Advent haiku redux

December cold sun

still, wide eyes ears alert too

deer caught in the lights

Poppin' the Cork (Ireland)

Through the technological wizardry of StatCounter.com analytics, I discovered that someone from Cork, Ireland, or thereabouts, came to this blog after searching the term "Advent haiku."

Cool.

It's a small world, owing to a semi-creepy sort of reverse virtual voyeurism.

But I don't know any more than that general data, which is all for the better.

Welcome, dear visitor from Cork. [Image from http://www.old-picture.com/europe/Blackrock-Castle.htm]

I loved visiting your breath-takingly lovely isle in 2006, mostly the northwest.

Hope to get to Cork next time.

Oh, and just for you, whoever you are, a brand-new Advent haiku:

snow-dusted evening
skeletal branches wind-whipped
I looked up -- and in

I fear you shall never return to The Laughorist, victim to the ephemeral whims of cyberworld.
Return!

p.s. Is StatCounter.com based in Ireland?

Advent haiku 2

dishwater gray sky

hollow blank slate yearning cold

silent seed stirring

Advent haiku

Sarum blue vestments
flickering wreath candles' flame
waiting for pink, still

Advent, the Conspiracy

Speaking of the Advent Conspiracy, does anyone in the world at large even know what Advent is any more? (Ever see those Advent calendars with all the little doors? Are the calendars a German tradition? Didn't the Advent calendars often have little pieces of chocolate behind each door?)

Then again, maybe Advent should be a secret, a subversive holiness. A conspiracy of caritas.

Advent-agious

My annual holiday malaise is creeping in, ready to swamp me, swarm me with melancholy and angst.

Maybe this video can be an antidote (or, for some a Christmas anecdote to tell tellingly). Dote upon this message from the Advent Conspiracy, if you will:

Waiting

Doctors use the term "watchful waiting" to describe a form of treatment for cancer patients. The prescription handed to me by the Unseen Hand ordains watchful waiting for me at this post-termination jobless Job-ish-feeling time (okay; I admit to just a teaspoon of melodramatic self-pity). Waiting is hard for me (and for most Americans), never mind adding an Advent-riddled watchfulness to it. So, what am I waiting for? Good question. I am waiting for that one call, e-mail, inquiry, letter, offer to make all things right. And as I write that, I see the fallacy of it. Or should I say the fallacy of IT (uppercase bold oblique underscore 48 point)?

In Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, the unemployed narrator, Toru Okada, spends long silent stretches of time in a deep, dark, dry well. He spends days down there, waiting. And the waiting (sometimes watching the ever more blazing stars from the well) wasn't all that bad, was it? He did it on purpose (or was compelled to do so.) He went down to the well, to sit, to wait, to listen, . . . to be.

I am in the well.

Waiting.

I'm not very patient by nature (and after all patience comes from the Latin verb for suffer). My coltish impatience, with its unruly recklessness, sort of got me into the well to begin with. (Or did it? Was it inevitable anyway?)

But I will wait.

I am waiting.

And who isn't waiting?

p.s. I did read Waiting, by Ha Jin, several years ago. I recall that I enjoyed it, but my memory is dim at this hour.

White on White

No words can describe

the whiteness of the lake-effect snow I walked in and on and amidst this evening,

nor its moisture-laden airiness and fluffiness,

nor the greeting-card alabaster tree limbs laden and droopy,

nor the snowdrift's swallowing silence,

nor the tracks the dog made, as did I,

nor the holiday lights in the park casting their own brand of a yellower whiteness or their reds and greens and blues, nor the sight of the dog gamboling and dashing like a rabbit or a deer, or, well, a dog.

The wind's razoring was a stinging reminder of that old Irish blessing, the one that prays, "May the wind be ever at your back."

Oh, the wind at your back (as opposed to in your face) makes a difference all right!

To me.

But not to the snow-hungry Maggie (presumably half yellow lab and half German shepherd).

All nature is poised and waiting.

Waiting to be present.

And that's what Advent is for me.

This waiting.

Like a deer in the brush. Waiting.

We are waiting for what? And why?