HAIKU TEA: SESSION IV-V - 'Before it all ends' & 'Journey of life'

WHAT ARE HAIKU TEA SESSIONS?

If you write, love collaborative writing, enthusiast of poetry and enjoy writing short verse like Haiku, Tanka, Renga, Renshi etc, then Haiku Tea sessions are for you... (Click here to join in for the Session VI).

Some weeks back I have had created a group on Google Plus for Haiku enthusiasts and through a suggestion of one of the friends, I started Linked Verse Sessions known as 'HaikuTea' on the lines of traditional Japanese style of public collaboration of writing poetry, where were quite popular in ancient Japan and China. These HaikuTea session at the group is getting to be quite popular in the group and the result - The Final Verse of 19 poets linked verse is for you to judge about the excellent quality of work these session produce... each one with their color and hue, paint the canvass of the emotions, feelings and thoughts in brilliant shades... Loved it.

The poets who are linked in these sessions are through invites only. If you are interested to be invited, please leave a comment on this link, (Click Here) with your concurrence AFTER READING THE RULES OF COLLABORATION....

HAIKU TEA LINKED VERSE SESSION IV : 29.04.2013
__________________________________

BEFORE IT ALL ENDS

Hung between my mind;
Her Heart; A wish waits; "Hold me
Again, before it ends"                            By +Shashi S 

in echoes of glissando ---
Rhapsody in Blue                                  By +Carolyn St.Charles 

An EPIC composition
Her wish is granted"                               By +A. M. Frasier 

deep fires dissolving time
love, fed by freedom                             By +jamer nicholls 

Questing for Eternity:
She seeks its portal.                              By +Gabri Rigotti 

gateway to her inner self
setting longings free                              By +John Belchamber  

expressions of exhaling!
gateway,she is in                                   By +craig volney 

Reflections of a deep love
Mirror to his mind                                  By +Francis JA 

Obscured via dragon walls -
Rendezvous arranged.                           BY +Berteena Gaines 

in secret corners of dark.
She is the goddess.                              By +Joe Nicholas 

craved by many, loved by none!
a diamond hidden...                              By +Dan Del Carmen 

Her Myriad pain, silenced
Eyes held in capture                              by +Uma Maheswari Anandane 

peering ...deep... salacious...
desire to return                                      By +Daniel Davila 

so much lost . . . so much given
why have I come here                            By +Harley King 

in a world full of sadness -
the little child smiles                              By +Kristjaan Panneman 

Again; relearn, reincarnation
Before it all ends                                   By +Shashi S 

HAIKU TEA LINKED VERSE SESSION V  : 20.05.2013
______________________________________________

JOURNEY OF LIFE

Beauty of path
Lies, not in eternal wait
Of life; but in End                                  By +Shashi S 

The life cycle continues ...
New journey begins                               By +A. M. Frasier 

our footsteps — strong yet gentle
soft breeze stirs our hearts                    By +Harley King 

wafting scents of adventure
perfumed paradise                                By +John Belchamber 

A garden for all to see
Serendipity                                           By +Francis JA 

the reflections at their feet
mirrors of still ponds                             By +Gabri Rigotti 

now quivering fractal pools --
singing Buddha bowls                           By +Carolyn St.Charles 

luring the doves to their peace -
white feathers tremble                            By +Joe Nicholas 

loving process one with all
flutters with the wind                              By +Daniel Davila 

aspiring wish dreams in spring
human mortal mind.                               By +Bhawana Bhowmik 

Dawns love; harmony in spring
Journey to explore !                              By +Uma Maheswari Anandane 

Seek, bright mind; strive on, brave heart,
'Til stillness finds you.                           By +Yuttadhammo Bhikkhu 

the journey of your life continues -
Honeysuckle (*) blooms                         By +Kristjaan Panneman 

(*) the spiritual meaning of Honeysuckle is the path to find your Inner Self

in finding the paradise
elixirs of life                                          By +craig volney 

and harmonic quintessence
meet cosmic dancer                              By +Berteena Gaines 

Moving to the rhythm of
Our Grand Orchestra                              By +Dan Del Carmen 

glimpses of synchrony seen,
ebbing and flowing....                            By +Haiku Rambler 

ebbing and flowing
Lies, not in eternal wait
Of life; but in End                                  By +Daniel Davila 

RULES OF PARTICIPATION

1) This is INVITES only effort, so you need to get invited. So leave a comment below to be invited.

