The green grass rises,
a tree leaf unfurls itself;
an egg is hatched.
An Early Spring Haiku
A Drop of Haiku
A drop of water,
captures our reflection;
the pond fills with rain.
One Lost haiku
I wrote a Haiku this morning, I wrote it on my Iphone, then posted it on Twitter, and yet there is no trace of it on my phone or in my Twitter feed. It is gone, vanished.
Here, for a moment.
Eroded from memory;
winter snow, or love.
An Early Morning Haiku, For You
Darkness soon founders,
to the silent rising light;
the sound of one bird.
Another Haiku
Ever so silent,
To stand alone in the trees;
One single heartbeat.
One Lone Haiku
In one warm tear drop,
Can exist, an entire
Reason for living.
My Old Dog
She is actually my ex-wife’s dog, but hey, I was there too. They’d both established, right away, that I was not the boss and proceeded to enact this philosophy of theirs whenever possible. At the time she wanted to get a puppy, I wanted one as well, but I really didn’t have the time to rear a pup and it would’ve just ended up being ‘hers’ anyway. She’s very pretty, and she is obstinate, insistent, and entirely focused on food, food and my ex. She would pester my ex constantly, follow her around, bark at her. After I left, our dog decided I wasn’t so bad after all and really missed me; I come back to dog sit on occasion.
My wife got her from a breeder, as she was picking out her puppy, the son of the breeder said, “oh, no, not that one.”. His mom shushed him, my wife took that pup anyway. She asked the boy why, he said, she’s bossy and piggish. Ha, well, that was one astute boy. She came home and it a was all about the food; food, food, food. Immediately she decided I was not pack leader, and she did not have to do as I said. I quickly cured her off that, although, really on her own terms, so she would begrudgingly do as I told her.
When she got old enough, we would send her to puppy day camp; she loved it there, she ruled the roost, as they say, queen of the hill, she was. Then she got attacked while at the camp, tore open the skin on her belly, so she was real skittish around dogs after that. Not too long after that incident, while out for a walk with other dogs, and dog owners, another dog, and its owner, walked past their group but then the dog turned and ripped open her stitches and caused even more damage.
During my Cancer ordeal, the poor dog had to go in for surgery, can’t remember now, possible cruciate surgery, and they discovered she had major dental problems that we were unaware of. We are good owners, but I never brushed her teeth, and I had been in her mouth a few times for one reason or another when she was younger. So, two surgeries, one after another, while I was on Chemo. Then, not too long after, her spleen burst.
After that healed up, her hind end started to give out. That was a few years ago, she’s been to the vet on a monthly basis for three years now, getting one treatment or another for her hind end. It was during this time that they discovered she has a blood cancer, it livable and treatable. It’s also just a pricey as the rest of the stuff. I regret not getting pet insurance. We have it for us, but we didn’t for the dog. To this day, my ex won’t tell me the total vet bill tally. I have a feeling she hasn’t added it all up.
We love our Monster, the cash isn’t an issue, but I do recommend pet insurance.
Ensconced in Nature
I am renting a small cabin, situated on a large property which borders two lakes, I can’t see the lakes from my cabin, but once I get out onto the property itself, I get a partial view of one of the lakes. My little cabin is plonked in the centre of a large stand of cedar and fir trees. It is rather bucolic, however, like a lot of things in life, there are two side to every coin. I like to see it as three sides to every coin, there are good, bad, and ugly, in most things. It is gorgeous, but I don’t own it and so I am at the whim of a stubborn, money hungry, land lady who, in turns can be nice, then be very not so nice to be around.
I have families of deer surrounding me, in my little cabin, I watch them graze their way around the woods, mostly I see two, or three females and two, or more offspring. They tend to have twins. The bucks show up once in a while but I mostly see the does and fawns on their own. One fine morning, as I was heading out for my nature walk along the lake side trail, I walked upon a group. They stood and watched me approach, but didn’t bound off as is their usual wont to do. They stood and let me walk into the group, I kept my eyes lowered, slowed my walk and tried to be as quiet as possible, I stopped for a second or a brief moment to absorb my situation. I was surrounded by a group of deer.
Don’t try this at home folks, they are a wild animal, they’re a whole lot stronger than I, and I am lucky I didn’t get attacked. Lucky indeed, but it was quite the exhilarating experience for us out here at The Rusty Prose.
The same goes for wild rabbits, I live in bunny central. Eastern cotton tail, these ones are called, and there are a lot of them. These are wild, not at all the store bought bunnies for Easter which then get released into the wild to fend for themselves after they’ve developed a taste for fresh lettuce and carrots. These wild ones have a different diet, so they’re not after a the farmers gardens, they tend to graze around my cabin much the same as the deer.
Birds, the birds. Many different types, although I’m sure the bird population, as a whole, isn’t what it used to be, but I am blessed with a having so many different types; I have Raptors, song birds, water fowl, mourning doves, Stellar’s Jays, woodpeckers, ravens, crows and hummingbirds. I don’t have any feeders out, they don’t seem to need any, even my hummingbirds hang around without a feeder. At night I get the eagles chittering away to themselves, I have screech owls letting their presence be known and felt, and I have barred owls flying over head, calling out as I go for walks. I have my ducks and geese to welcome me, then the ravens lead me back home. Back to my little cabin ensconced in nature.
