Brandymore Castle

When I was about five years old I began having experiences of things that stuck in my mind. I would see something, encounter something, and I would freeze for a moment. When I think of it now, I realize this was "noticing" the whatever-it-was, but very intensely, compared to other things, for a moment. I noticed the freshly washed sheets my grandmother had hung on the clothesline to dry, billowing in the breeze. I saw this from my vantage point sitting in the sandbox. It was memorable for some reason I did not consciously think about then. I was never bored riding in the car on family trips because I was constantly entertained by noticing all the details of everything along the road, there were always things that raised interesting questions in my mind, drew out my curiosity, such as the light on the window in a shop in a strip mall, or the neon lights at night, the stars reflected in the window, the hum of the tires on the highway. On one of my first trips to the beach, I ra...

"Tyler Cowen: I don't think it's a useful description to say autistics are only focused on on thing, but I would say there's a lot of tasks you can give autistics, like picking out small details in locked patterns, or picking out different musical pitches, where autistics seem especially good at attention to small detail. So if you think of the web as giving us small bits, like a tweet or a blog post is shorter than a novel, if you think of that as the overall trend, like an iPod, a song is shorter than an album. It seems that we're now all living in a world where we manipulate small bits effectively, it doesn't mean any of us is just interested in one thing, but we manipulate these small bits to create bigger ideas that we're interested in, and those bigger ideas are synthetic, and I think it's another way in which we are using information technology to mirror or mimic capabilities of autistics without usually people knowing it. " http://www.wrong...

It doesn't matter to me whether I write haiku or senryu or whatever, as long as what I am writing is a satisfying expression of my need to share experience and thought. It would do no good to say a particular poem of mine is senryu and show me how to make it haiku, or to say I should withdraw it because it is not haiku. It isn't the form of poetry that matters. I'm not trying to write haiku , I'm trying to express myself . That's a crucial difference. Beginners want to know how to write haiku. But I what I tell you is that you want to find the form that enables you to express yourself, not learn to write haiku or iambic pentameter. You need to learn from these forms the form that suits you best, or a form in between no one has ever imagined yet. Each form you may take something from, you may move toward one or the other, or among them, but there will be a form that liberates your expression and you should use whatever form that is. Haiku is the just form of express...

I don't need a tomato that rides well, a transcontinental traveler. I just need a tomato grown from grandmother's seeds. I don't need a tomato perfectly round, a spherical aberration. I just need a tomato grown from grandmother's seeds. I don't need a tomato blessed by the grower's association. I just need a tomato grown from grandmother's seeds. -sek, Mar 2008

Life is an occurrence. People come and pass, pass into the night like thunderstorms while you dream. What threat is a thunderstorm once it has passed into the night? To me, people hung like specters over me, long after they had passed into the night. For me, the past was always real and peopled, like the other world peopled with willful spirits. But life is an occurrence, and the spirits have passed into the night like thunderstorms while you dream. -sek, 2008

Trapped in the situation room I long for peace and freedom. Trapped in the situation room until I turn off the television. -sek, Mar 2008

Reflections and shadows Ebb and flow in Cadenced oscillations Brushing silvery washes of shadowy branches Across the dark mirror of The silver stream, a Picture developing And redeveloping In hypnotic fascination Steve Knoblock, 2002-2005 Relating to an experience visiting Silver Lake, DE and my fascination with photography.

There's something to this being psyched up for the fight, this false confidence contrary to reason has some ability like a catalyst to transform, to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. -sek

I received Bashō, The Narrow Road to Oku , yesterday (the 19th of May), a poetic and anecdotal chronicle of the celebrated poet's journey in 1689 to the northern end of the island of Honshū. The book itself is beautifully made of high quality materials, typical of a Japanese paperback. I sent for Bashō after enjoying his poetry while studying haiku and having read the jacket cover blurb by illustrator Miyato Masayuki online before ordering. I was captivated by the description of Bashō "drifting with the clouds and streams" and "lodging under trees and on hard rocks," in his long journey to Oku. I felt a sensation of deja vu wash over me as I read the blurb. I looked up to one of my drawings on the wall behind where I sit at my computer, which depicts a poplar leaf caught up in the flow of a stream and about to run aground on a rock. I had seen many a leaf in this predicament, turning and twirling with the current until it snagged upon a rock, in my explorations ...

Enthusiasm I saw through enthusiasm like a child sees through the easter bunny to the man walking down the street in a bunny suit I saw through enthusiasm too easily, and dismissing in melancholy realism the love I had, I threw the rare book in the trash it had begun to mold and grandfather had cut a pattern from the cover and no one was ever going to be interested in Craftsman homes again I saw through enthusiasm like a child realizes there is no santa claus bearing gifts, but a man in santa suit I saw through enthusiasm too easily, to be swept up in discovery, as if by the tide, to fall blindly in love with an idea who would come to use it who would not ridicule its simplicity, so I never made anything of it Now, I see through ghosts the past, lackluster years the cost of never falling in love enough to stop seeing through enthusiasm to stop being a con man conned into giving the envelope back to the old fool -sek, January 01, 2006

The Strike high above the earth the stoop begins wings pulled in response to sensing movement on the ground sensors sensing more accurate than human they zero in the prey high above the earth the dive begins dead prey walking the earth now, but soon to be fodder for the superior, the mover, the diver it zeroes the target falling, turning reaching inhuman speeds, moving with inhuman accuracy, seeing with inhuman eyes the inhuman flying machine readies for the strike closer to human ground, revealed the falcon strikes and in front of God's eyes the sparrow falls -sek, May 01, 2005. I wrote this after watching a small hawk or peregrine falcon perched on a tree swoop down after a small bird, whether it caught it I could not see, for the distance was too great by the time they both disappeared across the valley.

The Urchin's Progress One day, purple urchins covered the left side of a great rock jutting into the sea and the urchins remained there until they were pushed halfway back by olive urchins coming up on the right side of the rocks washed by the sea Next day, olive urchins fell back to one side pushed back by the purple ones as if they were never masters over the other and the struggle went on until the day when a great wave washed over the lesser rock and swept away the urchins, purple and olive Years later, visitors would come to the spot and say what a nice empty rock to sit upon, to contemplate the sea and never think once of the urchins purple or olive who once held sway over their domains. -sek (Steve E. Knoblock), Original work July 12, 2005, revised May 3, 2007. This is more of a story and prose poem than a metered poem.

I was talking with filmmaker Tom Davenport today and the discussion turned to my observations of a tree outside the window of my apartment, which over many years I have observed to display fascinating changes and cycles in response to climate. The conversation turned to haiku as he likened my noticing a leaf falling outside my window on a quiet day to haiku. I was startled when he said "in haiku, the tree and the person are not very separated." This is an idea very close to Zen. I won't go into the details of Zen belief here, but one idea of Zen is that individuals can reach a state where they feel as if there is no separation between the self and the things making up the world around them. Scientists and Zen masters may debate exactly how and why this feeling arises in the human mind, but what is interesting is the possibility haiku may represent a kind of expression or record of this kind of merging of the individual with things. I found myself agreeing with his observa...