Sep 2

...where does the time go? ◠‿◠

click pics to ENLARGE 16

windy day-

fallen leaves,

fall again

There's an extension to this ku being fiddled with . . .

windy day-

fallen leaves,

fall again

alone at Dead Woman's Corner,

perhaps murdered by highway men

This isolated, bend along a narrow country road is a local mystery to me. Got theories and if any headway is made will blog it over at my Maiden Bradley site. A few miles away is a market town, some of which was built using stones from a place called Dead Maid Quarry. There may be a connection. But it begs the question of what a dead maid / woman's backstory is. I find this enigma surprising as surely some local historians would have unearthed the tantalising origins. Anyway, this tanka form is just an experiment. The idea is, the more we research and practice various haikai poetic forms (including historical precedents), the more we enrich our ku practice and allow "the pine" to articulate with increasing eloquence.

jp©

Maiden Bradley site →

an old field gate,

reclaimed by brambles-

puzzles the trail

Overgrown field gates are almost become hedge again. Barring the way permanently. This leads me to always wonder about previous uses as entry/exit controls. Older histories and their trails being the longer lived puzzle. Sometimes I scope, at the time, or on subsequent trips, the adjoining area. Like a jigsaw, piece by piece, observation and logic works it out.

This particular haiku references a specific gate which I've watched for several seasons; slowly returning to nature (as directed by the farmer's intent). The gate itself is virtually decomposed now. What's left is mainly held together by brambles, bindweed, and the expanding old hawthorn hedge on either side.

Frankly, even if it were my own property, breaking through would seem almost a perverse crime to the natural beauty of the thing.

morning glories

bloom, securing the gate

in an old fence

- Basho

"Junk DNA is potential DNA and instructs coding DNA in its operation. Since we now know through the Gariaev Group experiments that DNA responds to our instruction, how far are you willing to go in your own transformation?" - Toni Elizabeth Sar'h Petrinovich

fallen leaf,

the thing it has always been-

sunlit tunnels

"I do not believe what these eyes see is all that is there and I am not afraid to find out." - Matt Pennery

all slid away

in their spiral shells

to nev·er-nev·er land

all slid away

to nev·er-nev·er land-

spiral shells

rock-paper-scissors,

the wooden spoon...this grey

fall day

M U S I C A L U D E (not Xavier Rudd)

entranced by its drumming

the bath tub overflows

spring rain

mmcg

NOTE: The author of the ku (crossroader Zen Anecdotes) and the singer of the song both live in South Africa. It's spring there at the moment and the Skeleton Coast is coming alive again. Also see Nibs van der Spuy who Guy partners with.

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"I'll forget the trail I marked out on Mount Yoshino last year, go searching for blossoms in directions I've never been before." - Saigyo

rooted to the spot-

but, not this frilly stalk

in a red spotted hat

Saigyō Hōshi (1118 – March 23, 1190)

"The willow spirit appears to the priest in a dream as an old man with long, flowing white hair." - Yugyo Yanagi (Noh play), Japan Times

"I have rested under a willow tree growing by the river along a mountain path. I thought I would stay just for a short while, but have stayed there for a long time." - Saigyo

This Noh play, "Itinerant Priest and the Willow Tree", was based on a poem by Basho's role model, the wandering priest, Saigyo Hoshi. The ghost in the tree is Saigyo's spirit. Matsuo echoed his itinerent guru's sentiment a few hundred years later, under the same old tree, in "Narrow Road To The Interior" (a trip he made and documented on the 500th anniversary of his hero's death:

a whole field of

rice seedlings planted-I part

from the willow

- Basho

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with blooms of pampas grass as markers,

I push my way along,

no trace of the trail

I vaguely remember

- Saigyo

"The equinox named the autumnal equinox in the northern hemisphere and the vernal or spring equinox in the southern hemisphere occurs on dates varying from 21 September to 24 September (in UTC). In the pagan wheel of the year the spring equinox is the time of Ostara and the autumn equinox is that of Mabon." - Wikipedia

