3.12.2022 – incongruous range

incongruous range
of turmoil and misery
and stupidity

These last weeks have made it difficult to write both haiku and essays about haiku.

I watch TV and its about the war we can’t do much about.

I pick up one book and suddenly I am back in the refugee crisis caused by the Spanish Civil War.

I pick up another device and without any indication of where I was going, I find myself in Carville, Mississippi and learning about a US minimum security prison that shares housing with the national leprosarium because all persons diagnosed with leprosy (Hansen’s disease) in the U.S. were required, by law, to be quarantined and treated there.

While at the same time, my job is to sell sunshine and beaches online.

Going mad, using both definitions of the word at the same time.

You bet it has been difficult to write both haiku and essays about haiku.

Good gracious, but what is wrong with me today?

What worked for me in the past was to get back to the roots of all this and focus on word usage in my reading.

I came across this line from the book, How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain de Botton,

I have been avoiding this book because no matter how I try I cannot get into Proust.

The legendary Civil War writer Shelby Foote loved Proust and claimed to read the complete In Search of Lost Time (all 9 or is it 10 or more volumes) at least 10 times.

But I cannot get it going so I did not want to know how Proust could Change my life.

Anyway I was paging thought the it and there was this:

However brilliant, however wise the work, it seems that the lives of artists can be relied upon to exhibit an extraordinary, incongruous range of turmoil, misery, and stupidity.

Now on usage, it is a wonder.

Not just turmoil, misery, and stupidity.

Not turmoil, misery, and stupidity that works together and builds on itself.

But incongruous turmoil, misery, and stupidity.

Incompatible turmoil, misery, and stupidity.

Turmoil that rejects the misery and the stupidity.

Misery that cannot relate to the stupidity and the turmoil.

Stupidity that cannot understand the turmoil or the misery.

All adding to one vile brew in my brain.

And not just incongruity in my turmoil, misery, and stupidity but extraordinary incongruity in my turmoil, misery and stupidty.

In the words of Charlie Brown, THAT’S IT!.

3.11.2022 – have confidence that

shape future that will
be determined by what we
do in the present

Once the war in Ukraine started, I often found it difficult to write a haiku on a daily basis.

To fill in those gaps, I turned to this entry, originally posted on March 6, 2022 and created several haiku to fill in gaps.

Please forgive this effort on my part to produce a daily haiku in retrograde fashion but as I like to say, my blog my rules.

Suffice it to say, this entry may not have been created on this date and this essay was not written for today but then the essay itself is somewhat timeless in its application.

Thanks

MJH

——–

Adapted from the article, The world is unpredictable and strange. Still, there is hope in the madness by Rebecca Solnit and the paragraph in particular that states:

Despair is a delusion of confidence that asserts it knows what’s coming, perhaps a tool of those who like to feel in control, even if just of the facts, when in reality, we can frame approximate parameters, but the surprises keep coming.

Anyone who makes a definitive declaration about what the future will bring is not dealing in facts.

The world we live in today was utterly unforeseen and unimaginable on many counts, the world that is coming is something we can work toward but not something we can foresee.

We need to have confidence that surprise and uncertainty are unshakable principles, if we want to have confidence in something.

And recognize that in that uncertainty is room to act, to try to shape a future that will be determined by what we do in the present.

Recognize that in that uncertainty is room to act.

I have been told that the symbol of Ukraine is the sunflower.

I find it, well, comforting, or fitting, or entirely appropriate that Vincent Van Gogh let out so much of his expression through sunflowers.

While I agree and endorse that We need to have confidence that surprise and uncertainty are unshakable principles, if we want to have confidence in something.

I agree too with the statement that the world we live in today was utterly unforeseen and unimaginable on many counts.

But I also am comforted knowing that when the when Moses came down Mt. Sinai with the 10 commandments and he wrote the the first five books of the Bible, God knew that it wouldn’t be long until I was reading those books on something called an iPhone.

3.10.2022 – I find no peace, and

I find no peace, and
all my war is done fear and
hope holdeth me not

Adapted from I Find No Peace by Thomas Wyatt about 1540

I find no peace, and all my war is done.
I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice.
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise;
And nought I have, and all the world I season.
That loseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison
And holdeth me not—yet can I scape no wise—
Nor letteth me live nor die at my device,
And yet of death it giveth me occasion.
Without eyen I see, and without tongue I plain.
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health.
I love another, and thus I hate myself.
I feed me in sorrow and laugh in all my pain;
Likewise displeaseth me both life and death,
And my delight is causer of this strife.

3.9.2022 – baby girl’s birthday!

baby girl’s birthday!
two years? A terrible two?
seems impossible …

Can’t believe it has been two years.

We had some concern about going to the hospital to see the new baby as this coronavirus scare refused to go away.

There was a station to get anti-bacterial goop on our hands when we entered the hospital but that was all all.

Todays later, Lenox came home.

Two weeks later, the country shut down and I haven’t been to work since.

Two years later and baby girl is 2.

Her big sister is bigger and still the best big sister.

The country deals with covid.

How time flys.

3.8.2022 – world that is coming

world that is coming
something we can work toward
we can not foresee

Once the war in Ukraine started, I often found it difficult to write a haiku on a daily basis.

To fill in those gaps, I turned to this entry, originally posted on March 6, 2022 and created several haiku to fill in gaps.

Please forgive this effort on my part to produce a daily haiku in retrograde fashion but as I like to say, my blog my rules.

Suffice it to say, this entry may not have been created on this date and this essay was not written for today but then the essay itself is somewhat timeless in its application.

Thanks

MJH

——–

Adapted from the article, The world is unpredictable and strange. Still, there is hope in the madness by Rebecca Solnit and the paragraph in particular that states:

Despair is a delusion of confidence that asserts it knows what’s coming, perhaps a tool of those who like to feel in control, even if just of the facts, when in reality, we can frame approximate parameters, but the surprises keep coming.

Anyone who makes a definitive declaration about what the future will bring is not dealing in facts.

The world we live in today was utterly unforeseen and unimaginable on many counts, the world that is coming is something we can work toward but not something we can foresee.

We need to have confidence that surprise and uncertainty are unshakable principles, if we want to have confidence in something.

And recognize that in that uncertainty is room to act, to try to shape a future that will be determined by what we do in the present.

Recognize that in that uncertainty is room to act.

I have been told that the symbol of Ukraine is the sunflower.

I find it, well, comforting, or fitting, or entirely appropriate that Vincent Van Gogh let out so much of his expression through sunflowers.

While I agree and endorse that We need to have confidence that surprise and uncertainty are unshakable principles, if we want to have confidence in something.

I agree too with the statement that the world we live in today was utterly unforeseen and unimaginable on many counts.

But I also am comforted knowing that when the when Moses came down Mt. Sinai with the 10 commandments and he wrote the the first five books of the Bible, God knew that it wouldn’t be long until I was reading those books on something called an iPhone.