forestbathing

on the path

up from the windswept beach

are no bikinis anymore

only loneliness carried in one bag

a threadbare scarf, and falling snow

Snow is a blessing near the Arctic Circle, where daylight shortens to almost nothing during the winter months. Without the layer of snow it is a dark, gloomy winter, but everything changes after snowfall. it does not have to snow much; indeed, it is often too cold to snow, but a couple of day's worth will give pristine snow for the whole winter.

A tanka demands sincerity, and given my warm feelings about snowfall, I am not sure if I am giving the right message. I suppose the tanka is not about my feelings, but about the woman's as she makes her way up the winter path. In that sense I feel there was the sincerity.

I walked by the bicycle going into the small shopping mall, and by the time I left the sun had long started to set, and the snow had turned the neighborhood into a soft, ethereal one.

I wondered if she was in love, the owner of the bicycle, and if that kept her from riding home. Or maybe she was the woman in the shop who served me with the enigmatic smile, not knowing it was snowing outside.

After taking the picture, I brush the snow off the seat and make my way.

first frost

but inside it has melted

this old heart of mine

the soft snow lightens the landscape

the slight smile tightens heartstrings

oh dragonfly

you survivor you

against the wind

with the greatest of ease

and a rainbow for wings

What is simplicity? Perhaps the real meaning of climbing a mountain lies in the quest for purity of rationale. To be close to one's natural environment, one must interact directly with it, and such interaction must take precedence over all.

It is thus with the conquering of a mountain. Decisions, and therefore all thought, are taken only about this interaction. This singular interaction brings an utterly pure and stark focus.

One of the most simple decisions one can make is whether to climb or not. This is not an easy decision to make, as simple as it is when you have spent days and months preparing, arriving and climbing the mountain, and you are a mere few hours from the peak, and despite those months and days of preparation and climbing, those few hours are all behind schedule. 

These few extra hours mean night is drawing in, and because simplicity requires a certain gravitas, in order to ensure that only one thought remains in mind, there is also a storm brewing, brooding, a gathering force that obeys only the laws of nature, over which we have no control and can only at times challenge yet always abide by.

How many hours until the top? Until nightfall? Until the storm breaks? Real courage is being able to turn around and go back down, and knowing when to turn around is the greatest lesson one learns in the mountains. For the absurd motto "never give up" is a travesty, a sacrilege. and only said by those who are spectators who have nothing to give up.

Today on my walk through the forest I came across a boulder shaped like a mountain I has once nearly climbed, decades ago. Perhaps I could have made it to the top, but then comes the next consideration, of making it back down. Of course there is always the third option of just staying at the top, all night, in the storm, waiting until morning to try to come down, assuming of course the storm has moved on and you have survived.

On my forest walk this morning I pause at the rock, and remember, and then continue my walk.

the eagle cries

and yet the marmot still watches

and is watched

and the eagle still flies

because marmots watch

and when I depart

I shall know not to look back

I must not look back

the hardest move

to ever not make

"No more goodbyes," I wrote in Winner Takes Nothing, "they pull so hard something is starting to tear somewhere."

In fact I went on for a few pages, remembering strong moments in cinema, in black and white of course, where the goodbye marked. In reality I was presetting the final tragic pages of the book.

Since I wrote those pages I am unable to say 'bye' to anyone, nor would I if I could.

Click on the book at the top right and upload it for free. I think it is different from many books you will have read - very. If you enjoy it, tell me...thanks.

Over on the Carpe Diem Haiku Kai website, haiku poet and master Chèvrefeuille would like us to write a haiku with dancing in the moonlight as the second line. Clicking on the URL at page bottom will take you to the site to participate...

A Memory

I watch you

dancing in the moonlight

bare moon on your skin

I miss the chestnut trees of my youth. I miss collecting freshly fallen chestnuts in the rain, and later rolling them lightly, in their casings, and then without, all over Yasuko's bare back, and her inner thighs, and soles.

I have my pines, here in Santa Claus country, it is true, but nostalgia has very specific ingredients that weave magic spells on the mind, no matter what fashionable Buddhist edicts say about living in the present.

I remember those naughty games I played on Yasuko, my geisha and classmate, with small chestnuts on a string, and her pleasure.

But most of all I remember the cold rainy night I took her to the cinema, and the moment I bought her a bag of baked chestnuts from a stand, and she warmed her fingers by wrapping them around the paper cornet, then warmed my lips and soul by taking a chestnut, kissing it, then putting it in my mouth, her fingertips infused with the chestnut aroma.

What I would give for love like that now, among my pine trees.

oh my geisha

I lost the chestnut you gave me

with the message inscribed

and ever since then I lost my way

from the sweet touch of your fingertips

coating the pine

morning sunbeams

where I should be

instead I watch the day rise

at a desk in permanent shadow

oh beautiful butterfly

when do I see you again

we've got snows to come

and still you have not come home

until then I'm a last leaf hangin' on

Autumn is only for photographs, not living through. Even in the desert you'll come across an old leaf of some kind, rejected, and fallen. Perhaps we should all take up the seasonal calendar of the Sàmi people, the reindeer herders of Lappland, who have eight seasons.

without their leaves

the trees bare their nature

back in the cabin

she waits in a copper bath

for the birch bark scent

The bark of the birch tree makes good tea, as well, mixed with pine needles. But both work best on her as a forest fragrance. 

rain in the taiga

pattering on the canopy

and through the trees

into the words

of the tanka I write

so much mist

in the forest this morning

even the trees are lost

and only the lynx

follows where I go

There are quite a few folk I have met who suppose plants have brains. The problem with that is not the assertion itself, but the "supposing." The general statement is that they "think" plants can think, or are at least conscious.

They think. Or suppose. Or imagine, without a pause to profess any evidence or show interest in any.

Shallow thinking like that worries me intensely. Plants are a mystery, but the first step to unlocking some of those mysterious codes lies in not projecting human or animalistic attributes onto them. There are pertinent questions, such as why roots from trees seem to 'know' how to avoid each other, or find the best direction to go - mostly, though further, even more surprising studies show trees actually not being able to adapt when moved to new locations, and growing in a manner they might in their original setting.

But the first step must remain the same: if we are to discuss the idea that trees might be aware of their surroundings, we must first discount the idea of a brain in any animal sense.

why does the rose

emit such a beautiful fragrance

that makes her bend down

and touch petals to her nose

so I admire her sexy behind?

still weeping

after everyone has gone home

-willow tree

A haiku should always be sincere, and oblique enough for the reader to attach their own relevance to it. I prefer the 5 lines a tanka gives, and not too much more, in order not to bore.

Not sure why weeping willows reminds me of childhood. I rather think haiku must be devoid of sentimentality, and here I fear that I have failed. But I was already battling with the sincerity anyway. And as far as the obliqueness goes, well, perhaps the precise meaning is not as real as the mood..  

On one hand we have that almost unfathomable question, the one asked by disciples of various arts and I dare say scientists, too; that if a tree falls in a forest and no-one hears it does it make any sound?

In the other hand, I would like to place my favourite Habith, one of Prophet Mohamned's sayings: tie the camel first, then trust.

Is there a connection between what is in each hand? There must be, because there is a connection between everything on this planet.

In the first hand, about the tree, it is what we don't know that we know, and in the second...ah, well, it shows us that it is...what we don't know that we know.

True knowledge is defined by what is not definable.

asking the right question

does not always give the right answer

always seek the most humble

for they will not seek to impress

so do not seek to impress, either