2) You will have to have a Google Plus account and have to be a member of the Group Haiku at Google Plus

3) Once you are invited, you will be given a chronicle order, on the basis of your joining. You will have to write your linked verse, after a particular member which will be listed out on the HaikuTea page at the group.

4) At your turn you will have to write within 24 hours your own linked verse.

5) The linked verse have to have the first line as the last line of the previous linked verse and rest of the two lines you will have to create on your own.

6) You will have to follow the short form of poetry, preferably in the 5-7-5 Syllable format.

7) If, for any reason, you are not able to write your own verse within 24 hours, the next person in the order will be free to write his / her own verse, within 24 hours… and so on.

8) Each HaikuTea linked verses will go on till every member of the group has finished writing one of his/her own or if the linked verse has gone beyond 100 linked verses or a particular time limit which will be decided by the moderator of the HaikuTea.

9) The compilation of the individual verses will be done at the end by a person nominated by the moderator and/or the members.

10) Final decision on this collaboration is with the moderator.

PLEASE NOTE: You agree, by participating for this collaborative poetry HaikuTea Sessions, to be published in various blogs by the members (with due credit to each individual participating) as well as a final collection to be printed by end of the year. Look forward to your joining in the team…. Please click here to join HaikuTea....

Let me know if you have any questions.

To participate in the ongoing Session VI at Haiku Tea, please click here...

__

Shashi

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

PREV                                HOME                              NEXT

HaikuTea Session III Final Verse

THE READER: Testament Betrayed by Milan Kundera

Testament Betrayed is a book which brings out the times that we live in and how we become what we are. A collection of essays which brings out arrays of ideas in a coherent narrative. For the writer’s its kind of challenge that Milan Kundera throws to come out of the set thought pattern and travel out of one’s comfort zone to explore spaces that sometimes are dark, filled with unknown doubts but sometimes brings out the light as at the end of tunnel. Inspired me to think beyond the form of writing novel, structure and the limits of thought out characters. Made me to write the way one talks to a friend… 

Giving below some of very powerful thoughts from the book “Testament Betrayed”. If you are a serious aspiring author, then you must read this book and if you have time, check out my feature on “How To Write A Book” based on his thoughts from “The Art Of Writing Novel”. Click here to read…

MILAN KUNDERA – A Brief Biography

Milan Kundera (born 1 April 1929) is the Czech Republic's most recognized living writer of Czech origin, he has lived in exile in France since 1975, having become a naturalised citizen in 1981.

Kundera's best-known work is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. His books were banned by the Communist regimes of Czechoslovakia until the downfall of the regime in the Velvet Revolution of 1989. He lives virtually incognito and rarely speaks to the media. A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been nominated on several occasions

He belonged to the generation of young Czechs who had had little or no experience of the pre-war democratic Czechoslovak Republic. Their ideology was greatly influenced by the experiences of World War II and the German occupation. Kundera remained committed to reforming Czech communism, and argued vehemently in print with fellow Czech writer Václav Havel, saying, essentially, that everyone should remain calm and that "nobody is being locked up for his opinions yet," and "the significance of the Prague Autumn may ultimately be greater than that of the Prague Spring." Finally, however, Kundera relinquished his reformist dreams and moved to France in 1975. He taught for a few years in the University of Rennes. He was stripped of Czechoslovak citizenship in 1979; he has been a French citizen since 1981.

He maintains contacts with Czech and Slovak friends in his homeland, but rarely returns and always does so incognito.

TESTAMENT BETRAYED

Kundera is more concerned with the words that shape or mould his characters than with the characters'

physical appearance. In his non-fiction work, The Art of the Novel, he says that the reader's imagination automatically completes the writer's vision. He, as the writer, wishes to focus on the essential insofar as the physical is not critical to an understanding of the character. For him the essential may not include the physical appearance or even the interior world (the psychological world) of his characters. Other times, a specific feature or trait may become the character's idiosyncratic focus.

