News and 5 Summer Haiku
Well.... It has been quite the past six months or so. Mom's apparently doing fine on hew heart medication and wrestling with the concept of stress reduction for the ulcers. I'm searching more in earnest for a job, hoping to have something lined up by October. We've enjoyed the first cucumbers and cherry tomatoes of the season. Apparently there's some little orange eggplants I must go pick and enjoy too.
The wedding is less than 3 weeks away. There's a lot to be done even as simple as we've kept things. CK and I are apparently experiencing pre-wedding stress, which to us feels bad but my therapist assured me on Monday that it is actually perfectly ordinary. I suppose it further proves the point that a same-sex wedding is in no way different from a heterosexual one... we even get terribly stressed out!
CK has inspired me to experiment with making very large origami cranes. I made one yesterday out of watercolor paper and then painted it. I want to do one and paint it with clouds. We're going to put paper cranes of all sizes around the reception venue and encourage guests to take them home.
All that and a little summer haiku:
Sweetness of summer.
Stonefruit nestled together
In market basket.
The cats melt into
Sleeping puddles of warm fur.
Waiting for cool night.
Deep green summer leaves
Yet still adorn the lilac.
Look, brown edges form.
On hot days grateful
Sighs are heard in shady spots
Along the steep trail.
Cucumber hiding
Shyly under the low leaves.
Summer's abundance.
Springtime Snow
Just a little haiku for spring. I added this to some artist trading cards I painted featuring cherry trees blooming.
Brisk wind shakes petals.
Blanketing the neighborhood
In pink, springtime snow.
Mom’s Choice
I spent the 5th with Mom, her birthday. We didn't really do anything special at all, I just went on her shopping errands with her. Mom's always been a shopper, poking around looking at things is a fun day for her. I find it generally fatiguing, although we agree on thrift store shopping and both enjoy it.
I was feeling very anxious and down about things having only spoken with her for a few minutes when she told me about the cancer. Actually talking with her in person helped a lot to alleviate some of those uncomfortable feelings. I think seeing that she felt resolved and at peace with things, at least she did on Friday, was reassuring in a lot of ways.
Chemotherapy might be an option, as might surgery. Radiation isn't really an option since she's had it so much. What Mom really wants is to receive palliative care, just medication for pain and anxiety rather than trying to 'cure' the cancer. She also is interested in alternative medicine. She really doesn't want to go through any treatments to cure cancer again.
It is so sad. I do feel anger at this one last failure of my Mom's health. She corrected my belief on when she first had cancer, it was 1973 and I was four years old (I'd thought I was closer to 9 the first time). For 36 years I've watched my Mom fight cancer, have some time of health, fight heart disease, diabetes, and increasingly debilitating arthritis. It has been exhausting for both of us in its own way.
I don't blame her, not at all. Having watched what those cures have done to her over the years I think she's making a wise decision. Her health isn't that great to begin with, her heart is very weak, and she wants to really be able to enjoy what she can of the time she has remaining to her. I honestly think she's making the best decision.
We're taking her to the coast for a few days later this month. I'm really grateful I've got more time available to do things with her and have been trying to check in by phone with her more often.
We have some squirrel-gifted daffodils blooming in the front yard, but I'm loathe to pick them as they make the yard look so cheerful. Instead I bought some flowers - stock and daffodils. Purple and vivid yellow adorning the mantle. Today's poem is a quick haiku inspired by them.
Daffodils open.
Spring flashes a wide smile from
Bright yellow faces.
Rain Returns
The sound of rain on the house, particularly the upstairs rooms that are built into the attic space, under the eaves, always makes me smile. Tonight's short haiku is inspired by it.
Rain Returns
After a welcome
Sojourn with the sun’s warm glow
March rains come again.
Saturday Connection
We rested in the morning, CK felt like she was coming down with something. We decided that hanging out at a movie with friends, as we'd planned the night before, was still something we both felt up to doing. We met up downtown to see Terry Gilliam's new movie. Afterward we got lunch from the Bombay Chaat House cart, enjoying it in the new park downtown. The day wound up at Powell's, mostly just to have coffee, and a quick shopping trip. We both really enjoyed connecting with some new friends even though we felt pretty tired as we headed home.
For today's poem I played around with the 3 line format of a 5-7-5 (syllables) haiku. Stringing several of these sets together to evoke the experience of lunch.
Saturday Lunch
The square was filled with
Sunlight streaming sideways and
The sound of water.
With conversations
Loud & sharp, punctuated
By impatient words,
Offset by laughter
And with appreciation.
A hum of voices.
The scent of rich food
Hung in the air, enticing,
Promising delight.
Mostly Haiku
Spent the day with Mom. It was a good day, I felt better after actually talking with her. After a lot of running around with Mom I rushed off to Beer & Blog to meet up with CK. Dinner at the carts and more hanging out - made for a really late night. I was really too burned out to write much about anything at all.
I've decided to recycle a children's board book for ABCs into an artist journal for haiku. I'm not sure yet if I'll use all my own haiku or some of mine mixed in with work by other authors. Mindful of wanting to continue the 30 Poems in 30 Days challenge and the possibility of many haiku for the book, I wrote a short haiku inspired by the afternoon.
Hood Haiku
Grey sky, white mountain.
Late afternoon sun glowing
Against winter snow.
