LETTERS FROM HAIKUISTS: H.F. NOYES

LETTERS  FROM  H.F. NOYES

               I came in touch with Tom Noyes , born in 1918 in Oregon, USA,  when he was already past 80. Very knowledgeable about the Japanese tradition of haiku and tanka, and critical of the Western, including American understanding thereof, he practiced psychotherapy for 25 years, published seven books worldwide, won the Heron’s Nest award for some of his haiku, and died  in Attikis, Greece in 2010. He read my haiku and tanka with interest and offered comments from time to time. Simplicity and selflessness were his watchwords for haiku. I respect his critical opinion. 

1.

 

4/20

Dear Dr. Singh,

I am so grateful that you shared with me your fine publication, Creative Forum (a splendid title).  I have read it through with real pleasure, and I believe it to be a project that will promote the “one world” haiku feeling and international interest and participation.  India seems to be a prime leader in this sort of undertaking.  Bravo!

I have written a short piece for AZAMI’s first spring issue -– no., it will be the second—about the booklet and my enthusiasm for the haiku therein.

I greatly admire your spirit, and I cherish your words, “There is God’s abundance to feel in the brief three lines…” and “The briefer I become, the nearer I am to silence.”  Haiku is but a sketch of a moment’s experience, to be filled out  by the reader.  It does not use sentences, as does prose.  It also does not use the devices of Western poetry, nor share its use of the sentimental and simile—preferring always contact with the real—the things of Nature and the spirit of Nature herself.

My good friend, in thinking of me and writing to me, remember that I will be 81 in May and am beginning to fail—slow but sure.  My spirits are still high, but my work capacity is naturally diminished.

I wish you godspeed with Creative Forum and your other undertakings.  I sense that you’re a man of great energy and great good will.

                                                                                    With my warm thoughts,

                                                                                    Tom Noyes

 

2.          

                                                                          Good Friday – (our Easter is the 30^th)

Dear R.K.—

I do so appreciate your warm, friendly letter and your sharing of your poetry.  Last night I thought about what you said, that people were helping you to understand haiku better, and I’d just read the recent KŌ magazine.  It seems more and more clear to me that “East Meets West” is one of the great truths of  our times. I’m no expert, but I’ve followed the trends quite closely in Japan and the West—esp. America, of course; and I’m more and more convinced that Frogpond and Modern Haiku are among the best representatives of the haiku of Bashō and his contemporaries, and that most Japanese publications are not paying any sort of strict attention to the old guidelines. As much as I admired Ikkoku San and  his friends who contributed their “vernacular haiku” to AZAMI, though those efforts had charm and something of the haiku spirit, at least in the English translations, they fell far short of genuine haiku.  The translations from Croatia and Yugoslavia are equally  far from being the real thing, and they seem to me strongly influenced by Western poetry.  Kōko Katō is far too “romantic” in her feeling expression—even sentimental. And I don’t usually see any relationship between James Kirkup’s poetry and haiku.  It’s mostly mental and very close to Western poetry.  So my general conclusion is that not only East met West, but they have changed places in the   haiku world.  We in the West learned so well from the Japanese masters that it is we who not represent them,   more than the Japanese themselves.  An exception is Kohjin Sakamoto, a professor like yourself; he writes some of the very best  haiku being written today.  Your own soul is highly poetic, and I feel intensely the struggle you’ve gone through to try to bring your haiku down to earth.  May I suggest that you try at a library to find a copy of F.S.C. Northrup’s East Meets West – an old book, but truly great one, written from a solid and scientific point of view. Haiku have their roots in Zen, and when you mix in Christianity, as Kōko Katō and some of her contributors do, it just doesn’t work.  Zen and haiku are completely reality-oriented. Their concern is what is – what you see and hear and touch.  Another romantic is Marijan Čekolj, pres. of Croatian Haiku Assoc. and editor of Sparrrow. His latest book is mostly 3-line love poems that have no relation to haiku whatsoever. After all these years of experience, he’s created what I view as a sacrilege. (He calls them HAIKU!)

I like your “Crouching out of the bath.” It’s like one of mine from years ago, in reference to the Holocaust:

                                In  the queue to die:

                                a desperate clutch at modesty—

                                hiding naked sex.

and

                                Her photograph

                                ever mysterious

                                haiku moment

           is splendid.   

