Softly our lingering summer love chills

heart angst seeping

liquid salt blobs   smeared dry

tear tracks dissipating

loves ebbing backflow

flowing - ceasing - emotions abate

Rapedseed

              rapedseed

husks swept about by brooms

sprawled   naked   grains

From my hovel in the Pacific Northwest #89, The last in the UP the Mtn Series

Nature's Lush Life    

Coltrane's visceral score 

pulsing   sultry   snow 

Ylem notes   manifestations

divine composition  

Haiku is

monistic

divine hermaneneutics

teleological

sacred sounds

koans stoke meditative prayers

chanting temple gongs

Sylvan

seasonal trope

asian hermaneneutics

Nature's tapas

From my Hovel in the Willamette National Forest #74

White Tailed Deer

white booties bounding   -   BANG!!!

white tailed Venison

From my Hovel in the Willamette National Forest

"NATURE" 

transcending isms

where divinity resides

calm   still   solitude 

A edited re-post

Fall's Leafs - Fall's Colour

summered greens - autumned yellows

fall leaves - fall colors

Blooming 

eternal

Brush Clovers

My Fuyo

Hibiscus

wilt as I wither

ponder      western shores

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #78

sunlit temporal paint

spray painting shadows

on a spatial canvas

Pacific Northwest Forest

Up the Cascade Mountains

waxing & waning

years teeming   flowing with time

rivers   fjords   oceans

In celebration of the first (unoffical) day of Autumn

autumn leaves

bursting      blazing      ripe

red leaves

Ephemera Hanabi

cityscapes (man made)

(ethereal) shooting stars

(ephemeral) cherry blossoms   -   yielding

Softly Our lingering summer CHILLS!

heart angst seeping

tear tracks dissipating

liquified salted blobs smeared dry 

loves ebbing backflow 

flowing ... ceasing ... emotions ... abate

PDX #8 "Portlandia's Acromatopsia" (another example of Poekuagery)

haiku: social plutocrats

verse: in an acromatic miasma

haiku: gentrifying foot soldiers

verse: entitled foodies

haiku: social darwinism

verse: abject excuses   -   absolve all of responsibility for social malfeasance

haiku/tanka: moiety   -   race   -   class   -   ism's

verse:  subtly racialized   -   a playground with a nuanced achromatic aesthetic   -   Portlandia

haiku/tanka: my new home (phratry)

verse: an illusion of financial independence whether LGBT, coloureds, or B&W 

Down from the Mountain

re-creating breath

authentic essence

urban process

A tanka (Mt hovel)

mt hovel

solitudes amenity

mountain hovel

focused contemplation

mt hovel

musical mendicant?

enticingly crisp(y) sounds

playing in the snow

hanging blossoms

inquiring   a fanned facade

faning ignorance

My entry to a recent online contest for SanDisk.

In 45 words or less this is what I came up with to accompany the image they providied below

(Photography by David Black, of Arches National Park)

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #95

snow showers

white powder    clumps on a branch

pruning a bare bough

wind swirled in a rush   topples

now moored   aground   a snow mound

Posted with Blogsy

A Spring Renga, begun in March of 2014

"White Chrysanthemums"

Before the white chrysanthemum

The scissors hesitate

a moment  (Buson)

rustling ears flinch in suprise

a squirrel I, ease each other's fear  (Richard Heby)

picking strength

with  the white blossoms

bird chirps  (Willie Bongcaron)

petals soft, silky - offered

a momentary pleasure  (Mary Kathryn)

the flower awaits

a life soon forever changed

a new begining  (Eve Penman)

bygone moonlight moves beyond

drooping petals   whimsical frowns  (Bukusai Ashagawa

  (Paul Douglas Lovell)

From my hovel in the Willamette Forest

Know the centered way

avoid distractions

understand - balance 

An excerpt from the recently published 4th edition of my poetry book, entitled, JIKU.

Epilogue: Reflecting on how the artistic experiences of artists like James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Henry David Thoreau relates to and influences my own artistic process and personal frames of referencing my artistic identity or "who I am as an artist and more significantly as a human being".

