The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: Basho

  • The Frog and the Pond

    (after Basho)

     Staid pond 
         Frog springs 
    Skein uncoils

    Serious
    pond


    frivolous

    frog

    F lip   pant


    SPLASH

    . . . . . 

    Frog de sides 
       opacity
    Leaps 
       to its own line 
    Escapes 
       eternal pond poem

  • On the Doodle

    Is doodling an art form? The true doodle only appears when the doodler is preoccupied, listening to a lecture, sitting in a staff meeting, caged, drawing absent-mindedly. While the doodler is distracted, the doodles escape. But, as John Cage said, music occurs whether we intend it or not, and when we turn our attention to that music we do not intend, it is a pleasure. And Basho said, whatever we may be doing at any given moment, it has a bearing on our everlasting life (physicists are in the process of proving this as we doodle on, on the doodle). Here are some doodles for your mid-week doodle viewing pleasure:

    Some might argue this last piece may not qualify as a doodle. “This guy’s trying to do art, and failing.” But yeah, it’s a doodle. The critics said to Picasso, of his painting titled “Woman Sitting in a Chair”: “We don’t get it: no woman, no chair.” Picasso replied that it is a painting of what it feels like to be a woman sitting in a chair. That last doodle appears to be a drawing of what it feels like to doodle, to watch the doodles escaping.

    John Cage, Basho, Picasso, Delmore Schwartz…now here’s some doodling post. Some might argue that blogging is like doodling. In doodles begin responsibilities.