Self-Cleaning Pottery
Several weeks ago I sent my teacher Hogen an artist trading card I'd made. It has the quote from Rumi on the back, that bit that has had me thinking and meditating around it since CK gave me the book for my birthday!
Ask!
Step off
proudly into sunlight,
not looking back.
Take sips of this pure wine being poured.
Don't mind that you've been given a dirty cup.
It has been useful to consider myself as the cup and the various abusive moments in my life as the stains of the cup. The imagery has become a way to see that in being caught up in the stains I'm entirely not present to the pure wine being poured, not able to appreciate my life. When I am stuck in the pain, and the habitual reactions around it, it is like drinking the wine while complaining about the cup.
When I sent the trading card to Hogen I enclosed it inside of a beautiful card with koi painted on it. Faced with the blank interior of the inside of this card my mind rushed to put something, anything that might sound like I'm a decent student. In that speedy awkwardness I wrote down something about practice being a way of cleaning the stains of the cup.
Only it isn't. I'm totally wrong in thinking that. Believing that if I just practice hard enough I can somehow clean the stains. I can't make history go away, it is impossible. It is falling into the trap of hoping that Zen or Yoga are somehow a kind of self-improvement program that will make the past not matter.
I'm missing the point. The point is to not care about the stains, not to find some way to clean the up. This wondrous, present moment is the pure wine of life. The cup holds the wine, why in hell do I care if it has stains?
On Sunday I was hanging out after the retreat, a busy time when Great Vow gets even quieter as residents head into their day off or to attend events in Portland. I happened to catch Hogen as he prepared to head into town and mentioned what I'd realized about practice. That what I'd first written him was wrong because I still cared about the stains if I was hoping practice would clean them. I told him that the whole point is for me to not care about the stains anymore.
He smiled at me, nodded and commented that the real point is that when I no longer care about the stains then the cup will clean itself.
I had to laugh to myself as he walked off, considering the aspiration to become self-cleaning pottery.
All that and a haiku for late winter!
Late winter sunshine
Inspires flowers to burst forth.
"Spring comes!" they assert.
Ango Appreciation Art
A friend from my Zen community has decided that for Ango he will collect stones, two per day picked up as he goes about his routine, and use them to make a small stupa in his meditation space. It coincides with an art project he's doing to create a piece that is built over 14 weeks and for his is a wonderful combination of his spiritual and creative practices.
I immediately was inspired to consider an Ango art project for myself. I went back to my vows and my teacher's direction to appreciate my life. How could I incorporate this into an art project? This thing that I get stuck on, spinning around the things like about my life and trying to ignore the things that hurt. The "I appreciate everything but THAT" rut.
Each day of Ango, starting with today, I will write or otherwise express something I appreciate about my life onto a piece of paper. It could be one word, it could be a collage. I am considering making a sort of assemblage mobile with them, FL even commented upon how interesting it would be to watch the piece move and shift. Maybe I can use them all assembled in one large collage.
Tonight I'm going with what I'm most appreciating right this moment - my warm, cozy, cheerful home I share with CK and the cats. She is typing on her computer, the cats are being goofy, the heat came on a moment ago. How can I not appreciate this life?
A haiku for tonight's piece of paper (a piece out a gift of paper from a Dharma sister):
Cozy, sacred home.
Alive with Love, cats, color.
I know gratitude.
As a Result of Poety
I really thought I'd written about haiku, learning the form. It is a cherished memory and activity from the year I was nine. Generally that year was one traumatic event after another, but I also was taught the form of haiku that year. It is a form of poetry I've returned to over and over in my life, although I really moved away from in during my twenties. When I started practicing yoga and zen I noticed that haiku just started to appear in my mind.
And that brings me to this past Friday. My love of haiku has borne fruit, as it were. I am being given a pair of tickets to see the production of 'Snow Falling on Cedars' at Portland Center Stage as a prize for a winter haiku I wrote! They sponsored a concert on Twitter for the best winter-themed haiku, or "snowku" and I submitted this:
Bare branches rattle.
Evergreens shiver and sway.
Winter's breath blows cold.
On Friday they posted a message that I'd won. What a delightful surprise to see appear on my computer screen while working! CK & I'll be going on the 30th and are very much looking forward to it.
I'm trying to take this into my practice too. Ango is approaching and I'm given the gift of a chance to remember the focus Hogen gave me during my first Ango: Appreciate my accomplishments.
I discount my writing a lot while at the same time am anxiously attached to it. I minimize my poetry. I even diminish the accomplishment of having my writing appear in ZCO's publication, Ink on the Cat.
"After all, they're your Sangha, they have to act like they like your writing." says my Inner Critic.
This little surprise of winning these tickets is pretty hard for even my Inner Critic to diminish. I mean someone in the "real world" liked something I wrote. Gosh.
In Kilauea Iki Crater on the Big Island in August 2009
Red Leaves
I've been enjoying the small red maple leaves that blow into our yard from a neighbor's tree. Some are still speckled yellow, while others are already turning brown. I found myself with a small clutch of them in my hand, trying to press & dry them. A few have found their way onto very small art pieces.
I believe one of those art pieces will incorporate this haiku about them.
In the air, red leaves.
Impermanent gifts, wind-brought.
Brief gems of autumn.