Category: seasons

haiga, haiku, humor, photography, seasons

Fall Frolic

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
October is Chores Can Wait Month.  I took a short walk that inspired a haiku, but the chore gremlins got their revenge when the haiku generated yet another chore.  That’s OK.  Writing about the nuts and bolts of haiku beats raking leaves.
(BTW, the [Menu] button atop the vertical black bar reveals the widgets.)

Fall Frolic #1
|Dancing on the breeze,
|ignorant of gravity:
|red leaf in blue sky.

Nuts and Bolts

My haiku has “#1” in its title to distinguish it from a similar haiku Fall Frolic #2.  I prefer #1.  Why bother with #2 at all?  The answer to that question helps answer some others.

Fall Frolic #1 implicitly poses a riddle, then provides the answer.  Who is the ignorant dancer?  More subtly, why is (s)he said to be dancing “on” (not “in” or “with”) the breeze?  The basic structure is the same as in Jane Reichold’s classic

roasting_veg_chkn_800x575

Haiku © Jane Reichold superimposed on
Photo © Vladlena Azima | ShutterStock

Now consider swapping the initial and final lines of my riddle haiku:

Fall Frolic #2
|Red leaf in blue sky,
|ignorant of gravity:
|dancing on the breeze.

While #2 describes the same scene #1, it lacks the suspense and resolution of the riddle structure.  While both versions work, #1 works better.  I still owe U an explanation: why bother with #2 at all?

The first draft for what eventually became #1 had initial and final lines that were very close to the corresponding lines in #2.  The middle line had an entirely different way of hinting that the leaf’s freedom is a temporary illusion, between being stuck on the tree and stuck on the ground.  The first draft’s hint would have been too obscure w/o either an appropriate picture or the explicit scene setting done by the initial line in #2.

Already unhappy with the first draft’s middle line, I swapped initial and final lines on a whim.  The resulting riddle structure was motivation to get serious about clarifying the middle line.

Some haiku poets strive to have the initial and final lines be interchangeable.  Unless I am responding to a challenge calling for haiku that work just as well when the initial and final lines are swapped, I usually do not consider swapping.  Too gimmicky and arcane.  But a swap while revising might help answer the eternal writers’ questions

Am I saying what I want to say?

Am I saying it clearly?

red-leaf_blue-2_haiku-144_840x465

0
haibun, haiga, haiku, humor, philosophy, politics, seasons

Vampire Bunny at a Haiku Party

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
Follow tradition or push the envelope?  Normal or weird?  (Normalcy spiked with weirdness?)  Haiku or senryu?  This crowd does not fret about simplistic dichotomies.  Let’s get some saké and join the party.
– Gray button (upper left corner) reveals widgets, –
– above post (on phone) or beside it (on desktop). –

Haiku poems often want (and sometimes need) to interact with images or prose, as in haiga or haibun.  Here is a gathering of ten haiku that could stand alone if they had to.  (Some would rather not.)  They have been invited to come here and interact with just each other, while enjoying some good saké (or whatever).

momokawa_crop_vampire-bunny_840x684

Overlay © Incognito – Russian Federation | 123RF Stock Photo

A haiku inspired by an image may or may not speak to readers who have not seen the image.  It’s hard for the writer to make this call objectively.  That’s OK.  As Stephen Jay Gould often told readers of his articles in Natural History, perfect objectivity is a myth anyway.  (The path from my raw data to “facts” that matter to me depends on my cultural baggage and personal experience.)  Rather than pretend that my judgement calls are objective, I try to compensate for my biases.  In particular, some of my haiku were not invited to the party because they might be too dependent on their inspirations to stand alone.  That’s OK too.  Unlike me, they are not compulsively self-reliant.

Like some of the other guests, October was originally posted in a haiga or haibun context.  That’s why the title it wears as a name tag is also a link.  (When a pale yellow background indicates that several such guests arrived together from the same place, only one of them has a link.)  Click on a link to see the guest(s) interact with an image or some prose that adds to the experience of the haiku.

Seen in Spring
|Kelly green moss on
|rocks near the clear quiet stream
|with water striders 
|October
|Bright sun and cool air;
|azure skies and pumpkin pies.
|Leaves fall in glory. 
Who Miscounted?
|This so-called “haiku”
|ignores five-seven-five, so
|it’s not a haiku.
|Deciduous
|Lifeless?  No, leafless.
|Trees hold their breath all winter,
|exhale leaves in spring. 
This is Not Apollo 13
|Is failure an option?
|No, it is a given.
|But we will still try. 
|No Pots of Gold
|Seek ends of rainbows.
|You will not find them? Okay.
|The quest is enough. 
Fiscal Responsibility
|Debts rise; incomes fall.
|Hard times demand bold action:
|tax cuts for the rich! 
|Seize the Breeze
|Helicopter seeds
|fall from maples and travel
|far enough, this once. 
What’s for Lunch?
|Mosquitoes in flight
|are seen as meat on the hoof
|by a dragonfly. 
|Vampire Bunny
|With coprophagy
|as the alternative,
|you might suck blood too. 
6
growing old, haiku, photography, seasons

Early Spring Snow Shower

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
Unaware of what lies below them, snowflakes fall thru air that is barely above freezing.  Aware of what lies ahead of me, I rejoice in a partial workaround for growing old.
(BTW, the [Menu] button atop the vertical black bar reveals the widgets.)

