Carpe Diem Summer Retreat 2017 (unconditional) love Introduction

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new edition of Carpe Diem's Summer Retreat. This year,2017, I have chosen for the theme "(unconditonal) love". Today this new Summer Retreat starts and 30 days later we will look back at a wonderful Summer Retreat I hope.

Carpe Diem's Summer Retreat is a period of 30 days in which the goal is to create haiku or tanka themed "(unconditional) love" every day. What is (unconditional) love? Let me tell you what I think it is.

I think love is a strong sense, but each of us will respond on love in a different way. Love is not only something you have for a person, but it can also be for art, literature, nature and as I speak for myself ... haiku, maybe my love for haiku is even more stronger than the love for my wife, children and grandchildren. For sure my love for haiku is very strong, but my love for my wife (and I have a lot of love to give) is everlasting and unconditional.

Love, Unconditional Love

[...] “All men and all women are connected by an energy which many people call love, but which is, in fact, the raw material from which the universe was built. This energy cannot be manipulated, it leads us gently forward, it contains all we have to learn in this life. If we try to make it go in the direction we want, we end up desperate, frustrated, disillusioned, because that energy is free and wild.We could spend the rest of our life saying that we love such a person or thing, when the truth is that we are merely suffering because, instead of accepting love’s strength, we are trying to diminish it so that it fits the world in which we imagine we live”. [...] (Source: The Zahir by Paulo Coelho).

lotus flowers
rising from the depths of the pond
everlasting love
like a river flows onwards
uncertain of its goal

© Chèvrefeuille

Maybe you know "Manuscript found in Accra" another wonderful novel by Paulo Coelho. In that novel he says the following:

[...] "Love changes, love heals. Love is just a word until we decide that she can take possession of us Love is just a word until someone gives meaning to it". [...] (Source: Manuscript found in Accra - Paulo Coelho)

Haiku is love, a love that grabs you by the throat and takes you into an adventure to discover the beauty of our world in all her beautiful details and bring that into the tine form of haiku that shows us a scene, a moment that lasts only one heartbeat.
The main character in one of my novels (Never To Return) says the following on (unconditional) love:

[...] "Unconditional love is never-ending. Unconditional love is bound together with the Collective Consciousness which binds together every living creature with the Universe. Unconditional love makes us one." [...] (source: Never to Return)

"Real (unconditional) Love" is in my opinion the only base for haiku. Without real love, for all and everything, creating haiku is not possible.

As I discovered haiku I fell in love ... in love with that universal beauty that binds all artists (poets, musicians, painters, sculptors and more) together.

a little verse
lighted a fire in my heart
addicted to love

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... I wish you all a wonderful Carpe Diem Summer Retreat 2017 and I hope to read wonderful haiku or tanka. The Summer Retreat 2017 is open for your submissions tonight at 10.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until May 15th 10.00 PM (CET).

PS. Try to give your submitted poems for this Summer Retreat a number, because then it will be easier to link up to the linking widget.