Haiku of Sali Eating
Burp…hiccup…giggle…
Sounds Sali makes while eating
Tell us she’s all right
11-13-15
© Ken Chawkin
Fairfield, Iowa
See these related poems: Two spontaneous haiku while talking to Sali.
Archive for the ‘My poems’ Category
Haiku of Sali Eating
November 13, 2015Searching For The Meaning Of Your Life
November 12, 2015In meditation last morning, a thought came that I was “in search of my own doing.” My life is the result of choices, of things I did and did not do that cannot be undone. Life goes on, and I am still wondering what I should be doing with the rest of my life.
Then I thought of my children and their attempts to make sense of their lives, to fulfill their destiny. So, I wrote this philosophical tanka about being and becoming.
Searching For The Meaning of Your Life
Your destiny is
A search for your own doing
What your life will mean
But doing starts with being
Only then can you become
…
Yogastah kurukarmani
Established in Being, perform action
I’m reminded of what Krishna said to Arjuna on the battlefield of life — to perform his duty and fight. But he also gave him the technique for skill in action — to first transcend, to Be (Ch 2, V 45); and then, established in Being, to perform action (Ch 2, V 48).
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in his translation and commentary on The Bhagavad-Gita (Chapters 1-6), said this was the essence of the Vedic wisdom of life, and his effortless, natural technique of Transcendental Meditation was the way to accomplish it.
So “meditate and act” is the formula for success in life. Do what comes naturally and brings you bliss. And if life sometimes stretches you in ways you’re not comfortable with, keep meditating and acting, and you will have grown stronger in the process, becoming more of yourself.
Here are some related poems: kintsugi: japanese pottery inspires poetry, Two kinds of knowledge about living and learning, and Seeing Is Being.
@RadimSchreiber captures the magic of fireflies in beautiful award-winning photos and films
October 28, 2015
“I like to capture the magic.” — photographer Radim Schreiber
The little luminary pictured above was photographed in 2010 by award-winning photographer Radim Schreiber, of Fairfield, Iowa. The photo, entitled Amber Firefly, took 1st place out of 56,000 entries in “The Natural World” category at the 8th annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest published in March 2011.
A designer, photographer and videographer, formerly for the Sky Factory, Radim has won several national and international photography competitions. Also in 2011 he took 1st place in the 41st annual National Wildlife Photo Contest in the “Backyard Habitat” professional category out of 27,000 entries. He won the 2010 Galapagos Conservancy Photography Contest, and the 2008 and 2009 Rainforest Alliance’s “Picture Sustainability” Photo Contest. Awards are listed on his website.
Radim Schreiber had rarely seen fireflies back home and was surprised and thrilled by their abundance here in Iowa. He started taking still photos and then made a movie of them.
“In the Czech Republic where I grew up, I only saw fireflies a couple of times, deep in the forest. When I came to the United States, I was shocked and thrilled to see the abundance of fireflies and their amazing glow. I was happy to encounter this firefly and photograph its magical bioluminescence.”
Read this July 2011 Iowa Source interview with Christine Schrum to find out how Radim braved ditches, swamps, mosquitoes, and chiggers to obtain his fantastic firefly photos: Stalking Fireflies in the Night.
Radim’s award-winning firefly images have been featured at CBS, NPR, National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, Iowa PBS (Iowa Outdoors, Ep. Aug 11, 2013, go to 13:15, Fireflies In Iowa) The Weather Channel, The National Wildlife Federation, and KEW – Royal Botanical Gardens. Read more in Mo Ellis’s updated profile of Radim on the MIU website.
Update Insert: On March 24, 2016 I found out that Radim’s photo, Synchronous Fireflies, won the Altered Images category of the 13th Annual Smithsonian.com Photo Contest. The next day The Des Moines Register wrote: Fairfield photographer’s fireflies win Smithsonian award.
The photo was taken mid-June 2014* at twilight in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee. Radim was in almost complete darkness surrounded by fireflies and witnessed one of the most amazing and magical natural phenomena—fireflies that synchronize. He used the latest low-light camera technology and took several long exposures over several minutes and merged them together to preserve detail and clarity. He uploaded it November 2015 and it was selected as Shot Of The Day on December 24, 2015, then Editors’ Pick, Finalist, and now Altered Images Winner. Radim had used this photo for the cover of his Firefly Experience film described below.
The Firefly Experience on Film
This summer I saw a magical little film at the first annual Creative Edge Film Fest in Fairfield, Iowa. Made by fellow MUM alum Radim Schreiber, BFA, it was so beautifully put together visually and musically, the audience was spellbound. When it was over, the 2½-minute short elicited an extended exuberant response.