Thoughts from  Testament Betrayed

The removal of Gods from the world is one of the phenomenons that characterize the Modern Era.

An important note: imitation does not mean lack of authenticity, for the individual cannot do otherwise than imitate what has already happened; sincere as he maybe, he is only a reincarnation; truthful as he may be, he is only a sum of the suggestions and requirements that emanate from the well of the past.

All of man’s love seeks to win woman’s good will and kindness – Kafka (The Enchanted Kingdom of Love)

Through ecstasy, emotion reaches its climax, and thereby at the same time its negation (its oblivion)

Ecstasy is absolute identity with the present instant, total forgetting of past and future.

Living is a perpetual heavy effort not to lose sight of ourselves, to stay solidly present in ourselves, in our stasis. Step outside ourselves for a mere instant, and we verge on death’s dominion.

History is not necessarily a path climbing upwards (Towards the richer, the more cultivated), that the demands of art may be counter to the demands of the moment (of this or that modernity), and that the new (the unique, the inimitable, the previously unsaid) might lie in some direction other than the one everybody sees as progress.

“Among it’s mad enticements, one could only walk still farther, go still astray” Kafka

His seeking mouth found hers, which was now pressed against his like the muzzle of an animal against a pane of glass, and Esch was enraged because she kept her soul imprisoned behind her set teeth, to prevent him from possessing it.” – Broch’s “The sleepwalkers”

“She was seeking something and he was seeking something, maddened, grimacing, heads thrusting into each other’s chest as they sought, and their embraces and their tossing bodies did not make them forget but rather reminded them of the necessity to seek, as dogs desperately paw at the ground they pawed each others body… “ Kafka in The Castle

“A thought comes when it wants to, and not when I want it to” Nietzsche

We should neither conceal nor corrupt the actual way our thoughts come to us” Nietzsche

Great changes often have an unobtrusive appearance.

Tolstoy thus offers us another conception of man: he is an itinerary; a winding road; a journeys whose successive phases not only vary but often represent a total negation of the preceding phases.

They (People) change not in order to draw closer to some essential self but in order to merge with everyone else; changing lets them stay unchanged.

Rock is the only light music in which melody is not predominant; people don’t hum rock music.

Memories are only confirmation of an absence.

What is an individual? Wherein does his identity reside? All novels seek to answer these questions.

When we study, discuss, analyze a reality, we analyze it as it appears in our mind, in our memory. We know reality only in the past tense. … Present moment is unlike the memory of it. Remembering is not the negative of forgetting. Remembering is a form of forgetting.

Beethoven saw that the only way to get around, what Milan Kundera termed as ‘Stupidity of music’ ( – weeping into their adagios, and then turning into little children when the last moment starts, starting into the school yard to dance, hop, and holler that all’s well that ends well) is to make composition radically individual.

Milan’s music teacher to him “There are many surprisingly weak passages in Beethoven. But it is the weak passages that bring out the strong ones. It’s like lawn – if it weren’t there, we could not enjoy the beautiful tree growing on it.”

__
Shashi
ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

PREV                                     HOME                                       NEXT
HOW TO WRITE A BOOK

TALKING POINT : Einstein and Tagore on Music - 19th August 1930

“The difficulty is that the really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.” Einstein

I have had posted Nobel Laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore’s meeting with Einstein earlier where he talked about Truth, Reality and Beauty. (Click here to read it) and the talk below is his second meeting with Einstein, on 19^th August, 1930. 

In the first instance, the meeting has Einstein questioning Tagore on his belief on divine and whether God is isolated from the world, to which Tagore replied, “When our universe is in harmony with man, the eternal, we know it as truth, we feel it as beauty”. Where as the second, as excerpted below, mainly centered around Modern Physics and Music.

