Yet more Haiku for the Dragon Year

rummaging in the bag
for a haiku, i found instead
empty space


if it's true that
we reincarnate, then we are
our own ancestors


my kind of season: this
soft grey sky; bare twigs
just breaking into bud


change the world
one doubt at a time: ask the
impossible question


haiku? can't do.
brain needs defragmentation -
possibly new software


i load up my plate
with the future.  the notice says:
all you can eat!


branches swamped with birds
the trees give voice: each twig
a-buzz with birdy news


this morning there was no world
beyond the dense white fog
which wrapped the field


primroses return: pale
at the foot of the ash tree,
snuggled in grass


leafless twigs, painted
on one side with soft dabs
of reddish-orange light

More Haiku for the Dragon Year

beyond this room
is world: in every direction
(or so i believe)


pusscat intently
sniffing the rush matting:
rememberance of mice past


blackbird in the dusk sings
dusk in the blackbird:
theme and variations


after chaos: calm.
after calm - no, better not
complete this logic


like an ill-fitting hat:
the green-grey sky;  whatever
was gained is lost

A Haiku a day...

in January i decided to write one haiku for every day of the Dragon year.  here are some of the ones i've written so far, starting with the most recent:



fledgling dragon arrives:
splintered moon
reflected in a dark puddle


on frosted grass: the
Brueghel birds
pecking up every seed, every seed


to and fro:  is there
anything else?  dark birds feed
in the frozen grass


loss: like stretching out
a hand in the dark,
unable to see its shape


seeing his painting
from a distance:
now suddenly i understand


silently the brush
strokes the painting: one, two,
three thousand times and more


twisted, winter-bare
branches, lichen-green: smudged
tenderly by snowflakes


raw air, white fields;  muted
bird calls.  too cold
even to write a haiku


the radiators
softly tick;  outside
sparrows' voices chip the air


white chrysanthemum petal
hangs in the sky - and now an owl
calls out


the storm bellows
its argument.  trees growl at each other
in the dark


pusscat yawns, licks paw,
circles damp paw on face;
suddenly looks at me


dusk settles like an old cat:
spreads its apron of fur;
folds its soft paws


get going: the bus
won't catch itself.  the teeth won't
fill themselves, either


moon, you're past your full - so
stop sending these wild
implausible dreams!


i think there are
no words; or none which fit
this reposeful place today


a soft greeting
warbled, as pusscat enters
the room, quiet as sunshine


night before last: vixen barks,
owl screeches - cacophony!
and moonlight


wind scours the branches, yet
sixteen apples still
refuse to be dislodged


on its way: the dragon
we know or the dragon we don't know.
which one?

Peacock Butterfly

walking beside the river this afternoon, i encountered this glorious Peacock butterfly, sunning itself on the dried mud.

DYING WELL OR DYING BADLY?

My dad, at ninety-seven, fervently wanted to get to a hundred.  Despite a body which was failing him in every way, and a mind that was increasingly hijacked by other realities, he would have been appalled had anyone suggested to him that he should 'go gently into that good night', deliberately assisted by medication.  Eventually he descended into a twilight of bizarre apparitions and increasingly frequent lung infections, and finally a few months before his ninety-eighth birthday, died of pneumonia. 

That's one way of doing it.  Despite the infirmities and indignities of his last year, my dad was lucky: he didn't die in pain.  He didn't need, and would never have asked for, my help in leaving this world.  Had he done so, I would have done all I could, but I doubt I'd have been able to get him to Switzerland: no plane company would have flown him at his age, in his state of health. 

Our laws are meant to be one-size-fits-all.  Of course, they don't: they fit nobody very well, and many people very badly.  But despite the fact that I support assisted dying, I don't see it as a solution which can be tailored to fit the majority: there are just too many variables.  The best we can hope for is to find a way of responding to those in the greatest need, and helping them in an ethical, transparent and principled way.  I think we are coming to the time when enough people (though not of course the most vociferous: the religiously indoctrinated) are beginning to realise that we must address this question, because otherwise, as the population ages (and becomes more infirm) there will increasingly be suffering on a scale which is unacceptable. We need to learn from Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the two states in the USA which have legalised assisted dying: learn from them, incorporate what they have worked out into our own legislation, and give ourselves a proper choice.

The choice is not between life and death, but between a good death or a bad death - this point is clearly made in Sir Terry Pratchett's excellent documentary, 'Choosing to Die'.  Furthermore, it should not be a choice forced upon anyone by anyone else, and it must be made only by someone of sound mind and sound intention.  Yet this very stipulation presents those with dementia with an impossible conundrum.  If they wish to end their lives before they become unrecognisable to themselves and to those who care for them, they have to do it before their condition has progressed beyond the point where they can no longer speak for themselves.  That is - they have to kill themselves prematurely, whilst their minds are still fully active.  This is appalling.  Somehow, if assisted dying is also to be made available to those with incurable, progressively debilitating dementia, this terrible Catch 22 must be addressed.

But in the present climate of religious intransigence and 'Doctor Death' scare-mongering (a tabloid spectre entirely suited to the comic book mentality of the hysterical masses) it is unlikely that we shall even get as far as framing legislation for those who need an alternative to dying in physical pain; we are more likely to get a law which will define flight paths for pigs over built up areas.