Fears
Phobias, oh I have a few, I’ve had them since I was a child. The four main phobias that I can think of right off the top of my head are, in no particular order: Nyctophobia, Acrophobia, Arachnophobia, Trypophobia, Agoraphobia and Achievemephobia. Oh, I said four, and there are six. I wonder if I have others that I haven’t discovered, or realized, yet. I’ve often wondered if it’s all just one big phobia, but science tells me they’re all separate. I had anxiety growing up, and so I’ve thought it was all related to that. I think Cancer and Chemo have cured me of my anxiety, or it manifests itself different now.
I’ve rid myself of two phobias; the Nyctophobia, I think just by simply growing up; age and wisdom. The other phobia, the Arachnophobia, I don’t have that anymore. We had a friend, in high school, who had it real bad, which made me realize that mine wasn’t anywhere near what her level of fear was. I think I was finally cured one day at a friends house, after school, we sat on the couch together watching a Nat Geo special on spiders; my friend said she thought they looked awesome, I was soon mesmerized by the beauty and complexity of these spiders. Not to mention, my friend smelled real nice, was warm sitting next to me, and well, you know, soon I was loving spiders more than I thought I ever would.
I have Trypophobia real bad, I don’t like to talk about it or describe it. Okay, its a fear of clusters, or irregular patterns of holes or bumps. Oh yuck, I said it. Yep, that’s a weird one I know, but there it is. It is a phobia, but I think there’s a leaning towards calling it a biological revulsion.
I knew a girl who had such a deep seeded fear of clowns, she could not stand to hear that word spoken out loud. Not even the word, Assclown.
I am working towards pushing myself through the Achievemephobia, that is a tough one, as they all are. But it is a very important one that I need to get through, or at the very least learn how to cope. I am going to meet this one head on any day now.
I still have the acrophobia, and yet I go wall climbing. Yay me! We’re quite proud of ourselves out here at The Rusty Prose for that one. I still have the phobia, but I am able to work through it. My climbing partner is quite patient and understanding. It’s a real phobia, it’s the first one that I recall having. In a northern part of the city, where I grew up, there was a mountain pass, well, it was an extremely high span at the mouth of a large river. I dreaded having to drive over it. My father ridiculed me for asking if they could lower the bridge so it wasn’t so high up.
I still have the Agoraphobia, I think it’s getting worse as I am get older, my Cancer ordeal didn’t help matters in that regard, it left me feeling quite vulnerable; the pain, the weight loss, the act of dying but not actually dying, and the intense chemo brain left me feeling that I’d rather be alone, more so than ever in my life. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t cower in fear while I’m out in public. Not at all. I’m actually an extroverted introvert and can be quite out going when I need to be, however, I really don’t like crowds of people.
For myself, I am all about self improvement. I have over come a couple fears, and learned to live, well enough, with a couple more.
Procrastination
Never put off until tomorrow something that can be done right now, or some such thing. I’m good at paraphrasing, I tend to forget the entire adage, or quote, or what have you. These are good words to live by and it’s taken me decades to turn that into practice. Not all of it is my own fault, there are numerous external factors involved, life, other people, well, life in general gets in the way of life. Of course, one must take ones health, and various other factors, into consideration, but it really is best to make the attempt to not put things off for another day.
I had procrastination tendencies as a child; early memories of not wanting to do my homework for one reason or another, then getting it piled up with no end in sight took me by surprise, not to mention the incredible amount of ‘music’ coming from all manner of adults who surrounded me during my education system sentence. I didn’t understand, nor did I care, what the repercussions would be. Going to school, keeping myself and my room clean, then all the household chores, were all I had to do, but I didn’t want anything to do with any of it, for all kinds of reasons. Reasons.
During puberty, and then teen years, meant all new levels of procrastination. There were many problems in my life, which I am not discussing here, right now, that contributed to procrastination, spite against my parents and authority in general, were the two strong factors. So, really, what ended up happening is that over the years I developed it as a habit, a bad habit, one of many that I carried through my teen years and well into adult hood.
As a young adult I seemed to be in a state of shock for the first few years, then as I got through into my late twenties I came to an incredible realization of what I had been doing, or, in the case of procrastination, what I had been not doing. I was sabotaging my own life by procrastinating out of spite against people who had sabotaged my life. I was cutting off my own nose to spite my face. I was seeing things in a different light, as well as having different job experiences soon made me do the opposite of procrastinating, I was getting to things as soon as I could.
Then I fell, head first, into an unhealthy relationship which lasted far longer than it should have, and my procrastination came back with a vengeance. You want spite? Well you got it. Man, I look back on that time and I feel real stupid for staying in for so long. But, it happens, as they tell me. Life gets in the way of life. I soon fell into a whirl pool effect of procrastinating on life, which really bummed me out, which, in turn, made me procrastinate even more, which bummed me out even more. You see where this is going? Yes, folks, we do love a good run on sentence down here at The Rusty Prose.
I am so much better now. I still put things off, but that really bugs me so I try my best to get things done. Don’t get me wrong, I, by no means, am an over achiever, I just do my best to accomplish my tasks on hand.
