Being rooted makes plants easier to photograph than animals, but plants do twitch with the breeze and ruin careful compositions. Cautiously optimistic, I shoot repeatedly and hope a few images catch the air’s calm moments. This post’s haiku and images suggest that sometimes optimists win.
Tag: pic-and-a-word-challenge
Henley’s Indomitable Trees
One of the few nineteenth century poems that move me is Invictus by William Ernest Henley. The poem’s spirit of unflinching defiance can be expressed in more contemporary ways. (Henley’s way is still good.) After one very contemporary way inspired by trees, we end with a quick riff on forms and freedom in poetry.
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An Oak Flips the Bird
Storm splinters tree trunk
and gets one-finger salute.
Tree can still leaf out.
Henley’s indomitable trees are not all oaks. On a short walk to see whether the oak that had flipped the bird could still leaf out, I saw a weeping willow that did not weep and a sugar maple that was not sweet. Shrugging off storm damage, they both just leafed out.
Quick Riff on Forms and Freedom
While not so terse as a haiku, Henley’s Invictus is about as direct and succinct as formal nineteenth century poetry can be. I don’t feel expected to forgive contortions or digressions motivated more by adherence to an elaborate form than by the topic at hand. Invictus sings, and part of the appeal is that its form does not feel like a burden.
In poetry and elsewhere, adherence to forms and rules is looser nowadays. That’s a mixed blessing. Robert Frost was basically correct when he said
Writing free verse is like playing tennis w/o a net.
Tho people often try, U can’t get good poetry by sprinkling obligatory line breaks on bad prose. But there are some good poems in utterly free verse. Here are links to a few that I saw while working on this post:
Beyond Measuring the Earth
Geometry began with practical measurements over moderate distances. Boundaries of Egyptian farmers’ fields had to be restored after the Nile’s annual floods. A taut rope between two posts marked where an edge of the base of a pyramid would be laid. And so on. This prosaic technology inspired ancient Greeks to create something weird and wonderful.
People like Pythagoras and Euclid reimagined the pyramid builders’ rope as perfectly straight (not sagging a little), so thin that it had no thickness at all, and extending forever beyond the posts. Crazy. They called it a “line” and found that they could reason about such things, proving new statements by deductions from what they already knew.
Those ancient geometers discovered much that was true and good and beautiful in the imagined world of points and lines, and a few of them took the first tentative steps toward using their discoveries to help answer questions about the experienced world of posts and ropes and much else. Eratosthenes kept the promise made by “geo”+”metry” when he measured the circumference of planet Earth, even tho it was impractical to try to wrap a tape measure around it.
Modern STEM is rooted in ancient geometry (among other things), and a long hard slog has progressed from measuring the Earth to understanding it. Our understanding is not perfect and never will be, but maybe it is good enough to help us save the Earth. From us. I hope we can rise to that challenge, and that I have risen to this one:
Geometry ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #269
Image Sources
- The colorful frame around the image is upsized from my much smaller diagram for Bhaskara’s elegant proof of Pythagoras’ Theorem. The resulting fuzziness of the points and line segments is a reminder that we cannot experience the ideal perfection of geometric shapes. But we can refer to the shapes when we tell each other stories about what we experience! (Tho often hard to read w/o wrangling equations, scientific theories are among the best stories we can tell.) The colors of the line segments tie the image to the theorem’s bottom line w/o using letters that would clutter the diagram:
a² + b² = c²
- The Blue Marble image overlaid on the diagram was downloaded from NASA Visible Earth: The Blue Marble. Making NASA’s image cost a lot more than making mine. That’s OK. It was money well spent.
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Perpendicular: Upright or Uptight?
Calling 90 degrees a “right” angle is a little misleading. Yes, spatial coordinates should usually be based on perpendicular lines. But 90 degrees is often just one angle among many, and perpendicular may not be right for the job.
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Perpendicular ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #269
The ceiling should be perpendicular to the wall
(and the wall to the floor).
Even the klutz who built my house got it right.
The right angle for slicing a pizza depends on
how many slices are needed.
© sabelnik | 123RF Stock Photo
Willing to count a circle as a “line” perpendicular to any chosen straight line thru the center? (I am.) If so, then spatial coordinates should almost always (not just usually) be based on perpendicular lines. Want to navigate on a really big pizza? Use polar coordinates.
Haiga with Several Time Scales
Haiku poems commonly deal with events on short time scales. In a split second, the frog jumps into the pond. In minutes, the sunset fades. In days, the cherry blossoms fall. How about decades? How about millennia? They can show up too, along with the split second that a camera’s shutter is open.
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Sunlit Moment
Mums are good silk fakes.
Rock is real and will outlast
both mums and viewer.
I dithered over whether to respond to
Scale ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #268
with the material above. With small differences in format, it was posted 2020-04-17. Tho usually reluctant to repeat myself, I’ve noticed that bloggers I respect sometimes do repost things they feel are still relevant. I’ve also noticed that 11 months is quite a while on a cyberspace time scale.
Oh well. It’s rare that I settle on a combination of angle and settings that I really like before the light fades or shifts. Seize the moment.
Hope at Sunrise
Patrick Jennings’ challenge #259 salutes the sun in the great outdoors. Sunlight is both a source of hope and something to hope for. The same is true in more intimate settings, and the New Year got off to a good start at sunrise on 2021-01-01.
