Categories
Haiku

Yoga Haiku

Lying on my back
Mostly still, arms by my sides
Shivasna begins

My eyes are closed
I am breathing through my mouth
My spine is tall-ish

Feet and hands planted
My butt very high in the air
Downward dog; woof woof.

Sun salutations
sometimes make me feel dizzy
Too much namaste

Categories
Haiku

TS Haiku

blood on my knuckles
cut and scraped, dull and aching
what was I punching?

stones tumbling in waves
retreating back toward the sea
fear of being dry

standing on a cliff
staring into the blackness.
forgot my question.

(written while listening to folklore)

Categories
Haiku

Haiku for November

Rain drops on bike rides
Somewhere between damp and wet
And then my chain breaks

November yard work
Consists of cutting back stuff
that’s done for the year

Categories
Haiku

Eagle Haiku

Proud eagle standing
On its razor sharp talons
Holding a seagull

Ginko leaves fall
And flutter in a wind storm
Look like little finches

Categories
Haiku

Haiku Reboot

Going to restart
My effort to write haiku
again. wish me luck.

I will publish them
As I write them. Generate
momentum I hope.

The above don’t count.
No references to nature
Same problem here. Tree.

Beautiful red birds
Their plumage looks like horse blood
Even in the shade

The leaves are falling
mostly in wet goopy piles
In the gutter. Ugh.

October was wet.
Many dark and rainy days
Occasional sun.

Categories
Haiku

Haiku

Thursday (June 17th)

Haven’t been super.
Writing one every day is
hard for me. Learning.

Haiku is easy.
Making time is harder.
Open to suggestions.

Rosemary Rocksalt makes
delicious bagels. Poppy,
sesame are yummy.

Monday

Seem to be slipping
I missed three days. Must get
back into my groove

Dogs were here for a
Few days. Piper and Cooper
They were a handful!

Got my Moderna
On Sunday. My arm is sore.
Otherwise ok

Thursday

Heat wave is coming
Temperature is climbing
Stay cool and stay safe

Categories
Books

Broadening Horizons

I recently came across a quote that is playfully witty and wise. The character that is speaking is nine years old and has been home schooling, but now is facing the prospect of switching to learning in an actual school. Unfortunately she is reluctant. She is also a very clever lovable free spirit.

Sasha, the main character in the book, has just suggested that going to school will allow Nina to broaden her horizons. After she first asked Sasha to clarify what is meant by broadening one’s horizons, she says this:

Rather than sitting in orderly rows in a schoolhouse, wouldn’t one be better served by working her way toward an actual horizon, so that she could see what lay beyond it?

Nina Kulikova in A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

I find myself agreeing with her assertion. (as somebody who has occasionally enjoyed working his way toward actual horizons) But I also find myself confoundedly disagreeing (as a parent who has sometimes had to tell kids they need to do something they don’t want to do.)

For better or worse, Nina does go to school and is eventually swept up in life trials and tribulations. I don’t know if she would have been better served by heading toward actual horizons instead of the school house.

Categories
Hobbies

License Plates

I suspect the people close to me have noticed that I spend a lot of time looking at license plates. As kids, we would spend our time in the car searching for license plates and then trying to find words that used the letters on the license plate. (of course in the order they appeared on the plate.) So for example, for VCM 620 the first word I think of is ‘vacuum.’

As we got older, we’d get bonus points for things like having the first letter on the plate not be the first letter of the word. We would usually start by trying to get away with something like ‘revacuum’ or even ‘revacuumed’ to also pad the end of the word. But with time it became seen as lame to mindlessly stick a prefix and/or suffix on a word. Eventually we would aspire to have the first and last letters truly embedded. ‘Servicemen’ is a word, right?

I definitely don’t remember every license plate of every car we’ve ever owned, but I do remember quite a few. GEK is an early one I remember. We had an NBA for quite a long time. The first car I bought myself was an SKV. Our current car is an XAD. More than once, I think I’ve weirded out friends by knowing their license plates.

Sadly as the number of cars on the road continues to grow, the arrangements of letters and numbers on plates get more varied and creative. Ontario, for example, use 4 letters and three digits. BC has recently moved to AB1 23C as the format of choice. The headache for the Ontario scheme is making sure no curse words make it on any plates. (Three letter plates obviously have a much shorter list of words to contend with)

My current license plate game is to turn the numbers into a letter that they look like and seeing if the resulting ‘word’ can be pronounced or even better have some sort of meaning. The numbers map to letters as follows:

  • 0 -> o (duh)
  • 1 -> I or L
  • 2 -> Z (tho I’ve recently wondered if it could be an N on its side)
  • 3 -> E
  • 4 -> A (some people find this to be contrived)
  • 5 -> S
  • 6 -> G
  • 7 -> L
  • 8 -> B (tho something W8 could be read as ‘wait’)
  • 9 -> G (it looks a bit like a lowercase g, tho looking now, it also looks like a lower case q)

Following these rules, one of my favourite finds is CR8 04K which would be “Crate Oak”

Categories
Haiku

Haiku (June 15th)

I thought I’d try a suggestion from Gretchen Rubin. Write a Haiku everyday. I’m planning on publishing this approximately every seven days.

Wednesday (9 june)

Sunshine on my face
Mostly feels good but maybe
Less warm is better

Yummy peas growing
On very tippy lattice
Taste so crunchy good

Lovely irises
Translucent purple from
The sun shining through

I feel a fly that
Is walking among leg hairs
Not gonna smack him

Thursday

I see evil faces
In the reflected water
Upon the table

Stanley Park Seawall
Has become my happy place
Beautiful, tranquil

Start with five syllables
Next a line of seven more
Then the final five

Little ants walking
Relentlessly up the chair.
Where are they going?

Stuck on a puzzle
A sudoku idea
Eureka, it’s done!

Friday

When the rain begins
For a while, it’s dry under
trees. Then drip drop drip.

Pure Bread Bakery
Has so many yummy treats.
Ooey-Gooey bar!

Monday

I’m on the couch now
But I had an active day
Such defensiveness!

Categories
Happy

On the Cusp of Raspberry Season

It makes me happy to see that our raspberries will be ripe soon. We have a thriving colony of Golden Raspberries (the orange ones).