Here is the Haiku Project I mentioned I have been working on. It is a song I wrote. Each of the 4 verses is a haiku. Then I made a video. My first one ever! “Morning Song” can be purchased for download at www.rachelwagner.bandcamp.com
I have not written here in some time, but hope to soon post a little haiku project I’ve been working on. It has kept me busy and maybe a bit distracted, which is the opposite of what I have been trying to be. Thankfully, I was reminded this morning by a new friend, that being present in the moment is valuable…and so, for you my new little friend who showed up somewhere outside my dining room window this morning (I still have not seen him, but he is making his presence known) I begin again with this haiku:
Growling hiccups sing
beneath Bird’s lilt and warble.
Hello morning frog.
“He who sings scares away his woes.” ~Cervantes
Here’s to scaring away our woes….even if our song does sound like a growling hiccup…
My husband drives an old Nissan Maxima…mostly held together by duct tape. We call it the Minima and we’re not sure how or why it keeps running, but it does and we are thankful. This morning however, when he tried to leave for work, it refused to start due to a dead battery. Easy enough to fix. We drove our minivan to the auto parts store and I waited in the car while he went in to buy a new battery. I watched him through the front window talking with the guy behind the counter. He was in the store for all of 7 minutes. Now, because my husband works in a hospital, he wears scrubs to work. And since the car battery pronounced itself dead as he was trying to go to work, he was wearing his scrubs to the auto parts store. The wearing of scrubs has a magical affect on people sometimes…bringing on stories of ailments and injuries, and this morning was no exception. After 7 minutes in the store, my husband came back out to the van with a new battery and a portion of the story of the guy behind the counter. The story did include various injuries and ailments…along with an account of how he recently lost his wife. And it takes my breath away. How we all have our story. How we all are wounded. How we all, given 7 minutes with a stranger, will probably at some time or another spill over from all we carry around inside of us. For comfort, for understanding, for the hope that maybe we are really not alone here after all. And I am reminded how we need to listen to each other…to be gentle, to handle each other with care. So as I sit here by my open window this morning, looking out into my little backyard, the sunlight filters through my neighbor’s birch trees and I give you today’s haiku:
The sun warms my face
and listens to my story…
silent wounds and all.
Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and
has lost something. ~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Here’s to being warm and gentle with one another….
I grew up in the suburbs…and now, even though I prefer the idea of living in either the country or the city, I find myself still living in the suburbs. But if I had to pick between being a city mouse or a country mouse, I would probably pick life in the country. I like space, and quiet and nature most of the time…and oodles of people and noise make me a little crazy. And though I hate to admit it, as I get older I find that I am slowly growing more cynical and distrustful of PEOPLE. With that said, I found myself a couple of weekends ago, in the city with my kids. San Francisco to be exact. We had a lovely day together exploring a museum and just hanging out together. At the end of our day, we had to find a way to get back to our hotel across town. For some reason, we couldn’t get a taxi and I decided to take the children on an adventure of a bus ride. Now, I have NEVER taken a public bus in my life. It is sad…but like I said, I grew up in the suburbs and public transportation just isn’t the thing there. So we asked a few questions and found our way to a bus stop that was supposed to take us in the right direction. To make a long story short, we did find our way back to our hotel, but not without the help of some kind strangers along the way…directing us, looking out for us, and kindly putting up with our ignorance of public transportaion in general. And I was thankful. Thankful for the help of some truly kind PEOPLE, thankful for the adventure and thankful that I’m not quite as cynical as I feared I was becoming. It was a nice surprise. Here is today’s haiku:
Lost in the city,
strangers helped us find our way.
Thank you nameless friends…
And a quote from the song “Colors of the World” from The Innocence Mission album The Brotherhood of Man:
And I think of you in the colors of the world.
And I did meet you in the brotherhood of man
when I was traveling a long way from my home
and you are a friend of mine. –Karen Peris
Here’s to helping each other in all of our travels….
When Jon and I used to live back east, summer rain storms were common. We’d sit in our tiny old upstairs apartment and ooze around in the humid air, windows open, rain pouring down outside. But here in the California valley, summer rain is rare. Dry and hot…very hot…is the norm. So today, when it started coming down I opened the windows and enjoyed the memories. My daughter said “it smells like October”, which makes me smile because, though I’ve never told her this, I prize my ability to smell the seasons changing…and I’m glad she notices the season smells too. Here is today’s haiku:
A rare summer rain
smelling like the four seasons
all rolled into one.
Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. ~Langston Hughes
And with a song, here’s to the rain….
One of the many pleasures of summertime is finding a good book or two or ten and reading as long as you want…what are you reading this summer?
Here’s today’s haiku…..
Chapters and chapters…
no need to hurry through this
we have all summer.
I am a private person and writing this blog…well, it’s stretching the boundaries for me. This is probably why it does not appeal to me to post what I am doing on FACEBOOK every living moment. I see there are uses for the whole social networking thing. I guess it’s supposed to bring us together. Connect us to each other. But you don’t have to be a super observant genius to see that it often does just the opposite…pulling us from where we are and who we are with so we can post, post, post our updates. Robbing us from experiencing what’s around us where we are and worse, robbing us of experiencing the people we are actually with. I think this is one of the reasons I like haiku. I am an amateur haiku writer to say the least…but it seems that one of the disciplines of writing haiku is being where you are in each moment. Paying attention. Poetry and art require that of us I think. And speaking of paying attention, I have recently been inspired by a new friend of mine. Calvina is an incredible photographer and I had the pleasure of doing a photo shoot with her for some of my own promo photos. ( Photoshoot slideshow ) You can check out more of her work here : www.calvinaphotography.com Her attention to detail and to each moment, really is amazing. Her work reminds me of a kind of visual haiku.
by Calvina Photography
feet in a cold stream,
hope takes up its mat and walks…
awake and alive
Slight not what’s near through aiming at what’s far. ~Euripides
Here’s to being awake and alive right where we are….every moment…
Frustrating whispers…
I take my voice for granted.
Laryngitis sucks.
I was sitting out by the barn where my daughter rides horses….it was so quiet. And I just sat….and listened. Birds about their business, the breeze in the trees, an occasional horse snarfling somewhere…a lot of sounds that I miss in my busy bustling around sometimes. And I am reminded of how we need to sit and listen…really listen…and yet the flood of noise around us keeps us spinning and there is SO much that we miss. As a lover of poetry, I know how essential it is to sit with a poem… to be quiet, and let the poem speak what it is saying. If it is well written, it invites me in…but still it is not handed to me…I have to enter in to it. In the Bible it says that “We are His (God’s) workmanship…” And if I understand it correctly, the Greek word for “workmanship” is where our word “poem” comes from. I like the idea of each of us being a poem. We have to sit with each other…listen….enter in….it takes quiet and time and effort…but it’s worth it I think. At the end of this post is a song I wrote called “Blackberries” that is all about this very subject. And here’s your haiku:
I will hear your words
and also your silences…
Yes, I will listen.
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
–Henry David Thoreau
Here’s to asking and attending to one another’s answers…
My husband has a green thumb. And the patience of a saint. He tends a spectacular rose garden in our front yard. It is wild and climbing and this time of year it is one of my greatest pleasures. He gets pretty scratched up sometimes…roses are a little guarded about having their beauty cultivated. I am thankful for the price he pays to tend and share beauty…and that he thinks it is worth it. Which brings me to today’s haiku…
Reaching beyond thorns
to colors with fire and breath…
the roses have bloomed.
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting – a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Here’s to seeing, welcoming, and thanking….
