Carpe Diem #1809 Wedding Bells

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of our wonderful Kai. Yesterday I challenged you to create an Acrostic Dodoitsu, a nice Japanese poetry form, but also a short poem. So today I love to challenge you with a Long Japanese Poetry form, the Choka. Let me tell you a little bit more about the Choka.

The choka can be of almost any length, because its form depends on alternating phrases (or lines) containing either seven of five sound units (onji). The end of the poem is signaled by two lines of seven sounds. So the form is five/seven, five/seven, five seven, .... , seven/seven.
This was the most popular form of poetry in the 9th century as indicated by the large number of works in the celebrated anthology Man'yoshu (The Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves). This anthology of anthologies contained 260 choka and 4200 tanka.

Page from The Man'yoshu

The poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, who composed most of his work in the last decade of the 7th century, took the choka to its highest lyrical point with his finesse in the use of ritual language.
The connection to tanka is evidenced by the envoy or hanka - a tanka-like poem attached at the end of the choka. Occasionally more than one envoy will close the choka. There have been a few efforts to revivie the form over the intervening centuries, but the form has failed to gain any popularity in Japan, and even less has been accomplished in English. (Based on Jane Reichhold's "Writing and Enjoying Haiku")

Here is an example of a choka from the Man'yoshu (no. 802):

The briefest chōka documented is Man'yōshū no. 802, which is of a pattern 5-7 5-7 5-7 5-7-7. It was composed in the Nara period and goes:

When I eat melons
My children come to my mind;
When I eat chestnuts
The longing is even worse.
Where do they come from,
Flickering before my eyes.
Making me helpless
Endlessly night after night.
Not letting me sleep in peace?

(envoy or hanka)

What are they to me,
Silver, or gold, or jewels?
How could they ever
Equal the greater treasure
That is a child? They cannot.

© Yamanoue no Okura (Tr. Edwin Cranston)

Choka ... a wonderful Japanese poetry form ... Today I love to challenge you to create a Choka in which Love is the main theme.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until February 17th at noon (CET). Have fun!

Carpe Diem #1807 Two Hearts Become One

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Love is the ultimate emotion. I think we all agree on that. Love is positive energy and uplifts our hearts. The ultimate energy of love is ... "two hearts become one". We see that in our children for example, but there is another "thing" that can do that ... dancing ... especially the Tango.

So to inspire you I love to share a wonderful piece of music:

Isn't it wonderful?

dance of deep love
she, my lovely wife, sways
dancing the Tango
passionate couple of youngsters -
dance of deep love

© Chèvrefeuille


This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until February 12th at noon (CET). Enjoy!

Carpe Diem #1806 Unconditional Love

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of our Haiku Kai. This month I love to challenge you to create haiku, tanka or other Japanese poetry forms themed LOVE. Today I love to challenge you to create Japanese poetry themed "Unconditional Love".

Unconditional Love

Unconditional Love ... is the love without limitations, everyone can give Unconditional Love.

in the garden
first cherry blossoms bloom
cherised by the sun

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until February 10th at noon (CET).

Carpe Diem #1644 Hail (modern kigo)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

What a joy it is to create a new episode of our wonderful Haiku Kai. This month it's all about modern and classical kigo (seasonwords) for spring. Today I have chosen a nice modern kigo extracted from Jane Reichhold's "A Dictionary of Haiku". Today it's 'hail' what you need to use and maybe you can bring in a kind of love as Jane did in one of her haiku examples:

after lovemaking
hail falls between us
she buttons her blouse

© Jane Reichhold

What a wonderful kigo this is ... and what a wonderful haiku Jane has created, Isn't it a extraordinary haiku? To bring the hardness of hail in a love scene. Jane was really a great haiku poetess.

the sound of hail
mixed with the warmth of love
I kiss my love

© Chèvrefeuille

Hail (I couldn't retrieve the owner of this image)

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until April 16th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our next episode later on.

Carpe Diem #1421 desert (extreme haibun)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at the last episode of our story telling month. Today we end a wonderful month full of marvelous stories, or better said ... marvelous haibun. The last prompt for this month it desert and I love to challenge you to create an extreme haibun ... meaning that your haibun may have a maximum of 55 words (including the haiku).

To help you to awaken your muse I have a few images of the desert.

Caravan in the desert

African desert

Love in the desert

I remember it well. It was my first visit to the desert. I was part of a caravan and I met a gorgeous woman. She looked like a goddess. In the middle of the desert we fell in love.

desert heat
arouses the senses
sand on buttocks

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... this was our Kamishibai month. Next month we will go on a journey straight through the Andean Mountains.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until May 6th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode, the first of May 2018, later on.