In 1984 James Baldwin was asked by Jordan Elgrably of the Paris Review why he left the United States ... While reading this interview I thought ... Baldwin left New York for Paris in 1948 ... due to the racism he was experiencing ... racism I still deal with today in 2013 in more insidious and covert ways ... These are excerpts from his response to this question that still resonated with me today in November of 2013 ... as a Black ... Caribbean ... and Native American Man ... one who identifies as an artist amongst other things.

"Looking for a place to live ... for a job. You begin to doubt your judgment, you

begin to doubt everything ... You've been beaten and its deliberate. The whole 

society has decided to make you nothing. And they don't even know their doing

it. ... Given the condition in this country to be a black writer was impossible ... My 

father ...He said I was contesting the white man's definitions which was quite 

right. But I had also learned from my father what he thought of the white man's 

definition." 

                      (Jordan Elgrably, Paris Review interview with James Baldwin, 1948)

I was brought up in two independent and distinctly different families ... one (working class) in the deep south and the other (bourgeois) from the northeast I was heavily ... am still heavily influenced by both ... Though it was my maternal family from the northeast that was especially adept at visibly ... boldly ... flamboyantly ... overtly ... contesting the "white man's" definition of black folk ... My parents lived a life that also challenged how even the majority of the black community thought we should live ... One quick example was the fact that my mother was the primary bread winner for most of our lives ... my father was her partner ... advocate ... and supporter in her artistic endeavors ... This is a large part of why I've always felt comfortable defying what not just as Baldwin puts it "the white man’s definition" was ... but also how black folks too still attempt to dictate to me in regards to how I should live ... how I should identify ... define ... and who or what I should or shouldn’t align myself with ... Today I have $2 to my name ... and hearing Baldwin's words sub vocally ringing in my ear and in my heart ...  inspires and assures me that the path I'm following with my life is the right one for me ... I've never been happier or more fulfilled with purpose ... intellectual and spiritual purpose ... even though I am couch surfing ... technically homeless ... Sometimes in life it is worth it to take a financial leap of faith ... As an artists it is akin to a small business person attempting to start up a business on savings ... and credit cards ... without investors or loans ... Paying for say studio space instead of a place to live ... besides your car ... Only as artists there is very little if any social status involved ... You put yourself out there ... or spend a focused amount of time creating a work of art knowing there probably won't be any financial gain ... at least not for years to come if you’re really really lucky ... And you have to then survive until or as you're supporting yourself and promoting your work ... James Baldwin's plight seemed to parallel my own over 65 years later ... Here is James Baldwin again responding in the same Paris Review interview.

"I was broke. I got to Paris with $40 in my pocket ... It was a matter of getting out

of America  ... I didn't know what was going to happen to me in France but I knew what was going to happen to me in New York ... I still had to deal with the streets and the authorities ... I knew what it meant to be white and I knew what it meant to be a nigger, and I knew what would happen to me. My luck was running out. I was going to go to jail, I was going to kill somebody or be killed. ... When I arrived in Paris I didn't know a word of french. I moved from one hotel to another not knowing what was going to happen to me ... I got sick and to my surprise I wasn't thrown out ... An old old lady a great matriarch nursed me back to health ... she had to climb 5 flights of stairs every morning to make sure I was kept alive." 

      

                     (1948 Jordan Elgrably, Paris Review interview with James Baldwin)

Yes I too have been emotionally and financially nursed by friends ... acquaintances ... and complete strangers ... It's an ironic ... a humbling ... and reaffirming  experience ... that of humanity acting in an empathetic loving way ... one that transcends race ... class ... ethnicity ... and culture ... caring for their fellow man ... But! These are experiences that are extremely rare exceptions rather than the rule ... though they always seem to occur at my lowest points in life ... Like the hand of God lifting me … so that the light of Buddha might lead me out of a forest of intellectual ... artistic ... and spiritual despair.  

