About &Haiku

We are alive when we "explore, reflect, & tell" &Haiku is here to find this process in each of us. The haiku on this page is the end result of these three steps, they are the "tell."


&Haiku's "Explore, Reflect, & Tell"

(Adapted and modified from Haibun: Explore, Reflect, and Tell)

At the core of &Haiku is my experience with that 3 step process. It isn’t climate science, but I found such fulfillment in this process and I hope you find the reward in it too.

Dylan Thomas once declared how a poet is only a poet part of the time, the rest of the time he’s out living life and it is out of that living that he writes. This concept has become a driving concept behind "explore." Whether exploring means trudging through a river or catching my breath up a mountain, touching something new sets the process in motion. But it is not limited to physical activity, exploring, for me, could be a book, podcast, or conversation. To explore is to find the new and to pull a new glimpse of myself back out.

Jacque Ellul, one of the greatest thinkers from the last century, pontificating on technology said that for technology to advance, technology needs to become more like people and people like technology. For us to become more like the machines, we must become better and better at reacting. It is our ability to drive faster, type faster, tweet something witty before anyone else that is where we excel in reaction. But for millennia, our humanity has been in reflection. Our ability to take new explorations and to put words those memories, the emotions, the wants and desires and to tell them to others. 

That telling part completes the process. To tell another of the walks through the mountains became Basho’s creation of the Haiku. Next, Buson told of his experiences in changing rural Japan with Haiku, then Issa did the same (but Issa told in his own unique way). Haiku emerges as the "tell" part after walking into nature. Haiku then blossoms after reflecting on the one unique thing centered on in that walk through nature. Haiku blooms as the telling in condensed form of what was observed in nature. &Haiku is the continuation of that ink-filled tradition.

There is nothing to make up, no one to impress in the process. Editing will come after practice of the 3 steps. All you need to do is to explore something new, let it swim in your mind, and then tell. If you want to put it in a haiku, please share it. If you want to take a picture, again, please share. If you want to sing about it, share your song with a friend. The community, the humanity of you and me, is in the "tell." Something magical—something Apple or Google or Facebook can never take away—happens in that space between reflection and telling; but it starts with you or me exploring. We will never be a machine's slave as long as we explore, reflect, and tell.

this expanse won’t cease, 
bottom teeth beneath in peace
with heat’s new increase


























Thanks,

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