In this film, Radim Schreiber tried to capture his experiences with fireflies in Lamson Woods, a State Preserve and segment of the Jefferson County Trails System near his house in Fairfield, Iowa. He wanted to document not only their beauty and magical glow, but also behavior in their natural environment, the Neff Wetlands section of the Fairfield Loop Trail.
“When I walk through a quiet forest in the middle of the night full of fireflies, I have an experience of a magical forest. When I see fireflies being a mere reflection of stars under the Milky Way, I feel connected to everything in the universe. They are communicating to me. I am listening.”
Radim chose to not do any digital manipulation to the video itself. The footage came straight from the camera. This is not time-lapse photography, but realtime footage of fireflies!
Radim Schreiber’s Firefly Experience is synchronistically edited with a beautiful soundtrack specifically composed and performed for the film by Tiko Lasola. Radim loves the song. “It is a perfect match for my photos. In fact I was shocked that it happened this way.” I agree! After watching the film you can hear Tiko’s full 3½-minute Fireflies piece here.
After the screening, Radim was selling HD and Blu-ray DVDs of his film. I bought the Blu-ray. I never tire of watching and listening to it; it’s beautiful! It produces a calming effect.
For optimal viewing, Radim suggests we watch the video at night in full screen mode with all lights turned off and the sound turned up.
Visit Radim’s website to see more firefly photographs and videos at FireflyExperience.org.
A Firefly Poem
Have you ever experienced the magic of fireflies? I’ve seen them around Fairfield, but never like what I saw in eastern Missouri during a summer Residence Course in the early 1990s. I had driven with three other Maharishi Ayurveda Health Technicians to a movement facility in Ste. Genevieve County, Missouri to provide rejuvenation therapies.
The building was located at the edge of the Mark Twain National Forest. The warm night air was thick with nature’s sounds and sights. Hundreds of frogs incessantly called out to each other from a pond behind the building. Swarms of fireflies dazzled me with their exuberant flashing lights as I walked around the grounds. Their colors and bubbly nature reminded me of Champagne! Inspired, I wrote this short four-line poem.
FIREFLIES
EFFERVESCENT FIREFLIES
PHOSPHORESCENT HUE
SPARKLING LUMINOSITY
EVENING DROPS OF DEW
See newer photos by Radim Schreiber in his July 2017 newsletter.
*In July 2018, I discovered CBS Sunday Morning was also there that same summer in 2014 when Radim was capturing his award-winning photographs of the synchronous fireflies. They posted their report on July 13, 2014: Tennessee fireflies: A summertime light show.
Iowa PBS posted this Aug 22, 2013 profile on Radim’s work in their Iowa Outdoors series: Fireflies in Iowa.
New: This summer, August 2020, a video and a magazine cover story came out about Radim Schreiber and his work.
Frances Figart, editor of Smokies Life Magazine, interviewed Radim for their spring 2020 issue, Vol 14 #1. They created a wrap-around glow-in-the-dark firefly cover with one of Radim’s images of the famous lightning bugs of Elkmont. The edition’s cover story featured a sidebar about Radim and showed many of his incredible photographs. They also included a special video introducing Radim and his work. See Illuminating the Magic and Mystery: An Interview with Radim Schreiber, Firefly Photographer.
Radim posted the article and video on his website. Students in the Cinematic Arts and New Media Department at Maharishi International University made the short film. It was produced by assistant professor and award-winning filmmaker Amine Kouider. Amine is Chair of the department and a founding member of David Lynch Foundation Television. See Firefly Photographer Captures The Magic of Fireflies.
Radim was hired to film fireflies for the new Netflix series Alien Worlds. In Janus, Season 1 Episode 2, you see his work from 31:40 – 36:19.
On the evening of the full moon in July (7/13/22), Radim posted this stunningly beautiful photo on his Instagram radimphoto and wrote: Lightning Bugs and Full Moon. Photo I took last night in Fairfield Iowa. Multiple exposures, about hour total. Repost freely ❤️
On March 5, 2023, Radim sent out a newsletter announcing that last summer he had photographed a very elusive and endangered firefly species in the cypress swamps of southern Illinois. The “Cypress Firefly” Photuris walldoxeyi, first described by Lynn Fast, displays a unique flashing pattern. It has been Red Listed as vulnerable and has only so far been found in a handful of locations in four states — IL, IN, MS, and TN. See a short video of Cypress Firefly – Red List Vulnerable Species.
On April 8, 2024, Radim took photos of the total solar eclipse in Arkansas and made prints available on paper and metal of the Totality.
