A Road Less Travelled

Rather than post all my haiku (or haiku-ish-ness) in one big post, I’m going to choose one to post every day until I run out. Here’s the first one.

Winter raindrops

dripping

off twigs

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So there I was on Sunday afternoon, trying to decide whether to nap or read, when I happened to glance down at my foot and see a smoking volcano. Two of the wrinkle lines in my foot intersected in such a way as to look exactly like a smoking volcano. Why this caught my attention I’m not sure, but I found it interesting enough that I decided to duplicate this smoking volcano with the symbols available on the keyboard. (Using my Palm Pilot and keyboard, of course.) This may not seem very interesting. I think Adiel will get it. (Anyone who sees ’snow waffles’ in bootprints should understand seeing smoking volcanos in foot wrinkles.) James, whether he gets it or not, will tell me how very weird I am–which is true anyway. I can predict a few other reactions, but mostly I’m sending this brief incident out into the void. Interesting or not, that’s the story. Now you may ask, what does this have to do with haiku? Not a whole lot really, but the smoking volcano made me realize what I like about haiku. I tend to see details in life. Snow waffles, and smoking volcanos, and that one expression on a child’s face that isn’t quite like the others, and the patterns Cheerios make as they drift in a bowl of milk. These are all snippets of life that are worth noting but very hard to explain to someone who never noticed them. A haiku frequently points to one of these snippets without needing to explain why. It says, “Look, this is beautiful.” then leaves the reader to look and see. Haiku is, among other things, the poetry of the overlooked. In my experience, the overlooked is frequently worth noting.

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Last week sometime I finished the book I was reading and was unsure of what I wanted to read next. So I picked up a Winnie the Pooh book I had recently bought and set to reading. I come back to Pooh books every now and then and I still enjoy them as much as I used to. Pooh is such part of my family history and culture I am not sure I could walk away from him for long. I was reading earlier today and I got to the story where Tigger comes to the forest. He meets Pooh and they set out looking for some breakfast for Tigger who doesn’t like honey. They go here and there and finally end up at Kanga’s house where they find him some breakfast and the story ends happily. It was this time through, though, that I realized my favorite character has changed. I used to like Eeyore the best because he was gloomy and I liked that for some reason. This time through I realized how much I like Kanga. Every other time through the books she has always been in the background, but with one sentence I realized how important she is to the stories. ‘So they went into Kanga’s house and when Roo had said, “Hallo, Pooh,” and, “Hallo, Piglet” once, and “Hallo Tigger” twice, because it sounded funny, they told Kanga what they wanted, and Kanga said very kindly, “Well, look in my cupboard, Tigger dear, and see what you’d like.” Because she knew at once that, however big Tigger seemed to be, he wanted as much kindness as Roo.’ Kanga is the mother of the Forest. She is the one who fusses over you when you get hurt and she is the one you know will miss you when you’re not there. You are welcome at her house and she will feed you if you’re hungry or not. She is the caregiver, the nurturer, the one who cares about everyone. I want to be Kanga when I grow up. I want to have one of those houses people feel welcome in and I want to be one of those people who fusses over everyone and makes them feel special. I think the world has enough Eeyores and Piglets and more than enough Rabbits, but the world doesn’t have enough Kangas. So I think I’ll be one when I grow up.

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Ladies and Gentelmen, may I introduce a new member of our links. If you will kindly direct your attention to the right of the screen you might see a link entitled ‘Gabrielle’s Magical Notebook’. If you do not see this link it is no fault of mine. If you so desire please click on said link. It will either take you to an advertisement for office supplies or to an blog notebook full of magical stories and tales. The management of this blog decided that the subject matter of the tales recenlty posted here was not apporopriate for a sophisticated and intelligent blog such as this one. The decision might also have had something to do with the fact that this is a non-fiction blog and the stories were non-non-fiction. We hope you enjoy this new addition. Thank you, The Management

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When I got my Palm Pilot, one of the things Gabrielle said was, “Now you won’t have to carry forty-seven notebooks around with you anymore.” I do use my Palm Pilot for writing down ‘real’ stories, but I still have an attachment to my notebooks, and find them indispensable for recording snippets that may someday become stories. I just filled my current notebook a couple of days ago. Here are some of my favorite bits.

“I am not blithering, and if we ever get out of here alive, I will find a dictionary and prove it to you!”