                      

               To shorten one’s haiku is a profitable discipline.  “Haiku moment” is the great   secret.  “Chicken pox” has a  feel of sabi’s sense of loneliness. Thoreau wrote:

                                Why be lonely?

                                Is not our planet, too

                                In the Milky Way?                           

Congratulations on your haiku in Greek.  A fine achievement. I’m amazed at how few syllables the translator uses, because Greek language is overflowing with syllables.  Zoe Sabina is a very nice person, married to an artist, and talented; but she, too, is overly influenced by Western poetry, its beautiful description and metaphor.  Of your 3 beautiful haiku that I commended and really love, only “drowned in dreams not seen” seems overly poetic in the Western sense. The third – “peddling dreams”—has the true haiku spirit.  Reminds me a little of Ion Codrecu’s wonderful haiku:

                                Easter evening—

                                the old woman gathers

                                her unsold flowers

By the way, this is Good Friday, and our Easter will be the 30^th.  Orthodox Easter is never on the same date as the other European and American.

It’s a good aim to try to express sensuousness in haiku, and most of the time I think you do it well.  After all, it’s not just seeing and hearing that offer us reality, but touch as well.

Yes, if you’re a poet, writing haiku too much can suppress some of your true poetic instinct. They are very different. I too find the cost of getting published very discouraging, as I live on a pension from the Navy.  

I do now have chronic bronchitis, so there isn’t much hope of its going away.  But if I can swim in the ocean this summer, I will surely feel much better for a while. Good luck with your allergies. The Greek Stoic school believed that we shouldn’t let anything affect the Self (the inner self). While we’re creating something, it does seem to work – “Mind over matter.”  Poetry and prayer and “love-thy-neighbor” can help.

My warm thoughts and friendly good wishes always,

Tom

3.

                                                                                                June 5  [2000]

Dear R.K.—

I must say I feel some agreement with Lyle Glazier’s commentary on haiku in general.  There is a “mutual admiration society” and it’s true that haiku poets are  moving toward self-expression and away from the perception experience, which haiku of the old masters almost invariably was.  Also the old Japanese haiku of Bashō, Buson, Issa and Shiki was SIMPLE, and Bashō particularly in his  older years aimed to reflect the values of karumi or lightness: “Let your haiku be like a willow branch waving in the breeze.”  

I don’t agree with Glazier that haiku “has little worth” outside the inner circle of mutually admiring poets. I believe if there can be another shift – this time away from mere self-expression (and as Glazier says, back to “concentrated objective visual/auditory/sensory revelations” from “virtually didactic” or clever manipulations of the simple truth of nature’s wonders, haiku can be a major and world-respected form of poetry. People already make pilgrimages to the haunts of Bashō out of reverence for what he stood for and what he achieved.

As for your own best way, you’ll find it for sure, because you’re “committed.” But just considering the 6 poems you sent me, it does seem to me that the tanka is the best and that your preference is for expressing ideas, thoughts, and on a different, more literary level than haiku was intended to be.  The “cobweb of years” is a mature literary expression. “he breathes Kamini” is also, and isn’t a true fit with haiku.  Even “waltzing ripples” is Western poetry, though I  wouldn’t actually fault it in haiku. In haiku we offer the thing itself, not a poetic or literary or philosophical view of it. “flowers inviting” is what flowers seem to you to be doing. A haiku in their own voice would likely be quite different, as they they themselves have  a life utterly different from ours.  

 If you want to write authentic haiku, let the flowers, the water, the night and the sun speak for themselves. I think a good example is:

                                Night washes the sky

                                for the sun to shine freshness

                                at my window

                but don’t attribute a purpose or aim to the night. Just

                                night washes the sky—

                                the sun brings morning freshness

                                to my window

and let the reader make the connection.  In haiku, we don’t elaborate or explain, only sketch our experience of the moment.

Thank you for Poets International. “Small waves/growing into perfect tides/without warning” is a perfect haiku, WITHOUT “An uncertain life” which is Western poetry. Obviously the editor of Poets International is look for “sublime” poetry, rather than haiku.  There’s no law against India establishing its own genre, but it’s NOT HAIKU. Cekolj’s Here and Now has no relation to haiku. 

For continuing in the Japanese tradition and expressing yourself, TANKA is your best bet.

I deplore the American influence in literature, cinema, business (“free trade”) and politics—it’s disastrous.

I feel profoundly how difficult it is for you to conceive of your son having to sacrifice himself  “for the foolishness of petty politicians.” One should LIVE for his country, not DIE for it, to be a hero. 

