Zuihitsu

A haiku is triggered by a sudden perception: a frog jumping, a child playing, a sparrow in the nose of a Buddha statue.

My photographs, too, are initiated by a sudden new vision. So, in a sense, they also are haikus.

The non-believer daren’t believe
until he Knows his mother’s love.

He sits all alone 
in freezing rain for us all, 
this great stone Buddha. 
— Issa
(trans. Sam Hamill)* 

Through the rain,
this tree my Buddha.

* The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku: Kobayashi Issa (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997), p. 111.

Look around at the paintings in the museum and ask yourself:

Why were they created?
Why do they exist?

May they answer your Basic Question:

Why was I created?
Why do I exist?

Verlaine counseled Debussy that “nothing is more precious than half-light in which the undefined and the precise meet … What we want is nuance not colour – the nuance that weds the dream to dream.”

Yes, I take color photographs – very many. For the color and its reality. But especially for portraits, I greatly prefer

Issa wrote that it does not matter what you say to a dead tree.

Of course, not what you say, but Where it comes from.

And, having photographed – that is to say, intimately related to – so many apparently dead trees, I have come to believe that, in their own way, they are alive. As sculpture

Give up the world of suffering!
Come, come to your Muse of Love.
I will help you along the way with instances of Beauty.

with apologies to Issa
(trans. Sam Hamill)

We should be able to go into any art museum, look around and exclaim, “Buddhas, Buddhas, Everywhere!” Not just the paintings but, inspired by them, all the people.

It has been said of Emerson that he regarded every moment as Epiphanic. So he would have loved, would have felt loved, by any painting.

But we non-Emersons need

It could be said that if I first find my Soul I can then find my mother’s – and others. Or, if I first find hers I can then find mine – and others.

I prefer the second way, for it seems altruistic – especially if we primarily find her

“Scattered flowers are gone forever.” 
— Issa
(trans. Sam Hamill)

As, too, my paintings.