a bit too early

as predicted, it snowed yesterday and today but mostly a dusting. but somehow it still feels like spring. especially as i saw and heard the first robin of the season yesterday evening. a plump adult singing alone, the fluted notes ringing in the soft spring rain. the snow on the ground has all but melted but then this is minnesota where snow storms in april are not uncommon.

21/22: we got lots more snow although less than half the ten inches predicted. so instead of candytufts and dandelion fluffs, we had snow flurries. went for a walk around silverlake to see how the geese are doing. the lake is now completely ice-free but there were very few geese. it was a lazy saturday afternoon, overcast. most of the mallards were asleep amid the flurries and the restless geese. a lone mallard was repeatedly diving and then fluttering to shake the water off its wings, almost as if it was trying to get rid of something clinging to it. heard the first "potato chip" but couldn't see the goldfinch. friday was also the vernal equinox, officially the first day of spring. despite the robin and the goldfinch and the buds bursting with life, the snow decided to defer the festivities. hopefully not for too long.

pondered a bit on haiku/hokku and what belongs and what does not. specifically, was thinking about the appropriateness (or lack) of including things like jet engine noises in haiku as a photo taken on blackdog lake brought to mind plane roars (the lake being close to the airport). the belief that only sounds of nature should constitute haiku not only seems dogmatic but also seems a perverted view of buddha nature. it is the same mind which says that a dog does not have buddha nature. poets like david coomler are attached to form and your average haiku world, english language poets writing about random things in random versifications are attached to emptiness. there is clearly a middle path, even though one cannot pin it down in words. and as i wrote an, someone might be inspired to write about fallen hair in the bathtub but i probably would not- even if it turned colour in autumn. an also had me thinking about the use of "i" in haiku. there definitely is a place for it no more important and no less than any other natural phenomenon. the mind which separates "i" from nature is no different from the mind that removes it altogether. most of the classic poets including ryokan have used "i" albeit sparingly. after all, there is the alaya vinjana, which observes. this is a more neutral, a pastel coloured consciousness as opposed to a flashy, gaudily dressed ego mind. of course, some poets might disagree and say the first kiss or the day after are equally valid haiku topics. i think i would agree but it also depends on how it is written and the mood it evokes.

early spring

this past week, there has been tantalizing glimpses of spring. for the first time in several months, we were able to walk without wearing jackets at lunchtime. however, the forecast for tonight is freezing rain.

most of the snow is melting, leaving lovely puddles, which promptly freeze overnight and form again during the day, making the usual dreary evening walk exciting. and the plastic hydrangeas are now floating in water, almost.

over sparrow chatter
and cardinal songs-
chickadee-dee-dee.

hokku

stumbled into david coomler's wonderful hokku site from this interesting haiblog cheekily titled that was zen, this is tao. started a lively correspondence with david who started this site, fed up with the three lines of punctuation-less, often, subjective ambiguity, passing off as haiku. he spells out very clearly the rules that underlie classical hokku, a form honed by such masters as basho, buson, issa and ryokan. hokku focuses on objective expression of experiences (as opposed to thinking or conceptualization) and is intimately in harmony with nature and the seasons. the form eventually degenerated into hackneyed themes of moon watching and sakura watching; shiki masaoka is credited with the revival of the modern day haiku. however, shiki also introduced modernity (including ideas such as baseball and glass into his haiku), something which david views like a vegetarian eyeing a caterpillar in his salad. he accuses shiki of hokkucide by his introduction of the less rigid haiku form. there is definitely a lot of validity to his criticism of modern day haiku with is arbitrariness of form and subject matter but his view (esp on insistence of capitalization of the starting word of each line) seems equally dogmatic.

so david (rightly) dismissed my

sunny winter morn
water drops await rebirth
on icicle tips!

as haiku (not hokku). the rebirth is my thinking added to nature, he said. of course, he was critical of my lack of capitals and punctuation.

so here are a couple which might qualify -



tiny footprints on snow
end...
a walnut tree.

birches creak;
dancing in the snow-
a lone leaf.

evanescence

here is a lovely waka by the 18th century japanese poet ryokan titled white hair-

though frosts come down
night after night,
what does it matter?
they melt in the morning sun.
though the snow falls
each passing year,
what does it matter?
with spring days it thaws.
yet once let them settle
on a man's head,
fall and pile up,
go on piling up-
then the new year
may come and go,
but never will you see them fade away !

murder

that there is something beautiful about black and white photos is almost a cliche. there certainly is something timeless and luminous about black and white photography in winter. how much more contrast can there be than between freshly, fallen snow on the ground- silent and white and a murder of crows overhead- raucous and black.

no other "groups" of words are as fascinating, colourful and trivia-worthy and yet as illogical as names for groups of animals/birds. all your -phobias and -philias, -mancy, -cracy and -logy have rock-solid, grecian pedigrees. why is a group of larks an exaltation? (this also happens to be the title of james lipton's lovely, illustrated gem of a book which is a collection of these obscure, often obsolete collective nouns tracing back to sources in medieval texts and hunting manuals). or for that matter a group of crows a murder or an unkindness of ravens or my personal favourite- a fesnyng of ferrets? for the curious, here is one such collection. some of these words are not uncommon in the birdwatching patois- kettle, rafter, skein, charm.. but it is as rare to hear a birder refer to a murmuration of starlings as it is to spot a parliament of owls !!