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following my old bootprints...

a summer's walk turns,

into autumn

FREAK OUT

"That wild narcotic took them all back to the 1960s, when belief was strong that a dream was all in your head and reality was a dream come true." - jp©

pushmi-pullyu!

two sheep do an optical- seems

autumn laughs

must be the 100 yard stare

this stereogram's oracle

Mohsin Maqbool Elahi "They weren't sheep, they were llamas."

haiku crossroads "No, they were definitely sheep. Today, for a moment, it was real. Wish I could have held onto that state of consciousness and seen where it led. But, in a split sec·ond all was back to normal and I pressed on to the peak."

Mohsin Maqbool Elahi "I am talking about the 60s film "Dr Dolittle" with Rex Harrison and PushMe-PullYou was a joint pair of llamas."

haiku crossroads "Yes, we know, and I was portraying a real experience which occurred today. The Doctor Dolittle movie is an 'intertextual reference', as they say."

Mohsin Maqbool Elahi "OK, no problem. :)"

haiku crossroads "The assumption is that what is presented is what is intended. Mistakes are not part of the precision, when we do ku. So, to cite sheep is to mean sheep (not llamas). Do you see? This means that the llama connection must be an intertextual allusion to a previous cultural artefact. In this case the binary llama in My Fair lady." ◠‿◠

Mohsin Maqbool Elahi "Yes, I got you. Thanks for explaining."

haiku crossroads "With over 500 hundred crossroaders on board it's always worth explaining. The value of this short discussion is two-fold. Firstly, we learn to avoid knee-jerk reactions and secondly we have been introduced to the term 'intertextual' as this relates to ku. As the I Ching says: "Everything serves to further." I have found this to be quite true."

source →

quote of the moment

loolude 23

"Perceiving shapes other than flowers amounts to being a barbarian. Holding thoughts other than the moon is akin to being a beast." - Basho

this foggy dell

must be a teenager zone-

autumn debris

leaf ash,

blowing in the wind-

so many moons

sooth! robin of perched,

how lin·ger·ous 'neath lamppost

thine autumn ballade?

Interestingly enough, the old bull is up on White Sheet Downs again with his current batch of young lovelies. He really is a nice person and his girls love him to bits. Passing (politely) through the herd on my way up to the llama-moment and then on the way back, I got into the small group's peaceful vibe. The ancient stud was seated and one of the girls ambled over and licked his cheek. He continued to pretend I was not there and looked at the view over to Zeals Knoll, Mere. But, as I travelled on he was looking at me askance. Overhead a sparrow hawk was hunting and in the distance a cup of coffee, not yet made, was waiting.

jp©

more 25

"On execution day, the condemned inmate waits, usually for about four hours, in a tiny cell a few steps from the steel door to the death chamber." - Daily Mail

wilting flowers,

why not sip some extra power

from the Harvest Moon?

Truth be known, the moon (and stars) probably play their part in supplying intelligent energy to intelligent plants (and everything else) when the sun's down under (or over, down under, from a Northern Hemisphereocentric point of view).

"'I did not do it,' he insisted recently from a tiny

visiting cage outside death row." - Daily Mail

wilting flowers,

why not sip some extra power

from the Harvest Moon?

As with the definition of schizophrenia, I was somewhat in two minds about which quotebun (bun = 'writings' in Japanese) version to use. The first is quite dramatic (main post) whilst the second option (this comment's version) is quaintly ironic.

◠‿◠

G I N K O L U D E

Walking Meditation

"Furyu (Japanese) : ‘As wind and stream’. Journey (without a plan other than that) into and with the flow of events (Tao) to find out and engage with what happens and accept that. The journey is the thing, not the destination." - jp©

an autumn storm

must have placed this-

dancing stick

Not a jumping stick. I had one of those, so fine it was. But, my grandson took it and I forgot to steal it back. More about this and other things, coming soon to http://bit.ly/geodesic-eye (eye of the bee!). Working title is:

G I N K O G A M E S

How To Engage With Nature By Transcending Detachment

Just had a crossroader enquiry regarding my last comment's working title:

QUERENT : "How to Engage With Nature transcending ATTACHMENT - not detachment? Detachment is the goal, surely ... vairagya."