June 6, 2024: Fireflies! 💛🌟 Just WOW. I took this video couple nights in the Tennessee. So many fireflies!!!
BLUE: a translucent painting by Bill Teeple at ICON Gallery on Fairfield’s 1st Fridays Art Walk
August 7, 2015
It’s Fairfield’s 1st Fridays Art Walk and tonight I’m at ICON Gallery talking with owner/curator Bill Teeple about the creative process, painting, poetry, and consciousness. I’m moved by one of his new images on the wall in the smaller gallery/studio upstairs. It’s deeply blue and draws me in like a magnet.
Bill tells me it’s made of multiple layers of acrylic paint, like a glaze. It’s translucent; it glows in your awareness. Tiny white specks look like stars in the night sky. Bill says it’s the paper, meant to be part of the painting.
Click on the blue image to enlarge it and you’ll see them. Enlarge it again and stare into the BLUE, and like the Hubble telescope, you’ll discover a world that previously was not visible.
The simplicity and minimalism of the piece inspires me to write a haiku. I do, and share it with Bill who says, “That’s it!”
BLUE: A Translucent Painting by Bill Teeple
Ten Layers of Blue
Look at it looking at you
Aglow between two
I can’t help myself when it comes to rearranging words in lines and their meanings. Here is a second version of the haiku.
BLUE: A Translucent Painting by Bill Teeple
Ten Layers of Blue
Looking at it look at you
A glow between two
Here’s a related poem about the mystery of the creative process: Sometimes Poetry Happens.
Sali’s Nature
August 7, 2015While feeding Sali lunch yesterday I would joke and make her smile and laugh. It was sweet. No matter how lousy I was feeling before, she made me feel better. I told her she had a happy heart and a blissful soul, and thanked her for making me feel happier. That’s when I wrote the first two lines. I thought about it some more and the next day when I came in to feed her, the last two lines came out spontaneously. She is my muse. Even though Sali is severely compromised on so many levels, she still maintains her inner nature, an inspiration to us all!
Sally has a happy heart
And a deeply blissful soul
When she laughs it all comes out
Leaving me smiling and whole
© Ken Chawkin
August 7, 2015
Fairfield, Iowa
Also see Sally’s Smile (Haiku for Nurse Dan) and Tanka For Sali Upholding Her Wonderful Nature.
A NEW YORK HAIKU by Ken Chawkin
April 17, 2015I’m in New York City this week with my son Nathanael, along with other extended family members, to see the premier of my nephew Zachary Sluser’s film, The Driftless Area, at the Tribeca Film Festival. We’ve been doing a lot of walking lately and I gotta tell ya, New York is a noisy city. Cars honk their horns at all hours of the day and night, ambulances blare and police cars wail their sirens. Construction is going on somewhere. People are everywhere. I had to write this New York Haiku in a New York Minute.
A NEW YORK HAIKU
WALKING ON THE STREETS
NEW YORK’S A NOISY CITY
CONSTANT CONSTRUCTION
© Ken Chawkin
April 16, 2015
New York, NY
Nathanael took this video of me as I was rewriting this haiku. Note how he titled the description as a haiku: Haiku composing / captured in motion real-time / gotta love my dad.
Driving to the airport for our trip to New York City I noticed a series of billboards that seemed to tell a story. It cracked me up. We took pictures on the drive home, and I included them in this new blog post: The battle for Good and Evil along Highway 218.
Some News Coverage on The Driftless Area
INDIEWIRE: Meet the 2015 Tribeca Filmmakers #35: Stellar Cast Teams Up to Solve a Mystery in ‘The Driftless Area’. Watch The Daily Quirk Blog VIDEO: An Inside Look at the Tribeca Film Festival Red Carpet for ‘The Driftless Area’ and a Red Carpet group photo. Scene Creek: 5 Questions with Zachary Sluser of The Driftless Area. Moveable Fest: Tribeca ’15 Interview: Zachary Sluser on Pushing Forward in “The Driftless Area”. The Blot Magazine: ‘Driftless Area’ Director Zachary Sluser On Zooey, John Hawkes & His Dog. No Film School: Using an Objective Camera to Create Metaphysical Noir ‘The Driftless Area’. Shockya: Tribeca 2015 Interview: Zachary Sluser Talks The Driftless Area (Exclusive). Check the film’s Facebook page for updates.
Here’s an article in NY Magazine about How to Not Think and Do Nothing in New York.
Tanka For Sali Upholding Her Wonderful Nature
April 5, 2015Tanka For Sali Upholding Her Wonderful Nature
Her essence shines through the Dementia!