Carpe Diem #1365 Silk

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at this delayed post of yesterday. I hadn't enough time to create this post yesterday, so my excuses for that inconvenience, but here it is our episode of today Silk I remember that I have created several other posts about silk, but this month while we are on a journey along the Silk Road such a n episode cannot be missed.
Maybe you know that I am also hosting a feature at Mind Love Misery's Menagerie, "heeding Haiku With ..." Yesterday (Wednesday February 7th) I published an episode about "silk", so I will (and can) make it myself a little bit easier and ... of course I will do that for this delayed post.

The Silk Road was a really renown trade route, or better said routes, straight through Asia. This month we are focusing especially on the Northern and Southern Route around the Teklamakan Desert on the main land of China. The Silk Road got its name especially from the fine silk that was made in China and other regions around the Silk Road. Later it became a very rich trade route not only for the wealth of the silk, but also of pottery, porcelain, spices and more.

I wonder ... will there have been relationships growing around the Silk Road? It was a well used trade route and people from all over the globe came along it and met each other. It just must have been also a route of love, intimacy, sensuality and sexuality. There must have been love relations ... growing I don't know that for sure of course, but it just had to be.

A wonderful piece of Chinese silk

Imagine ... a rich trader has fallen in love with a beautiful woman (or man) and he loves to give his love a wonderful piece of clothing what would be more beautiful than a wonderful piece of Chinese silk to create a kimono or something of. Than his love would be very grateful and maybe love him even more than she (he) already does. What can it bring such nice piece of clothing than give the love a boost ... Isn't that what we all long for ... love and more love?

I love to challenge you to create a haiku or tanka about love, sensuality, sexuality or maybe lust in which silk plays a role. Just give it a try to bring love into haiku or try to create a tanka is it was meant to be ... a love poem.

Let me give you an example from my archives:

arousing my senses
the sweet coolness of silk blankets
shared with my love

© Chèvrefeuille

Or what do you think of this beauty by our friend Hamish Managua Gunn which he wrote for us back in 2015:

her cinnamon taste— 
and the silk she wraps herself in
for both I travel miles!

© Hamish Managua Gunn

silken kimono
the coolness of the shadow
hot summer day

kimono slipping
fingertips discover silk road
ecstatic sigh

© Chèvrefeuille

All poems in which you can sense love and sensuality embraced with a touch of silk. Must be a joy to create haiku with this theme.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until February 15th at noon (CET). I will try to post our new episode,  Kashgar (Northern route), later on. Please forgive me if I am not reaching that goal, because I have the evening shift and it is very busy at work.

Carpe Diem #1320 Falling in Love

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Falling in love is the greatest thing that can happen to someone. I think a lot of you have experienced that somewhere in your life. I fell in love almost 30 years ago with the woman I am still married to, but I also fell in love with the beauty if Japanese poetry especially haiku. I remember that moment as if it happened yesterday. I love haiku and through the years I have learned a lot about haiku, but as I started with CDHK I discovered that all around the globe there are lovers of haiku, but also other Japanese poetry forms. A few years ago I started creatinf other forms from the land of the rising sun. Forms like tanka, choka, dodoitsu, kyoka and sedoka. All beautiful ways to give words to your feeelings. However that's not the theme for today ... that's not what the title means.

This month I hope to inspire you through the novels of Paulo Coelho, one of my favorite authors. Today's quote is extracted from "Eleven Minutes". As I read this novel I was surprised, because "Eleven Minutes" is all about sex and the beauty of it, but also the sad site of it. I was really surprised as I read that novel it was ... different from all his other novels I had read, but after reading it and reading it another time and another time ... I fell in love with that novel. Surprisingly there was a deeper layer hidden in it, a spiritual approach of love and sex ... sacred sex ... as it is described by Paulo Coelho.

Spiritual Love

spiritual love ...
like bees seeking honey
giving life

© Chèvrefeuille

Let me give you a brief overview of "Eleven Minutes" than you maybe can imagine or relate to it.

"Eleven Minutes" is the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heartbroken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that “love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer. . . .” A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune.
Maria’s despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness—sexual pleasure for its own sake—or risking everything to find her own “inner light” and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love.

Re-read that "quote" in italics "love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer ..." Is that what love means? Something that will make you suffer? I haven't that kind of feeling with love ... to me love isn't something terrible that will make me suffer. The love I have found in my wife and my family is love straight from the heart, that love is sacred a warm blanket. Of course there will be situations or relationships that are not such a warm blanket. I even know several people that actual feel love like it's suffering ... to those I love to say ... "there is real love and it will cross your path one day".

