haiku

Issa’s Essential Message on Being Alive Beneath Blossoms…

At the end of cherry blossom season, as the petals were falling to the ground like pink snow, we found the perfect haiku written 300 years ago by the great poet Issa. We found the gist applies to way more than cherry blossom season…

The Power of Pine Trees Dreaming (Xmas Card)

We’ve stumbled on a few things recently that mightily deepened our view of the Christmas trees that are everywhere now, including a remarkable video of the birth of a pine tree and haiku written hundreds of years ago: Our improvised holiday card to you…

A Guide to Glimmers and Where to Find Them

Lately, we’ve been hearing about glimmers, tiny moments of awe and beauty that spark joy, calm, well-being and help our nervous systems feel relaxed and balanced (the opposite of stressors and triggers.) Glimmers can be the seemingly ordinary things, as well as very unexpected ones.

Apologies from H.C Westermann, Holton Rower, Buson…

The very best letter of apology we can imagine is a strangely wonderful love letter artist H.C. Westermann’s wrote to his wife Joanna Beall Westermann. “Dear Sweety”, it starts. Then he goes at it. It got us thinking about apologies…

Heading for Deep Analog, We’ll Be Back in September

We’ve suddenly realized that we’re heading into the home stretch of summer, with September in the too-near distance, and feel, well, we really need to STOP. We are world-weary, still. So we’re heading OUT, to immerse ourselves in deep analog.

Revelations from Living with A Book Left Open

Although I’ve often left art books open around my space so I could live with an image, it only recently occurred to me to do that with a volume of tiny, powerful poems.

Soft Rain on the Pond, Fireflies in the Field and a Poem for the End of Summer

In case you haven’t been able to get away enough this summer, or have but are wondering where it went, here are a some lovely time-stopping moments of summer…

Cherry Blossoms in Your Face: Time Lapse, Gif, Haiku and NOW

A superb little time lapse, haikus and a gif are reminders to take a moment to take in the cherry trees coming into bloom: opportunities for amazement.

How to Maintain a Kind of Summer in the Horribleness of Winter

Roz Chast’s January New Yorker cover “Cruellest Month” made us laugh out loud. “I wanted to show just the horribleness of January.” Chast says. And she did. Then we thought of ways to change our winter mindset.

Hi/Low: Round Porthole Mirrors for a Haiku-like View

You have only to search MIRROR on Improvised Life to find evidence of an obsession. Not to look at one’s self. But to angle them in such a way as to SEE a bigger view. Take these port-hole mirrors, for example…and Basho’s haiku…

The Secret Flashcodes of Fireflies

For a summer evening, some lovely silent videos of fireflies, haiku from centuries ago, and a hint at their secret flashcode.

You Control Your Time (Warren Buffett + Bill Gates)

When Rose asked Bill Gates what the biggest thing he’d learned from Warren Buffett is, Gates replied it isn’t about investing money; it’s about investing time.

Never Give Up! (Buson and Babar)

Just as we were wondering if March, the fickle, endless-feeling month would ever end, we found hopeful signs…

A Wondrous Dragon in A Single 2-Minute Stroke w Haiku

This truly astonishing tiny video is a perfect morning mediation with a inbuilt lesson: The ease of this miraculous single stroke-that-became-a-dragon is the result of intense practice and many failures.

Wabi-Sabi Lesson: Broken Blossom with Rubber Bands (+ haiku)

At dinner at photographer Ellen Silverman’s house, I noticed a beautiful on-the-verge-of-flowering Amaryllis plant on her kitchen island…and next to it her clever, fast save of a cluster of buds that had broken off. It was as beautiful as the plant itself and embodied the elusive quality of wabi-sabi.

Leap (William Wegman) with Haiku

One of the best titled leaps we’ve seen (in our vast collection): William Wegman’s For a Moment He Forgot Where He Was a Jumped into the Ocean. THAT is how we would love to live our life:

Walking the Kumano Kodo Pilgrimage Path w Poetry

We thought these extraordinary photographs of walking Japan’s ancient deep forest pilgrimage path would be a fine wait to start the week. And of course we found poems to accompany them…

Sleep Doc Wakes Up Nap Shamers

Being avid but somewhat guilty nappers, we were heartened by the research of Damien Leger that shows a well-timed snooze to be ESSENTIAL to good cognitive functioning. The key, he says, is to nap wisely, without shame.

Re-envision Time to Have More of It

Scott Thrift redesigned the traditional numeral clock to make it shift the way you experience your day: he simplified a 24-hour day into a visualization of dawn, noon, dusk and midnight, its slowly moving hand making a gradual transition from one to the other. He says its effects are powerful…

How to Walk Around with “Poet Mind”

Knowing of our love of — and frequent postings of – centuries-old Japanese Haiku, tiny poems that perfectly describe an instant, a friend gave us The Haiku Anthology. It contains very surprising haiku written by contemporary Americans in English; evidence of modern life is everywhere…as poetry and insight… long meeting I study the pattern embossed on the napkin * freshly…

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