by Kelly

the darkness always

shocks — it’s so hard to wake up,

get up, motivate

by Alison

fuzzy-brained fatigue

has me craving coffee and

searching for haiku

by Kelly

pinching petunias

desperately seeking haiku

or serenity

by Kelly

creative ideas

have been lost and not yet found –

missing my mojo

by Kelly

This post combines two things seemingly at odds with each other: Fran Drescher and haiku.

Here’s the deal — I’ve been struggling to write this post. It was just supposed to be a quick-and-easy, short little review of a single chapter from Patrica Donegan’s book, Haiku Mind. Instead, it turned into a ball and chain.

I knew which chapter I wanted to write about, too. Chapter 75. It discusses creativity and imagination, two traits I respect, admire and hold dear as a writer.

The irony, though, is that I couldn’t find the creativity, the imagination, or the motivation to actually sit down and write anything on the topic.

To prove my point, I’ll tell you that it’s Saturday right now. It’s 2 pm. Yet publishing this entry was on my list of things to do for Monday afternoon. I’ve managed to push this off for five whole days.

But now I’m back on track, or at least I’m catching up, and I have Fran Drescher to thank.

She came through Minneapolis the other night, on a speaking circuit, and I went to hear her talk. One of things she talked about the process of developing “The Nanny”.

Apparently, just before the show performed its pilot episode, the producers got a call from an advertiser who was willing to buy a bunch of ad slots if the writers would change the nanny character (Fran) from being a Jewish girl to an Italian girl.

Fran refused, but not on the politics. She refused out of creative integrity. She could have played an Italian girl, she said. She could have pulled it off, but …

But not for the long-term. Fran Drescher as an Italian nanny wouldn’t have been as authentic, and in order for the show to have any chance at going the distance, it needed to ring true.

She said: I had to listen to the voice inside me because the voice inside me is the closest to my creator.

As soon as she said these words, I immediately connected them to chapter 75 in the book Haiku Mind, the chapter that is all about creativity and imagination.

The haiku that starts this chapter was written by Diane di Prima. It reads:

the inner tide –

what moon does it follow?

I wait for a poem.

The inner tide. The inner voice. They are flip sides of the same coin. The inner tide brings a wash of ideas; the inner voice communicates them. And each is as mysterious as our creator.

We wait for these messages from the beyond — for these ideas, these sparks, these words of guidance — knowing that they will come, but often left wondering exactly when they will show up.

If only we could put a lease and collar on our inner tide so that we could call it up at exact moments whenever we needed a little bit of extra juice.

Instead, we must learn that inspiration strikes in its own time. Our creativity doesn’t always peak when we want it to. And sometimes, words of wisdom are frustratingly silent.

But they come. They all come. In due time. They always do. The trick is, we have to keep ourselves open for their arrival.

Find Haiku Mind on Amazon:
Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart

Inspiration haiku excerpted from Haiku Mind by Patricia Donegan, (c) 2008. Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston. www.Shambhala.com.

by Alison

Colombia is

Doris Salcedo dreaming

of one thousand chairs

by Kelly

Yoga teacher says:

Be present. Breathe. Instead I’m

counting syllables.

by Alison

I look for haiku

in piles of slush and snow but

I cannot find it

Credit should be given where credit is due. When it comes to the birth of Haiku By Two, we must give a nod to bloggers Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes. Together, they author a blog called 3191: A Year of Evenings.

Their blog is a photo blog. Everyday, both of them post a picture snapped during evening hours.

Their two pictures are posted side by side, and even though these women live on opposite sides of the country — one is in Oregon, the other in Maine — the pictures are often similar.

For Vettese and Barnes, these evening pictures are round two in a photo-blogging project started in December 2006. Back then, though, at their blog’s inception, they were posting pictures taken during morning hours.

Their morning pictures proved so popular that when a year was up, the photos were turned into a book. That book, A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart, put us on the path to Haiku By Two. We took the idea of a shared, long-distance art blog, tweaked it a little, and started our own version.

Here are just a few of the reasons we love this book and find it inspiring.

The photos in A Year of Mornings are fresh and crisp. They FEEL like morning and look like life, newness and potential.

For example, there are a couple pictures of a young girl’s neat braids. Every strand is in place, but you know that by the end of the day, wind and play will take their toll.

What you’re saying about newness and potential, I noticed this too.

I kept getting drawn in to all the pictures of food. Healthy food. Raspberries. Wheat toast. Granola. Chopped melons. The foods felt organic and natural and I wanted to eat what these women were eating. Their breakfasts looked like such a productive start on the day.

One of my favorite images in the book is a breakfast photo. It’s on page 36, dated January 29, and shows a red mug filled with coffee next to a plate with half-eaten pastries. I can imagine the photographer’s morning, picking up a piece of banana bread and dreaming about her day to come.

One of my favorite images is on page 31. It’s dated January 19. If you just look at it quickly, you might think it is the four legs of a cat stretched out on a bed. But if you look more closely, it’s actually only three legs. What looks like the fourth leg is actually a tail.

There are quite a few pictures of cats in the book, and the whole cat is rarely included in the frame. Instead, you see just a corner of a cat. An ear. A foot. An eyeball.

I know what you mean. Most of the images are cut off, just a section of the whole, and that is where the pictures start to remind me of haiku. A haiku is so short. You can’t tell a whole story. In haiku, you can only tell a piece. You have to focus on the small things and in doing so, you see how extraordinary they are.

Totally. This is one of the book’s charms. You feel like you’re getting a tiny glimpse into these women’s lives, a peek of something unpolished that maybe you’re not really supposed to see. Like on page 101. The picture is dated June 21 and it shows crumpled sheets in an unmade bed.

Unmade beds are usually hidden behind closed doors and off-limits to house guests. But because I get to see it, I feel like I know something about this woman that others don’t. Even though this picture only shows me a sliver from her life, it feels like it reveals more because it’s a private image.

I love the crumple and smell of morning sheets! Taking a moment to find the beauty in our ordinary, domestic lives is so important.

I’ve been reading this book about haiku and something it said sticks with me. It said that if you need a moment of meditation, you should look toward the sky. Doing this can help you see the moment. There is a picture in the book on page 161 that reminds me of this. It shows a splendid cobweb with an out-of-focus house in the background and the sky glowing white beyond that.

It looks like something I might notice on a walk in a moment when I let myself look up for a second.

I love moments like those. As I go about my daily life, I notice color combinations, shadows or the shape of a sign and I pause to look a little longer.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one pausing or if other people also have these small moments of clarity, moments when they stop, notice a thing, and then acknowledge it by giving it their attention for a few seconds. This book, A Year of Mornings, proves that others do this, too. I’m not the only one.

And this is what I think we took from A Year of Mornings when we came up with Haiku By Two. Vettese and Barnes are snapping pictures of their moments of clarity. We’re writing word pictures of ours.

Photos © Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes

Find A Year of Mornings on Amazon:
A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart