Every morning, I write a haiku-like verse with the goal of catching what\u2019s going on in my mind at that moment. These are closer to senryu than traditional haiku, since only a few of them are about nature and they sometimes have a humorous or satirical turn.<\/p>\n
I call these \u201czentao\u201d and you can find them on Twitter with that as a hashtag. I also post them on Facebook.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been doing this since January 1, 2015, and I don\u2019t seem to be able to stop. When I go back through them, I find that I have often said the same thing in slightly different words.<\/p>\n
Since it\u2019s 2020, you won\u2019t be surprised to find that many of this year\u2019s verses are related to the pandemic or to U.S. politics. This verse from January 9 \u2013 pre-pandemic unless you were in the know \u2013 kind of sums things up:<\/p>\n
I feel unsettled.
\nThe whole wide world\u2019s unsettled.
\nI guess I\u2019m in sync.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThis one, from later in January, was motivated by the political mess, but it\u2019s on point for everything that\u2019s happened:<\/p>\n
Our system assumes
\npeople will act in good faith.
\nOur system\u2019s broken.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
Though since I got a chance to go to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia after the Australian wildfires were under control and before the pandemic began to spread, I did get a chance to make this science fictional observation. I will note that we left Melbourne at about 11 am on March 2 and arrived at San Francisco\u2019s airport at about 6 am the same day. (It was of course, March 3 in Melbourne when we landed in San Francisco.)<\/p>\n
Trips around the Earth
\nare as close as we can get
\nto real time travel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAnd here\u2019s one that has horror potential.<\/p>\n
Powerful women
\nmust be monsters, given how
\nthey frighten some men.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nHere\u2019s a pandemic verse posted a few days before the San Francisco Bay Area locked down on March 17. Still very relevant.<\/p>\n
Observe basic rules:
\nwash your hands; keep your distance;
\nwhen in doubt, don\u2019t go.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nA week into lockdown and I was already thinking about all the people I wasn\u2019t going to get to see, not to mention all the lives that were already being lost. The Jean-Paul I\u2019m referring to is, of course, Sartre, whose play No Exit<\/em> I read in French class when I was young.<\/p>\n
Jean-Paul missed something.
\nHell\u2019s not just other people,
\nit\u2019s missing good ones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI wrote this one in April. It\u2019s another one that\u2019s even more true now.<\/p>\n
Some believe \u201cfreedom\u201d
\nmeans that they \u2014 and only they
\ncan do what they want.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nBy June I had realized just how bad off the U.S. really was.<\/p>\n
I wish my country
\nwas the exceptional place
\nwe were told it was.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAnd I started to realize the deep error of saying that we had to choose between the economy and our health.<\/p>\n
Health and death are real.
\nEconomics is made up.
\nMoney\u2019s not worth lives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nBy September, I had recognized that the important fights are rarely the dramatic ones of movies.<\/p>\n
Doing the right thing
\nis rarely life or death fights,
\njust lots of small ones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nBut by October I was reaching my limit.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m tired of outrage.
\nOf course, things are outrageous,
\nbut it\u2019s exhausting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nBut I got back to politics in time for the election.<\/p>\n
The scariest day
\nthis year isn\u2019t Hallowe\u2019en;
\nit\u2019s Election Day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe virtual meditation retreat I did in November, following as it did on my reading of Rutger Bregman\u2019s book Humankind, brought back a few positive thoughts.<\/p>\n
Most people are good,
\nbut we\u2019ve been taught that they aren\u2019t.
\nChange the narrative.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThis insight came from meditation.<\/p>\n
Anger\u2019s important,
\nbut don\u2019t let it eat your soul.
\nBring love to anger.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nBut the most prescient, and frightening, verse I wrote all year was written on January 3. 2019 was not a great year for me, so I was looking for improvement.<\/p>\n
I still plan to hope
\nthat this year improves on last.
\nBut the news so far \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI see that damn senryu every day when I open the folder to write the new one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every morning, I write a haiku-like verse with the goal of catching what\u2019s going on in my mind at that moment. These are closer to senryu than traditional haiku, since only a few of them are about nature and they sometimes have a humorous or satirical turn. I call these \u201czentao\u201d and you can find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[186,185],"class_list":["post-874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid-life","tag-senryu","tag-zentao"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":878,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions\/878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}