For Abe

commonplace object
by photographer's eye

transformed

This haiku (an explanation of the syllable structure follows) was inspired by the photograph you will find here. The photographer, Abelardo Morell, is an old colleague and friend from my days as the registrar at an art college. It hangs in the lobby of my current employer's main building. Abe is also the subject of a documentary film, Shadow of the House, which gives a glimpse into not only his work but his life. If you have a chance go see the film.

As for the haiku, as mentioned in a previous post, I am participating in a year long haiku writing project. The moderator's theory on haiku, which you can read here, is that the strict syllable structure is in part a mis-translation to syllable of a Japanese word. His critique of my first haiku was in part that it was too wordy. So, I'm working on making my haiku fit the spirit of haiku rather than fitting a strict syllable stucture.

You can read more submissions to the haiku project here.

Haiku Project, Week 3

web dances on wall

revealing winter antics

of sunlight and wind

See more haiku project here.

Haiku Project Week 2

low spots collect fog
overhead squirrels frolic
January thaw

You can see all of the week 1 submissions here. My favorite is Norma Dunlop's (about 1/2 way down in the right column). It paints a lovely picture.

New Challenges

The new year has dawned and with it new challenges and experiences. I don't make new year's resolutions, but this year I've volunteered myself into a few new challenges.

I have my sister-out-law, Shelley to thank for encouraging me to write haiku. She was the one who alerted me to the Nengajou exchange, and with the new year approaching she encouraged me to join in on the Haiku Project. The challenge of the project is to write at least one haiku a week and submit it. My frost haiku is my submission for this week and I have the women of One Deep Breath to thank for the inspiration.

Challenge number two is one of my own making. As those who read this blog regularly know I take and post a lot of photos. The numerous photo memes have really inspired me to carry my camera with me most places and to use it regularly. Carrying that to the next level I've decided to take and post one photo a day every day this year. You can find my 365 project here. One note - I actually failed this on the very first day of the year. I did take pictures that day, and I did post a picture that day. But the pictures I took were with my film camera, not my digital camera, and the photo I posted was taken on December 31st.

For challenge number three I have committed myself to being up and out of the house by 7am every Saturday for 5 weeks. Those who know me well know that early mornings are not my thing. I can count of one hand the number of sunrises I have seen in the last 12 months, and two were this weekend. I was up early today because I was so zonked last night that I was asleep before 10:30. The reason for the early rising is that I am taking a workshop class at the North Bennet Street School in Boston's North End. I took Fundamentals of Fine Woodworking there two years ago and loved it. So for the next 4 weeks I'll be spending all day Saturday at NBSS taking Fundamentals of Machine Woodworking. I've used all of the tools we'll be using in the class but this is a wonderful opportunity to fill in gaps in my knowledge and to get an understanding of the inner workings and maintenance of the machines. None of my previous classes have covered maintenance. The bonus of this is that I got some interesting sunrise pictures yesterday and during lunch some shots of the North End. I expect to add more in the weeks to come.

Finally, because I can't resist - the new year challenge haiku:

daily photograph,
saturday woodworking class
write weekly haiku

This week's prompt at Sunday Scribblings is "New" or "New Year". No story came to mind but since I hadn't written about this yet I decided it would fit the bill. Read more Sunday Scribblings here.