What do you see when you look up into the night sky? Dots of twinkling light? Or Orion, the Pleiades, Ursa Major?
Which is to ask, do you see the territory or do you see the map?
Krishnamurti (among others) dedicated much thought to “direct perception,” the issue being that when we look at familiar things, we no longer see them but rather our memory (map) of them. We see a tall elongated fuzzy shape on a hill, then our mind says pine tree and suddenly we no longer see the tall elongated fuzzy shape but some conceptual amalgam of all the pine trees we’ve catalogued in the past.
It’s not unlike how a web browser redisplays a previously cached image, instead of downloading and displaying the source image all over again. It saves time and energy.
To make my living experience more vital, more authentic, I periodically try to break through my “cached” maps and see things anew, fresh. Maybe travel is so invigorating precisely because it forces me to see things for the first time, things for which I have no cached version. All territory, no map.
Since moving to the Sierra foothills from the foggy beaches of San Francisco, I’ve been enjoying the brighter presence of the stars. Every morning, I let out my cats while it’s still dark, and I often step outside with them and gaze up at the stars.
I take them in, allow them to act upon me, as it were, and experience “direct perception,” but my mind inevitably seeks out Orion, then other familiar constellations.
And I get why. For untold millennia, we looked to the stars not to gaze in wide wonder, but to locate ourselves, to grasp the seasons, to find the way back home. The stars for all their beauty provided data critical to our immediate survival.
And yet… I want that wide wonder, too. Beauty and utility can co-exist.
I look at the night sky to taste something magical, and to connect with something primal that can’t be captured in any map.
And sometimes it happens. Sometimes I find Whitman’s moment of perfect silence, and when I do, it invariably shows me the way home.
Anyway, here are last week’s seven haiku postcards, and where under the stars they were destined for.
haiku 20231016 » Los Angeles, CA USA
autumn afternoon
yellow light and brown leaves
crunching underfoot
haiku 20231017 » Findikpinari, Mersi̇n Turkey
autumn leaves
the dog keeps
losing his ball
haiku 20231018 » Brooklyn, NY USA
early morning stars
something ancient
stirs in my bones
haiku 20231019 » El Cerrito, CA USA
purple asters --
all year we've waited,
the butterflies too
haiku 20231020 » Chicago, IL USA
starry night
the patio stones
sparkling with dew
haiku 20231021 » Washington, DC USA
morning cats
curled around my feet
just a hint of claw
haiku 20231022 » Findikpinari, Mersi̇n Turkey
early morning stars
the names of constellations
impose themselves
That’s all seven! See you next week! And remember…
I STILL want to send you a card
It’s kinda weird you read my Substack but haven’t requested a card yet. I don’t get it. Please ask! It’s free. I ask nothing in return, aside from your good graces or maybe a cup of coffee if you’re so inclined.
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And I’m posting reels of each week’s haiku postcards on Instagram. The “live” photos feature lets you see my sloppy attempts to angle in on the best shot. Check it out!
Recommended reading
I heartily recommend all the books below. I get no commission, no nothing if you buy through my links. (Amazon Associates gave me the boot because I didn’t move enough merch. Oh well.)
Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems, Stephen Addiss/Fumiko Y. Yamamoto/Akira Y. Yamamoto
With the exception of The Haiku Anthology (see below), this was the first haiku anthology I bought when I first started sending out haiku cards. I stumbled across this small, beautiful book, while making my requisite writer’s pilgrimage to Shakespeare’s Books in Paris (ooh la la). The richness and scope between the covers in this little book is simply amazing, featuring over 102 poets, many more if you include anonymous authors. It’s my go-to when packing for a trip. Buy it here.
The Haiku Anthology (Third Edition), Edited by Cor van den Heuvel
Want to know what modern English-language haiku really looks like? What it is capable of? Here is your answer, and a must for every haiku poet’s bookshelf. When I first started writing haiku, this volume served me very well. Many of the haiku within have remained with me throughout the years, and I have been privileged to now count some of the contributors as colleagues and friends. Buy it here.
Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku, Natalie Goldberg
Many writers will immediately recognize Goldberg from her forever bestselling Writing Down the Bones. As it happens, she has been writing haiku for her entire adult life, and has much to teach us. In Three Simple Lines, she intertwines memoir, history, and travelogue in a magnificent way as she journeys through Japan, chasing down the ghosts of Bashō and Buson, among others. She also draws much needed attention to women haiku poets, who were too often overshadowed by their male contemporaries. Buy it here.
Mountain Tasting - Haiku and Journals of Santoka … (tr. John Stevens)
I found Santoka challenging at first. Much of his haiku feels incomplete to me or dashed off. But he grew on me. Soon I felt like a companion on his journey, bouncing from inn to inn, begging for alms by day, pounding sake by night. Buy it here.
The Essential Haiku - Versions of Bashō, Buson, & Issa
Essential is right! Edited by Robert Hass, a great poet in his own right. Hass includes great essays on the history and evolution, as well as other writings by the poets themselves. A true master class in haiku! Buy it here.
Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings, Matsuo Bashō (tr. Sam Hamill)
Haiku poets have a tradition of wandering the countryside, and Bashō set the example! Buy it here.
Selected Poems, Masaoka Shiki (tr. Burton Watson)
I wrote a whole post about Shiki. Haiku might not exist today without his influence and renewal of the form. Buy it here.
Issa's Best: A Translator's Selection of Master Haiku, Issa Kobayashi (tr. David G. Lanoue)
Issa is probably the most beloved of the classic poets. His humility and joy in the face of unbearable loss and poverty endear him to haiku lovers everywhere. Lanoue seems to have made translating Issa his life’s mission, and I love his versions. Buy it here.