Tom

4.

                                                                                                           July  8    [2000]

Dear R.K. –

Your #2 tanka is very deeply felt.  The tanka tradition is in general a romantic one. I wish I could afford to send you The Country of Eight Islands  with the great old Japanese tanka of earlier centuries.  I admired your haiku this time, but I am not familiar enough with your subjects to comment.  “on a sheet of ice” paints an amusing picture. There is sabi in “waiting for the flight” – loneliness but without the important element of beauty, (“the beauty of loneliness in time”).

I totally agree that simplicity and lightness should be the aim of all haiku, and detachment is desirable in our way of looking at things—detachment, selflessness, and a sense of our oneness with all of life.  Spinoza wrote that the highest understanding is of the union of our minds with nature.  The Bible says, “Though shalt be in league with the stones of the field.”

I deplore the Western influence – its power over adult minds and even children.  When I practiced psychotherapy in N.Y. I used never to miss seeing the wonderful Indian films. (Now I understand that India puts out more than Hollywood!) I loved Tagore’s poetry and plays, even at college age.  I’ll never forget his writing: “The purpose of life is the pleasure of living.”

I’ll be on holiday soon.  Hope you, too,will have time off from “the grind” of your workload.

Warm thoughts,

Tom

P.S.: At 82 I am having to cut down on my correspondence. Please forgive.

A favorite waka (tanka):

This long bridge:

pausing to gaze

at the willows,

I forgot which way

I’d thought to go.

--Clark Strand

sun behind the hills

the fisherman ships his oars

and drifts into shore

                 Nick Avis, Dragonfly, Vol. XII, No.1, Jan., 84

“Haiku,” wrote Lorraine Ellis Harr, Dragonfly editor, “is like an iceberg….It is the unseen   part that is important….What floats within the depths is the universal oneness of the experience.”  (Dragonfly, Vol. XII, No.4, October ’84). When the sun goes behind the hills, it’s the signal all over the world for working people to let down, to call it a day—for fishermen to rest the oars, to drift in peace.  It’s a hallowed hour, a time of special blessing, of rest well earned.  A time for the  mind too to drift—to the haven of that emptiness—fullness which revives our hopes and dreams.

LETTERS FROM UNCLE RIVER

LETTERS: 2004: 1

                                                                                                HC 61, Box 408

                                                                                                Glenwood, NM 88039

                                                                                                U.S.A.

                                                                                    uncleriver17@yahoo.com

                                                                                    June 4,  2004

Dear R K,

Thanks for your e-mail of April 20.

I will be interested to learn if your friend does indeed include my little article about your work in the book.  In any event, I hope that the publication of the book will go well for you.  If my article is used, and if it is affordable to do so, I would love to have a copy, and in any case hope that you will send me publication information for my records if the article is used.

Thank you, too, for planning to send a photocopy of relevant pages when your critique of my Prometheus appears. And thank you again for that effort.

My current project is a complete read-through, with minor corrections, of my enormous novel, Ever Broten. I had said, last time I went through it, that I would not do so again until and unless I found a publisher. Now a small publisher has said he wants to publish it. Huge as it is, and economics of all publishing being what they are, we’ll see.  But this publisher has followed through on several of my shorter works in the magazines he also publishes.  So I am hopeful.  That he also publishes magazines has the added advantage over many small publishers of being an in-house means to promote the book.  I now am almost through with the read-through.

I am planning another trip into Silver City, in about a week and a half, for about a week I think, and am hoping to be able to put together an informal reading of the play I wrote this winter at that time.  Another writer friend who recently has settled there and is interested to participate also just told me that Summer also is interested.  That sort of thing always pleases me, that she would be interested, but equally that she is feeling well enough physically.

The state of the world, and of my country’s rulers in addressing it, remains appalling. What to say?

One thing I will say is the reason why I am sending this letter by post rather than by email.  I have run into a bit of what amounts to censorship of my email.  I do not believe this was intentional, nor that it was directed at me specifically. But it is disconcerting… and leaves me wondering what was intended, of which I have run into this evidence. I am enclosing a copy of the instances I have found.

