Revisiting "Up the Mtn " #224

Revisiting "Up the Mtn", #237

Revisiting Up the Mtn page 76, poem #219

Revisitng page 62 from Up the Mtn poem #233

A play on the meaning of the word Komorebi.

Revisiting Up the Mtn poem #233, on page 72

       For me this image, these words epitomize my experience, my life in the Pacific Northwest, and in particular in the Willamette National Forest. This particular night , almost the last day of august was to be what the meteorologists were calling a rare blue moon. So I went for a midnight walk and this is what I saw, what I experienced. The moonlight was projecting moonbeams of blown out light, through the trails thick forest canopy. The light blew out the leaves projecting from its dark mossy branches. It was a surreal ethereal experience, one that ended between the time it took me to create this image with my iPhone and attempting to capture it with my dslr camera. No matter, it was still a mesmerizing experience. It was an experience that symbolized for me the changing of seasons. I had started a fire in my wood stove and could feel the temperature drop that night, especially when there was no cloud cover as was the case on this night. It made me feel melancholy thinking about the summer I’d spent here in this forest, this summer, knowing it would soon be time to return to the city, and deal with the ways of life dominated by man once again

Revisiting Up the Mtn #193, page 74

Revisiting Up the Mtn pag 60, poem #235

Revisiting Up the Mtn #111, on page 58

Revisiting Up the Mtn page 56, haiga #164

Revisiting Up the Mtn page 54, #177

I knew that after cutting/splitting firewood that if sap seemed to stick everywhere, to my gloves, my overalls, and my hands, that I would be rewarded that night with a crackling popping fire that so soothed me in the dark and moonlight. A crackling that seemed to match up with the sparkling of the stars or moonlight, that is if I didn’t get to much cloud cover that night. 

Revisiting Up the Mtn page 52, #187

Revisiting Up the Mtn, page 50, poem #116

The term this other world  is a reference to the civil rights essayist and haiku poet Richard Wright. In the last year of his life Wright was living as an American expat in Paris. Wright was dying and wrote over I believe it was 4,000 haiku in the last year of his life. Although I personally perceive many of these 4,000 haiku as senryu. So this was my way of paying homage to him, and performing a rudimentary form of honkadori. For me “Up the Mtn” - “in my hovel” was and still is another world to me, both literally and figuratively. While Wright found it outside of America, in Europe and Africa, an the world he created on the page with his words.The image that is part of this haiga is also somewhat dreamy or other worldly.

Unifying Intersectional Discord Within English Haiku Idioms (Part V)

Discovering Dharmic & Abrahamic Divinity coetaneously in Nature

Many in the A-W academic and literary world and in society at large are subtly influenced by conservative Abrahamic views. This influence suppresses and subverts whatever is deemed divergent, in regards to philosophical, literary, and poetic ways of thinking and writing. Rajiv Malhotra speaks to these conflicted and subversive influences in many theological and even some academic circles in the A-W world. “Whoever is not for Jesus will be assumed to be against him and on the side of the Devil. For such believers, a mutually respectful engagement with dharma is tantamount to dealing with the Devil. It would be sinful to engage on any terms other than the clear intent to convert.” (Excerpt From: Malhotra, Rajiv. “Being Different.” iBooks.).

All of this is in opposition to most Hindus, Buddhists, and many First Nations and Native American Peoples who tend to more pluralistically accept Jesus as one of a plethora of divine incarnations, but not as God's exclusive divine incarnation. So I wonder, do christian or abrahamic haiku poets likewise feel conflicted in regards to accepting the possibility that nature might be a place where they can discern divinity that might exist independent of or contemporaneously with their Abrahamic God? Do we need to do so in order to write haiku on a higher level, one that transcends our religious and spiritual beliefs, if only momentarily? Does doing so or even discussing the possibility threaten our/their religious beliefs? Can the christian god coexist as an equal with the plethora of deities that may also exist in nature? These are complex, controversial, and nuanced issues. They're also issues that each of us has to come to terms with individually. Sadly, many of us deal with these issues by dismissing their relevance, much like we do with other intersectionally complex issues of oppression (like sexism, racism, and gender identity issues). Do we have to perceive spiritual or religious divinity in nature at all, to write haiku on a higher level?

I don't have definitive answers to all these questions, although I'm aware of and open to ideas that may seem divergent from my own. 

