Harley King

While I saw my first robin this year over a month ago, I am still reminded with each new sighting about the importance of the seasons.  The seasons are the touchstones of our lives.  They remind us of who we are and what we are all about.  This year has been a particularly hard winter where I live and people delighted in the coming of spring.  The seasons measure the passing of time.  

Our lives are also like the seasons.  Our youth is the spring of our lives — full of energy, excitement and enthusiasm.  We seek to discover the meaning of life and the world into which we are born.  Why are we are?  Who do we want to become?

In the summer of our lives, we settle into the world, mating and raising a family.  We find employment to pay our bills and hopefully, provide us with a sense of purpose.  The questions of our youth become less important as we are in pursuit of life's abundance.  Like the squirrels we are finding nuts and burying them for the coming winter.

In the autumn of our lives, we return to the melancholy of our youth.  We think again about the meaning of life and our purpose for being here.  We question and challenge the decisions we have made.  Have we settled for too little?  Have we given in too easily to the demands of life?  If our time in this life is limited, what changes do we want to make?

In the winter of our years, we know the end is near.  We can feel the coming death in our bones.  We will return to the soil from which we came.  We watch our friends and companions of this life pass on to a world beyond our grasp.  We live in memory of what has been — hopeful that our passing will be blessed.

The seasons have also been a touchstone of my creative life — beginning with the wild and crazy hopes and dreams of spring.  I wanted to be a poet and a novelist — a rich and famous world traveler.  In the summer, I chose to find a job to support a family.  Writing was relegated to the early morning hours while everyone slept.  In the autumn of my years, I have written thousands of poems and published little.  I am more interested in the process of creating then in fame and fortune.  Winter is around the corner and I find myself also drawing and creating art.  I wonder what will happen to my creative work after I am gone.  Will it disappear?  Or will it find a home somewhere?

In 1977, I published Winter Silence, my first book of haiku to celebrate the birth of my daughter.  The book was organized by the seasons.  In 2014, I read and recorded the haiku from that book.  Enjoy this short reading.

May your heart rejoice 

with the coming of robins in the spring.

Andrew Wyeth

Late Fall
(1981)

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.  Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show."

— Andrew Wyeth

American Artist

1917 - 2009

What is your favorite season.  My favorite, autumn, is coming to an end.  Most of the leaves have fallen from the trees.  The squirrels are burying the last of the nuts.  The geese are flying south.  Bare branches now reveal the sky.  Death hides around the corner — waiting for winter to pounce.  We have had a good autumn.  Warm, gentle and full of life.  Not too much rain, just enough to keep the creeks flowing.

How do the seasons effect you and your art?  Do you produce more creative work in one season or another?  Do the seasons enrich your art?  Can you taste the winds of autumn?  Are you counting your blessings?  Has the harvest been abundant?  Are you thankful for what you have?

Photo by Harley King
(2011)

Robert Bly

"When anyone seriously pursues an art — painting, poetry, sculpture, composing — over twenty or thirty years, the sustained discipline carries the artist down to the countryside of grief, and that descent, resisted so long proves invigorating. . . . As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression."

— Robert Bly

American Poet

1926 - 

I first heard Robert Bly read poetry in 1969 while I was in college and I still own a copy of his very first book of poetry, Silence in the Snowy Fields, which I bought when he was in town and is autographed by him.  He was majestic, expansive and seemed to blow the roof off the auditorium.  I fell in love with the poetry I read in that small sixty-page book, published by Wesleyan University Press, full of images of the midwest where I was born and raised.  Years later I had another opportunity to hear Bly read and I bought a collection of his prose poems, Morning Glory.  I own a number of his poetry books and his books of translated poems.  I even bought the book that made him rich and famous, Iron John, a non-fiction book I have never been able to finish reading.  

Here is a short poem that I love.  The last two lines have the feel of Japanese haiku.

Watering the Horse

How strange to think of giving up all ambition!

Suddenly I see with such clear eyes

The white flake of snow

That has just fallen in the horse's mane!

Here is another favorite poem of mine from his first collection.  This poem evokes the feeling of the rural countryside in which I grew up.  Anyone who grew up in the rural midwest will immediately feel at home.

Three Kinds of Pleasure

        

                   I

Sometimes, riding in a car, in Wisconsin

Or Illinois, you notice those dark telephone poles

One by one lift themselves out of the fence line

And slowly leap on the gray sky —

And past them, the snowy fields.

                   II

The darkness drifts down like snow on the picked cornfields

In Wisconsin:  and on these black trees

Scattered, one by one,

Through the winter fields —

We see stiff weeds and brownish stubble,

And white snow left now only in the wheeltracks of the combine.

                  III

It is a pleasure, also, to be driving

Toward Chicago, near dark,

And see the lights in the barns.

The bare trees more dignified than ever,

Like a fierce man on his deathbed,

And the ditches along the road half full of a private snow.

Marcel Proust

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

 

— Marcel Proust

French Novelist

1871 - 1922

For some people the environment is crucial to their happiness.  They let where they live affect their emotional life.  And there is some truth to the fact.  Cloudy days can bring people down.  Long winters give some people cabin fever.  Others need the mountains or the ocean or the prairie.  How does your environment affect you as an artist?  Does it inspire your creativity?  Does it make you hopeful?  Does it make you happy?

For other people like Proust and myself, the environment is less important?  I can create anywhere.  I can sit in a shopping mall and write poetry.  I can sit in a church and write.  As I write these words I am sitting in a hotel in South Carolina.  And the environment rarely affects my mood or happiness.  I love the mountains, the ocean and the prairie, but I don't need them to be happy.  I live inside my head.  Can you create anywhere?  Or must you be in a certain place?  A certain mood?  A special environment?