Einstein and Tagore Curtsy Mokta Mona

“In creation we follow the central law of existence, but if we do not cut ourselves adrift from it, we can have sufficient freedom within the limits of our personality for the fullest self-expression.” Tagore

Bertrand Russel said once for Tagore, “I regret I cannot agree with Tagore. His talk about the infinite is vague nonsense. The sort of language that is admired by many Indians unfortunately does not, in fact, mean anything at all.”

And I believe that people like him, are governed by the five senses for perception and when those sense perception fails in perceiving truthfully (Like a spoon in a glass of water seems to be broken) they go around finding the reason behind it and sometimes find it (As in case of broken spoon – Laws of refractions) but if they don’t, they refuse to acknowledge it the truth (That the spoon is actually not broken) till the time another person comes with another set of laws.

Scientists and logicians are handicapped by the limitations of sense perception. I am happy that someone like Einstein has the humility to accept it and some like Stephen Hawking (He went on to famously proclaim, “God Does Not Exist” click here to read… )feel that what they know, is absolute truth.

Divine is nothing but collective consciousness of the Universe, including mine. To know that Universal consciousness, one has to go within to up-link  that’s what I believe in, whether it means anything to people like Bertrand Russel, Stephen Hawking etc. or not.

Anyways, here is the part of the talk curtsy Mukto Mona… on Music.  To read the full talk, please click here…

EINSTEIN AND TAGORE ON MODERN PHYSICS, MUSIC ETC.

Excerpted from "Three conversations: Tagore Talks with Einstein, with Rolland, and Wells"  (ASIA 3/1931, p.139-143,196 f.)

Einstein and Tagore Curtsy Ms. Sabina Choudhary

EINSTEIN: I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it is good, however, that we cannot see through to it.

TAGORE: There is in human affairs an element of elasticity also, some freedom within a small range which is for the expression of our personality. It is like the musical system in India, which is not so rigidly fixed as western music. Our composers give a certain definite outline, a system of melody and rhythmic arrangement, and within a certain limit the player can improvise upon it. He must be one with the law of that particular melody, and then he can give spontaneous expression to his musical feeling within the prescribed regulation. We praise the composer for his genius in creating a foundation along with a superstructure of melodies, but we expect from the player his own skill in the creation of variations of melodic flourish and ornamentation. In creation we follow the central law of existence, but if we do not cut ourselves adrift from it, we can have sufficient freedom within the limits of our personality for the fullest self-expression.

…
EINSTEIN: It requires a very high standard of art to realize fully the great idea in the original music, so that one can make variations upon it. In our country, the variations are often prescribed.

TAGORE: If in our conduct we can follow the law of goodness, we can have real liberty of self-expression. The principle of conduct is there, but the character which makes it true and individual is our own creation. In our music there is a duality of freedom and prescribed order.

EINSTEIN: Are the words of a song also free? I mean to say, is the singer at liberty to add his own words to the song which he is singing?

TAGORE: Yes. In Bengal we have a kind of song-kirtan, we call it-which gives freedom to the singer to introduce parenthetical comments, phrases not in the original song. This occasions great enthusiasm, since the audience is constantly thrilled by some beautiful, spontaneous sentiment added by the singer.

…

EINSTEIN: Can the Indian music be sung without words? Can one understand a song without words?

TAGORE: Yes, we have songs with unmeaning words, sounds which just help to act as carriers of the notes. In North India, music is an independent art, not the interpretation of words and thoughts, as in Bengal. The music is very intricate and subtle and is a complete world of melody by itself.

…
TAGORE: Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value. 

EINSTEIN: It is a beautiful comparison; line is also much older than color. It seems that your melody is much richer in structure than ours. Japanese music also seems to be so.

…
EINSTEIN: The difficulty is that the really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.

TAGORE: Yes, and what deeply affects the hearer is beyond himself.

EINSTEIN: The same uncertainty will always be there about everything fundamental in our experience, in our reaction to art, whether in Europe or in Asia. Even the red flower I see before me on your table may not be the same to you and me.

TAGORE: And yet there is always going on the process of reconciliation between them, the individual taste conforming to the universal standard.

__

Shashi

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

PREV                                HOME                              NEXT

A discussion of Einstein and Tagore 14th July 1930