Some
days, sometimes, life becomes an unfortunate series of conflicts.
I would like to examine how conflict in our lives
might inspire us to read and write haiku and other short poetic forms.
I believe turning to these forms as a response to conflict creates for
us an opportunity both to lose and find our selves, as well as to gain
some resolution, levity and redemptive understanding. Conflict in our
lives, as I'm sure everyone here can attest, is epidemic. It can range
from the petty, everyday variety
to the profound, deeply unsettling type of conflict that makes our very
existence miserable.
The list of how we define conflict is as endless as the days and the
lives of those experiencing these conflicts. In examining the self,
it becomes apparent that conflict creates in us incentive and impetus
to recreate our reality or at least to adjust our understanding of reality.
In a critical sense, it is conflict which challenges and upsets our
old, comfortable self-understanding. This may lead to a reconfiguring
of the self which in essence we have merely invented as a reflex and
reaction to the myriad circumstances, needs and desires we experience
daily. The chameleon of our self usually remains beyond the conscious
control, unless of course we are a saint, a Zen monk or in some other
way tremendously disciplined in the ways of the self.
As we go along in life we cling to this self like a life preserver.
After awhile we may begin to recognize that the self, like all forms
in nature, is subject to change and extinction. Carrying identities
and shedding them like snakeskins is a lifelong and humbling negotiation
beginning on the playground and requiring each of us to close down and
let go of significant parts and ideas we have of our self all along
the way. Yet, combined with these losses, may come the discovery that
a certain currency of self exists in concert and unity with all things,
great and small, simple and complex. This currency always exists but
may be only discovered and intelligible when we feel deeply the wheel
of our life turning so that we begin to look, listen, and notice our
'self' with extra-sensory interest and attention. It is at such times
of awakening, often in the midst of conflict, that our perception to
receive poetic messages opens. These messages visit us with heart lasting
truth and insight which may dissolve as quickly as it arrives. Haiku
are from this realm, and the best of haiku give us glimpses at a uniquely
clear and liberated relation to our sometimes imprisoning and limited
alone little self.
As writers we have two main paths of response to our conflicts:
1. We can directly confront our conflicts by cathartically writing
about them and in the process gaining both perspective and distance
which in turn, often provides levity. I often favor this approach and
have found a healthy degree of self therapy is available by simply reporting
on the essence and edge of my conflicts, aware that they are as likely
to be universal as they are unique. As the Buddha pointed out, there
is not one house that does not experience struggles and suffering. When
we share and find ways to help each other bear burdens, we begin on
a path of liberation even if in our writing we feel as if we are simply
walking in place!
2. The second path is to seek alternative reality by choosing to contact
apart or a level in the self that is not feeling conflicted. In other
words, to basically shun and reject conflict in favor of a reality that
is at least seemingly, if only temporarily, free from conflict. This
response I liken to the poet in person being much like a dream catcher;
catching the burdensome while allowing those joys and affirming visions
to pass through. The widely sought serenity that is often equated with
nature and nature poems is perhaps the written representation of those
who in response to conflict are inspired to focus on images, places
and feelings that are not conflicted.
I've often wondered if the most classically undramatic and still point
nature poets are not selectively creating what they as individuals
most need as a response to their personal conflicts or those in
the world
at large. Perhaps as a group, those of us who associate and strongly
relate to haiku are doing so as a collective response to a world gone
quite mad with too many conflicts.
D. T. Suzuki in
his introduction to Essays in Zen Buddhism points
out: "life
is after all arguing, a painful struggle . . . this however is providential
for the more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with
deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into
the secrets of
life." A gift of conflict then, encourages us to read these
secrets, and haiku offer a way to articulate and share our findings.
Each of
us writing haiku and other short forms is as a reporter of sacred
and small bits of news about our transitory passage through this
mysterious
life and world. Conflict is our reality check—our chance
to reflect, review, and take time out to look, listen . . . and
note! When the
poetic and intuitive speaks to us, we become a medium for a message
that allows
us to be refreshed with seeing anew and again that which simultaneously
lets us lose and find our self.