Beverly Pepper

Alpha

"I go to my studio every day.  Some days work comes easily.  Other days nothing happens.  Yet on the good days the inspiration is only an accumulation of all the other days, the nonproductive ones."

— Beverly Pepper

American Artist

1922 -

Horizontal Twist Vision 1
(2008)

Farmers understand that they have to leave the fields fallow some years.  The soil needs a rest and an opportunity to rebuild itself.  If they planted corn every year, they would deplete the soil of its nutrients eventually.  Artists, writers and creative leaders are going to have good days and bad days.  The bad days are a way of restoring the creative energies to our spirit — of making us whole again.  Work every day but understand that some days you will be producing weeds and other days you will harvest the corn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world, I thank God I am alive."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

American Poet/Essayist

1803 - 1882

I am fortunate that I have a yard that is full of birds, squirrels and rabbits.  And occasionally, a deer or a family of ducks have found the time to visit.  And our yard has maple trees, a large old pin oak and a few blue spruce.  Even in a metropolitan city I can find nature close at hand.  As creative leaders, we can and should find inspiration in nature.  I am amazed at how strong and resilient Mother Nature is.  If you have ever observed grass poking up through a crack in the concrete, you understand what I mean.  Long after the last man or woman has passed onto a better place, Mother Nature will still be there.

For me, the ironic thing is that human beings talk about nature as if we are not a part of it, only observers.  In fact, we are very much a part of nature.  And contrary to the opinion of many, Mother Nature is stronger and tougher than man.  I remember reading a study of overcrowded deer on an island.  The overcrowding generated unusual behavior among the deer such as increased fighting, rape and homosexuality.  Nature sought to reduce the overpopulation through disease.  In the end nature will win so we need to enjoy it while we can.

Photograph by Johari King

As artists and writers, we need to find joy, solace and inspiration in nature.  We need to enjoy the sunsets and the sunrises.  We need to appreciate the changing of seasons from fall to winter to spring.  The squirrels and rabbits in my backyard bring me pleasure and laughter with their play.  I have seen rabbits play leap frog, jumping over each other.  I have watched squirrels chasing each other up a tree.  And you will find both the rabbits and the squirrels in my haiku and my poetry.


Here are a few of my haiku.  More of my haiku can be found at my website.


downtown Chicago
    a squirrel buries apples —
        warm autumn sun




Illinois farmland —
    pheasant scoots across the snow
        the pickup heads home




early morning —
    two robins play leap frog
        in the shadows




on the corn tassels
    a flock of purple martins. . . 
        summer sunset

Morihei Ueshiba

"Contemplate the workings of this world . . . . Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely. . . . Everything — even mountains, rivers, plants and trees — should be your teacher."

— Morihei Ueshiba

Founder of Aikido

Japanese Author

1883 - 1969

Albert Camus

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

— Albert Camus

French Novelist

1913 - 1960

My wife and I were sitting on the back porch today enjoying the autumn morning.  Autumn is my favorite month.  If I had to rank the seasons from most favorite to least, here is my ranking:  Autumn, Spring, Winter, Summer.  What is your favorite season?  As artists, writers and creative leaders, we are affected by the seasons.  I studied and wrote exclusively haiku for seven years and the key to understanding haiku lies in the seasons.   Many of us have lost touch with the seasons.  We live in heated and air-conditioned buildings where the environment is controlled.  The further we get from the farms and the fields, the more we lose touch with the individual nature of each season.  I like winter because it cleans the cobwebs out of my brain.  I love spring because of the renewal and rebirth.  Summer with its heat overwhelms me.  My brain melts once the temperature gets above 75 degrees.  Autumn, though, brings me back to myself and I reflect on the importance of life.

This quote from Camus, the French novelist, caught me by surprise this morning.  The phrase, "Every leaf is a flower," makes me see the world anew and I find it to be true.

Paul Gauguin

"Color!  What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams."

— Paul Gauguin
French Artist

1848 - 1903

As a writer, I have lived in a black and white world.  The pages of books are black and white.  The page I write on is black and white.  I have come to color only slowly when I took up the study of art about a decade ago.  The complexity of color is hard to understand.  Since the impressionists, color has been celebrated and let free.  The old Dutch masters were darker, deeper.  What is the color of your life?  Bright?  Sparkling?  Deep?  Dank?  Dark?  Autumn is coming — my favorite season.  A time of reflection.  The colors shift and darken.  The greens fade from the world.  We see yellows, reds and browns.  Then winter will be here and we are back to black and white, waiting for spring to sprout.

Mort Walker

"Laughter is the brush that sweeps away the cobwebs of the heart."

— Mort Walker

1923-

Sometimes the heart grows stale and tired with the routines of life and needs a good spring cleaning.  Laughter is a powerful cleanser that helps to heal the pain we feel and revive our hopes that have been buried under layers of dust.  A deep belly laugh is like a breath of spring air on a winter's day.  Find those special moments of laughter and enjoy them.

Bernie Siegel

"If you watch how nature deals with adversity, continually renewing itself, you can't help but learn."

— Bernie Siegel

Nature has a way of renewing itself quickly and swiftly.  In the 1970's Lake Erie, which is up the road from where I live, was declared dead.  Today it is alive.  If you ever watch how quickly a forest renews itself after a fire, you will understand the meaning of this quote.  In fact, I believe nature uses adversity has a way of cleansing itself from the rot and finding new opportunity.  One simply has to observe the seasons to understand how nature renews itself.  And since we are a part of nature, we also have this gift.  We can renew and reinvent ourselves as needed.  Let go of your old tired habits and plant new habits.