Carpe Diem #1279 Yekaterinburg

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of our Haiku Kai. This month we are on trip along memory lane, because we are celebrating our first luster. Isn't that an awesome idea? Carpe Diem Haiku Kai is here providing you inspiration for haiku, tanka and other Japanese poetry forms for five years. And it is a joy to create CDHK for you all. We have made a lot of journeys, old and new, along the roads all over the world.
At the start of 2014 we went on a journey straight through the former USSR as we "hopped" on the Trans Siberian Railway. While on that journey we read "Aleph" written by the renown author Paulo Coelho, one of the best authors on earth. Maybe you have read our CDHK preview last week than you know that next December we will have a marvelous month full of prompts extracted from the novels of Paulo Coelho. It's a long route to prepare that month, but I am happy to do that, because you, my dear Haijin, visitors and travelers are the ones for whom I creating CDHK ... just to inspire you.

Today we go back to Yekaterinburg, one of the places were Paulo Coelho was during his journey with the Trans Siberian Railroad (TSR). Yekaterinburg is the birthplace of Hilal, one of the lead characters of "Aleph". Hilal disappears in Yekaterinburg and Paulo is anxious to find her and hopes she is okay. Short before the TSR enters the station of Yekaterinburg Hilal and Paulo enter the "Aleph", the place were there is no time, were past, present and future meet eachother. What did she see? We know what Paulo saw, he describes that in "Aleph", but Hilal's experience is not described on that same moment.

Hilal however tells Paulo what she had experienced as they find each other back in Yekaterinburg. This place is the turning point of the relation between Hilal and Paulo. From that moment on they are re-living again their path from the past. Hilal and Paulo have known each other in a former life.

The Inquisition

In a former life Hilal was accused of heresy and witchcraft, she was sentenced to dead by fire. She was burned. Paulo was, in his former life, a member of The Inquisition. He could have saved Hilal, but didn't do that. That's the reason why they met again in another life, the life in which they both traveled on the TSR straight through the former USSR.

In a way the former USSR and The Inquisition are the same. In the former USSR people were persecuted if they were agains the communist government and send to camps deep in the coldest region of the USSR, Siberia. Is it a coincedence that Paulo takes the TSR? No ... the former USSR has the same history as Paulo had in his former life as a member of The Inquisition.

her spirit departs
with the dying of her pyre -
smoke rises to the sky

© Chèvrefeuille

Persecution still happens in our time. People are still persecuted for their believes or political ideas. Nothing has changed ... maybe The Inquisition started, back in the 13th century, the wish for a One World Religion and a New World Order. Let us hope ... that this wish will never be fullfilled.

Sorry for the strong ending of this episode, but I had to say it. Maybe we all have to enter the "Aleph" than we can see our past, our present and our future ... and learn from it.

This episode is open for your submissions tonight around 7:00 PM (CET) and will remain open until October 22nd at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, Wheel of Creation, later on.