Sadly Baldwin's experience is still relevant some 65 years later … in what is almost 2014 ... Baldwin as do I ... struggle with these sadly timeless issues ... I like Baldwin and many artists of colour … Women … or any oppressed person have and can often find or reaffirm our artistic and human worth overseas (not that you can't do so in the states)... For me it was in Asia… while for many others in my family it was in Europe or the Caribbean ... It is sad that many of us have to look outside of our country for true artistic and financial recognition and compensation as artists and people ... as opposed to being labeled a "Black Artist" or a "black" person here in the states ... Interestingly enough when Thoreau, Whitman, or Emerson  brooch issues of race they're often characterized as "artists" with "social conscious" or "Abolitionists" ... but let Baldwin ... Morrison ... Angelou ... Belafonte ... or Poitier do so and they are classified as "Black" artists perseverating on ethnic issues.

The following is my paraphrasing of James Baldwin's "Notes From A Native Son" ... I believe it hits the mark in articulating the draw that traveling overseas has had and to a lesser extent still has for all oppressed people in much of the America's ... from Marshall Taylor ... America's first World Champion up until today ... in December of 2013.

"... Europe's black possessions remained-and to a lesser extent still do remain-in Europe's colonies, at which removed they represented no threat whatever to European identity ... If they posed any problem at all for the European conscience, it was a problem which remained comfortingly abstract: in effect, the black man, as a man, did not exist for Europe. But in America, even as a slave, he was an inescapable part of the general social fabric and no White American could escape having a negative attitude toward the Black Man.... And so, the white washing of white americas deep rooted racist past as historically being of the past is not the same thing as ceasing to unconsciously or otherwise allowing that negative attitude to continue playing itself out more covertly and subtly in dismissive, implausible, and deniable ways even today."            

                            (Paraphrased from James Baldwin's, Notes From A Native Son)

As I said earlier I like many other athletes and artists of colour have left my homeland and traveled for an extensive period of time overseas, and have gained much acceptance not just as an artist but as a human being overseas. 

From W.E. Dubois, Langston Hughes, Marshal Taylor, Josephine Baker, Quincy Jones, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Jack Johnson,  Paul Roberson, Angela Davis, James Baldwin, Nelson Vails, my grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, cousins, my mother, and me. This is not a uniquely "Black Thing" it's a universally "human thing". These types of experiences free people of all races, ethnicities, gender, class, and less frequently sexual preference to reassess their existence. They allow us to temporally transcend the identity both we and our former socioeconomic environment developed for us temporally, spatially, emotionally, especially spiritually, and intellectually back in the states. It is why this year (2013) Tina Turner's relinquishing as opposed to renouncing her US Citizenship for a Swedish one so intrigues me. 

Identity is one of the key components in the creation of human society, minorities and those oppressed cannot escape it. In my personal experience identity permeates every aspect of the lives of everyone, especially oppressed minorities worldwide. Even if you can mitigate some of the racial oppression you experience as my parents were able to do for me via class privilege, one’s race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality still affect the development of your identity.

Identifying as an athlete and an artist has empowered me to transcend the negative connotations that white american society continues to place on my blackness. It's allowed me to flip it around and claim my blackness as my own, as a positive attribute. Just as other oppressed people find their own way to do the same. Some of us become doctors, thieves, lawyers, gang bangers, soldiers, con-men, parents, or inmates, etc. All can be ways of redefining ourselves and our identities on our own terms. 

Whether speaking to issues of identity from within the specific and demonstrative vocabulary of academia, or as a writer or artist like Robert Wright, James Baldwin ... Walt Whitman .., Miles Davis ... or Henry David Thoreau ... Issues of identity ... whether racial or otherwise  in some form or another are addressed in all our artistic work regardless of how we identify racially or otherwise ... All our experiences as human beings serve as building blocks upon one another to further everyone's understanding of themselves as black white or otherwise, but most significantly as human beings. 

Having said that I've made it a habit to frequently take leave from actively participating in society ... Most recently ... as I'm writing this I've found a precarious alternative ... a place of solace in the woods, much like Thoreau did ... A place where this poor man might find some solitude ... sometime to write and contemplate ... I see this as an attempt to extend a time of concentrated artistic focus. 

I think it would shock most folks to discover how many people get off the public buses of Oregon and Washington State with backpacks on ... and walk off into the brush on the side of the road ... living as squatters in nature's labeled woods ... Living on land labeled BLM Lands ... labeled state and federal forest lands ... beyond the social footprint of civilized society. Oh and not all of them are poor, destitute, or mentally impaired, at least I think I'm not any of those things?

