5-7-5

I'm into simplicity these days. A recent trip to Hong Kong was great, but there's nothing like international air travel to hammer home (by contrast) that simple is good.

I also spent the better part of this fall re-designing our online pottery store to be simpler in form and function. Less is more!

I like haiku. The idea of saying a lot with few words attracts me. I've had fun incorporating some classic Japanese haiku into the VSK site.

Haiku sometimes lose their strict 5-7-5 syllable structure in translation, but brevity remains essential. A couple of my current favorites (translation by Peter Beilenson, followed by poet's name) are:

Dead my old fine hopes

And dry my dreaming

But iris blue each spring

-Shushiri

and...

Here, where a thousand captains

Swore grand conquest

Tall grass their monument

-Onitsura

Haiku often end with an image of infinity. I guess both of these haiku are similar in that they contrast the desires and mortality of man with the image of plants growing. These two poems both convey the melancholy that often pervades Japanese haiku.

In Japan, Matsuo Basho is widely considered the greatest haiku writer ever. I highly recommend his book "Oku no hoso michi" (Narrow Road to the Deep North) as translated by Donald Keene. It's a really wonderful read.

Speaking of Basho and reading, I'll finish this blog post with one more haiku from the master himself:

No oil to read by

I'm off to bed. But ah!

My moonlit pillow!

Dave