RESPONDENT (me) : Detachment is a gap between two junctions. In this case the two junctions are self and not-self (as nature in the round - Basho's pine aphorism gone large). In order to realign with not-self (as nature in the round, in this appliocation) one is required (obviously) to detach (vairagya) from self. Having detached into the void (of numinous mu's phenomenal potentiating as ma), one realigns with not-self as nature in the round. That would be the 'science' of it. Being gifted (by the living wind's synchronicity) with a dancing stick is one recent example (of 10,000) which requires little (if any) thought to action. All will become clear as simple motile dioramas are given by way of illustration in:

G I N K O G A M E S

How To Engage With Nature By Transcending Detachment

This will be an additive series. The first section is working-titled:

NATURAL DEBRIS

More Useful Than Simply Vagabond Litter?

1. Sticks

◠‿◠

for split sec·ond,

wandering my path of wind-

a leafy companion

more 26

"And, yes, it appears that Matsuo Kinsaku was very much a Saigyo wannabe, in the gaps between swindling rice-yen from the man and blowing miscellaneous trumpets in the wind." - jp©

over hill and dale,

the slow wind of geology-

a sheep drags brambles

sky stone-

in the fall she rocks back

with silver and lace

movie 27

"Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of." - Charles Richards

my autumn fly

warms its tingling toes-

Die Hard 4 online

N I N G Y O L U D E

Ichimatsu-ningyô, called tôrei-ningyô (Friendship Dolls)

reclaiming its property

the North Pacific

rippled

"Until we stand on groundless ground, until we step out of our survival mechanistic way of being, the possibility of being who we are remains just that." - Werner Erhard

autumn hills,

my feet don't connect

to the path

M U S E L U D E

"An eagle is born, dependent upon its mother for food. The mother eventually entices the eagle out of the nest by flying next to it with some food in her mouth. She feeds it, moving the food farther away until the eaglet leaps, unknowing, from the nest. It starts falling fast, like a rock, thirty-two feet per second, per second, and there is no turning back, ever. In the fall the eagle discovers for itself what it can or cannot do." - Werner Erhard

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Werner makes some powerful points Sychronicity envelopes the ideas on this post. Nothingness is the real subject, as in emptiness and what to do with that. He speaks of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger and this leads to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being. The general idea is that we peel back the layers of the onion of personality and discover 'the emptiness of nothing' which is the basic substrate of somethingness. Erhard suggest we should not be dismayed by this as nothingness (mu) is devoid of dismay also (that being a something). From this simple enough notion of accepting and merging with nothingness (and he has exercises for his students which, it is claimed, work very quickly and, in some cases, traumatically) he echoes the views of many systems of disentanglement by advising we realise this cosmic truth (infinitely morphable emptiness - Basho's "flower") and make our own realities, and this at will; you know, rather than being slaves of socialised habit and so on. Presumably using common sense as one's guide, if not (clarified) intuition. This washed up on my shoreline recently. The bottle was broken on impact but most of its apparent contents were nearby and to hand. I expect, with a little more serendipitous beechcombing, most of the jigsaw could be retrieved. I get the general idea, though, and this should be enough. Besides, like when we dream, things have already been set in motion whether we remember the dream or not. It may well be useful sometimes to recall a dream; in that case I expect it is the unconscious' intent that this occurs.

jp©

"It's the same the whole world over, It's the poor what gets the blame, It's the rich what gets the pleasure, Isn't it a blooming shame?" - Billy Bennet

click over to the lyrics →

autumn rain

on my neighbours line

swimsuits

"It’s as if a couple of azure-coloured crystals have been installed in her head — and then back-lit for dazzling effect." - Will Gompertz (BBC Arts Editor, referencing J.K. Rowling’s "blue peepers", at the unveiling of her first adult novel, 'The Casual Vacancy')