Paraphrased from Thoreau's "Walden"  

"I went ... faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my countrymen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make any place for me, so I had nothing to lose in creating my own place in society. ... The wise have ever lived a more simple and meager life than the rich and the poor."

All of which inspired me to finally create for the sake of creating, rather than splitting my time between creating ... marketing ... and studying (in academia) others who are now and have created in the past ... I've spent enough time doing so ... I've also reached a point in my life ... a point of maturity as a human being and as an artist that draws me to for a time ... focus solely on my art ... to focus on my work ... on my path ... I am now artistically honed to a razors edge ... like when an athlete has trained all their life for an Olympic performance ... and so I know I am at my artistic height ... if not a crucial developmental artistic juncture ... If I don't focus on artistically performing now I will have wasted a lifetime of artistic discerning ... learning ... and practice ... If I don't refine and sharpen my craft I'll become artistically dull for a time... and miss an opportunity to reach or create at my artistic zenith.

I feel that regardless of my financial success or failure ... the real issue is to continue progressing on my journey and be mindful of the process undertaken while on that journey ... rather than where it might or might not take me in regards to selling "delicately textured artistic baskets" in a subjective and biased capitalist marketplace ... Still at the risk of sounding like a hypocrite ... I'd never say no the Sotheby's or Christies ... in regards to selling my work. ... It took me several decades to let go mentally ... materially ... spiritually ... and socially ...  from the ties that have actively bound me to society ... How long I'll continue down this road I do not know ... I'm just here to be mindful and open to the experience ... After all my role models for this experience are in literature ... of other cultures ... or are characterized in this one as lost in more ways than one ... How do I or do I attempt a reentry into society? I do not know.  

Again this paraphrased excerpt of Thoreau's Walden speaks to this much more articulately. 

"... I too have woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one’s while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which most men praise and consider successful is but one life, one way."

"I believe that this body of work I've woven throughout this book to likewise have a delicate texture. A delicate texture that is at once tangible and intangible all contained within the pages of my book-basket. A book-basket that has much artistic merit yet may still not seem worthwhile to the buyers in our marketplace. So instead of attempting to appeal to a capitalistic profit driven marketplace, I too, have chosen to focus on producing an artistically woven and delicately texture book-basket. My book-basket too is uniquely crafted and delicately woven following its own poetic and visual design. The artistic process of which is transparent enough for all to see. This exposure of its artistic process and the social strands of fabric that compose its individual parts is what may make it so unappealing to the marketplace. After all no one really wants to have to be reminded of or acknowledge the tainted strands of our social fabric exposed for all to see. Social strands of colonialism, sexism, homophobia, classism, oppression, religious persecution, tainted democracy, and corrupted capitalism, all delicately but nonetheless blatantly interwoven into an artistic medium. An artistic medium designed to mitigate the overt presence of these social tinges in our society and in our art." 

                                                            Bukusai Ashagawa

Still for me these social tinged and artistic strands have always been undeniably visible. For me I see the beauty that can and does shine through in spite of our being bound by a delicately textured socially tinged interweaving. It’s just that I'm trying to assist all my brethren, especially some of my elders, my white male brethren in finally acknowledging the presence of the beauty that each of us has to contribute. A beauty that rings true through all of our humanity and is indivisibly interwoven into all our social, spiritual, and artistic endeavors; despite being deeply flawed and undeniably artistically tinged. 

A final note   

The prose writer Richard Wright who passed away in 1960 was an example of someone who came to haiku at the end of his life but did so prolifically. He spoke to oppressive issues, of materialism, greed, poverty, race, mortality, and gender while juxtaposing them to mitigating presence of nature in his haiku's.

Paraphrased in part from Gabor Terebess translation of Richard Wrights Haiku: This Other World

"In roughly 1959 Wright began writing haiku in France while in self-exile. He wrote over 4,000 haiku in the 18 months before he died. He predominately focused on nature. He wrote haiku steeped in the beauty that would act as a culmination of his life's work in prose. In prose he directly addressed issues like materialism, greed, and poverty in regards to how they collectively oppress women and people of colour. Wright then readdresses these social ills in his haiku, with a beauty that provided scope and a universality that transcends race and color without ever denying them". 

