I guess I am going to find a way to edit. I mean winnowing. I think looking honestly at your own work is hard. This is where the “kill your darlings” part comes in – what is your favorite, for whatever reasons, may not apply to others.

In quilting, this means that a special play between two colors in one part of a quilt just isn’t enough to make it special for the person who hasn’t seized on those few square inches as you did. Can you make the whole thing work for them?

In writing, it’s knowing that the reader doesn’t know there are three more companion haiku that go with this one. They don’t know the back story; they only have the words before them to go on. They need to be able to read it in their own voice and get a reaction, right?

(Or I guess if you’re in the Modern Poetry course you tease the words apart and roll each word around individually until you are thinking about something you made up in your own head instead of the group of words that the poet put down on paper… oops – tangent alert!)

This talk was mentioned in Take This Job and Love It, so I wanted to share it with you. Have a hanky ready at the end for a little twist to the talk but you’ll be glad. Then stand up and strike a power pose and get on with your day!

and in case you need help with some power poses (here’s my alter ego for example):

Robert Genn’s newsletter just landed in my inbox, titled: Perfect happiness.

As I read these, whether nodding or shaking my head, I am glad to know that the problems, pitfalls and rewards of making art are the same no matter what you’re doing. Isn’t that good? We can all learn from each other.

And what about this great quote:

Be philosophical. The happiest people take an “agnostic” approach where curiosity and questioning give more joy and stimulate more wonder than pat answers. We live our short spans in the vortex of a miracle, and while we may not be the center of that vortex, it is magic to be anywhere in there. Be happy! The gods insist on it. The philosophers can find no higher ideal. The pursuit of it is written in the US Constitution. It’s the pursuit that matters.

Yup – it’s believing that something’s possible even if you can’t see it! (This is the other video we saw at Take This Job and Love It!)

I pulled together more haiku than I could possibly imagine out of this computer and out of the blog too (pre-laptop). Wow. I got really good at the necessary search and replaces to throw them into a form so they could be imported into a database. I have to figure out a reasonable way to “rank” them and then some way to print them. I did see that I can easily print in “label” format which might work. I found one that was six to a page. Eight on a page would be ok too. I have no idea how that would work.

Anyway, tonight I emailed a friend from warcraft about this and he replied with great news – he’s getting married! woot! So happy for him – he’s had some dark days and he’s such a nice young guy.

————-

spent the day reading
so many haiku to sort
counting seventeen.

october morning
settling onto ridges
fog between the hills.

the dollops of clouds
you may call them morning fog
glow in the sunlight.

Molly, small black cat
greets me at the door nightly
and then skitters off.

I send a hello
comes back with happy, good news
so glad for my friend.

is it the ocean?
or a steady rain on leaves?
or wind in the pines?

the beady black eye
of the wooden rooster
that guards my work room..