Everlasting Love

everlasting love ...
the waterwillow and the brook
living together

© Chèvrefeuille

Okay ... this episode will be to big, but the theme touches me ... I believe in love ... that love we show here at CDHK ... a loving family of haiku poets. Back to our source of inspiration ... "Eleven Minutes" written by Paulo Coelho. A novel in which love, sacred love, is the leading theme.

Here is the quote for today:

[...] “When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side.  And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left!  How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly?  Life moves very fast.  It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.” [...] (Source: Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho)

universe explodes
as sacred loves finds it way
two hearts become one 

© Chèvrefeuille

Awesome ... what a strong haiku full of love (how immodest), this haiku came straight from my heart like erupting geysers. Isn't that what real love is? Strong as nature!

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until December 12th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our next episode later on.

Carpe Diem #1288 abalone shells

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

What a joy to create a new episode for our festive anniversary. Last year (2016) we lost one of the most famous and renown modern haiku poets. Jane Reichhold died at the end of July and around that time I created that special feature "Universal Jane". That feature was all about Jane and her wonderful legacy. In one of those episodes I tried to inspire you through haiku in which we can find love, erotics, sensuality and sexuality. Jane created several haiku about those themes and she did that in a wonderful way, not hidden, but our in the open.

Logo Universal Jane

Earlier this month I tried to inspire you with "love" as prompt and I told you that haiku isn't really the form to bring sexuality, sensuality and love in. Those themes were more for tanka, or it's pre-form waka, love poems between lovers, between secret lovers.

Here are a few haiku created by Jane Reichhold in which you can find those themes:

a time of beaches
abalone shells and lovers
without memories

making love
the jack-o-lantern also
grins in the dark

shadows moving
on the bedroom wall
a pumpkin’s eyes

in and out
of the river’s mouth
a tongue of sea

© Jane Reichhold

Jane is still missed, but her spirit lingers here at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. I feel a bit lost without my dear friend and mentor Jane Reichhold, but she would have me to go on that's for sure.

I found the following haiku in my archive, I think you can remember this one:

first sunlight
caresses our bodies
we unfold

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until October 31st at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, symphony no.11, later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem Time Glass #1 re-start

!! This Time Glass episode closes on October 16th 2:00 AM (CET) !!

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Maybe you can remember that we once had a time-challenging feature titled "Time Glass". The goal was to create haiku or tanka inspired on a theme within 24 hours, so a real time challenge. I love to "restart" that feature. Why? Well as you all know several months ago I changed the responding time of our Kai into seven days, a whole week, but (as you all know) haiku is an impression of a moment as short as the sound of a pebble thrown into water. That short time can help you to create your haiku (or tanka) based on that single moment.
I love to improve your haiku (and tanka) writing skills so I think this "Time Glass" feature can help you with that. But ... we are a haiku loving family from all over the world and we live all in different time zones, so I think it's a good thing to extend the (original) 24 hours of the "Time Glass" feature to 36 hours to respond on the theme.
That theme can be a haiku, a tanka, a waka, an image or just a word  And for the "restart" of this feature I have chosen for a haiku and an image to inspire you.

First the image:

lonely flower

And here is the haiku to help you to find your inspiration:

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

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... a nice time challenge I think. Try to create your haiku or tanka inspired on this "restart" of the Time Glass and share it with us within 36 hours. That means this episode is open for your submissions around 2:00 PM (CET) and it will remain open until October 16th 02:00 AM (CET). Have fun!

Carpe Diem Tan Renga Challenge Month 2017 #19 in the light of dawn (Chèvrefeuille, your host)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at the last episode of this Carpe Diem Tan Renga Challenge Month 2017. This month we have created wonderful Tan Renga inspired on wonderful "hokku" by classical and non-classical haiku poets. To conclude this month I have a nice haiku (how immodest) written by myself. This haiku I wrote in February 2016 as part of our first Theme Week. In this haiku I used the haiku writing technique "baransu" or "balance through association", a haiku writing technique which I created myself for our first series of CDHK Haiku Writing Techniques. More about this "baransu" technique you can find HERE.

Here is the "hokku" to work with for this last episode of this Tan Renga Challenge Month:

in the light of dawn
sunflowers reach to the blue sky
praising their Creator

© Chèvrefeuille

sunflowers (image found on Pinterest)

A wonderful challenge I think. Of course I cannot create a new 2nd stanza towards this one, because Tan renga is written by two poets and not by one. On the other hand ... I can create a Tanka with it, maybe that's what I am going to do.

in the light of dawn

sunflowers reach to the blue sky

praising their Creator

while a choir of birds falls in
she my love has to go home

© Chèvrefeuille

Not bad, not bad at all ... I even think this one is based on my experience, because when my wife and I met more then 25 years ago, she stayed several nights at my home, but had to leave at the break of dawn.