Friendly Friday Photo Challenge – Feelings of Spring

snow-melts-on-blacktop_840x1146

Ground Already Warm
|Falling thru cold air,
|oblivious snow flakes will
|melt on the blacktop.

[2019-03-22]  Bummer.  I want to photograph the inspiration for my haiku, but my old hands cannot go more than a few seconds w/o thick gloves in cold weather.

Hmmm.  Tho unheated, my garage gets some warmth leaking from the furnace.  I put on a pair of thin gloves that can be worn while doing some things that previously required bare hands.  I open the garage door and look outside while standing just inside the garage.  Maybe I can work enough of the camera’s buttons while wearing the thin gloves.

The lens zooms too quickly for fine control.  I cannot move forward or backward to compensate for zooming too far out or in.  Oh well, I can crop the image later to compensate for zooming too far out.  Is there a serviceable view in some direction from where I can stand w/o getting too cold?  Hmmm.  I try five views and go with the last one.

While it does illustrate my haiku, my photo is admittedly not of standalone quality.  I can live with that.  Any partial workaround for growing old is a small triumph to savor.

4
history, language, photography, seasons

Solstice Salutation

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
Whether a person lives fully and righteously is vastly more important than which religion (if any) helps them do so.  But I still wish people “Merry Xmas” in late December.  Can anybody suggest something with more pizzazz than the generic salutations but w/o religious implications?

When I say Merry Xmas (pronounced like “MEH-ree KRIS-muhs”), it might be heard as an unwelcome hint that the hearer is (or should be) a Christian.  I suppose I should say something like Happy Holidays or Season’s Greetings instead, but the generic salutations for this time of year sound bland and vague to ears as old as mine.  Can anybody suggest something with more pizzazz but w/o religious implications?

I decorate for the winter solstice (with multicultural Xmas lights and wreaths) and hope it is OK to wish U a

chickadee-wreath_el-greco

Merry Xmas!

– Gray button (upper left corner) reveals widgets, –
– above post (on phone) or beside it (on desktop). –
4
enlightenment, haibun, haiku, history, photography, seasons

Oh Come, All Fibo-ku

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
An old Xmas lighting tradition defies a darkness worse than long nights.  I honor it with my lights and with a fibo-ku (a haiku using the Fibonacci series rather than 5-7-5 for syllable counts).

My response to

Carpe Diem Weekend-Meditation #10
Fibo-ku winter time

could be called a “fibo-bun” because it is like a haibun but has syllable counts from the Fibonacci sequence in the haiku part.

Several cultures have responded to the long nights of winter with festivals or structures celebrating light at roughly the time of the solstice.  While not quite old enough to have personal memories of Stone Age passage tombs aligned with the sunrise (on a few of the several days that amounted to the solstice with Stone Age time-keeping), I do remember multicolored Hanukkah candles and the cheerful chiaroscuro of multicolored Xmas lights draped over trees and large shrubs.

multi-vert_800x1116
Nowadays I see mostly different kinds of Xmas lights.  Some people set out ugly jumbles of inflated Santas and other symbols of the gifting frenzy; others outline their houses with harshly uniform white lights.  But some still carry forward the old Xmas lighting tradition (with LED-s now).  And the glorious vocal music of Hanukkah and Xmas still transcends the literal meanings of the verses (2 of which inspired my titles here).

Darkness worse than long nights and garish decorations hangs heavy in today’s air.  Maybe this darkness will also recede.  My lights are up.

Yet in the Darkness Shineth
|Red,
|green,
|blue, and
|yellow lights:
|multicultural
|winter solstice celebration
|defies dark tribal hatred to sing of love and light.

multi-square_800x669

– Gray button (upper left corner) reveals widgets, –
– above post (on phone) or beside it (on desktop). –
10
photography, seasons

Thirty-six Hudson Valley Pix in 2017

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
These photos illustrate why fall is the best season of the year in the Hudson Valley.  U can vote for your favorite(s) in Central Hudson’s annual Fall Foliage Photo Contest.
(BTW, the [Menu] button atop the vertical black bar reveals the widgets.)

I have gotten my electricity from Central Hudson for many years.  This year, I also got some deeply discounted LED bulbs and a tiny chance to win a contest.

There are 36 finalists in Central Hudson’s Fall Foliage Photo Contest for 2017 (out of 180 entries).  My entry is among the finalists, but winning is unlikely.  That’s OK.  A flyer for the contest was enclosed with my electric bill; it was a good day for a short local walk; I wanted to learn by doing with a new camera; I got lucky.