In David Steindl-Rast's book A Listening Heart,
he has an insightful chapter devoted to haiku called "Mirror of the Heart".
In this chapter, he begins by calling haiku a mirror; "Like
a crystal, the facets of which mirror and bring together so many
different reflections
of the world around it, the haiku shows us some important aspects
of the world gathered together and reflected as if in one brief
sparkling
flash. The clarity and precision of this remarkable poetic form
is only heightened by the fact that it is so utterly unsentimental.
So is a
mirror." As we go about our day to day rhythm of routines,
a degree of unconscious-automatic pilot type behavior dims our
awareness and
attention to see and feel many miracles and poetic messages about
us.
The calling of haiku requires
of us a daily recognition of moments, simple and subtle as they may
be, that rise above the plain of our
life and give a good glow of knowing . . . bringing humble grounding
and
poetic order to the cottage of the self. Brother Steindl-Rast describes
this aspect of haiku as a "Peak Experience" . . . "for
we do experience our lives as relatively long stretches of ascent
and decline culminating here and there in brief moments for which
a peak
is the perfect image. What makes a Peak Experience so liberating is
that precisely for once I no longer feel and know that I know but
simply feel and know just that. Only afterwards can I reflect on it
and so
talk about it. And what I am then inclined to say is something like "I
was simply swept off my feet," or "I was out of myself,
carried away." Even though it might have been for a split second
only, "I
had lost myself." This was all. But not quite all. For looking
back I will so admit that at the moment of my Peak Experience I was
more truly and more fully myself than at any other time. And so I
find myself confronted with the strange paradox that I am most truly
myself
when I forget myself. When I lose myself, I find myself. To receive and record haiku is a challenge requiring considerable
patience and readiness for those moments of serendipity when suddenly
like a
candid camera we are shown ourself in a most special way. It takes
practice and regular reading to discover the breadth and depth of
the endless
ways haiku can be felt. That conflict and adversity may turn us to
writing, is in no small way an honoring of our life and all life
and can be the
compassionate venture beyond our self on the way to find our self.
. . . In Francine Porad's collection The Perfect Worry Stone,
Connie Hutchinson
writes in the preface: "Greeks carried "worry stones," usually
agates, in their pockets. Fingering them had a calming effect, reducing
anxiety. As haiku poets, we observe the moment, craft the poem. Poet
and reader re-experience the moment through the poem. Haiku in all
these aspects engage us with life, diverting our attention from ineffectual
worry over personal and communal pains, redirecting our thoughts and
energies. Haiku is the perfect worry stone. In my life I have found
considerable solace in being able to write about my personal conflicts,
moments where I felt moved to pause, reflect, regroup and recognize
that even in conflict and distress are silver linings and the potential
for poetry that each of us can find in our heart . . . and in turn
move
on from our conflict through the poetry we create from it.
~ Tom Clausen
|
waking me
just to tell me
she can't sleep
Some poems from my chapbook, published by Snaphot
Press in 2000, entitled, Homework: cleaning the poop out
his little Superman
underpants
how long he cries
for the little shell lost
on the way home
home from work ...
the little one brings me
an empty wine bottle
playing a child's game
I learn all
his rules
all through
his temper tantrum
her calm
now that I'm over
my bad mood,
she's in one
she's waited up ...
to have some last words
with me
while brushing my teeth
she tells me again:
"let's
move"
the plumber
kneeling in our tub
– talking to himself
done –
the repairman tells me
any fool can do it
the snow
moves me
window to window
second day
of the New Year:
taxes arrive
at the mailbox
the emptiness
of another day
outside the glass door
our old cat has forgotten
it wanted "in" |
|
Tom
Clausen lives in Ithaca, NY with his wife, Berta Gutierrez,
and their son, Casey (16) and daughter, Emma (10), in the
same house Tom grew up in. Tom works in a library at Cornell University
where he used to post haiku in an elevator for patrons. This has evolved
to become a link at the Mann Library home page featuring a daily haiku.
He became enchanted with haiku and other short poetic forms in the
late 1980s after reading an article about Ruth Yarrow, a fellow Ithacan
at the time.