All of the censorship occurred at one place: the Glenwood Community Library, which is unfortunate as that is the handiest place for me to get online when here at my current home base.  I do not believe it was supposed to happen, but rather that it did happen because of a malfunction or missetting of a Security program intended to do something else. What I think caused the problem is that there now is a low in the United States which mandates a Security program on all computers with Internet access in public places that accept Federal funding (which most do) supposedly to keep children from accessing pornography.  Many of the computers supplied to libraries have this Security program preinstalled.  However,  the Glenwood Library bought new computers this past winter which did not, and therefore had to install it.  I believe what I have run into happened because it either was not installed correctly or some other error.

The reason I noticed what was happening is because of how I customarily do a lot of my email.  Not having my own access and having limited time at any access, I commonly write letters on my computer, copy them to disk, then copy them to whatever system I can use to get to my email to send them.  Then, I recopy them from the “Sent” folder in the email, back to my disk and thence to my computer, largely to have a record of when I sent them.  I do not usually read them at all these copyings.  But I just happened to notice, on a couple of occasions, that something didn’t look right.  So I checked, and thanks to the recopyings, I had a record so I could check.  Sure enough, words were missing. I then checked further, and found that when I copied from disk to the email “Compose” function, or wrote directly in that function, what appeared was as I wrote it. So if I proofread what I was going to send, it looked right.  The changes occurred when I sent the emails! And I have confirmed since that it is the changed versions that people received.

It is entirely possible that what caused the problem was just a poorly written program, shabby work sold to the public, created because  the law created a market for such programs.  Unfortunately, exactly that sort of thing has become more and more common in recent years, as a once-robust and practical American economy and technology has, more and more been consumed by mindless regulation and endless hype.

However, I find it equally plausible that what I saw was a malfunction of something else that was intended. Considering what words were deleted from my emails (with no regard at all for context) I have difficulty seeing how this program would effectively serve its ostensible purpose of keeping children out of pornography.  The cuts are too arbitrary…. And, frankly, a lot of young people are far too ingenious to be stopped by such things, knowing how to do things with computers that I can’t even imagine.  However, what if the program, and the law mandating it really was sold, fraudulently, to a public susceptible to fears about children and pornography, but actually is intended for a different purpose entirely?  As a flagging system, that would send flagged words and phrases to some central government computer system, which in turn would record them, and if a high enough level of flagging occurred inform someone to take a look, I think the pattern I saw would be quite useful…if, of course, no one noticed it, as I believe no one was supposed to.  As a Security measure, to trace pornographers, drug dealers, terrorists…or any dissidents getting too uppity, I think such a system would be a useful addition to the  authorities’ repertoire.  Considering that it came into play just when I sent my emails, and that I have seen no suspicious lacunae in incoming emails, I think just such a purpose is all too plausible.

 

Of course, I do not think it was supposed to do anything that anyone would see. I think that the deletions, the censorship as I am calling it, really was a malfunction. I think it was supposed to be a flagging system, that was not meant to leave any visible trace.  But it is just because it accidently did so that I did see it, to note the pattern by which it operates…for whatever purpose it really is intended to serve. 

Someone has worked on the computers at the Glenwood Library since I called this problem to their attention. I have not noted any further deletions in my emails since, though I really do need to check further to be sure.  I have not noted anything of the sort anyplace else, and have checked on at least one other system in a public place: the University library in Silver City.  So I think the emails are going through intact (except a few that always get lost, but that really is as much as anything just a normal flaw in a huge and complicated medium).  However, what I have encountered leaves me with two troubling concerns.

One is that, over a period of months, I was the only person to notice what was happening at the Glenwood Library, and it was only because of all my copyings that I had a record to check it. Very few children use that library.  But quite a few older people use it, and some of them use it for such purposes as emailing medical records.  Considering the words that were deleted from my emails, I think such things could do very serious  harm.  I wonder how many other small libraries run by volunteers, as the Glenwood Library is, have encountered similar situations, and no one has noticed.

The other concern, of course, is to wonder what really is going on with this supposed Security program.  I do not believe it was intended  to cut any words out of anyone’s email as it did to me.  But I do believe that, in it doing what it did, I saw the pattern by which it does whatever it is supposed to do. What might that be?  And who is supposed to see the result, for what purpose?  I don’t know.  But, in hope that the post is at least somewhat less susceptible to tampering.  I am using this method, rather than any email, to tell people about it.

Hot here now. In fact, this trailer gets so hot, in the sun, that I don’t try to work  inside at all in afternoons.  It is even causing a problem with deterioration of the disks I use for backup copies of my work.  Though in many ways, my situation is congenial here, I do hope that sometime soon…after my trip east later this summer perhaps, I can find a different living situation.