“There is as much steel in my soul as there is fire in yours; if I cannot cut you, neither can you burn me.”

“Yes, I’m an idiot. Do I at least get credit for pointing it out?”

“I shall face the darkness in my soul and slay it, though I feel each dying throe as my own.”

“I can’t even grow silk flowers. Seriously, I tried once and they died. Long story.”

And here are a couple of my haiku-ish writings. No, they’re not really haiku, but I like them anyway.

Tall shadow
watching over my shoulder.
Safe.

Driving through cornfields
in the winter–
hot coffee in my hands.

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This is another in the weepy series “They’re Getting So Big!” Last night I fed Justice some liquefied banana. I am not sure how much got into him, but there wasn’t much on him and there was less in the cup than when we started. When I finally ran out of patience Noah drank the rest of the banana and we called it a night. It is hard to remember that Justice has been out of the womb for five months. His life has been so full it feels like he’s should be so much older and yet I can still remember his birth quite vividly. Justice is one of the reasons I wouldn’t trade the last year of my life for anyone’s. And now one more developmental hurdle has been leaped. He won’t take a bottle, but he ate some banana. Go figure.

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Once upon a time there was a man named Steven. I’m not sure why his name is Steven; it just felt right. This man named Steven worked in a giant building full of little boxes. Everyday he sat in a box and moved numbers he couldn’t touch. He knew it was important he moved those numbers, but no one had explained why. He knew that some people enjoyed moving the numbers around, but he didn’t work with any of those people. The only true joy in his life was the fish name Camille. Camille lived in a glass bowl on Steven’s desk. Everyday Steven put food in her bowl and everyday Steven thought she smiled at him. Some days the numbers wouldn’t move where he told them to, or three and three didn’t add up to eight or the world ended in some other way, but if Steven would sit and look at Camille the world would fix itself around him. In those moments Camille would always smile. Steven thought that if he could just talk to her once his life would be better than it was. But she hadn’t talked yet and he assumed she never would. But what Steven didn’t know was that he is one of my stories and I love happy endings. So one day an old man gave Steven a package and smiled pleasantly. Steven opened the package and found a green stone pulsing with magic. Apart from Camille it was the most beautiful thing he’d seen. It was obviously meant to be put on a necklace so he strung it on to an old shoelace and wore it around his neck. After nothing happened for a long time he sighed and went to work. Sadly, he sat down in his box and sadly he fed Camille. Then he watched as she very definitely smiled at him and he continued to watch as she winked at him. She looked like she was talking so he leaned close to the bowl. He kept leaning in close until his nose touched the water and then he fell into the bowl. When Steven was done falling he found himself face to face with Camille. Only now she was the size of a horse. Or had he shrunk? Steven didn’t know or care. He had eyes only for the great fish in front of him. He threw his arms around her neck as far as they would go. She said something to him, but it was in fish and we don’t have green stones to help us understand. Steven obviously understood her because he laughed long and hard. He climbed onto her back and they swam off to find some adventures. I don’t know what happened next, but you may be assured Steven and Camille lived happily ever after.

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It is very difficult to harvest Skittles. Only pixies are light enough to walk on the rainbows, but as soon as a pixie picks a Skittle it becomes too heavy to stay on the rainbow. So there are gnomes stationed on the ground with baskets to catch the rain of pixies and Skittles. Other gnomes are equipped with slingshots to shoot the pixies back up to the rainbow. After the Skittles are picked they must be coated with sunlight refracted through a cube of ice taken from the highest tower of the North Wind’s castle. For some reason the cube of ice must be taken and not given. She would be willing to give them a cube, but the last time they tried that all the Skittles went sour. They discovered that some people like sour Skittles so that batch wasn’t a complete waste, but still every year a group of gnomes creep into the castle and take a cube while the North Wind politely looks away. Tropical Skittles are harvested from rainbows that shine over the ocean. It is a little trickier to harvest these Skittles because the gnomes who catch the falling pixies have to be in speedboats. That is why Tropical Skittles are harder to find than regular Skittles. Wild Berry Skittles only grow on rainbows that shine over Wales in the spring. No one knows why except the head pixie and he doesn’t tell anyone. It’s a trade secret. After the Skittles are harvested and coated with refracted sunlight they are packaged and in the middle of the night they are put on the front doorsteps of candy stores all over the world.

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