Well ... this was it ... our second Tan Renga Challenge Month at CDHK. I enjoyed creating it for you and I hope you all did like it.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until June 4th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our first episode of our next month, prayer flags, later on. For now ... have fun!

carpe Diem #1191 (spring) shawl or haru shoru

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of CDHK. This month we are exploring classical kigo (seasonwords) for spring.
In spring it can be cold, but mostly not as cold as in winter, but when it's "spring"-cold you sometimes need a shawl not one of wool, but of cotton or linen, warm but not that warm just to prevent you from the spring cold. I wonder if such a shawl (haru shoru) was mentioned in haiku. Let us take a look in the past ...

It took a lot of time to research this, but I didn't found haiku with this seasonword, so what to do next? Maybe we can create the first haiku with "haru shoru" or spring shawl. Or maybe I have to dive into another shawl which is very important in Zen Buddhism.

So I think we have to make a jump into Buddhism and the meaning of a holy scarf or khata, maybe you have heard from it and maybe you have once seen how it was given to someone else. Let me give you a white khata virtualy as a token from my gratefulness of being your host.

Giving You a Khata, a token of my love

What is the meaning of a khata?

The khata symbolizes purity and compassion and are worn or presented with incense at many ceremonial occasions, including births, weddings, funerals, graduations and the arrival or departure of guests. It is usually made of silk. Tibetan khatas are usually white, symbolising the pure heart of the giver, though it is quite common to find yellow-gold khata as well. Tibetan, Nepali, and Bhutanese khatas feature the ashtamangala. There are also special multi-colored khatas. Mongolian khatas are usually blue, symbolizing the blue sky. Mongolia, khatas are also often tied to ovoos, stupas, or special trees and rocks.

a token of love
I bow my head and present to you
a khata ...

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... not a classical haiku, but it is for sure a haiku that comes right from my heart.

Namasté

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until April 21st at noon (CET). I will try to post our next episode, white sake, later on.

Carpe Diem #925 Love

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Earlier this day I published a new CDHK e-book on Troiku, you can download it for free at the right side of our Kai. I think it has become a beauty ... I wish you all a happy read ...

Today our new episode on senses is Love and earlier this month we had an episode of Tokubetsudesu about love ... so maybe this continues that post or opens your eyes to look in another way at love. I did like the essay on love which Hamish wrote.

Introduction

I love to share a quote from the above mentioned Tokubetsudesu episode:

[...] "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 tiny form of haiku that shows us a scene, a moment that lasts only one heart beat." [...] 

And here to introduce love ... a haiku which I wrote several years ago:

the last steps taken
to find universal love -
the sound of rain

© Chèvrefeuille (2014)

Hamish on love

Is love an emotion? If this was so, would it not change constantly, like other emotions? The concept of love might be chemical, and scientific, but it could also be defined as one of the senses. "What is love" was the most searched phrase on Google in 2012. Biologically, love is a powerful neurological condition like hunger or thirst, only more permanent. We talk about love being blind or unconditional, in the sense that we have no control over it. But then, that is not so surprising since love is basically chemistry. While lust is a temporary passionate sexual desire involving the increased release of chemicals such as testosterone and oestrogen, in true love, or attachment and bonding, the brain can release a whole set of chemicals: pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin and vasopressin. However, from an evolutionary perspective, love can be viewed as a survival tool – a mechanism we have evolved to promote long-term relationships, mutual defense and parental support of children and to promote feelings of safety and security.

Spiritual Love

Unlike us, the ancients did not lump all the various emotions that we label "love" under the one word. They had several variations, including Philia which they saw as a deep but usually non-sexual intimacy between close friends and family members or as a deep bond forged by soldiers as they fought alongside each other in battle. Ludus describes a more playful affection found in fooling around or flirting. Pragma is the mature love that develops over a long period of time between long-term couples and involves actively practicing goodwill, commitment, compromise and understanding. Agape is a more generalized love, it's not about exclusivity but about love for all of humanity. Philautia is self love, which isn't as selfish as it sounds. As Aristotle discovered and as any psychotherapist will tell you, in order to care for others you need to be able to care about yourself. Last, and probably least even though it causes the most trouble, eros is about sexual passion and desire. Unless it morphs into philia and/or pragma, eros will burn itself out. Love is all of the above. But is it possibly unrealistic to expect to experience all six types with only one person. This is why family and community are important. What love is depends on where you are in relation to it. Secure in it, it can feel as mundane and necessary as air – you exist within it, almost unnoticing. Deprived of it, it can feel like an obsession; all consuming, a physical pain.

