Xuân and I had been reading Vera Kochanowsky’s 101 Haiku for 15 minutes a day. The haikus are short, but they introduction is 35 page long. I love how Kochanowsky approaches haiku. For example, she writes:
In our modern life we are rarely encouraged to observe little things. Although we may look at our surroundings (when our eyes are not glued to our cell phones), we often don’t see what is really there. We don’t take the time to make those connections that fill our world, and which can bring us a clearer understanding of ourselves and our relationship to all that exists, one little piece at a time. Haiku can be a form of meditation, a focus on a particular object or experience that has elicited a feeling or even just some kind of response in us, a spark of recognition, a connection to something we have known or experienced before. Each of these moments of understanding becomes a tiny piece of beauty in the mosaic of our lives.
Kochanowsky continues:
The idea of “less is more” is nothing new. In art and music there are plenty of examples. The human mind enjoys and even revels in these intentional gaps. A good art teacher will tell you that when you draw an object or a person you can leave certain things out. Some lines can and should be lighter, and some can be left out altogether. Dark areas enhance the lighter spaces, and vice versa. Knowing what to minimize or leave out is where the artist shows his or her mastery. The viewer’s mind must fill in these gaps. It regularly does so with surprisingly little effort.
In music the blank or light space is silence. The musician’s canvas is time. Our minds always compare the present moment to what has just been heard. The impact of what will come is shaped by what is played or not played in this moment. One can get used to loud sounds if the ear is bombarded with them continually. But if there is a moment of silence just before it, a loud cymbal crash will have a more startling impact. The best musicians know how to use silence, the spaces between notes, to move their listeners.
After the long introduction, the concise haikus were a breeze to read through. They are beautiful. Here are a few of my personal favorites:
Your voice, so soothing,
like warm butter over grits.
Let me not forget.
Someone spilled paint
all over the fall mountains—
each leaf, a masterpiece.
Cold night in the woods,
sparks fly up from the campfire
to mingle with stars.
Xuân is getting better at recognizing the words, but has yet to understand the meanings behind the poems. We’ll reread the haikus slower the second time around.
