Living in Season
The official newsletter of the School of the Seasons
Volume 3, Number 6
April 15, 2005
The Ides of April

Contents

• Welcome
• My Season: Dread of Tax Day
• Living in Season: Capturing the Season in Haiku
• Following the Pilgrimage Path
• On My Bookshelf: Haibun and Haiku Books
• Slow Time Class Starting May 1
• Calendar Companion: Leaves from the Tree of Time
• Holiday Packet: May Day
• Signs of Spring
• Copyright
• Subscribe - Unsubscribe

Welcome
Welcome to my periodical newsletter featuring ideas for bringing the beauty of the current season into your life. If you enjoy this newsletter, please forward it.

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My Season: The Dread of Tax Day
The deliciously slow pace of the last few weeks is slipping away. Even though I know it's not true, I still believe that I'm too busy to do one thing at a time and so I'm missing that delightful sense of being present to the world which comes with paying attention.

Mercury is coming out of retrograde and my Spring classes (including a new session of Slow Time - see below) are beginning again, so there are reasons the pace of my life seems quicker. And, of course, much of my time has been consumed this week by completing by income tax.

Interesting that the IRS chose the Ides of April (which would have been a full moon day in early Roman lunar calendar) as the day for filing taxes. I wonder how much this deadline and the accompanying discomfort around money affects the American psyche at this time of the year. I know I always hear the date April 15th with a sense of dread.

Small plug here for TurboTax (and a disclaimer - I don't benefit in any way from services I promote on this web site, except of course my own services). Thanks to a recommendation from my daughter's friend, Tonya, I tried it (you can try it for free and only have to pay for it if you see that it has saved you some money). It made a huge difference (almost $1,000) in my tax liability as it suggested many business deductions that I would not have known about on my own. I had to borrow money to pay my taxes but at least I turned around and faced the monster that's been chasing me.

Now that it's behind me, I can look forward to the quickening pace of spring as the trees are all leafing out and my classes are rolling forward.

In good time,
Waverly Fitzgerald

Living in Season: Capturing the Season in Haiku
The Internet is wonderful, isn't it? More and more I find that I can do all the research I need for my columns while sitting at my computer. The idea for this column came from a subscriber to this newsletter and almost all of my research was done online.

Several months ago I got an email from Gabi Greve who is in the process of creating a world database for kigo, those words in a haiku that signify the season. There's even a word for a collection of season words, saijiki, and Gabi features links on her website to saijiki from Australia, Kenya and Alaska.

If the last time you wrote haiku was in grade school, you might want to revisit this poetic form. Probably you were told that a haiku should be written in three lines of 5 syllables, 7 syllables and 5 syllables. But that was true for haiku written in Japanese. English and Japanese have such different qualities that maintaining such a strict rule inhibits the creativity of the poet. Takahashi Masako in an essay on "Haiku in English" offers a good example of how Basho's famous haiku loses some of its charm when the translator tries to maintain the strict 5-7-5 syllable scheme:

Furu-ike ya Kawazu tobi-komu Mizu-no-oto Into the old pond Suddenly jumps a green frog And a splash is heard

Old pond: Frog jump-in Water-sound 5 syllables 7 5

There are some guidelines for writing haiku, although they are not hard and fast rules. Usually the poem is written in three lines, although haiku can be written in two lines, or even one:

snow drifts
on the driftwood
- Geri Barton

Or Cor van den Heuvel's one word haiku:

tundra

Haikus are usually about a moment observed in nature, although nature can be extended to include the human environment. The Austrailian haijiki compiled by John Bird mentions a famous blues festival and surfers. The Alaskan haijiki compiled by Scott Perkins and Cindy Zacko refers to humpback whales returning and the first mosquitoes as well as the first Winnebago and the first cruise ship.

A haiku offers the reader an experience of one moment at a particular time in a particular place, so vividly that you can experience it, and imbued with emotion, but the emotion comes from the image not from poetic words. The poet does not try to explain how she felt about the moment but depicts the moment so clearly the reader experiences it too. For example, you don't write: "Beautiful flowers, I wept with joy," but instead try to describe the flowers so clearly that the reader will weep with joy.

To help create the sense of a specific place at a specific time, haiku should contain a season word, the kigo. Kenchiki Yamamoto has compiled a dictionary of 500 season words used in Japanese haiku. I particularly love knowing the many varieties of spring including

Risshun, Coming of spring
Haru asashi, Shallow spring, barely spring
Yokan, Still cold
Keichitsu, Bugs come out
Hanabie, Blossom cool (a cool spell while the cherries are blooming)

Yamamoto also lists the evocative terms spring dawn, spring noon, spring evening, spring night, spring wind, spring thunder. And the list of spring flowers is also appealing: red plum, camellia, cherry blossoms, azalea, wisteria, wild rose, peach blossoms, tree buds, spring grasses, green barley and on and on.