Legislating for legal euthanasia is probably the most fraught kind of legislation there is - more emotive than birth control, gay rights; just as burdened with a malignant history as genetic manipulation.  No thinking adult can really be emotionally indifferent to this subject - after all, we're all going to die.  At the moment, in the UK and almost everywhere else, we have few alternatives: we can let nature take its course, though sometimes horribly; we can commit suicide, but rarely in a way which constitutes a 'good death'; or we can rely on the health services to ease our way - but the reality is that these very services are going to be so overloaded that even present standards of palliative care are likely to be compromised.  If we have money (a spare ten thousand pounds or so) we can go to Dignitas, but for how much longer can this compassionate institution take on responsibilities which we ought to be shouldering, ourselves?

Yet although there's no easy answer to this problem, it doesn't mean there's no answer at all.  We need to open up the debate, address the issues in a very clear-minded way, force our irresponsible and cowardly politicians to realise that assisted dying is an issue they can no longer duck.  Of course it's a minefield of dangers. Of course laws must be made in such a way that they cannot be used to callously bump off the vulnerable.  Nevertheless - we cannot pretend that our present way of doing things, with its muddled fudging of legalities, is acceptable.  It may mean that old and ill people like my father can be reasonably sure that they won't be hurried to a premature death - but at the same time there are far too many people dying in pain, in chronic despair: pleading for help that cannot be given without covert or overt transgression of the law.  

If I become terminally ill, and see nothing ahead but suffering and a bad death - I would like to think I'd have an alternative.  Not an obligation to depart, not pressure to revalue my life in terms of the burden I might become - but a free and open choice: made in the reassuring knowledge that there were compassionate people who would help me depart at a time of my own choosing.  A truly civilised society must attend both to its beginnings and its endings.  What we have at the moment is a society bewitched by the fantasy of being eternally young - dying unpleasantly must not be allowed to spoil the dream.  This attitude is more than pitiful: it is criminally negligent of our human rights.  Yet it is a travesty we have lived with for so long that we no longer notice how ingrained it has become. 

It is time to grow up.

STORYBOARD

i've just started a new blog where i shall be posting my short stories:  it's called 'STORYBOARD'.
find it here: http://catherinemilne.blogspot.com/

THE FREEDOM TO CREATE

this was something i posted on a fine arts forum a while back, in a discussion about content in contemporary art.  coming across it accidentally today, i concluded that i have become less coherent on the subject, not more, in the years since i wrote it - and so i stand aside for my younger, and more articulate, self:


"i'm tempted to get on my very high horse (legs a mile long) and declaim that far too much work today (whether artist-led, in a gallery, or elsewhere) seems to have little content - or perhaps, very little experiencing, feeling, exploring and risking, in it.  but that kind of sweeping statement, whilst expressing my own frustration at the superficial bandwagonnism i currently perceive, isn't really very useful, since i'm sure it could've been said at any time over the last several centuries.  it's entirely subjective: which is where i'm coming from, all the time and unapologetically.  in other words, my reference points are personal and, like a mile-high horse, probably somewhat shaky when they come to be trotted out.  


however...  genuineness; authenticity: these concepts are useful currency of the imagination, because for some reason (perhaps a similar impulse to the religious one) we want to relate to art at more than eye-level.  is this something to do with allowing ourselves to be caught up, and transported?  something to do with venturing beyond the confinements and sufferings of mortality?  


at any rate, we must surely be distrustful of anything that is trying to take us for a ride, for dubious purposes of its own.  i think that there is something in us (at least, in many of us) which is searching for more than superficial answers.  something which is looking to be met, to be answered (though what is the question?) and to be transported.  the kind of art which has little to offer but a cynical take on modern life is not art but social commentary - interesting at that level, perhaps, but in terms of the search for meaning quite meaningless.  meaning of course is another word which rests on personal interpretation, so i'm not even going to try to explain what i mean by meaning.  maybe all i can say about it is that a work with meaning doesn't leave one feeling hollow and unengaged. 


the moment one starts to investigate such things as genuineness, integrity, authenticity, one begins to flounder in subjectivity.  these concepts cannot survive outside the story we are telling ourselves about being real.  no concept means more than it can deliver in terms of reality - and there's another impossible statement!  (yet take the road this points to, and it becomes the journey.)


so, is an artist genuine because their intention is genuine; fake because their intention is fake?  is an artist someone who is simply that much better than others at being life's representative?  its hands and voice and eyes?  is an artist someone with a philosophy to peddle, an angle to grind?  an obsessive driven by the need to define and recall?  ah - the questions are so much more interesting than whatever answers get thrown at them that we should really be trying to ask better questions and dismissing the answers as no more than temporary, disposable containers. 


as for the freedom to create...  there's another imponderable to ponder.  but my own response would be:  nobody else, and no circumstances, ever give you the freedom to create.  you take it upon yourself to be creative, and do it because you must - and if what you make then finds its way into the world, well, so be it.  but if it doesn't, it isn't any the less for that.  no gallery, no marketplace, no critic, no establishment, no expedient demand, no lucrative commission, no benign patron, can bestow the freedom to create; nor can any of these forbid it.  we must take that on ourselves, and if we fail to recognise our creativity, we risk living lives devoid of meaning - which is a much greater tragedy than failing to be successful in worldly terms."