In the meantime, I should have a couple of more stories coming out before that trip, and just wrote a new one a couple days ago, the first new one since the play this winter.  That felt good, as the original writing always does.

Fruit trees have fruit on them, getting big.  This is a major event, as it usually gets warm too early and then freezes late here, nipping the buds.  But this year, trees that have not set in a decade have fruit on them, including a peach tree right behind me, which I hope really will ripen peaches this year, and will do so in time for me to eat some before my trip.

I hope this finds you well. All best.

River

LETTER: 2005: 1

                                                                                      Uncle River

                                                                                      HC 61, Box 408

                                                                                      Glenwood, NM 88039

                                                                                      USA

                                                             uncleriver8@yahoo.com

                                                            Aug. 25, 2005

Dear R.K.,

Most sorry to hear you are ailing.  Perhaps I know what is wrong… if not just projecting from my own life.  And I certainly don’t know what, effectively, to do about it.

I think the source of your ailment is that you are living in a way that is poison to your soul.  Eventually, this bleeds through to the body, one way or another.

All cultures have traditions which answer this condition. And on the whole, I think India  has done better, longer, in this realm, than the West.  But the density of the times has blotted up too much of every path,  turned spiritual liberation to an advertizing jingle,  exalted infinite material paraphernalia and noise at the expense of life and love, and made fulfillment of responsibility, always an effort, now an endless irritating frustration. 

Don’t know what to say. For myself, I’ve about choked on a largely futile effort even just to get by.  I think the world has to stop running at such a frenzy, but I don’t think it has any even acceptable way to do so.  So what is any individual to do, living day to day as long as we do?

Best,

River

LETTER:  2008: 1

                                                                                                            22/11/2008

Dear R. K.,

Good to hear from you.  Though I had been concerned, and I am sorry to hear that my concern was justified.

I hope that all of the stresses and health problems will improve, for you and all of your family, and that you can enjoy having a healthy grandson.

At present, I find myself in a somewhat anomalous position.  The U. S. economy is in great turmoil, with many people in unaccustomed difficulty, some altogether displaced.  But, after my many years of extreme marginalization, I actually am a little better off than I am used to.  Still living on what most Americans would consider a fraction of enough to meet minimal needs.  But, at least partly because of where I live, as well as how, I have been able to live pretty well, by my own standards, and am doing so with less stress about being able to than much of my adult life, at the very time when so many others are experiencing a financial crisis.

Well, life takes many odd turns.

I currently am writing this to you from the Western New Mexico University library, during a visit to Silver City of most of a month, my first time here since January.  (Since my move to Pie Town, 175 miles away, I can afford to make the trip to Silver City less often than when closer, but stay longer than I usually have when I came more often.)  I also made a trip a bit farther, from here, to Las Cruces, where I attended an EMS (Emergency Medical Services) conference, and also had a visit and did a signing with my Mogollon News editor, who lives in Las Cruces.

Volunteering with the Pie Town ambulance, as well as Fire Department, has been another new development in my life, if not what I would have expected to be doing at 60.  But with a lot of the population of that rural area, far from most jobs and facilities, my age or older, that I am physically able to help, as well as having a flexible schedule to be available, makes it a community service that I am glad to be able to offer at this time in my life. 

I have seen Summer twice since being in Silver City, and hope to see her once or twice more while here.  She continues to be more physically limited.  Her emphysema has her on oxygen most of the time, and general weakness from the breathing difficulty and being unable to exercise progresses.  Yet there is a way that her energy has responded to the physical decline by becoming more clear, releasing emotional baggage, so that she can continue her creative work and enjoy people who come to see her all the more, with what energy she does have left.  After quite a few years of publishing only online, which she continues with her www.motherbird.com Web site, she has published several new print books this year.  And there will be a signing, tomorrow, for two children's books she published for two friends: Finder who wrote them, and Jodey Bateman who translated them from English to Spanish, with publication in both languages.  Summer is not sure if she will be able to go to the signing herself, at the Public Library, but will if she feels up to it.  And both authors and other friends will be there.

Wishing you all best,

Uncle River

P. O. Box 747

Pie Town, NM 87827

U. S. A.

uncleriver8@yahoo.com

LETTER: 2009: 1

Jan. 8, 2009

 

Dear R. K.,

 

The world continues to struggle.  And at dusk, just a little while ago, I watched a herd of deer that has been passing through often lately.  Some of them were playing, chasing each other around some trees.