I once adopted as my annual pledge the practice of writing a haiku every day. It certainly made me more aware of what was going on in my neighborhood and I have a collection of my favorites to remind me of particular moments of that year. Two summers ago I took a wonderful class from Allegra Wong on writing haibun (a Japanese prose poem that always includes a haiku) that taught me even more about writing haiku.

Allegra often shared with us the thoughts of Robert Speiss, the editor of Modern Haiku for many years, who had this to say about writing haiku:

To a considerable extent these words of Thoreau have relevance for the haiku poet: "It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.... To perceive freshly, with fresh senses is to be inspired."

For an amazing essay about how to write haiku, I recommend the how-to essay by Jim Kacian (one of my favorite haibun writers) at this website:
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethicalesq/stories/storyReader$3181

Alan Pizzarelli also has an interesting list of creative "rules" for haiku that he shares in an interview with Michael McClintock at the website Simply Haiku.

Or you can try this simple exercise created by Timothy Russell which Allegra shared with us:

Write down what month this is (or season) and another word that indicates some feature of the month or season, for instance, November trees or Spring rain. Look out the window or go outside. Write down all the details you see. Look in another direction and collect more details. Turn your head and write down more details. Do this at least two more times. When you have at least five short descriptive phrases, arrange these beneath your first line (November trees or Spring rain). Fix words that seem out of place and shape your haiku. I recently used this simple formula to write these two haiku:

Spring breeze
A pink petal floats
Into the cafe

Spring breeze
Pink petals flutter
Past parked cars.

I often find that if I am having trouble with a haiku, the best way to make it work is to condense it even further to the length of a lune, an American poetic form invented by Robert Kelly in the 1960's which has 3 syllables in the first line, 5 syllables in the second, and three in the first, thus looking a bit like the crescent moon for which it is named.

If you want to submit your haiku as a sign of the season, please do so. I'll post them on my website under Signs of Spring.

If you want inspiration, visit the University of Virginia's Library of Haiku. Gabi also publishes haiku on her web site at:
http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com

If you feel intimidated by the prospect of writing haiku, you might just collect kigo words for your region. What weather, animals, plants and human activities indicate the season where you live? If you post these on a web page, I am sure Gabi will be happy to link to your list from her site.

Here's my favorite haiku that I've written this year (it came to me, full written, in a dream):

Morning meditation:
Pour the cup,
Drink

References
Bird, John, An Australian Seasoning
Greve, Gabi, http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com
Kenchiki Yamamoto The Five Hundred Essential Japanese Season Words
Perkins, Scott and Cindy Zacko, An Alaska Saijiki in Progress
Pizzarelli, Alan, interviewed by Michael McClintock, A Western Kinsman of Haiku, Simply Haiku, November-December 2004,
Taiko Inahata, Haiku in Twelve Months
Takahashi Masako, Haiku in English
University of Virginia's Haiku Library
Wong, Allegra teaches for www.writers.com and is the editor of Full Circle Journal.

Following the Pilgrimage Path
The topic of pilgrimage is still resonating in my life after my writing about it in the last issue of this newsletter.

I signed up for a writing class on the theme of pilgrimage taught by local writer and teacher, Barbara Sjoholm. We talked in the first session about what distinguishes a pilgrimage from other travel and decided it had to do with intention. That reminded me of two other books about intentional journeys I've really enjoyed:

Cathedrals of the Flesh by Alexia Brue, Bloomsbury 2003
A young woman travels around the world looking for the perfect bath experience. She visits Russian banyas, Finnish saunas, Japanese hot springs, ancient Greek thermae, Turkish baths. It's totally delicious and educational, plus I liked the side story of the author's failing romance and her coming to terms with her own independent nature.

Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay, Random House 2003
Finlay travels around the world looking for the sources of the pigments that are used to create colors like cadmium orange, ultramarine, indigo, saffron, cochineal, lamp black.

I found the presentation a bit choppy — she skips from subject to subject and country to country presenting interesting snippets of information, but the topic is fascinating. And I'm always a great fan of obsession in writing.

Thanks to Neil Dennis for sending me this question and answer on the topic of pilgrims:

Question: What's the difference between a pilgrim and a tourist?
Answer: The pilgrim comes back a different person.

Also while looking for haiku examples, I found a haibun about a pilgrimage by paul t conneally.