Love ... renew it every day ...

Love is the driver for all great stories: not just romantic love, but the love of parent for child, for family, for country. It is the point before consummation of it that fascinates: what separates you from love, the obstacles that stand in its way. It is usually at those points that love is everything. Love is more easily experienced than defined. Can you show love through a haiku?

My response

Love ... we all know what it is and what it can be ... Love can be caught in haiku too. Here are a few haiku from my archives to show that love can be caught in haiku.

watching a geisha
monk from high up in the mountains
he's also a man

© Chèvrefeuille

she ... the moon
affectionate love for ever
illuminates my path

© Chèvrefeuille

She ... the moon ... once it was said that same gender love belonged to the night, they had to hide, so their love was only seen in the light of the full moon. She ... the moon ... their only friend.

affectionate love
shared between two similar hearts
in full moonlight
they finally could kiss each other
She ... the moon ... their only friend

© Chèvrefeuille

As I look at our time now, than we see / hear here in The Netherlands that same gender love is accepted, but there are growing signs that the acceptance of same gender love is in heavy waters. Let us hope (and pray) that this will not be a time in which unconditional love will be lost forever ...

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until February 27th at noon (CET). I will (try to) publish our next episode, nature, later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem #99, Love Story

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Tomorrow we have a little celebration, because we will reach a milestone ... the 100th episode of Carpe Diem. I hope to make that a nice anniversary with a wonderful post. Our 100th prompt will be 'angels', a nice one I think, but that's for later.

Today we share haiku on Love Story a nice one too I think. Love Story was a movie which came in roulation in 1970. Love Story, a short summary.

Harvard Law student Oliver Barrett IV and music student Jennifer Cavilleri share a chemistry they cannot deny - and a love they cannot ignore. Despite their opposite backgrounds, the young couple put their hearts on the line for each other. When they marry, Oliver's wealthy father threatens to disown him. Jenny tries to reconcile the Barrett men, but to no avail. Oliver and Jenny continue to build their life together. Relying only on each other, they believe love can fix anything. But fate has other plans. Soon, what began as a brutally honest friendship becomes the love story of their lives.  

 

I can't remember if I have seen it (I think not I was 7 yrs old at that time), but I have heard it was a wonderful movie. 

two hearts as one
the love story of their lives -
a pair of swans

a pair of swans
forever and ever together
even in death

Well ... that's my haiku pair for today's prompt. Have fun, be inspired and share your haiku with us here on Carpe Diem.

This prompt will stay on 'till January 20th 11.59 AM (CET) and I will post our 100th episode of Carpe Diem's daily haiku meme later on today around 10.00 PM (CET). That will be 'angels'.

Carpe Diem #54, love

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

We are in the last week of Carpe Diem's November Month. Still have five days to go and than our new month of daily haiku writing will start. I have already posted the prompts for December. December will be a tough Carpe Diem month, because I have chosen classical winter kigo (seasonwords) for the prompts. Also at the end of this month I will grant one of our contributors with the Carpe Diem November Award for the most valuable Haijin. I will re-read all of your posts and than I will grant one of you with this award.

The New Carpe Diem Award for November

OK ... back to our prompt for today. Today it's all about love. Share your creativity with Carpe Diem on this prompt.

A haiku written by Issa (our haiku master for November):

squeezing in next
to my lover ...
quilt-covered brazier

With this one came a prescript 'Lovers'. In Romanji the haiku is written as follows:

omou hito no soba e warikomu kotatsu kana

Gabi Greve (a well known name in Haiku) says about this one:

'To sit near a person you love in a kotatsu (a quilt-covered brazier) is quite a different thing than sitting beside a fireplace. Nobody can see your legs in the dark, and we often call it 'playing footsies'.

playing footsies
in a dark corner of the bar
that's real love

together on the bench
our legs covered with a quilt
feet on a chafing dish

Credits: chafing dish

This Chafing Dish has a section underneath to place a ceramic or metal container filled with hot charcoal. It was used to set your feet on and warm them. The 'quilt-covered brazier' is very much the same as this Chafing Dish (or 'stoof' in Dutch).

This prompt will stay on 'till November 27th 11.59 AM (CET) and I will post our new prompt 'sadness' around 10.00 PM (CET).

Have fun, be inspired, be creative and compose your wonderful haiku for today's prompt on Carpe Diem.