Friday, October 10, 2008

Doodling about Issa

A Kind of Elaborate Doodling I did while Thinking about Issa in Provincetown

After finding the book of Japanese Haiku at Tim's Used Bookstore in Provincetown, I became very interested in Issa. One of my favorites of his was, and still is:

In this windy nest
Open your hungry mouth in vain
Issa, stepchild bird.

I later found a book of 45 Haiku by Issa, translated by Nanao Sakaki. Nanao Sakaki is an Issa-like, playful prophet. Sakaki believes that compassion is not something we make, that it is human nature: "Everybody has it originated in our blood," he says. Sakaki says that Issa wrote 20,000 Haiku! Out of the 20,000, he loves "maybe 200." Out of the 20,000, "maybe 10 great."

One of the 45 Haiku translated by Sakaki that I like a lot is:

Just myself
Also, one fly
--an enormous house.

It says something to me about loneliness.

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"I was no better than dust, yet you cannot replace me. . . Take the soft dust in your hand--does it stir: does it sing? Has it lips and a heart? Does it open its eyes to the sun? Does it run, does it dream, does it burn with a secret, or tremble In terror of death? Or ache with tremendous decisions?. . ." --Conrad Aiken

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The Secret of Hurricanes : That article in the Waterville Scout said it was Shake- spearean, all that fatalism that guides the Kennedys' lives. The likelihood of untimely death. Recently, another one died in his prime, John-John in an airplane. Not long before that, Bobby's boy. While playing football at high speeds on snow skis. Those Kennedys take some crazy chances. I prefer my own easy ways. Which isn't to say my life hasn't been Shake-spearean. By the time I was sixteen, my life was like the darkened stage at the end of Hamlet or Macbeth. All littered with corpses and treachery.

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