Still I'm attempting to brooch these issues in broader and more generalized terms by initiating a dialogue. Since it is the A-W's continued reappropriation of kigo for mukigo that is watering down the depth and aesthetic integrity of Saigyo’s Wakka, Basho's Hokku and Sokan & Shiki's Haiku, as they continue to be re-translated and thus gentrified into English. This loss of natural aesthetic integrity was accelerated by a catalyst. This catalyst was-is the Anglo-West's egocentric segregation of man apart from nature. This is exacerbated by the west’s own Abrahamic-Greek division, one that continues its internal struggle to synthesize a uniform Abrahamic -Greek conceptualization and interaction with nature; as opposed to coexisting with, or even embracing another more Dharmic perspective that views nature as divine in and of itself, irrespective of the presence of any deity. The west's discord is aggravated by the many A-W poets who are unaware of their detachment or resistance to concepts they may repressively perceive as divergent, because they independently (of god) personify nature as divine. This concept of nature’s divinity speaks to the essence of haiku. This essence is personified in the poetry of poets like Saigyo, Basho, Issa, Sokan, Shiki, Buson, Jun Fujita, etc. Even A-W and Persian poets like Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, Rumi, and later Wright all acknowledged nature’s divinity in their own way. To write T-C Haiku, or of it we too must come to some spiritual complacency in regards to natures divine essence or at least its secular wonderment, otherwise haiku's essence will continue to be distorted and corrupted. 

Often without realizing it A-Westerners and Westernized-Easterners are frequently shackled with this contradiction between Abrahamic and Dharmic spiritual and religious perceptions of divinity in regards to its application and meaning in ehi. This intellectual and spiritual contradiction, this discord spills over into how all of us conceptualize and apply Dharmic based terms like shizen, koto, zoka, and even kigo, in relation to our perceptions of the role nature plays in our lives and in haiku. 

So, how can A-W poets indoctrinated into this self conflicted culture of secularism (Greek based academic evolutionism), synthesized with non-secular (abrahamic based creationism) thought become open to writing in a more passive voice, a less peremptory manner? How can A-W poets write in a manner that they can be receptive participants in collaboratively creating haiku with nature, as opposed to writing apart from nature? I choose to believe you can continue to honor and not betray your Abrahamic spiritual ideals while simultaneously embracing others as equals, that have different ways of being. This is after all what those “Manifested” by the 'Destiny" of the A-W empire have done while being colonized and gentrified by us. Still many of us that were raised to believe it's our way (senryu) or the highway, or perceive their way of being, thinking, or believing, as being superior to all others will have great difficulty, poetically speaking to nature as if it were independent of God, yet still divine. 

To paraphrase Rajiv Malhotra "No amount of human commonality can resolve the conflicts caused by the non-negotiable and proprietary grand narratives of Abrahamic historicism". I hope Malhotra is wrong. If he is not, then how can we expect Abrahamic writers, scholars, readers, etc to find commonality amongst themselves, never mind with a Dharmic art form like haiku?  

This issue of haiku/senryu is an intersectionally conflicted one. It is a literary issue intersected by class, cultural, race, ethnicity, linguistics, religion, spirituality, and conceptions of nature/naturalism that are unique to haiku. 

"...The epistemology of modern science is not the intuitive perception of ... essence or form of things ... it is a technical, formative epistemology ... that tortures so-called nature to force nature itself to answer". (Ban'ya Natsuichi in his online essay, "Technique Used in Modern Japanese Haiku: Vocabulary and Structure".)

Still I would suggest that one of Japan's Cultural contributions to the literary world is haiku's methodology, it's unique hermeneutic poetic aesthetic, Haiku's teleological perspective unifies natural threads that in turn transcend the Judeo-Christian God or humanities self absorbed mukigo like ways, while speaking to our innate embodied (shizen) connection to unifying our integral (zoka) relationship with nature. 