(Haiku Poems By Richard Wright from "Haiku: This other World" translated by Gabor Terebess, 1988) 

Wright does so by using nature as a backdrop to illustrate the oppression of women and people of colour ... He humanizes their struggles by juxtaposing nature with their plights ... while addressing and contrasting the relationship between humanity and nature.      

Wright's daughter Julie also spoke of the appeal of short distinct syllable counts ... and how they matched with his need to take short breaths due to the illness that would end his life ... Wright's daughter also spoke of how haiku allowed him to develop an appreciation for nature ... despite previously perceiving it as hostile ... Interestingly enough  Wright's writing of haiku over the last 18 months of his life could be viewed as one extended death poem ... All of which coincided as his daughter noted with his shortness of breath ... which naturally aligned with the concise format of haiku.

Here are some examples of the haiku Wright wrote during the last 18 months of his life.

The dog's violent sneeze

Fails to rouse a single fly

On his mangy back.

Upon crunching snow,

Childless mothers are searching

For cash customers.

In a drizzling rain,

In a flower shop’s doorway,

A girl sells herself

A bloody knife blade

Is being licked by a cat

At hog-killing time.

So it seems even the Hungarian translator of Wrights work is artistically, critically addressing issues of race and color in regards to a haiku, an art form created by other artists of colour. Haiku, an art form that enables an artist who was a spokesman for issues of race to "transcend those issue of race without denying it". (Haiku Poems by Richard Wright from "Haiku: This other World" translated by Gabor Terebess, 1988) 

Wright much like Emerson and Whitman before him believed that the divinity of God could be found in nature. Wright too seems to have discovered a spiritual connection to both nature and Zen Buddhism. Thoreau, Whitman, and Emerson interpreted this spiritually divine connection to nature as a form of transcendentalism. Wright interpreted this spiritual connection to nature as being aligned with African Nationalist Independence ... which he aligned with Eastern spirituality ... Personally I too see the beauty of nature as well ... amongst other things as natural.

Many readers and critics may not make this connection between race and art, and in particular haiku ... even though it's an art form created by yellow people ... now adopted by whites and all others race ... Many readers may likewise interpret all of this as an inappropriate politicizing or aligning of issues of race into a discussion of art ... Yet in western society and especially in America issue of art and race have always been indivisibly intertwined ... They are at the very least unconsciously personified in one another ... Even Thoreau ... Emerson ... and earlier on Whitman ... all spoke out in favor of abolition in their artwork ... and as a part of their artistic process ... Yet still today ... increasingly art and race are characterized as if they exist in isolation of one another. 

In fact issues of race ... gender ... and art have always been intermingled in the West ... As a poet I am merely emulating the numerous examples set by some of America’s greatest poets and artists ... I am in part emulating my white male elders in speaking to these social justice issues in relation to my art and my artistic process.

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #88

torrential downpours

trunks swayed by whistling winds

boisterious companions

drooling roof -  rhythmic   rain tricklings

found!      solice  in  solitude

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #90

Old growth

germinated in the way

are not uprooted

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest

lacking substance

enter where there is no space

the way beyond

worldless   actionless      teachings    

modeling   a master's way

(inspired by the the Tao Te Ching #43)

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest

being essential

know less   understand more

do without doing

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest

fear an illusion

emotional ambuscade

Now go beyond

For my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #98

flakes clumped on boughs

plummet in powdery waves

mt snow showers

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #101

on hushed winds

into a silent forest

flakes descend

From my hovel somewhere In the Willamette National Forest #100

descending

on swirling winter winds

soppy white flakes

From my hovel somewhere In the Willamette National Forest #99

sky sprinkled white

Up the mt      snow swirling

dry flakes falling down

Another Jiku excerpt

vague ambigious

verbalizing imagery

emotions journey

a drop of dew wells

heavy at a leafs tip

end of a life span

Another JIKU excerpt

foliage tumbles

views narrow, colour hardens

then fade & crumble

my winters here to stay

my winters here to stay

my springs to far away

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #65

waxing  -  wanning

years teeming with time

rivers - fjords- oceans

evaporating oceans

clouds raining down on me

British Columbia #?

