a forced break

It has been a while now that I have written any blog post. In fact, I haven't written anything at all for quite some time. I have missed quite a few submission deadlines, some contests i wanted to participate in and even cancelled travel plans.The reason being this debilitating pain I've been struggling with for the past few months which won't let me focus on anything, let alone write or even sit at the computer for an extended period of time. Nothing serious, (I hope) and with time, perhaps, I\ll be back again...(at least I intend to)... to bother you all with my bad poetry but meanwhile i thought it only fair to let all the readers, visitors and the handful of my blog followers know why I have been playing truant lately. Thanks to all of you who are still visiting regularly. Please bear with me some more.

by this day's end

if I may come home whole, 

life might be good--

for now, I'm glad to see trees

and the light shining through them

-Michael McClintock

the haiku that didn't happen

I could not participate in NaHaiWriMo this month, being tied up in too many other things.But I've been closely following the very challenging prompts given by Alison Williams, the prompter for this month and one of the prompts a few days ago that aroused my interest was the creative random word generator at creativitygames.net where you only had to click a button to get a set of words. I thought that would be fun and I could make up for my past few days' of inactivity.

So I press the button and get my first word: "microbes".
I had no intention of writing about microbes and couldn't, even if i wanted to. So I took a second chance.

The word i got this time was:"jass".
I had no idea what that meant, so went and looked it up in the dictionary. A card game played with a 36 card pack, it said , with some other complex rules. I didn't think i could write a haiku on that either.

Again i refresh the button and get "metal detector"!
Things are not really going my way, i thought... how could one get poetic about a metal detector? Well, i know some of you very talented poets out there could do even that, but not me!

So off again i go and click the button with hope in my heart and a prayer on my lips. Perhaps I'm going to be fourth-time lucky?

The word that leaps out at me is:"CHIMPANZEE"!
( Though not in caps, but it looked like that to me.)

At this point, I gave up and went to bed.

these days

These past few days have been very unproductive. Things haven't really gone well and in spite of the positive mantras I keep on repeating; somewhere along the way, my confidence has taken a beating and any creative streak I might have had in me, has hit an all-time low.

Perhaps this is the time I should take a step backwards, take a deep breath and let go for a while.

Perhaps I should let the world pass by and just be content, watching.

Perhaps I am trying to gatecrash in a place where I was not meant to be.

Perhaps I should concentrate on other things that need my attention.For example, maybe this is the time to tackle that unfinished book that has been by my bedside for months now. Or maybe, I should clean one kitchen shelf instead. Or perhaps, just perhaps I should go shopping...with Diwali closing in, I should do that, anyway and that is a guaranteed and time-tested way to perk one up, though only temporarily.

Have you noticed the materialistic bent of my mind, the direction my thought takes when under duress? This is why I doubt I was meant to be a poet...least of all, a haiku poet!
I should restrict myself strictly to reading them, at least for a while.

And talking of reading,these beautiful lines from a blog I love to visit, perhaps best describe my feeling now:

i fear it's too late
like starlight
i should have set out earlier

-Mark Holloway

The week that was

Last one week has been extremely erratic for me. Every body else has been writing beautiful poetry and creating amazing artwork while I have been away...! To a place I must have visited some 383 times before (well, I am exaggerating, but not much), and where I spent all the time gazing at sea and stuffing myself with all kinds of delicacies (mostly Goanese preparations of fish and desserts from all over the world) and have, at last, come back richer by a few inches. Also with an armload of photographs. Which was the saving grace, because i thought they would be wonderful raw material for my haiga project.

Only to find, that now I don't find them so interesting. I want to do haiga, using clip art like Alee, (Alee Imperial Albano at Jornales), but cannot find anything appropriate and cannot come up with anything decent.

Meanwhile, as i said, all the poets are doing great things! Johannes S.H.Bjerg has posted a fantastic haiga, created using some layering technique, on NaHaiWriMo.

autumn moon I take it on face value

To see the image you'll have to visit the NaHaiWriMo page on Facebook.

And two weeks of fabulous haiku on Dailyhaiku by Claire Everett and Michele Harvey. They have such contrasting styles and yet both are such superb poets.

I am going to quote here just two, one from each of them, but I'd suggest you visit DailyHaiku if you don't do it already... and read the whole lot.


So here they are:

mehndi
from wrists to fingertips...
last of the swallows

Claire Everett


summer fling -
strands of twine
litter the hayloft floor

Michele L.Harvey

(For the non-haiku reader of this blog, please note how in the 2nd poem the lines hint at something beyond just the image of a hayloft floor littered with twine. Again, it could be just that, only a hayloft floor and nothing else - who knows? And in the first poem, how wonderfully the image of a mehndi ritual ties in with a season in nature, the 3rd line being the key-line here.)

