BlissQuest: Better Living through Haiku

Cherry Blossoms along the edge of the cemetery.

Listening to right now: Sakura, Sakura (a traditional Japanese folk song depicting spring, which originally had the lyrics "blooming cherry blossoms")

Today's Happiness Formula: The sound of traditional Japanese music mixing with the birds outside. The sun warming. Barely a breeze (an odd day when you live on a Great Lake).

Following My Bliss By: Working on one of my children's book ideas. Making notes for a work of nonfiction that is floating around in my brain. Taking time to read a great book I am into right now about Merton, Day, O'Connor, and Percy, and the power of reading and writing.

Today is day eleven of the Flower Moon, which means we are a few days from the full moon. The "Flower Moon" is just one name for it; it is also called Milk, Dragon, Planting, Bright, and Hare Moon by various traditions.

Knowing the name of the moon attaches me to the larger cycles, cycles that we are no longer aware of since we can buy strawberries in December.

And I have become aware since the spring I started to really pay attention.

For an entire spring one year, every day, I wrote notes about the weather and what was growing (something I do now in my regular journal along with noting the moon day), and I would write a draft of at least one new poem, sometimes many more.

wind sings through wind chimes
wind dances through tree branches
sky drops small rain drops

(all haiku copyright me)

For the entirety of the following summer, I wrote, at minimum, one new haiku every day. And they are like potato chips -- once you write one, you write another and another...

birdhouse painted blue
a small spot of sky and lake
brought into this yard

This exercise taught me so much. First of all, it taught me a lot about natural cycles. For instance, each season really is equal in length.

I know this sounds funny, but many people take weather very personally (I used to be one of these folk), and so we judge weather and seasons as 'good' and 'bad.' Summer being the best and therefore seeming the shortest in our negative attitude-marred perceptions.

But really, they are all quite equal, and when you mark them day to day to day, you notice that you aren't getting "ripped off" at all. You also start to notice the grace and beauty in the uniqueness of each season.

And things start to feel...right. Ordered.

gentle morning rain
weighing heavy on flowers
pink petunias bow

Winter was no longer something to "survive," but something to pay attention to. Standing at the bus stop, the silence of a snow storm as it blanketed the park across from me. The tiniest sign of things to come. I took note. I began to feel like I was a small, sparkling piece of a large and grand puzzle.

red bird on white snow
covered branches dipping down
touching dreams of green

As I have mentioned before, depression is susceptible to attention, like Superman to kryptonite. Paying attention is not what depression requires; depression requires a brain fog, a denial of life, a saying "no."

Haiku is about saying "yes."

"Yes" to it all, to every detail, to every little mundane-seeming inch of it.

And so we have Haiku no Michi, the Way of Haiku. A "religion," if you will, in the best, most expansive use of that term.

Religion is what D.H. Lawrence calls "setting the little
life in the circle of the greater life"; it is sweeping
a room as if sweeping the universe; it is paring your
nails as if you life depended on it; it is winding
your watch just before you are executed.

--R.H. Blyth (THE dude of Haiku)

When you pay attention like this, everything is always okay, even in the "worst"of times. Someone is sick? But they are alive in this moment. You lost your job? But right now, you are still breathing and able to eat and have a roof.

Every moment becomes an opportunity. An opening.

You are a peony in the spring, about to burst.

bike rider and bird
meet briefly at heart center
oh, soft life

The Way of Haiku requires some commitments that are antithetical to the fast, gathering, desperate life that we are told we should want to live:

1. Slow: You can't be rushing to the store, to an appointment, to the store again...haiku are lost if you are breathless.

2. Steady: You must be rooted or your tree will not bear this particular fruit.

3. Simple: In words and in your surroundings. Too much clutter of your physical environment, as we all know, clutters our minds.

4. Sensual: Open all those senses. Learn bird songs. Smell every flower. Feel the bark on the trees.

Applying the Way of Haiku to your life, will lead to:

5. Sane: Your boundaries will strengthen; you'll know, once and for all, what is important to you and you will protect it with the reverence it deserves.

Just hear the birds and
the breeze and the bees and let
all else fall away

Let all else fall away...let the "no" fall away...let the sad fall away...let the aggression, the violence, the self-hatred...let it all fall away like the leaves off the trees in autumn.

Just say "yes," even if at first, you must only whisper...