Dusk settles

Wolves howl behind twilight

Fading with the dawn

Alaskan Aspen

A bare stand

Barren branches form

A community

Another JIKU excerpt

barkless 

on a Manzanita Tree

See that dog pee

Ur Self

knowing ur self

is to listem to ur self
 
in spite of ur self

Posted with Blogsy

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #38

Up the mtn

Cold   Solitude   Simplicity

Up the mtn

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #86

waves of sunlight splash

Jetties   Trunks jutting upwards

In a treelined   sea

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #87

Swirling flue smoke   Drifts

into shadows   reappearing

as smoked sunbeams

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #33

BOOOOOOOOOOOM!     Cracklng silence

a tree has fallen

ah!      firewood

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #47

Light slips thru a sieve

compositional frame

forest foliage

seen through a canopy

natures Old Growth light filter

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #?

A winters freeze

Plodding thru  wet crunchy snow

Life's flow slows

Hard on the top soft underneath 

Chewing mouthfuls of snow

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #46

Wet snow   wet wood

Drenched   Up the mtn

Fickel woodstove heat

fall's leaf    fall's colour

summered greens    autumned yellows

fall leaves    fall colours

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #45

sabi   Up the mtn

tight quarters   Woodstove yugen

wabi mtn hovel

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #80

spray painting shadows

sunlit temporal paint

on a spatial canvas

Pacific NorthWest Forest

Up the Mtn      In the Cascades

An excerpt from the book JIKU

Introduction: 

This book is my way of adding my voice to the growing worldwide discourse ... in regards to english haiku idioms (ehi) ... I’ve never been privy to a haiku poetry book that addressed technical … interpretive ... artistic qualities… the artists process … and is accompanied by a significant body of work ... one that encompasses a single artist over a decade ... This is the fourth edition of this book ...  For me it acts as a seminal piece of poetic literature and visual art … One I’ve continually built upon over a decade … It was Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass that inspired me to continually build upon a single book over several years … Visually … technically … artistically … and in addressing my artistic process.  

The formats for writing romanized and or non-romanized ehi have been in a state of slow but steady flux as they've incrementally evolved and matured over a century ... As a result they continue to produce unique and novel methods of poetically interpreting the english language well beyond the more straightforward ... linear ... and contextually limited format found in the traditional english sentence structure. 

In part as a result of these fluctuations that characterize its slow evolution ehi lack a universally accepted interpretive structure … especially when presented in a language other than Japanese ... This lack of a definitively universal structure is to a great extent what makes it a unique form of poetic and visual art.

                        Relating poetry to martial arts & music

This lack of a more definitive literary structure reminds me of the reluctant and often reductive initial acceptance of novel/new and foreign art forms in the west ... like Indian Hindustani Music … Jazz … Rap … or abstract forms of art …It is in part the literary abstractness of the haiku idioms presented in Japanese or any other language that so confounds most of the literary and academic world in the west ... Here in the West we are more accustomed to photographic imagery as being tact sharp ... and our poetry as being more artistically verbose … representational or figurative … rather than having to actively …intuitively … and abstractly connect the seasonal dots ... It is what we are socially and culturally accustomed to … to passively digesting a poem rather than actively engaging with the text ... We are more conditioned to engaging with a text as part of an academic close reading here in the west … which is counter to the way ehi should be read … at least initially.

As a result I think it is up to the reader and writer to intuitively judge for themselves what does and doesn't work ... it has been much the same in martial arts ... As opposed to looking to definitive grammatical structures as fixed guidelines … as they're often employed when defining a sonnet or a rhyme scheme that defines a specific poetic style of english poetry.

 It all reminds me of how O’Sensei the founder of Aikido studied several martial arts … Judo ... Jujitsu ... and Iaido among them and created his own martial art form Aikido ... after having mastered the fundamentals of each … It’s similar to how Bruce Lee created Jeet Kune Do … by forming an amalgamation of what was martially practical ... of what did and did not work ... O’Sensei and Bruce Lee amongst others were the mixed martial artists of their … of my time … I realize as an Aikido Blackbelt of over twenty years I am no longer as martially effective as the mixed martial artist of today … in part because I’ve remained fixed to a relatively static martial arts form … Yet I am still much more of a martial “artist” in comparison to a mixed martial artist who has never extensively focused on the artistic aesthetic of a single martial arts form. 