Through all the Changes
Your Nature Remains the Same
Sweet, Joyful, Loving
Radiating Sallyness
Constant as the Northern Star
© Ken Chawkin
Parkview Care Center
April 4, 2015, 5:40pm
Fairfield, Iowa, USA
Our Meditation Love Poem for Valentine’s Day
February 14, 2015I wrote Our Meditation Love Poem, about 4 ½ years ago, and decided to post it now, for Valentine’s Day. I was visiting my sweetheart during the week at her care facility and wrote the poem and story behind it that Saturday, September 4, 2010, almost 4 ½ months after she moved in.
I was remembering the meditation we had this week; my chest area filled up with a great inner warmth and bliss of loving you. Tonight, I was listening to Leonard Cohen singing his songs of love, and started writing this poem from that memory, that feeling, and also remembered the quote in the film, Tristan and Isolde, when he is dying and he says to her, “You were right—life is greater than death, but love is greater than either.” He was referring to what she had said when they first met, about following your heart, and that love in one’s life fills up what would otherwise be an empty shell of duty and honor, quoting John Donne’s The Good Morrow, where he writes:
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares,
And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest,
…..
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.
So I came up with this poem, Our Meditation Love Poem. I found myself writing a 17-syllable line, the sum of a haiku in 3 lines. I liked the flow and decided to make each line 17 syllables long, each one having its own internal rhythm and flow. I wanted to write 11 lines for some reason, maybe thinking there were 11 syllables in each line. But now I remember there are 17. But I would then have to write 6 more lines, and right now I can’t see it. I naturally divided them into 2 stanzas of 4 lines each followed by a stanza of 3 at the end. It seems to have worked well.
Related: See this #RomanticPoem for #ValentinesDay: i carry your heart with me by e.e. cummings. This Quiet Love, a #LovePoem from Kenny, for Sally on #ValentinesDay. ‘In Our Loving Eyes’ a poem by @kenchawkin remembering a special love with Sally Peden.
Enjoy reading other beautiful love poems posted on The Uncarved Blog.
This Quiet Love, a #LovePoem from Kenny, for Sally on #ValentinesDay
February 14, 2015This Quiet Love
This is a quiet love
One of simplicity and easiness
No complications here
It’s too late in life for that sort of thing
Just time to be best friends
© Ken Chawkin
October 22, 2006
Fairfield, Iowa
I wrote this poem around 8 years and 4 months ago at the recognition of a growing friendship I was sharing with someone special. I realized I was enjoying a different kind of love at this stage of my life, and it was good. Earlier attempts at love in relationships had been disappointing—unrequited, romantic, irresponsible, tempestuous, lustful, and in the end, unfulfilled. I didn’t think true love was possible, or if it even existed.
And then it happened, but not all at once. We had met briefly 10 years earlier, then forgot. After we unknowingly reconnected, a story in itself, love took some time to blossom, to be earned. She was UNDECIDED about being COMMITTED. Through each stage, poems would flow forth; she became my muse. All poems listed in the sub-category Sally Peden are about Sali, except the first 3, which were written by her about a visit To Jyotir Math with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Later my love would be tested when An Unwanted Guest came to live with us. Eventually we would have to live apart, which led to the Dementia Blues. But Sally’s Smile would continue to uplift me and all those around her. Many changes continue to transform our lives, each in our own way. I never would have imagined this kind of development, but This Quiet Love continues to sustain me. As does the love of my family, my children and my siblings, for which I am truly grateful.
And even with the ongoing decline, Sally continues to maintain her essential nature.
See this #RomanticPoem for #ValentinesDay: i carry your heart with me by e.e. cummings. See Our Meditation Love Poem for Valentine’s Day, and other beautiful love poems posted on The Uncarved Blog.
See this most recent post, December 8, 2016, Capturing an authentic moment in writing, Being with Sali, August 1, 2012, on a full moon night. It concludes with an update, of Sali’s passing, October 1, 2016, with a link to a blog post by Valerie Gangas, Life in Love with You, describing her personal response to Sali’s Funeral Service and Vedic Cremation Ceremony, which took place on October 5, 2016.
Here is the most recent update, December 28, 2016: An early attempt at some kind of closure with a poem on Sali’s passing and auspicious times.
And, as a reminder, the poem, Love After Love by Derek Walcott, profoundly describes the basis for any love relationship, knowing and loving your self.
See these Final entries leading up to and after Sali’s passing. And this recent entry with photos and stories: For Us—a tanka honoring Sali and what we shared.
I would later record This Quiet Love and two other love poems for Sali (COMMITTED and In Our Loving Eyes) for a 2019 Valentine’s Day program on KHOE, MUM’s campus radio station. Click here to read and listen to them.
The Uncarved Blog 