Haibun a Party- Haibun Thinking

AnElephantCant always write bad rhymes
Sometimes he writes bloodthirsty fiction
And if you know him
You know he also writes poems
It seems he suffers from a terrible affliction

AnElephant once again launches a one pachyderm assault on this great weekly challenge hosted by his friend Al.
Please take a moment to check out this page to see some superb interpretations of the Japanese Haibun, a literary form which explores the relationship between the human experience and nature.
This week is Freestyle, where he can choose his own topic.
So he does.
And he includes a photograph of one of his favourite spots for thinking and writing.

a corner of paradise by anelephantcant

Haibun a Party

He gradually becomes aware of the change in his blog writing habits.
For almost a year he writes, almost exclusively, daft rhymes of six five-line verses or stanzas.
Under an even dafter nom de plume.
He loves doing these.
He describes places he visits, the weather, museums, animals and plants of all descriptions including dragons, gooses (yes, really!) and haggis, parks, people alive and dead, rivers and bridges and, most of all, adventures with a grandson.
Then he stumbles across an on-line weekly writing challenge.
Write a story in 100 words.
He attempts this mainly out of curiosity at first, to discover if he can, then later as an exercise in disciplined writing.
He makes every story exactly 100 words, never 99 or 101.
He finds that this is less easy than it sounds, often involving not merely the addition or deletion of a word but a total restructure of a sentence.
He loves doing this.
Then a friend introduces him to another weekly challenge, the haibun, with a philosophy and style he has never before encountered.
It is a Japanese literary form which explores the relationship between the human experience and nature.
He attempts this with some trepidation, it is a much more personally revealing genre, the approach is more gentle, less robust than his usual deliberately bad rhymes or death-dealing short fiction.
Eventually its fascination leads him to this point, where he writes about writing it.
And it occurs to him that perhaps he just loves writing.

a gently subtle
almost intrusively personal
window to the soul