Why is kigo essential to traditional haiku, structurally and thematically? Because! "By including Kigo in haiku, the rhythm of the earth's revolution is incorporated within haiku".  (Robert D. Wilson's excerpt from his interview with Kai Hasegawa from his online essay "The Colonization of Japanese Haiku"). So this is why kigo and to a lesser extent kireji are the definitive characteristics of traditional haiku. "Kigo usage in Japan was a given before ...  the Gregorian calendar". (Robert D. Wilson from his online essay "The Colonization of Japanese Haiku"). Kigo is an issue I've also addressed in my book, JIKU. I also agree with Wilson when he states "Again a restructuring of the Japanese vocabulary and its poetic perception/interpretation of nature; a side effect of the self-imposed colonization of cultural memory". (Robert D. Wilson from his online essay "The Colonization of Japanese Haiku"). 

Again this is what Gandhi referred to as “stripping people of their collective notion of self … (via 

the) “systematic destruction of their relationship with nature” This “self-imposed” colonization of cultural memory continues today. Haiku's colonization takes the form of a 5-7-5 shelled format. This colonized shell is then filled with muki as its primary ingredient. This is how colonization systematically re- appropriates how the world perceives the essence of hokku/haiku. This redefining of kigo as an optional accessory rather than essential ingredient in haiku, is the result of A-W perspectives. A-W perspectives usually feel comfortable linguistically rather than spiritually assimilating haiku. They linguistically do so by counting syllables and employing short-long-short lines, akin to counting rhyme schemes, lines, meter, and syllable stressing in a sonnet. Yet many A-Westerner's feel religious or spiritual discomfort accepting nature as the essentially divine subject of their poetry, equal to, or god forbid more divine then their Christian God. After all nature is the "other" subject, one in which they/we have a maladaptive relationship, distorted by our historicists linear way of seeing the world.

Unifying Intersectional Discord Within English Haiku Idioms (Part IV)

                               Speaking of nature, and our interactive sources of discord 

"The future direction of haiga is uncertain ... since it depends on the future of 

haiku itself. ... powerful influences ... lead potential poets away from nature ... 

away from extraordinary awareness of the seasons ... away from the 

observation of minute but flavorful moments of daily life. Instead of the 

traditional cycles of rural life ... there is now a pervading focus on urban 

existence with its stress on products and possessions. Japanese like 

Americans are ... deluged with mass entertainment ... we can only hope that 

both haiku poetry and haiga will continue to serve as a counterweight to the 

pressures of the modern world."

(Published by Marsh Art Gallery and the University of Richmond, in association with the University of 

Hawaii Press. From the book entitled Haiga: Takebe Socho and The Haiku-Painting Tradition: Haiga and 

Japanese Art)      

In regards to humanities discord, our dysfunction and/or maladaptive behavior in regards to the 

way we interact with and perceive nature, I'll address two sources. Though before I address these sources, 

I'll speak to what I mean when I refer to “our natural interactions with nature” (Bukusai Ashagawa JIKU 

5th edition). when I speak of our interactions with nature I’m speaking of our comfort level, in regards to 

the when, where, how, and if we live or spend time in a forest or anywhere in nature for extended periods. 

I speak of existing and then thriving in a setting where nature, her elements and the other living beings 

that coexist within it dictate to you, rather than you imposing upon them. I speak of putting on a pack and 

living in a tent/shelter where there is no bathroom, running water or electricity. Or living in a small cabin 

where protecting your food source from ants, mice, and bears is as much a concern as stocking your wood 

stove or fireplace; where stoking that wood stove or fireplace is not just for heat, but as a cooking and self 

defense source. To live in nature where dusk, dawn, and the whims of the weather dictates what you do, 

rather then a job. This is what I mean when I refer to "our natural interactions with nature” (Bukusai 

Ashagawa JIKU 5th edition), especially in regards to our dysfunctional and/or maladaptive interactions 

being the sources of our natural discord. 

These sources of discord with nature have brought to the forefront a "distinctly" A-W form of 

pastiche haiku. This form of poetry uses haiku's "cicada shell" if you will, its 5-7-5 or short-long-short 

format. This form of poetry is then used to fill the inside of the cicada with mukigo instead of kigo 

to create haiku's fraternal twin, senryu.  

At least two of the sources of our discord are Abrahamic (Anglo-Western) maladaption and 

Dharmic (Eastern) dysfunctionality, in regards to how most of us associate and interact with nature today. 

Generally speaking, Dharmic origins have a preponderance of views, views that speak to nature as being 

seen as divine in and of itself. While Abrahamic or A-W views maladaptively characterize humanity as 

patriarchal, as imposing our interests upon nature, it treats nature as a resource for man, to tame or impose 

Abrahamic order upon. 