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Hope ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #259
Morning Sun on Winter Wreath
Bird, bow, and berries
scatter rays of hope to me.
Today may be good.
Ash Trees and Artichokes
Apart from being plants, they have little in common. But this particular ash tree and this particular collection of artichokes share a kind of solemn beauty in death. My images respond to the image and words in Patrick Jennings’ challenge #258, which is reblogged (in effect) at the end of this post.
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© Patrick Jennings | Beauty ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #258
There is beauty
In all things
Even death
In all things
Even death
To understand this
Is to master life
To master life
One must master death
Seeking Solitude
«You may use my image in your post, or any image you have created.» So say the rules of Patrick Jennings’ series of challenges. For challenge #257, I did both at once. (Details are at the end of this post.) The image illustrates my haiku about solitude, which is sometimes an aspiration rather than a condition.
Solitude ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #257
Not Alone
Lonely in the crowd
and weary of empty talk,
I seek solitude.
Image Notes and Credits
I was intrigued by the landscape’s azure sky in
While the sky is fine just as it is, it is also a good place for an overlay with text or another image.
I had already used a downloaded image of a wearisome crowd to illustrate the first 2 lines of my haiku Not Alone:
© Igor Zakowski | 123RF Stock Photo
(Image has been cropped.)
I decided to illustrate the whole haiku by overlaying the landscape’s sky with the crowd image, opaque at the top and then gradually fading out of sight toward the bottom. By the time I noticed that my photo editor does not support opacity gradients in overlays, I had my heart set on the project. Hmmm. Overall opacity of 60% in the overlay looks good, apart from the sharp horizontal line at the bottom of the overlay. Hmmm. My editor does have enough functionality to make that boundary a little blurry and wobbly, with one eye of Ms Purple Hair left staring at the viewer.
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Warmth and Light
Warmth and light are both in short supply outside at this time of year, but the plants in my yard know that relief is on the way. Winter will end and they will rebound. My haiku about their resilience can be a response to Patrick Jennings’ Pic and a Word Challenge #255.
Warmth ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #255
Spring
After the winter,
green plants spring back to savor
warmth and longer days.
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Twilight Tanka
In context, the phrase «world slipping into darkness» in a recent challenge refers to serene twilight in the natural world. In the political world, the same phrase has an utterly different mood. What to do? Write a tanka and dig deeper for ways to fight the political world’s descent into darkness.
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The challenge is reblogged (in effect) below. I was jolted by the clash between the serenity of the image and the political interpretation of a phrase in the poem.
In the ebbing radiance
Of a world slipping into darkness
The light is most vivid
Capable of magiks
Unknown to daylight
© Patrick Jennings | Radiance ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #243
Radiance and Darkness
In sure and certain hope
that light returns tomorrow,
sky’s radiance fades.
But slipping into darkness
is not serene for nations.
Mundane Miracle — Curl
What works for one seeker of enlightenment may or may not work for another. If listening to JS Bach’s Mass in B Minor does not work, consider something quicker and quieter. Pay really close attention to some of the mundane miracles of everyday life.
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Portal ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #243
One Way Among Many
Stiff slick paper slides
between thumb and blade to form
a spiral portal.
Here are 2 quick questions for anybody inclined to think they have already paid close attention to the curling phenomenon:
(1) Does the paper curl toward the thumb or the blade?
(2) Why?
Confession: I could not remember which way it curled at the time I took the photo. A few later repetitions answered (1) in the same way. It curls toward the blade. Dunno about (2).
Freedom for Whom?
«Normally I let people interpret my poems as they will, but here I will be crystal clear on one point.» So says Patrick Jennings in #236 of his Pic and a Word Challenge series, and I concur. My poem in response to the challenge has a final couplet that could be misinterpreted, so I too will try to be crystal clear afterward.
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Freedom ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #236
Breonna Taylor and George Floyd did not enjoy freedoms that a white guy like me could easily take for granted.
Freedom?
Freedom to be left alone,
not be shot in my own home.
Freedom from the nagging fear
that a racist cop is near.
Freedom to salute the flag,
or to burn it like a rag?
The Pledge of Allegiance ends with an aspiration, not a fact. Maybe some flag burnings are meant to protest America’s failure to provide liberty and justice for all, but they don’t look like that. They look like flag burnings in Tehran, like hatred of the republic for which it stands.
Tho ardent about civil liberties, I can accept prosecution of flag burners for violating local ordinances against open burning and the air pollution it causes. Don’t give jerks who alienate potential allies an excuse to fancy themselves as martyrs for freedom of speech.
There are respectful ways to protest with the flag. Fly it upside down. Display artwork that incorporates it, such as the moving “Close the Camps” stickers (designed by artist Pablo Stanley) that were distributed by MoveOn.org in 2017.
Above all, remember that the worst defilers of the flag are the bigots and plutocrats who hide behind it, while denying others the freedoms it represents.
Remember in November.
Red-y or Not …
Some short color words are spread thin in common usage. Words like “red” are pinned on many things that are slightly reddish. If plant breeders ever develop a cabbage that is actually red, they will find that the name “red cabbage” has been usurped. Chaos in the produce aisle! Hope spinach stays green.
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Red ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #187
Salad Paradox
Red peppers are red.
Red cabbage is purple but
is said to be red.
Red peppers are red.
Red cabbage is purple but
is said to be red.
