am in South Carolina.
But be that as it way, here I am, where I ought to be.
Ms. Blixen also writes about Africa that, “Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequaled nobility.”
Not that I can say exactly that about the South Carolina shore.
But I will say this.
Everything I felt in the warm dark overallness (so I made up a word) made for me, greatness and freedom, and unequaled, well maybe not nobility but can I say satisfaction.
And I was just taking out the trash.
PS – Yes the short story, “From the Forests and Highlands – We come, we come” is better known as Out of Africa but had I wrote that everyone would be reading my essay in the voice of Meryl Streep as she used it in the movie of the same name. A voice that not too outrageously had me waiting for her to say beyork beyork beyork like the Swedish Chef in the Muppet Show..
it was a dawn to
remember on your deathbed
life lived within life
Adapted from Sundog by Jim Harrison, 1985.
It was a dawn to remember with a smile on your deathbed.
The sky was a vivid red as if the forest had caught fire. I drove through clumps of pink fog, re-crossing the river of the day before which lividly reflected the sky.
The roadside and small clearings in the forest were covered with a white blooming dogwood, around which misted coiled and released like unraveling white satin.
I stopped the car and shivered, imagining that I might HAVE died and this was some sort of afterlife designed by H. Bosch and Magritte, much less vulgar that Dali; or it was life lived within a brilliantly colored seashell for which one might not emerge.
I added emphasis to HAVE.
‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ by Hieronymus Bosch.
I would give $199.25 to find out if Mr. Harrison couldn’t spell Hieronymus and in those innocent days before the google, had no easy way to look it up.
No Haiku For You 