Sunday, June 21, 2009


*
warm winters day
a Chinese wind chime sings
to an empty street
*

18 comments:

  1. Can hear it. All layers of chilling (out) included ... Very nice.

    Best wishes
    Ralf

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  2. HAHAHA....this made me laugh loud, Dalloway!

    singing to myself is my way to happiness, :))

    wishes,
    devika

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  3. Emma,
    _I'm just now becoming -adjusted- to you being in another season! Silly me.
    _Love the wind chime -sings to herself- and yet... 'we all hear her song.' _m

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  4. This one didn't quite do it for me.

    It feels, maybe, just a little too... saccharine?

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  5. yes Magyar, we are now in the depths of winter (I have a scarf wrapped around my neck as I write this).

    Patrick, I was loving that one day of unseasonal warmth... obviously intoxicated with suger-filled happy hormones... and the chime WAS singing away to itself, I swear...

    (makes you wonder though - if I wasnt there, would she still have made a sound on that empty street? ahem)

    anyway, we're back to typical Sydney winter draughty weather today and I have a delightfully bleak, non-sweetened haiga for you the moment my computer is back in my cold winter hands ;)

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  6. just checked - its 68F at the moment... Devika might agree thats cold

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  7. Hmmmm....pulling my legs, Dalloway? :))

    i love cold, the colder, the better...it makes me long for warmth ;-) [else, i don't bother! :)]

    devika

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  8. I have always used a photographic prompt, but am going to try without. I'll see ...

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  9. keen to see what you come up with Julie.

    (if anyone's interested, julie takes wonderful photographs of people, places and events in Sydney - I lost sleep last night trawling through her various blog sites)

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  10. I like the change, Dalloway.

    The change adds a depth and complexity that was missing from the first version.

    Shouldn't winters read winter's? - asked the pedant.

    I keep wondering about "singing" instead of "sings". I always pause over decisions like these. I usually chose the "present continuous" or "present progressive" tense (-ing) but I don't know why and I can't think of a good rationale.

    http://www.haikuworld.org/begin/whigginson.sep2003.html

    The linked article is "sort of" related. It's by the haiku scholar William J. Higginson who, from what I can judge, was probably the best and most objective scholar around. I tried writing him recently, only to learn that he died last year.

    Sigh...

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  11. The day I discovered haiku I ran out and bought Higginson's Haiku Handbook. A few weeks later I noticed a large number of tributes to him on various haiku sites.

    I also came across this http://haikaipub.wordpress.com/

    I prefer present continuous generally - its more immediate, but chose sings for a couple of reasons

    lovely chatting to you, as always Patrick

    and lovely reading everyones comments, many thanks

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  12. Yes, I saw your website too. It's strange because the last word you hear from him is that his Doctors are feeling optimistic. Very unsettling...

    They left his blog just they *he* left it. It's like walking into someone's room, a year later, and seeing that nothing has moved or been changed.

    Spooky.

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  13. thats exactly what it felt like

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  14. I love the feel of this- haunting.

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  15. Many thanks J.Andrew

    Hey Patrick, thanks for the Higginson link. Some very useful points on -ing words! A lawyer at work once sent me an article on the use of 'which' and 'that' which has stuck with me ever since. I suspect Higginsons comments will do the same on my use of 'ings'.

    Its the kind of article that ups my game on composing haiku (much like the f/k/a essay on psyku - though that one freaked me out of writing for about a month).

    Im ramblimg. Then again, whats a blog for?

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Thanks for taking the time to write something.