Think for a moment of the American painter John Gast, and his symbolic painting “American 

Progress”, it acts as a sort of crude haiga. Gast's work acts as a piece of iconic symbology for the A-W 

world accompanied by text that epitomized western domination. 

Here is an excerpt from the text of the "Manifest Destiny" which often accompanied Gast's 

painting."To control North America ... as god's chosen people ... to spread civilization, free market 

capitalism, and Christianity ... to enlighten the world ... bringing light into the darkness".

These words and Gast's painting would come to personify the symbology of America’s westward 

expansion or its “Manifest Destiny” worldwide. This manifest destiny was rooted in the belief that 

America was there for the Christian man to tame, and take ownership of. North America was there for 

man to mold into what he (not she) believed would best reflect Christian values. Never mind that this 

westward expansion or manifest destiny required the annihilation of most, and the colonization of the 

remaining non Christian Native Communities that were already thriving where they wanted to expand. 

This colonization required once again in Gandhi’s words, “the systematic destruction of their ... 

relationship with nature. Stripping people of their collective notion of self … a prelude to ... the process 

of colonization ... (which) goes on today under the name of 'development' wherein success is measured by 

the criteria of Westernization."

The Black Ships that would posture within range of Japan’s coastline were merely another 

example of this expansion of America’s A-W Manifest Destiny, only played out in Asia. Again my point 

is not to vilify our A-W society, but to make my literary point by critiquing it. Japan and China too 

were-are empires, which did-do much the same throughout much of Asia. This has been the legacy of 

many of humanities more aggressive and intersecting imperial societies. I’m just addressing how the 

world’s present dominant Abrahamic A-W society is influencing my literary art form, ehi/haiku today. 

So as I’ve illustrated, this Abrahamic viewpoint sees nature as a place apart from God, as an 

untamed godless place where man was banished to, from the garden of eden. This historicist perspective 

immediately imposes a maladaptive Abrahamic view of nature upon those of us indoctrinated into this A-W way of faith, thinking, believing, and creating. No matter whether we identify as A-W or not, if we're born and raised in the western world, or are in the eastern world and are heavily influenced by the west (few aren't), we must then contemplate simultaneously being open to a multiplicity of religious or spiritual ways or possibilities. Ways of thinking, being, or even believing, and creating, to write aligned with haiku's Dharmic artistic aesthetic. For those of us born and raised in a Dharmic based eastern world we have to continually work at not manifesting the naturally maladaptive world’s dominant A-W concepts of nature that can create dysfunctional tendencies in the ways we interact, with nature. Being able to not just coexist but thrive within the intersectionality of divergent ways of being, with and in nature is something Basho, Saigyo, Issa, Buson, and Taneda did not face on the level we do today.( More recently poets like Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, and Wright poignantly addressed these issues of nature, via transcendentalism and ethnic nationalism. Still though, these more modern A-W poets (especially Richard Wright) wrote more senryu rather then haiku poems. In comparison to haiku, the others wrote more so in a verse, prose, or haibun style in regards to transcendentalism. They also wrote more so of imposing upon nature, rather than of equally being of or a part of nature. 

Still regardless of the reason, on some level most all humans on the planet suffer from some level of discord in regards to their interactions with nature. In the end much like social justice issues, the symptoms, causes, antecedents, and solutions, treatments for the continued decline of haiku are intersectional. Again these intersectional causes and symptoms result in large part from A-W and self colonization, as well as Abrahamic-maladaptiveness and Dharmic-dysfunctionality, in regards to our intersectional interactions with nature. As a result of our natural western tendencies to impose upon haiku, mukigo is being manifested as the gentrified tool used to subtly supplant haiku. So once mukigo is substituted for kigo a poem ceases to be a haiku, and is assimilated as senryu. This assimilation occurs regardless of whether kigo or nature is referenced in conjunction with non saijiki manmade subjects in a senryu. Again I'm not making an argument for or against senryu or haiku. I am instead speaking to what I perceive as the how and why of haiku's proxy gentrification by today's A-W interpretation of titular haiku, which in reality is actually senryu. To what degree mukigo or kigo is present in a poem as the underlying theme is truly a subjective judgement; it is a judgement that is relative to each readers and writers life experience, our way of conceptualizing and contextualizing external stimuli internally.