I was looking out my bedroom window this morning at the chickadees flitting from branch to branch in the nearby ravine trees, wondering why they haven’t yet found (or are ignoring) the two new birdfeeders we put up earlier this week. Then, something caught my eye in the middle of one of the larger cedar trees, and I spied these guys:

(Four of them)

It seems that all I ever have time for these days is a quick haiku. Here’s one from yesterday, when four eagles pulled me out of the fatigue and cold I was experiencing at the end of a tiring day:

waiting for the bus
cold stone step is a hard bench
above, eagles soar

I snapped a quick photo as the bus pulled up, but all I managed to get was blue sky (which was, itself, amazing) and one blurry eagle:

Meanwhile, unpacking and setting up my office/studio space continues:

Exciting to wake up to sunshine instead of rain again this morning (that’s two days in a row here on the wet coast!). The view from my kitchen window inspired a quick haiku:

mist weaves through tree trunks

as houses warm this morning

sunlight holds last leaves

And another image from this morning:

I have yet to see a coyote since we moved beside the ravine, but I’m keeping my eyes open (especially late at night when I let the dog out to pee before bed — and hoping the dog won’t give chase if we spy one).

As for writing, I’m actually back working on my neglected novel (yeah! I was getting a bit worried I’d forgotten how to write), but progress on unpacking boxes and setting up my office seems to have stalled.

waves of home-bound crows

crest over tops of fir trees

struggling in the wind

The sky is still orange as I type this, so these may be the most immediate images I’ve ever posted! I was concerned that my sunset view might not be as good at my new place as it was at my old. I needn’t have worried. (By the way, it was the crows that were struggling in the wind, not the trees.)

In the spring (just short of our first anniversary in our new place) our landlord dropped the bombshell that he was putting our house up for sale. After the initial shock and depression (we liked where we lived and were not looking forward to having to move for a third time in one year), we began to get excited about the possibility of actually being able to buy a house of our own (thanks to low interest rates) and finally break free of the whims of landlords. It turns out that looking for a house is all consuming (hence the neglect of this blog –and my other writing). We looked seriously at over thirty houses, put unsuccessful offers on five, and just when we were losing optomism… we found the perfect house. At first we thought it was more than we could afford, and with so much competition for houses in our neighbourhood and so many unsuccessful tries at other houses, we didn’t think it would be possible for us to get the house we liked more than all the others. But somehow circumstances, the planets, karma…everything aligned, and here we are in our wonderful new house!

We’re in the middle of the city, but here is the view from my bedroom window:

Perhaps other buyers were scared off by the closeness of the neighbouring ravine (our old landlord said we’d made a mistake buying a house so close to a “jungle”). Of course, we love it!

Here is the my first haiku written at the new house:

yellow autumn leaves
light a glowing pathway
through rain darkened trees

This morning I listened to an interview with author/illustrator Lee Edward Fodi in which he mentioned that his interest in writing and illustrating books goes back to when he first picked up a crayon. He also said that, for him, the visual images always came first. I was thinking that, although I loved to draw as a kid, the written story always came before the visual image for me. Then I remembered the pictures I drew for my grandma.

For most of my childhood, my grandma lived several hundred miles away, and I only saw her a couple times a year. We used to write letters back and forth, and for a brief period, we also did something special. I would send my grandma a drawing, and she would send me back a story to go with the drawing. The story she created from the picture would be a total surprise, and I always waited for it with great anticipation. (I still have at least two of those drawings and their accompanying stories –perhaps I’ll post one here when I find it.)

My grandma always encouraged my interest in being a writer, but I’d forgotten how much she modelled storytelling herself and inspired creativity by her approach to life and the things she had around her. There was always a mood of fun around my grandmother. She had a big encompassing laugh, sang lively French songs, made paper dolls with us, played cards, and always had a lazy-Susan tray of Bugles, Cheezies, chips and dip at the ready. She loved Hawaii, dressed in a bright floral muu muu at home, played Hawaiian music on her stereo, called her grandchildren by Hawaiianified names, and always had little shells and tiny toys hidden in her flower pots. And, there was the story-telling shell.

My brothers, sister and I loved to curl up next to my grandma while she held the storytelling shell on her lap (like a mother-of-pearl bowl), traced lines and patterns with her finger, and told stories about children who sailed the sea and had encounters with pirates. It wasn’t so much the content of the stories that made the stories great, it was the personality, warmth and love with which my grandma told them.

So, some stories begin with pictures, some with words, and if your’e lucky, some begin with a storytelling shell.

hundreds flew over

when my father was a boy

twelve nighthawks tonight

We’ve been experiencing a heat wave here in Vancouver, which has left everyone in my house (people, dog and cats) lying around sweating (or panting), unable to move or think. Today, the temperature has dropped just enough to give us a bit of a reprieve and allow me to stay for more than a few minutes in my sauna of an office as well as muster up enough energy to record some of the haiku that emerged out of the heat.

First, here’s one I wrote back in early June:

early summer heat
unwelcome guest in our house
the dog pants all night

And during this week’s  heat:

so many windows
open in the summer heat
spilling people’s lives

empty yellow grass
splashed by blue-winged Steller’s jay
beak full of peanut

heavy summer heat
no breeze through open windows
the night train’s whistle

fat slice of orange moon
behind smog and forest fire smoke
terrible beauty

And here’s the surrealistically orange sunset from the night the heat wave started:

I seem to be devoting more time to tweeting than to blogging lately. Perhaps because it’s so quick and easy to tweet, and so far (still novel) I’m finding it fun and challenging to put as much as possible in as few words as possible (kind of like haiku). In fact, one of the appeals of Twitter is that tweets are the perfect size for haiku, as many haiku addicts have discovered. Hashtags like #haiku and #haikuchallenge also enable people to share haiku and challenge eachother to create haiku on specific topics (somewhat kindred to the original Japanese tradition of haiku as socially created linked verse).  Here are some Twitter haiku samples:

Note: reading from the bottom up, the first challenge was to write a haiku using the words 1. crow 2. hole 3. roof, while the second challenge was to use the word “wolfish.” Fun, I thought (the Internet once again distracting me from work on my novel). Btw, my Twitter moniker: Jacquieink

air conditioning
chills me until I step out
into a warm hug

(it’s like summer today!)