Month: June 2021

Neighborly Haiku

My town’s art association was holding a haiku contest. The haiku should refer to something the writer experienced in Arlington Heights, Massachusetts.

My feelings for this area where I live had deepened during the pandemic. I was more appreciative of kind neighbors and the caring friendliness of those working in local businesses. I spent more time in nearby parks enjoyed by children, families and dogs both on and off-leash.

As I walked along Massachusetts Avenue near its intersection with Park Avenue looking for haiku from the contest, I came across several in the process of being painted. I said to one of the painters, “Maybe this has started something. Maybe there will be more poetry displayed in Arlington Heights.” The woman doing the painting agreed that should happen.

I noticed that some of the signs shop owners had put up in their windows felt a bit like poems. Looking back along the street, I knew it had happened again. I felt a new appreciation for this particular corner of the world.

The Spirit of Wood

With its warmth and depth, wood can speak to us in ways that few other materials can. We make so many things from it, we can take wood’s existence for granted. Some cultures particularly value the beauty of wood. The Japanese (who also value “forest bathing ”) have developed tools to shave incredibly thin strips from wood leaving a satin-smooth surface.

This post focuses on two old wooden objects from Nepal – see the first photo below. The wonderful five inch box with wheels has a cherry blossom carved in its swivel lid. Some kinds of cherry trees are native to Nepal but this chunky box seems quite a contrast to the delicacy of those blossoms.

Anthropomorphic figures like the one to the right are found outside temples, near springs, guarding bridge entrances and on rooftops in western Nepal. In Wood Sculpture in Nepal, Jokers and Talismans, Bertrand Goy and Max Itzikovitz write, “very few serious and thorough scientific works (are) available to help us make sense of the scattered, fragmented and often conflicting information on these sculptures” (p 49). Scholarly works tend to discuss religious objects from the Kathmandu valley like the idealized donor lamp in the second photo.

Knowing almost nothing about them only increases the appeal of these two wooden objects – I am free to imagine all kinds of meanings and uses. Whatever the original intention, the makers deep feeling for the spirit of wood is clear in a vivid aliveness that transcends cultures and time.

These two old wooden objects from Nepal captured my heart

An idealized donor oil lamp that would have been given to a temple