As for me, maybe I should go watch the match between MI(Mumbai) and CSK(Chennai) that's in progress as there's nothing like a dose of cricket to calm your restless mind. And boost creativity as well (at least, I hope so) !

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Siesta

The rain has eased off in the last few days. After four months of downpour (most of the time), torrential rains (some of the time), heavy shower (at other times), non-stop rain (at all times) and drizzle ( almost never) ; the sun has come out, clothes are dry and warm at last, the resident squirrel is back to its usual noisy ways and there are pockets of golden yellow at unexpected corners of my house.

The cat had been observing me closely for quite sometime, but after realising that I really bear him no ill-will or grudge,( we are at loggerheads most of the time, the reason being our similar tastes in food) he has stretched out on the window sill and gone off to sleep. There is so much to do, mails to write, calls to make, reading to catch up on...but at this moment all I want to do is to emulate the cat, curl up in this pool of sunlight on the recliner and snooze away! Everything else can wait!

siesta time -
a gentle tide washes over
the shingle

Wait a minute! Did i just write my first haibun?

Weekend ennui

Feeling lethargic since morning.

Skipped workouts/yoga and didn’t feel much guilty about it; it’s Saturday, after all!(Hope my daughter doesn’t read this though! Nah…she would be busy with her own stuff right now.)

Must, must, must write something if I am to meet the submission deadline for the Sketchbook kukai, the last day being today. But what with the exploits of Anna Hazare being aired/blared loudly over the TV all day, the husband trying to educate and update me about the current political scenario, the maids’ excited chatter about the imminent good times and my own weak efforts at running a household…it doesn’t seem likely at all.

Wait a minute, the deadline says, 20^th midnight and it’s not yet 20^th midday there, we in India being ahead of US. Ah, thank god, so I have time, after all!

OK, let me then quickly tell you about this post--Dragonfly dreams in Melissa Allen’s blog “Red Dragonfly”which doesn’t need any introduction to anybody in the haiku community. But for my other readers, here’s the link:Dragonfly dreams. And this new post is really a dream. Superb poetry and why not, considering both Pamela. A.Babusci and Paul Smith, two of my all-time favourites are there, apart from beautiful haiga by Rick Daddario, Polona Oblak and lovely poetry by Margaret Dornaus, Kirsten Cliff, Angie Warren, and Susan Antolin among many others. I, too have a haiku there and am happy to share the space with these amazing poets! But it is the photography by Jay Otto which leaves me speechless. I don’t know how he managed to capture those shots. I’ve gone there like about 10 times just to gape at them. All in all, I’m going to look at dragonflies with new eyes after this amazing post.

And finally the poem, a tanka which matches my mood today.

deciding
I am going
nowhere
the day passes
pleasantly

Not sure who is the author, most probably Michael McClintock. Or is it Tom Clausen?

My sincere apologies.I’ll find out and let you know.

And to compensate for this morning’s lassitude, I’ve decided I’d go for a long walk in the evening…! And come back with a carton of icecream , to reward myself for the walk.

Breaking the ice

My opening blog! And what do i write about?

Let's for a moment assume there are a thousand people out there, waiting to latch on to my every word...
how do i introduce myself to them?

I chew my pen(or rather, drum the keyboard uncertainly) and scratch my head!


What about those famous lines..."I have nothing to declare except my genius"? Not good enough?


Well, then...I am just a typical Indian woman, (well, on second thoughts, maybe not so typical, because I am also lazy, laconic and a loner most of the time), a mother and a wife, who happened to stray onto the path of poetry, especially haiku and the Japanese forms of poetry, rather late in life; but has since enjoyed every moment of being there.


I have not yet thought it out as to which direction this blog is going to take, having been warned not to turn it into a poetry blog, as poetry seems to be a surefire way of killing all reader interest, of losing your audience( if there is any to begin with, that is)! But what the heck, it's my blog, isn't it?And a blog is the only space in the world where you could indulge yourself, write whatever you please.So if you hate poetry, please ignore this and move on to the next blog. Because poetry probably is going to be a major part of it!

But if on the other hand, you stick around for a while, I'll try not to make it too long-drawn for you, be as brief as possible,the poetry I feature will be good and not always mine, and what's more I might mix it up now and then with some other stuff, too.
Stuff that would catch your interest!


So please bear with me till I figure my way out through an enormous number of unfamiliar gadgets on this newly-acquired blogspace of mine.

And please do leave your comments sometimes, if you feel so inclined, to help me make it a better blog.

For the moment, I'll just leave you with these lines:


soft brown earth,
the rock-strewn mountains,
swirling storm
and the gentle rain.
sometimes the creeper,
sometimes the banyan,
I am free,
I am bonded,
I am every woman.


Will be seeing you soon.