Adventures in Haiku

Begin to Last

Egg and leaf

Blowing and rolling down

Rain forgiving

Glades beginning

Sun rays form slices

Clarity shining

Windows remind

Slender plans forming now

Begin to last

Haiku-poems consist of respectively 5, 7 and 5 syllables in three units. In Japanese, this convention is a must, but in English, which has variation in the length of syllables, this can sometimes be difficult. Toyomasu.com

Steve Martin's version of haiku does not follow any of the traditional Japanese rules. He is not generally revered in Japan for his remarkable work but here in America he is one of our most respected artists. Martin created the fictional poet, John Lillison also known as, 'England's greatest one-armed poet'. He has given us two memorable poems;

Pointy Birds

Pointy Birds, O pointy birds,O pointy pointy.
Anoint my head, Anointy-nonity.

In Dillan's Grove.

In Dillan's Grove my love did die,
and now in ground shall ever lie.
None could ever replace her visage,
until your face brought thoughts of kissage.

Croquet Motocross

Our family likes to get together whenever we can and one of our family traditions is to play games in the yard. One game that we invented is a variation on the old, traditional and somewhat boring game of croquet. You remember croquet. Wooden balls, mallets and those fragile little wire hoops that the balls always bounce off of and never go through when you want them to.

Croquet motocross is a lot more fun and it is aerobic!

Object of the Game:

To be the first to hit your ball across the field, strike the wooden stake and then get back and put your ball through your own wicket before your competitors.

Rules of the Game:

1. Place all of the wickets in a line across one side of the lawn and place one of the multi colored croquet posts at the other side of the lawn.

2. A referee is stationed at the post to be sure that all players are competing fairly.

3. All contestants place their wooden balls in their own wicket and stand behind with their mallet all pointing toward the wooden stake at the far end of the field.

4. When someone shouts "Go!" all of the players hit their own ball as hard as they can toward the stake at the far end of the field.

5. All players are allowed to hit other contestants wooden balls along the way and send them off course but ultimately the goal is to hit your own ball and make the trip back over the field, hit the post with your ball and then go back and hit your own ball through your own wicket.

Metier

"Kathy, I'm lost," I said,
though I knew she was sleeping,
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why.
Counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike,
They've all gone to look for America"
Paul Simon - America

Forrest Gump's great gift was clarity of heart. He lived a transparent life without the comfort of an emotional veil or disguise. The popularity of the character was due to the fact that Forrest was the manifestation and expression of his own internal rhythms and lived life for all to see at the mercy of his reactive 'self'.

Forrest Gump's destiny was to live each day tossed by the waves of life that we all experience without a the stabilizing sail or keel that every person needs to stay afloat. This story was narrated to the audience as Forrest was about to embark on the most tragic event of his life, the death of his beautiful Jenny. As pragmatic as ever, Forrest endures this death and sees the gift of his child and the chance to be a father as a hopeful chapter in his life. Having lived a life of shocking clarity and earnest intensity, the character has no need for redemption and there is no tragedy to be found in his simple journey. It is rare in real life when we are introduced to an adult person who has been blessed (or cursed) with the gift of perfect introspection.

Clarity of heart is the natural gift that children have. Adults must protect this fragile ripple until the child experiences their own journey through life. Then, hopefully, the grown adult will carry the memory of what it was like to be hopeful and trusting and to see the broad scope of life as a series of challenges rather than an impending tsunami. Better yet, life could just simply be like a box of chocolates.

mé·tier
Variant(s): also me·tier \ˈme-ˌtyā, me-ˈ\
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Old French mestier, from Vulgar Latin *misterium, alteration of Latin ministerium work, ministry
Date: 1792
1 : vocation or trade 2 : an area of activity in which one excels : forte

Jean Therapy

Sometimes I just don't feel like getting dressed up to go to work. I think back to when I just used to throw on a t shirt and pair of jeans in my late teens and go outside to work in the sun every day and how great that was. A couple of pairs of shorts, three or four t shirts and some sneakers would last for months in the summer and sometimes on into the fall.

Now, I have a tie and an ironed shirt, clean socks and shoes and a belt. The tie was the last to join the wardrobe and even now I have a difficult time putting one on. Besides, we all know now how germy ties can get.