To see some good illustrations of why fall is the best season of the year in the Hudson Valley, U can visit the album page on Facebook with cropped thumbnails of the finalists.  Click on a thumbnail to see the full image.

The contest is judged by counting Facebook [Like]-s.  U can [Like] as many photos as U wish.  Voting ends at noon on Tuesday, 2017-11-21.  To have your vote(s) count, U must also visit Central Hudson’s main page on Facebook and click [Like] there.  Central Hudson is indeed likable as an enterprise.  They deliver the juice well, encourage conservation, and facilitate buying juice generated from renewable sources if the customer is willing and able to pay accordingly.

My own photo got some postprocessing on the computer to make the image more like the experience, but I refrained from goosing the image beyond the experience (and from [Like]-ing my own photo):

JM_2017-10-27_BKR_800x442

I liked many of the photos and decided to [Like] 2 photos that had unusual compositions and bright (but believable!) colors:

7
humor, philosophy, photography, seasons

Old Gold

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
Ultimate reality is elusive (or maybe illusory).  All photos in this post were taken by daylight on sunny late winter mornings in 2017, using the same dried silver dollar plant in the same corner of the same room.  But they don’t look it.
(BTW, the [Menu] button atop the vertical black bar reveals the widgets.)

Tattered old gold still glows.

gold-point_800x600

But is it really silver?

silver_800x600

Or some nameless pearlish color?

Shifting light; flaky white balance; …

Ultimate reality is elusive (or maybe illusory).

Rashomon

All photos in my response to

Gold ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #111

were taken by daylight on sunny late winter mornings in 2017, using the same dried silver dollar plant in the same corner of the same room.  The old camera’s unpredictable white balance sometimes lucked into interesting images.  It also inspired a riff connecting an old Beatles song to a recycling incentive, but the old camera was replaced after showing more signs of senility.

Another response to the same challenge shows that silver dollar plants sometimes do look golden in natural light!

8
flowers, haiku, photography, seasons

Waiting Impatiently for Autumn

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
My previous posts about waiting for autumn have been updated here in response to a CDHK episode.  July predicts;  August teases;  September backslides and hesitates;  October triumphs in the end.
(BTW, the [Menu] button atop the vertical black bar reveals the widgets.)

My previous posts about waiting for autumn were not CDHK responses.  My response to
Carpe Diem #1227 waiting for autumn
(Aki tikashi, Aki wo matsu)is to update and reblog them.  They fit the prompt better than anything else I can offer now.

Prophet for a Day (posted 2016-07-21)

Soon after the wild daylilies have finished blooming, another flower in my yard turns to prophecy.  The pale blue blossoms are long gone, but a few of the leaves on a few of the plants have another calling now.  For about a day, they prophesy the next season.

prophet

Prophet for a Day
|Wild geranium
|(just one leaf for just one day)
|turns in high summer.

Fall Preview (posted 2015-09-01)

WiPachysandra_842x582

As happens in many years where I live, late August of 2015 was a sneak preview of fall, the year’s best season:

Days are still too warm, but more are dry and breezy while fewer are hot and humid.  A few cool nights lead to chilly mornings, and I suddenly notice that my garden flag with a picture of phlox is out-of-season.  The roadsides have goldenrod and purple loosestrife now.

Virginia creeper is turning, as are some red maples in wet areas.  Nearly all the healthy trees are still green, but there is a hint of yellow in many of those greens. The process will slow to a crawl in September; I will spend much of that month grumbling when the weather backslides and thinking “C’mon! C’mon!” when I look at green leaves.

OnRock_825x619

October
|Bright sun and cool air;
|azure skies and pumpkin pies.
|Leaves fall in glory.

9
(reblog), haiku, seasons, tanka

Migrating Monarchs

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
After reblogging a post with a haiku about the autumn migration of monarch butterflies, I continue the story with another haiku and a tanka.
(BTW, the [Menu] button atop the vertical black bar reveals the widgets.)

A recent post by Christy Draper on Dancing Echoes honors the start of the epic autumn migration of monarch butterflies with a photo and a haiku, both beautiful.  After effectively reblogging that post below, I continue the story with another haiku and a tanka.

When I worked in a building with a glass wall overlooking a broad lawn, I sometimes drew strength from the sight of migrating monarchs trudging thru the air with steady wing beats.  They were doing what they had to do, and I returned to doing what I had to do.

Originally posted as Autumn Monarchs | Dancing Echoes:

enlight1

Migrating Monarchs
Tumble from atop the trees
Black and orange leaves

• • •

View original

Monarch butterflies
migrating to Mexico:
orange wings of will.
~ ~ ~ ~
Tiring as I trudge
toward an unseen distant goal,
I see the monarchs.
Mexico is far away,
but they will get there someday.

2