Seeing Anew

Dedicated to Lu/ALA Luci for her Continuous Birthday!


circling the loop
each time we face east again
your joy in Venus



One of the few things I know experientially about haiku is that it is about seeing, or rather seeing anew. Everyday we scan faces, objects, elements of the natural world, but how many of them do we really take in to the point of consciously reflecting upon them?

I've been very lucky in having had two year-long experiences in vastly different cultures and regions. The first occurred in my twenties when we spent a school year in the Inupiat village of Kivalina, Alaska. Kivalina lies on the edge of a narrow sandspit between the Chukchi Sea and a lagoon. Tundra and rolling hills lie across the lagoon, and in the far distance the DeLong Mountains rose. In Nov. the lagoon and sea ice froze. Eventually great ice hummocks formed and I could walk upon the sea, but it looked nothing like an ocean, but instead an immense snowy landscape indistinguishable from land. At times, I felt as though I was wandering through a kind of giant sculpture garden of gorgons and ice statues and frozen knobs. The culture was 20th century American mixed with hunter/gathering. Everyday I learned new things, saw new things, experienced new foods, crafts, and language.

Just after I turned forty, I experienced my second "wonder year." We moved to Yogyakarta, Indonesia where my husband worked on a rice project. In some ways this was even more intense than the Alaskan year: we lived in a city of two million on the most crowded island on earth, Java. Navigating--especially crossing the avenues-- took courage plus a jumbo helping of sheer foolhardiness because the intense roar of traffic never stopped and you had to dodge honking cars and trucks, rattling motorcycles and bikes with entire families on board, water buffalo, bejaks, etc. etc. When we first moved to Yogka, I'd wake up at dawn to the call of the muezzin, and take a morning walk. After about ten minutes, I'd get the most intense headache from all the unfamiliar sights, smells, sounds, along with the crowds jostling in the tropical air.

When you first move to a new country or very different region, you become overwhelmed by all this new seeing. Your filters don't block as much of this sensual world as they do when it becomes familiar to you.

This "seeing anew," the kind that comes with being a person in a strange new place can really help you write haiku. Through it you can discover the extraordinary in the daily, those "aha" moments that you must not let pass by. When my Dad had dementia, we'd take walks at dusk around a loop in his neighborhood. Since it was short, a quarter mile or so, we'd circle the route over and over for exercise. Each time we turned toward the lavender twilight glow with Venus burning brightly above it, Dad would view it as though it were brand new. "Would ya take a look at that big, bright star?" he'd say. "Ain't it gorgeous?" And then again, "Would ya take a look at that big, bright star?"