Many years ago, I was visiting an early mentor who had been recently hospitalized but was feeling pretty good the day he invited me to visit. I was working on my college applications at the time and Jay always made a great sounding board. When I arrived, he was sitting up in bed watching the sparrows in the tree right outside his window. Never one to beat around the bush, he said “Let’s get to it”, and we spent the next couple of hours polishing one of my entrance essays. The afternoon flew by, and I could tell Jay was tiring. He was about my grandfather’s age and still razor sharp. Before it got any later, I got up to say goodbye and let him know I would visit again in a few days. Jay said to wait a minute, sit back down, there’s a couple of things I’d like to share with you. Perched by his bedside, he began to speak slowly in that deep, rich, baritone voice of his. “Ray, you’ve got a sharp mind, even if you are sometimes a bit too clever.” With that said, he was emphatic about not taking acute intelligence for granted. It needs to be constantly engaged and challenged or else you’ll lose it over time. Listening closely because I could tell the importance to Jay to get his message through to me, he went on to say you always need an outlet for your creative energy. Jay was a superb Cubist painter which provided for his own creative outlet, quite different from his day job as a scientist and inventor. He was tired now but wanted to impart one final observation. As he put it, “perhaps the most important,” he wanted me to understand that if you do something for yourself it’s gone when you’re gone. If you do something for someone else, it becomes part of your legacy. A heady concept for a 16-year-old, but one that did leave me thinking. We said our goodbyes, shared a hug, and I headed home. It turned out that was the last time I saw my friend alive. A couple of days later, he had passed away from a brain aneurysm and the next time I saw him was at his funeral.
That spring flew by, a combination of excitement over college and the sorrow I felt at the loss of my friend and mentor. As the month’s past, the fog slowly lifted, and I had a real chance to process Jay’s parting advice. Keeping one’s mind challenged and constantly engaged was an easy one to get. I was in such a hotbed of academic scholarship in high school; it took everything I had just to keep up. Parenthetically, I see bright people every day who have put their minds on cruise control and it negatively affects their ability to engage on a meaningful level. Jay’s reminder of the difference between doing something for yourself as opposed to doing something for others was easy to grasp. That concept was a core family value drummed into me from an early age.
Now the concept of the legacy one leaves behind was a notion I really hadn’t spent much time on but soon began giving it thought. The hard one for me was finding an appropriate outlet for my creative energy. Up until Jay’s passing much of my time was divided between athletics and museums. Truth be told, I couldn’t sculpt, I couldn’t paint, I couldn’t remember my lines in school plays plus I had two left feet so I couldn’t dance. Now the one thing I could do was write. Writing came easy, probably too easy to satisfy the challenge I felt I was presented with in finding a creative outlet that really required introspection that my writing, my one natural aptitude, was not currently demanding.
College years passed, studying abroad expanded my thinking, and the young man that ultimately planted his flag in San Francisco started giving serious thought to the channel markers laid out by my first mentor, Jay. It didn’t take long before kismet happened. Just recently ensconced in a new apartment in a wonderfully diverse and functional neighborhood, I received a package from a former professor of mine and luckily for me another mentor. He had sent me a monograph written by a very influential Japanese writer named Yone Noguchi, who like me, had lived in both San Francisco and New York. His monograph was a challenge to American poets entitled, “A Proposal to American Poets.” Its central point was that American poets “say too much.” Yone suggested that American poets study “Haiku”, a short form of poetry first developed in the 13th century. It originally started out as the beginning stanza of longer form poetry called “Ranga” which is a “linked poem” where multiple poets collaborate to create a single poem. Eventually, it stood on its own merits with 16th century poet, Matsoo Basho setting the standard that still stands to this day.
It was American poet, Ezra Pound, who in 1904, picked up Yone’s challenge and wrote; “In a station in a metro” in an angelize haiku style.
As has been the case with most of feudal Japanese art forms, the Haiku came with a ton of required covenants and restrictions, many have now been left by the wayside, but three still have withstood the test of time and should be adhered to if one chooses to express themselves through a Haiku. They remain:
- The Haiku is a 3-line poem consisting of 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second and 5 in the third.
- A Haiku should reflect a moment of insight. Think of it as a panorama of thought in a single flash.
- A Haiku contains 2 parts, a section that creates an image (usually 2 lines) and the second section should be different but connected either through interpretation or contrast. This is what gives a Haiku its fullness and complexity.
It’s my hope that these few insights might inspire you to try your own hand at writing a Haiku. Remember Jay’s reminder that doing something for someone else is special, no matter how small the act might be. I have dear friends who I’ve written Haikus for birthdays, anniversaries, births and deaths. Twenty years later they actually have read them to me. Do you think they would have saved a Hallmark card from 20 years ago? I don’t think so. I hope you do yourself a favor as well as doing one for someone you care about. Give it a try, you’ll be amazed at the enjoyment you’ll derive from your creation and the satisfaction from having reached out to someone you care about in a most unique way.
One act of kindness
Cast ripples across the lake
Yet just a flat stone
See the natural
Recognize beauty abounds
Come share the bounty
Keep an open heart
Gifts come when least expected
Time to pay it on
