crickets’ rhythmic call

crickets’ rhythmic call
ebb and flow of listless night
surging, receding

Perception and the illusion of objectivity

dripping grit, oiled spit
a rusting train pushes through
glistening black rain

There is a scene from one of the men in black movies where government agent “k” is trying to convince a young woman that she is in fact a member of alien royalty, with extraordinary abilities, a proposition the young woman isn’t buying:

Agent K: When you get sad it always seems to rain.
Laura: Lots of people get sad when it rains!
Agent K: It rains because you're sad, baby.

So it is for the artist. It rains because we are sad. Kind of.

I wrote the haiku at the top of the post early this morning, thinking back on the scene from yesterday. It was an exceedingly shitty day, capped off by being rained out of a tennis game, heading home on the expressway the wrong way in the middle of a thunder storm, and then pulling off at the nearest exit only to be stopped by this lumbering train.

The haiku employs ugly descriptors (grit, spit) and cynisim (glistening black rain) to describe the bleak scene. While writing the haiku it seemed perfectly objective to me to use these words – this was the reality, I was only describing the scene. That is something I’ve been trying on and off for with some of my haiku, to see if I can just purely describe a scene without drawing conclusions or implying meaning.

For instance, I could describe a sunset as “sparkling beauty” or, say, as “a pink and blue cascade.” To me the first is more subjective (I am calling it beautiful) while the second is more objective (I am simply describing what I see).

This is an illusion however. The second is only more subtly subjective, not objective. After roughly five months of doing this it hit me that what I choose to write about and the words I choose to describe it betray any true attempt at objectivity. Choice = subjectivity.

It rains because we are sad. The train is gritty and black because I am pissed off. We notice these things and craft the words to frame them based on our perception, which is shaped by our emotions and experiences. The same train described by someone in a more pleasant frame of mind would take on a whole different description, perhaps “a noble, well-worn train/ gliding through the gentle rain.” Or perhaps it wouldn't be noticed at all.

We inject the meaning into reality, there is no escaping it. Even the most bare-boned description of something is still revealing by the very fact we chose to describe it. The world contains infinite possiblities of scenes and things that can be noticed, so in choosing to notice something we are already giving it special status. There is no hope for pure aesthetic detachment.

I’m not sure what the implications of all this are exactly, except to realize what a powerful thing our own perceptions are. I don’t say this in a positive-thinking sort of way, like we should all start describing the train as beautiful and it will make us happy. That would lack artistic integrity. Rather, perhaps we should simply remember that even the descriptive haiku is never simply an aesthetic exercise, but a telling snapshot of who we are and how we perceive the world around us at any given moment.

riverside harbor

riverside harbor
sunset plays on gentle waves
glimmers while we dine

riverside concert

riverside concert
jug-blown jazz, swing razzle-dazz,
the past leaps to life

solitary fields

solitary fields
rolled haystacks, temporal mounds,
bowed before sunset

shadow play, mid-day

shadow play, mid-day,
leafy dance of shifting shapes
painted by the breeze

robed in morning fog

robed in morning fog
the world reduced, a stone’s throw,
recast in mystery.

cloud shroud, first-light fog

cloud shroud, first-light fog,
misted ghosts of distant trees:
soft grey silhouettes

the leaves fade, slowly,

the leaves fade, slowly,
green succumbs to gold and red,
dying beautifully