MOVING TOWARD HAIGA

Joel Weishaus

Browsing a bookstore in Tokyo,
I happened upon R.H. Blyth's haiku translations.
The haiku captured something I had sensed while living
in the mountains; but even in midst of the busy capitol city:
an inconspicuous shrine, a smooth-scalped monk, a bow, a feeling
of deep connectiveness between humans and nonhuman beings...is why
I continue to study this tradition and write in its form. Now, experimenting
digitally with word/image relationships, haiga is a natural place for me to set forth.

Garden
Flies
Wings
Breezes
Moving

"Moving Toward Haiga" shares a strategy that preserves the spirit of wabi, elegant simplicity,
programming words to randomly appear and disappear around an image on a background
that reminds us of the Void from which all creation appears. As with time (life), space
(death) also becomes a factor, as does ma, a concept that moves toward
"a boundary situation at the edge of thinking and the edge of all
processes of locating things by naming and distinguishing."*
Most important of all, these haiga are a beginning
that foretells the illusion of an end.

*R.B. Pilgrim.