Thinking again of music … Jazz and Classical Indian Hindustani Music ... in particular in comparison to western classical symphonic music  … It seems western symphonic music … literature … and academia have much in common … all are more absolutely fixed and static ... We westerners thrive on the tangible … the empirically quantitative and qualitative … whereas ehi are much more intangibly abstract and must primarily be intuitively interpreted to gain full insight … never mind melding what the west has great psychological difficulty formally acknowledging in any formal academic or religious manner  … a mind body connection … some would even say a spiritual connection with its readers to nature.   

In regards to music haiku idioms use the 5-7-5 (-7-7, etc.) sound counts as a conductor would the notes in a musical score or as a jazz musician would when improvising a solo ... while remaining a cohesiveness component of a Jazz Quartet ... It is this stochastic solo of the jazz musician that so personifies the 5-7-5 (7-7) syllable count that acts as a stochastic structural guideline as opposed to acting as a fixed binary rule of interpreting a sonnet or rhyme scheme ... Yes both a sonnet and a haiku have specific syllable counts ... but haiku's onji or syllable counts act much more as a supportive structure rather than a definitive foundation for a haiku … This is made especially difficult … some would say impossible when attempting to align Japanese onji with english syllables counts in translation.

I realize that traditional english haiku were first definitively introduced in a 5-7-5 format ... Yet this syllabic count was more of a well-intended yet never the less roughly translated interpretation of onji into syllables ... regardless an exact sound count translation still only acts as a structurally supportive rather than a definitive foundational feature of the haiku idiom ... Whereas the decasyllabic count of a sonnet was more a definitive foundational feature … rather than a supportive structural feature of it's poetic form. 

Up until the opening of Japan to the west there were no definitive rulebooks for writing in haiku idioms that I am aware of ... just as there were only a few for martial arts or Budo … Musashi Miyamoto's The Book of Three Rings comes to mind ... Yet once introduced to the west ... westerners began deconstructing and defining definitive interpretative guidelines for Asian cultural art forms ... This is not to say that they didn't' already exist ... but less weight was associated in their being formally laid out in western style texts so definitively and absolutely ... In the past more weight was given to these guidelines being handed down orally from generation to generation via individualized interactions with say a Sensei or SiFu ... rather than being read analyzed ... deconstructed ... and compartmentalized in a book ... classroom ... or literary critique ... where they're theoretically digested ... contrasted and compared to western artistic standards and frequently classified within the confines of already established western genres ... and assigned sub-genre status at best.

As a child I noticed numerous examples of what I would today characterize as subcultural neologisms ... in written forms with the advent of email ... and in verbal discourse in the culture of Hip-Hop & the lyrics and beat boxing in Rap Music ... In the ways the MC's used short phrases in between musical notes or atop harmonies ... when using their voices as musical instruments (akin to the scatting of Ella Fitzgerald) ... or as part of the melody ... chorus ... base beat or beat box ... As an adult I noticed numerous regionally specific neologisms employed via verbal chatter on the C.B. and short wave radios of cross country truckers and especially from the legalized Kat Houses of rural Nevada ... All of which reminds me of how ehi has and continues to create its own neologisms … kigo … and phrases … Terms that are derived from Japanese kigo but  that can have varied ... derived ... or different meaning depending upon which region of the planet a poet is referencing … that is if they choose to reference a specific region at all.

From hovel in the Willamette National Forest #65

waxing   waning 

years teeming   flowing with time

rivers   fjords   oceans

evaporating waters

clouds raining down on me 

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #69

colours have sound

light   sound align in nature

sounding in colour

From my hovel in the Willamette Forests #81

nature transcends isms

where divinity resides

calm still solitude

Posted with Blogsy

From My hovel in the Willamette National Forest #53

Full moons painting

Forest canopied canvas

Splattering on trunks

projecting clear white shadows

cast upon a forest floor

From my hovel in the Willamette National Forest #83

Smell !      the fallen

long spun sillhouettes cut-split-stacked

woodstove fuel     firewood