haiku de fou

.
Le soleil se lève
.................Une bombe tombe sur Baghdad
....C'est une nouvelle journée.
.

weighty haiku

.
this stringed heart hangs
heavy about my collar;
i prefer daisies.
.

.

What we play is life.

.

Louis Armstrong

.

.

. .. . . . . .. . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .HENRI MATISSE

.

Docteur Tendresse

.
Last night, I was one of three hundred extremely fortunate fans to spend a couple of hours with International Superstar, Daniel Lavoie. The recipient of dozens of distinctions and awards once again graced the old neighbourhood with his amazing talent and passion. I am still high from the experience, one that I will carry with me for a lifetime.

I know this to be true because he has remained with me since he first graced the very stage he occupied last night, back in 1970 (?), which turned out to be only the first of several Daniel Lavoie performances I would attend.

My first reason for sharing this is about my continuing desire to help define the Artist in a positive light, despite the nasty branding and beating this title too often carries. Yes, I am talking about that artist, the pretentious alcoholic prone to fits of rage who always manages somehow to make front page news. I wish it were only Mr. Harper who believes this to be true of most artists, but sadly it isn't.

My second reason for sharing is all about going home again . . . On one of many visits I've made to Margaret Laurence's home, which has long since been turned into a library, I came across the speech she delivered the last time she visited her hometown of Neepawa, Manitoba. In her speech, she responded to Thomas Wolfe's "You can't go home again" by saying:

"I think you must go home again, not necessarily to go back and live in the same town in which you were born, but simply to come to terms with the past . . . one has to try to come to terms with the past in such a way that one assimilates it without rejecting it because, after all, our past, both good and bad parts of it (it's always mixed) form our mental baggage which we carry along with us all our lives. If we manage to come to some kind of terms with it, so that it is not a stultifying influence, but that is something that we can accept and assimilate, then, it seems to me, this is a kind of Homecoming."

Last night, the multi-talented artist honoured his hometown with a show that marvelled and inspired. As part of "Coup de Coeur Francophone", a yearly festival aimed at highlighting the creative spirit among the francophone community in Canada, the man not at all befitting Harper's artist, shared his true passion and voice with a small audience of 'ordinary people', mainly relatives and friends, for whom the show was made EXtremely affordable.

In accepting the most difficult of performances, the one offered to those one knows and loves, Daniel surely had his reasons for coming home again. And despite how difficult it was for me to enter the community theatre in my hometown of Saint-Boniface last night, I had my reasons too.

It just might be that again and again, we armour ourselves as best we could from the ghosts of our past, so that again and again, we might keep going home. It would seem that last night was all about assimilation, of one kind or another. . .

For filling up 'my well', Daniel, I thank you, and hope that yours was also filled.

Haiku Echo

.

In your eyes she dances.
Did you touch her with your smile?
La fille qui danse contemple.

.

October

.
part xi:
.
When Michael returned from his team's weekly curling game, Marjory greeted him with an ear to ear smile. Hi honey, she called, how was the match?

Game, Marjory.

What game?

‘How was the game’, is what you meant to ask, right?

When Marjory started to cry then, Michael felt like a heel for correcting her. He wished she understood the difference between a match and a game by now, but he sure hadn’t meant to make her cry.

Michael stood without moving so much as a toe in her direction. He just stared at her, as if waiting for instructions on what he should do next. Twenty-six years of marriage and he still felt like an awkward boy around Marjory's tears. They were a rare occurence, true, but Michael knew he had come to rely on her strength.

He should do something, he thought to himself. His right foot left the ground when a quick rap was heard at the door.

Hello! It's just me! Peter’s voice bellowed from the breezeway.
.

.

Comfort me from wherever you are–alone, we are quickly worn out; if I place my head on the road, let it seem softened by you. Could it be that even from afar we offer each other a gentle breath?

.

Rainer Marie Rilke

.

.

. . . . .

.

kandinski

.

October

part x:
.
The ride home was long. The bus chugged along at a slow pace for no other reason than to keep itself on schedule. Jean stared out the window, though all she could really see was her own reflection.

When Jean was a little girl, she and her mother would take a monthly trip downtown by electric car. The sound it made kept her in a trance and she had this feeling of riding on a magic bus that was being pulled along by a wire. She used to wonder what would happen if the wire snapped. But feeling her life hanging by a metal thread only added to the excitement of their journey.

It was only the two of them, then. She didn’t know where her father was; she couldn’t say for certain that she had one. Her mother refused to speak to her about him, and Jean learned early on that asking was futile.

She wondered now, under the trance of the bus’s hum, if Adam had ever felt that sort of abandonment. She had done her best to give him everything. Everything unfortunately hadn’t included a father for Adam. Was it genetic, she wondered, looking at the bits of blackness she caught through the glass’s glare, something she had inadvertently passed on from her mother?

Jean worried about her son, feeling at a loss lately about how to reach out to him. She just wanted him to be happy. But he wasn’t her little boy anymore who she could protect by wrapping her arms around his little boy body and swing him round and round until his tears became giggles.

Main at Portage, the bus driver announced. She prepared to disembark at the next stop. She would leave behind her the Saturday morning trips with her mother and the young boy who used to be Adam. And when she climbed her connecting bus and handed over the transfer tag, she would think of Marjory and her son, Peter. She would think of the silence that followed the weeping she had witnessed with a sense of confusion and uneasiness. Jean had never before seen Marjory cry.
.

.

La raison, c'est l'intelligence en exercice;
. . .l'imagination c'est l'intelligence en érection.

.
VICTOR HUGO

.

.

..........

.

.
H2O Harmony
.
.
how white the barren branches
how bright the early winter sky

fractal flakes falling from the heavens
tangle themselves in lashes and

drop on outstretched tongue, warmed
from the smile of her little child lips

as she reaches for the crescent moon
that floats upon a sea of stars tonight

.

Hollow Haiku

.

S.J.

.

droplets dangle from

fingers of mossy branches

bound to future fates

.

untitled

.
i can't remember her name
i can't remember her
the girl you met last night

she hides without seeking
foraging the shadows
of my soul it must be

that she waited patiently
choosing to show herself
to you she said hello
.

.

Sometimes I will write badly,

draw badly, paint badly, perform badly.

I have a right to do that to get to the other side.

Creativity is its own reward.

.
JULIA CAMERON
THE ARTIST`S WAY
.

.

.

CREATION

On this day in 1512, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel - considered Michelangelo's finest work - is exhibited to the public for the first time.

As a Neo-platonist, Michelangelo likely believed in the divinity of his own creativity more than he did in the possibility of man being capable of drawing an image of God. Nevertheless, this piece (unnamed by the artist himself), is deemed one of the finest frescoes ever painted. I suspect that the artist and the intellectual must have had a sense of humour about this particular project, wanting to do it justice despite his own philosophies and lack of passion for painting. . .

I find Michelangelo's sculptures most magnificent - Impossible for this tactile art lover not to run her fingers over his breath-taking beauties!

* * *

The Sistine Chapel was begun under Pope Sixtus IV in 1473, built to the proportions of Solomon's temple in the Old Testament (its height one-half and its width one-third of its length). For the purpose of emphasizing the authority and legality of the papacy, the chapel has frescoes on the walls by Botticelli and Ghirlandaio and, on the altar wall and ceiling, by Michelangelo.

.