 

I suspect, though with some embarrassment, that the whole world is waiting for Jan. 20, to see if a saner president of the world’s richest, most powerful nation either will or can improve policies, economic, diplomatic, enough to make a significant difference.

 

You say that the only reason India’s economy has not collapsed is an economist premier.  I long believed that the only thing that kept America’s economy appearing as stable as so many people wrongly believed it to be was Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve micromanaging each successive imbalance, but in the process making continued stability more and more dependent on himself, a position which, no matter how well and how long it worked, had in intrinsic limitation.  Greenspan himself now acts shocked at how badly things have fallen apart.  Perhaps his surprise is genuine, even if my opinion was correct.  Perhaps he only could make stability so dependent on himself by failing to realize that was what he was doing.

 

I’m not sure what economic collapse would mean, for India or for the United States.  Disruptions be what they may, the U. S. economy thus far certainly has not collapsed.  Compared, say, to Zimbabwe or Somalia, or even some earlier American economic crises.  The worldwide Depression of the 30s, most notably.  But I also think of a saying from the time of the American War of Independence:  “Worthless as a Continental”  The Continental was the paper currency that the then Continental Congress printed.  Despite present stupendous debt, and expectation of more, that has not yet happened to contemporary American money, most of which is just electronic numbers these days, not even paper.  We’ll see what we see.  I hope not too much in that direction.  It would not be good for anyone.  At least in the 1770s, the value, or lack thereof, of American money did not seriously affect much of the rest of the world.

 

My own circumstances, in the meantime, living on about 20 percent of what is called poverty level in the United States, continue relatively comfortable, by my standards, and by comparison to quite a few previous years of my adult life.  I have a place to live, plenty of food including carrots, turnips, parsnips and beets still in the garden under a foot of straw mulch and patches of snow, which I harvest as wanted, good water, plenty of firewood and the health to chop it.  By contemporary American standards, I am very marginal.  By contemporary world standards and most of human history, I can only wonder at my own society’s assumptions, and consequences when so many, mostly well-intended people have such assumptions.

 

Summer’s health…It was good to see her while I was in Silver City.  And her health is relatively stable.  But she was not having a health crisis.  She has emphysema, a chronic deterioration of the lungs.  She may be with us some substantial time longer; I hope so.  One never knows for any of us.  But it is not a question of an acute illness and recovery.  She is quite physically limited now, needing to be on oxygen a lot of the time, and also weakened just by not being able to do more.  Yet her creative spark certainly does continue and continue to grow.

 

And I am sorry to hear of your father’s health problem.

 

I hope you and your wife had a very fine visit with your son and indeed did get to hold your grandson in your arms and feel his breath, and that your daughter was able to join you for your birthday on Dec. 31, and a visit.

 

I had a birthday in December too, on the 12^th.  My 61^st, by American reckoning.  I was born Dec. 12, 1947.  Am I correct that it is customary in India to account one’s birth as the first birthday?  In the U. S., and the West generally so far as I know, the birthday at the end of one’s first year of life is called the first, when one is a year old.  Thus, if I do correctly understand the Indian method of counting, there is a year difference in ages of people calling themselves the same age in India and the West.

 

I think my novella: Camp Desolation And An Eschatology of Salt, is nearly ready to go to press.  And the story collection: Counting Tadpoles, is supposed to come out just a few months later.

 

I seem to be writing a new story.  If so, it will be my first in a year.  It has been so long that I feel unsure.  Also the material itself is on a subject that tends to pull apart.  People making assumptions, jumping to conclusions, acting without sensible consideration.  All too common human behavior, and I think that current tensions and the pace and distraction, notably including electronic media, of contemporary life only increases the tendency.  Which is a lot of why I feel inclined to portray it.  But we’ll see if I can do so and hold the story itself together.  It has been coming daily lately thus far.

 

My involvement with the volunteer fire and ambulance services continues.  But we have had mercifully few calls since my return from Silver City.  It is a service I am pleased to be able to offer though, at this time in my life and while and to the degree that I can.

 

A quiet evening now.  By comparison to the environment of much of the world’s population, I suspect extraordinarily quiet, for which I am grateful.  I see Venus out my window, with full dark, higher than I realized Venus could be; I mistook it for Jupiter the first few nights I saw it so high.

 

I hope this finds you and yours well.

 

All best,

 River