An Essay Joined in Progress as I Add to It
This started without any goal in mind.
After hundreds of haiku’s, I have to admit that I enjoy it.
Maybe its just enough of a creative process for my brain to handle and fulfill the desire, ‘to have something to say’ and move on.
Everyone has a desire or drive to create something.
In Big Two Hearted River, Hemingway writes, ” His mind was starting to work. He knew he could choke it because he was tired enough.”
I feel my mind start to work and I encourage it.
I pass the time thinking about the day’s haiku on my commutes to work in downtown Atlanta and my experiences as I drive often contribute to my daily haiku.
And another thing, I feel I can accomplish something with my daily haiku.
A long time ago, I worked for the Grand Rapids Public Library.
I learned that books stayed on the shelf for 2 years.
If no one took the book, the title was removed from the active collection and stored in the basement.
In storage, if no one requested the book for 3 more years, it would be removed from the collection completely.
Once I learned this, when I was on break, I would wonder though the basement and grab titles that caught my eye and take them upstairs and discreetly drop them into the book return and restart their clock.
With my haiku’s, I feel if I can pull an obscure bit of text from a forgotten book or poem, I can help reset the clock on that book or poem in the worlds collective consciousness.
Samuel Johnson wrote that an author has the power “to make new things familiar and familiar things new.”
Am I sweeping sand on the beach?
Yes, but;
To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
I am making an effort and for myself, that is enough.
Another thought that came is from a quote from Anton Chekov.
I feel like I am cheating quoting Chekov because I do not know his plays from the role played by the guy on Star Trek.
I hope to fix that someday, nevertheless, Chekov says, “The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.”
I want to ask as many questions as possible with these Haiku’s.
Not answer them.
That being said, I recognize that the role of an artist, any artist, is to help someone’s mind realize there is something greater than what they see on the surface.
No Haiku For You 