On My Bookshelf: Haibun and Haiku
Ross, Bruce, editor, Journey to the Interior: American Versions of Haibun, Tuttle 1998
This book is full of beautiful haibuns on every subject from sunrise to sunset, covering meditation retreats and long hikes, from loss to enlightenment.

Another book I've really enjoyed about writing haiku is
Seeds from A Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey by Clark Strand, Hyperion. Strand provides some wonderful thoughts on the meditative aspects of writing haiku and offers some simple exercises to get you started.

New Slow Time Class Beginning May 1
I still have spaces available in my next Slow Time class, originally scheduled to begin April 15 but since enrollment was slow I am extending the start date to May 1st. This is the same class I've taught successfully three times, and sent as a manuscript to a publisher, but it's been improved by the feedback I've gotten from previous students plus the information I added while working on the manuscript.

This twelve week course is designed to transform your experience with time,through a series of exercises and steps, which move you from seconds, through hours, days, weeks, moons, months, seasons, years and finally to the spacious arena of the night skies. You will learn:

• How to find the tempo that is natural for you
• The difference between artificial time and natural time
• The way your past affects the present
• Simple ways to attune with the natural rhythms of the seasons
• Ways to slow down and savor your life
• How to create a sacred relationship with time

You can register now in our Store.

Calendar Companion: Leaves from the Tree of Time
It’s not too late to order the Calendar Companion, the latest offering from School of the Seasons. This is a graceful way to incorporate spirit and seasons into your life. Use it along with your usual planning tools and calendar to help you:

• Slow time down
• Consult your soul while creating your schedule
• Make time for what's truly important in your life
• Move in rhythm with the seasons and the moon

Every week for 52 weeks you will receive a brief email with a reflection on the qualities of the present time period and one suggestion, task or question that you can savor throughout the week.

Start whenever you like. When you order the Calendar Companion, you will receive the next week's calendar companion, along with an introductory email.

$20 for a year's worth of gentle reminders to help you stay aligned with natural rhythms. Click here to order, or to see a sample reflection.

Holiday Packet: May Day
Last chance to get your May Day packet before the holiday. “May Day is rich in customs, perhaps more so than any other day of the year.” So says theOxford Companion to the Year. If you are interested in learning about some of these customs, order my May Day packet, an illustrated portfolio of over 30 pages which includes:

• Ancient traditions of Floralia, Beltane & May Day
• Instructions for creating a Maypole and dancing around it
• Recipes for May wine and other traditional May Day foods
• Special May Day divinations and songs
• The language of the flowers
• Ideas for May Day gifts
• And much more.

The print version is $14; please allow 10 days for delivery. An email version is also available for $9. It will be sent to you as an attached Word file within 24 hours. Order at: Order here.

Signs of Spring
Here Lisa sent me these signs of spring from Vermont on April 2:
The snow has mostly melted except for the big piles made by the plow. The sap is running in the sugar bush. Sugar shacks are open and boiling down the sap to make sweet, delicious maple syrup. The birds are here, it seems suddenly they  have arrived at once. Mother earth's  bulb children are poking their heads up from under the soil. The lilac buds are swelling. I can put a shovel into the compost and dig. The compost bin's ingredients have begun to shrink down and I can put the lid on again. And the cats stayed out all night!

And Tammra from Irvine, CA writes:
You would so love to be here. Our skies are filled with fluttering. The abundant rains that ruined my camellias have indirectly created a plethora of butterflies. Everywhere you go people pause, smile   and ask "Have you ever seen so many?" At first it didn't register--it seemed almost as if it were fall and the leaves were blowing across the hood of the car but the squeals from my girls in the backseat "Momma look at all the butterflies" turned the confusion to wonder. Flocks and flocks, thousands of them at once, it is so glorious.

Rebecca from Reston, VA took her daughters to the Tidal Basin in Washington D.C. on April 5th for their annual pilgrimage to see the cherry trees in bloom. But only about 10% of the trees were blossoming -- the rest of the blossoms were still closed tight. She writes "Our stroll was punctuated with stops and cries of, "Oh, there's one opened!" It was very much like a treasure hunt. A friend of mine went down two days later and said that she was covered in a wash of blossoms and "flower showers," the gentle snow of petals falling when the wind blows through the cherry trees. Within two days, all of the trees on the Tidal Basin had opened and blossomed!"

See all these signs of the season and more here.

Copyright
Copyright ©Waverly Fitzgerald 2005
All rights reserved. You may reprint material from Living in Season in other electronic or print publications as long as you credit me and provide a link to: http://www.schooloftheseasons.com. Please send me a copy of the publication.

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