Mariner's Log

I knew coming into 2012 it would be a year of changes. It started slow, but they're coming on. But, this post is more about my feelings regarding my father's death.

I think we all have a few, perhaps a half-dozen, people we set our life's pole stars by. It's not a matter of agreeing, but of having signposts, navigation markers, a sense of how to measure where you stand in life. In my case, my father was the last of those.

So. With his passing, I must measure myself against... myself. Finally, in some sense, I'm grown up. It's a more than a little disorienting. I can no longer stop over and watch the Yankees. Or argue about politics or society. Or listen to him recall his youth, and in those discussions understand a little more about me, and my place in the world. Instead, if you'll pardon the pun, I'm now navigating life by dead reckoning. Just me and my sense of action. That sense is a result of how I understood my polestars, but it's still just me. It's a little lonely, a trifle frightening, and, comma, sad.

I've understood, grokked if you will, personal mortality for a long, long time. But this is not mortality, this is life without a mental safety net. I don't know how better to describe it.

I have more to write, but it will have to wait.

I just re-read the haiku I composed for my father. It may be the purest, most traditional haiku I have ever written. (refer to the Wikipedia article, if needed)

To repeat:
On the first warm day
The old crow cawing softly,
Free of pain, at last.

It follows the 5-7-5 pattern for syllables, but more importantly, it follows 5-7-5 'on', or 'morae', that is 5-7-5 distinct sounds. A syllable can consist of multiple 'on' e.g real. Real is a single syllable, but contains two 'on'; re(e)-ail.

The Kigo, or seasonal reference, is the first phrase. The key seasonal word, that is, one listed in a saijiki, is 'warm' and is associated with Spring. I could have left the word 'first' out, and used 'warmer' but 'first' adds a stronger (in English) sense of when in spring then 'warmer' and also connects to the description of the subject.

The only flaw in using 'first' is an ambiguity of whether it has one or two 'on'. 'First' is pronounced as a single sibilant sound 'firs' with a hard lingual stop ('t). But stops are not considered 'on'. 'However, 'warmer' is ambiguous between the desired two 'on' or is it three (warm-er vs wa-rm-er), so 'first' it is.

The Kiregi, the cutting word, is 'day' in the first line, leaving the reader to have the seasonal reference mentally pending, while the actual subject of the poem is juxtaposed onto that reference.

The final requirement is that the whole piece creates a whole 'picture', needing no explicit outside references to appreciate the situation. Taken phrase by phrase, 'On the first warm day' is by itself sufficient, the self-sufficiency emphasizing the Kigo/Kiregi and placing the reader into early spring, rather than later. Furthermore, it appeals to a particular sense, the sense of touch, as in external warmth.

The second phrase, 'the old crow cawing softly' introduces the subject. This is also self-sufficient. Although the old crow represents my father, and the soft caw his voice, that knowledge is not needed by a reader to mentally hear a soft caw or picture a bird, somewhat ruffled, perhaps hopping awkwardly, and maybe a little lighter black around the edges. It's also not needed to know that 'crow' is the translation of our surname in its original language. Instead of 'caws softly' as the action I could have used a flying reference, which would have emphasized the free aspect of the third phrase. But I already have a visual reference, and 'caws softly' appeals to the sense of hearing, as well as giving the crow some personality.

Finally, the third phrase connects the Kigo and the subject, needing nothing else to complete the mental situation, although it doesn't not stand on it's own. The pain is obviously the pain of old age, and is an internal sensation, not an external one. Being free of pain evokes a sense of relief, and is connected to the sense of (external) warm as a cause. And the last two words suggest a duration of pain, connecting back to the implied length of the seasons. But 'free at last' also, in English, suggests a permanence to the change of situation from the constraint, in this case of pain. Pain and old are often closely associated, so if the old subject is free of pain, than that can only mean age no longer has meaning. Death, the passing of pain, the final freedom. The old crow is truly free. Oh, and is telling us about it, just like my father.

And I wrote it in a couple of minutes. Without actually thinking about these conventions, or analyzing it.

I'm pleased it was for him.

I finally gave in to Facebook. It's a realization I have to be be publicly social to provide a phrase and have a Facebook presence to be 'trusted' in some sense of the word by a lot of the world. Unlike this venue, where I typically keep a certain pseudonymity by not referring to my location and name, it's a deliberately public thing.

This will continue to be my choice for offering deeper, more private thoughts to an unsuspecting public, and a very few knowledgeable individuals. If you're one of those few, may I invite you look for me on Facebook. If you're there....

On the first warm day
The Old Crow caws with pleasure
free of pain, at last

My father, age 85, died peacefully today.

Actions of a government, ANY government in the name of the 'greater good' is the worst form of fascism.

Been awhile.. with most of my LJ folk defecting to FB, and some health issues affecting my motivations, posting is just not as regular as an activity as it was. But, I'm still here. And will be.

Melodies abound
Birds in the warm winter sun
Cats watch carefully

A Very Long Time Ago, I cried my way through a Holiday season because I had f'd up my relationship with my first love, bad enough, and my youngest sister was getting married two days after Christmas, so she's all giddy, I'm grieving, my family has absolutely no clue about my mental state and I'm not telling them so as not to mess up my sister's happiness. If you ever want some insight into a suicidal mindset, put yourself in that position. And yes, it's a deliberate run-on sentence.

That hurt affected every holiday season since then, until this one. Sometime in the last week I realized that ghost has left me. It's not been a *fun* holiday season; economic deprivation (read: I'm broke) cramps most style attempts, but the old hurt is vanished.

Cool, eh? Hope for me yet.

Best wishes to all, and to all, chive on.
bjb

Offhand, and given the amount of time LJ seems to spend addressing DDoS attacks, I'd say they have made some serious unfriends. Too bad. Not that I spend a lot of time here, but it's a useful outlet.

If Henry Ford had not made the assembly line an icon of American business, what would our economy resemble today?