Back in the days of jeans and t shirts, some things never really seemed to matter. I did'nt have a car so there were no car payments. There were only two keys on my keychain and since I did'nt own a car, one of the keys went to some mystery lock somewhere. We had music cassettes back then and were able to make 'mix tapes' of our favorite music. The hair was longer and I occasionally had to hitch hike to get to work.

Now that I am all grown up with a real job and all, I sometimes miss the free and easy days when I used to wear jeans to work. I have about seven keys on my key ring, two cars, a bank account, car payments, kids braces, mortgage and a 401K. Like most married guys my age we keep relics of our past around to remind us of how things used to be before we took on all of this responsibility. My wife has to put up with a drawer full of old t shirts and some shorts and a cardboard box containing some of my most precious 'stuff'.

My days of traveling the world, living on a shoestring and going without health insurance are over. Sometimes on a Sunday morning as I pull on my jeans to go wash the car or clean out the garage I kind of miss that simple life. Then when my daughters call me to pull them in their sled or help fix their bike or when my wife needs me to run an errand involving something called, 'topsoil' I am glad to have my jeans and am happy to be a husband and father.

The God's of Call

As I write this I am on call this weekend for my small group of physicians. Being 'on call' means that I am to answer my pager and try and help those calling in from any of these five other physicians. 'Call' is an integral part of a doctor's life and profession. There is no hiding from a pager for a doctor's entire career. A pager is like having a thousand dollar bill that you can't leave in the car or wash with the laundry. If a pager is lost then panic sets in and life comes to a grinding halt until it is found. Every doctor takes 'call' seriously.

With a pager comes a mystical aura which doctors refer to as "The God's of Call". This concept was made famous in the classic book, 'The House of God' by Samuel Shem, M.D, Ph.D. The God's of Call dictate every aspect of a doctor's on-call life. Once a doctor is issued a pager, he or she is at the mercy of an all seeing force that moves through the universe and uses physicians beepers as it's metaphysical loudspeaker to channel it's messages to patients through their doctors from the vast sea of human experiences.

The Gods of Call know when a doctor gets a chance to sleep because the pager goes off waking him up. The Gods of Call dictate whether a blood draw or EKG will be successful. The Gods of Call also have telepathic powers so that a doctor will break stride on the way to one part of the hospital because she knows that another patient needs her urgently somewhere else without even being alerted. The sooner a physician acknowledges the awsome power of the Gods of Call the easier their lives will be.

When a physician retires, the Gods of Call move on to other doctors. The healing aura that is beamed through pagers, in a doctors dreams and over the hospital PA system helps to keep patients safe and keep physicians in awe of the demands and responsibilities of their craft.

Zaftig

Even in our own language, I am often surprised at how we have incorporated other expressions and the roots of other languages to form our own descriptions. Take 'zaftig' for example. The definition is detailed below but I find it amusing that, while reading one day, I discovered that zaftig was chosen to describe the body habitus of an Indian health care worker. Curious.

zaf·tig
Pronunciation: ˈzäf-tig,
Function: adjective
Etymology: Yiddish zaftik juicy, succulent, from zaft juice, sap, from Middle High German saf, saft, from Old High German saf.
Date: circa 1936
Definition: of a woman : having a full rounded figure : pleasingly plump
Source: Websters English Dictionary

The Captain Lied

"Everybody knows the boat is leaking,

Everybody knows the Captain lied."

Leonard Cohen

When managers, leaders and supervisors knowingly mislead their staff, the problem they are trying to avoid may retreat but will doubtless resurface later to cause more problems. I was recently watching the classic James Bond film, 'Goldfinger'. Oddjob is the quintissential lackey in that he does whatever he is told even if he knows he is being misled. Oddjob believes his boss so implicitly that this trust eventually leads to his death by electrocution in the bowels of Fort Knox.

Captain Kirk would never lie to Mr. Spock. President Bush would never lie to Dick Cheney. Mick Jagger would never mislead Keith Richards and Bernie Madoff would never make the mistake of lying to....everyone. You see my point.

When leaders mislead and trust is violated we need to advocate for ourselves and be our own watchdogs. We would all do well to remember poor, trusting Oddjob as we watch our 401K plans and possibly our children's future disappear like the setting sun on a bleak African plain.