Bending the Rules . . . and the Truth February 25, 2010
Posted by nrhatch in People, Poetry, Word Play.trackback
When I set out on a journey to journal with Haiku, I came across some advice about writing Haiku which I shall pass along to you, free of charge:
Learn the rules . . . and then forget them.
Great advice! Don’t all artists want to live by their own rules?
Over the course of a year, in The Haiku Diaries on WEbook, I penned a few Haiku which resonated with me and others who read them.
One such Haiku (which breaks more rules than it follows) is:
Conditioned to please
we bend the truth to suit our
listener’s deaf ears
We measure our words, so as not to offend, and no one hears us anyway.
Image via Wikipedia
Simon Cowell’s brutal honesty on American Idol astonishes us because we are trained (from the time we are toddlers) to bend the truth, and tell little white lies, to avoid confrontation and placate others.
We say, “No, of course, I’m not mad,” when friends let us down, while thinking, I can’t believe you kept me waiting again!
Of course, while we are saying, “No, really, I don’t mind that you kept me waiting for 45 minutes. It gave me a chance to unearth the secrets of the Universe,” they are off on another tangent thinking, I should sign up for Salsa lessons with Bob. That would be fun.
Maybe if we were all a bit more honest, people would actually tune in and hear what we are saying.
Quotes to Ponder:
* Actions speak louder than words.
* The first duty of love is to listen.
No rules. Just write!
Comments
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Spirit Lights The Way 
Amen and Amen!
I’ve seen that Haiku rule as well…but wonder if the poor Japanese people have to endure as we would with the violin out of tune in the Philharmonic.
I am blown away by your comment . . . being here . . . on this post . . . this morning.
Last night, I came and looked at this post for the first time in months ~ debating whether to return to the topic of honesty for today’s post ~ and whether to “trick this post” with some graphics before linking it up.
Two hours later, you swung by and commented on it.
Coincidence? Synchronicity?
To respond to the substance of your comment, I expect that Haiku enthusiasts cringe at many of my attempts to capture a moment in three lines of 17 syllables.
Of course, unlike the Philharmonic, they didn’t pay to see me play.
Well, the mystery of how you ended up here last night is solved.
I just posted a link to “Divine Inspiration in Unlikely Places” on FB and saw a link to this post on my Wall. 🙂
I “trashed” the post at one point last night ~ then had second thoughts and restored it. That caused it to re-link with FB . . . giving you a “heads up” about its existence in the archives.
Nevertheless, I think the message I received this morning stands . . . old posts are NOT buried and I should stop looking over my shoulder at what I’ve already written and proceed “full steam ahead.”
Thanks, Amy!
Nancy – I sure wasn’t addressing your haiku attempts!! That general comment comes from the little I have read about constructing a haiku. I learned it is such an incredibly delicate art form in Japan that I could show respect by not “running my nail down the blackboard”. 🙂
On the other side – isn’t that interesting about the restore issue. That means that any time we do that, our subscribers get the new version? Aha! That’s news to me and good to know.
Haiku has more “rules” than syllables. 🙂
When I deleted and restored it last night, it looked like everything just went back the way it was ~ but if our posts auto-link to FB, the link is broken and then restored anew during the process, causing the archived post to reappear on our FB wall.