I have long been fascinated by both Koan and Haiku though understanding has been elusive at best. Then I had not been acquainted with Yosa Buson. While I am still illiterate and untrained in the art of reading Haiku, I can now feel the words speak to me.
I return to them in different moods to see if new meanings will be revealed. My immersion is complete as I marvel at the effect ten words or less can have.
Yosa Buson
Before the white chrysanthemum
the scissors hesitate
a moment.
Calligraphy of geese
against the sky--
the moon seals it.
Coolness--
the sound of the bell
as it leaves the bell.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
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